Reading Strategies

Reading Strategies Promote Comprehension

Students can use reading strategies to help themselves understand a text better. In my EAL class, we used several reading strategies during our first unit as we read poems, stories, and memoirs.

The reading strategies we focused on were:

- Making predictions (based on title, pictures, first sentence/paragraph)

- Choosing key words

- Creating a visual representation

- Writing a summary (using the key words to help)

- Writing a personal response

I created a reading strategies template for students to fill out each time they read a new text. See below for a sample. Keep in mind, you may need to teach your students how to fill out each space when they first use this template.

Benefits of this Reading Strategies Template:

- It is open-ended and can be used with any text (poem, story, movie, article, textbook, etc).

- It is easy to have a stack of these ready and photocopied for an automatic assignment students can complete without any extra prep required by the teacher.

- Student can complete the same assignment even if each student has a different text, or a version at a different reading level.

- It gets students to practice reading strategies that will benefit them whenever they are reading.

- The more students use this template, the better they will get at completing it and using the reading strategies.

- It can be easily customized to suit the specific needs of a certain subject area by changing the strategies for certain boxes.

- ALL students in your class will benefit from learning about reading strategies.

Please Remember-

Reading strategies help students understand what they read, but if a text is way too difficult, even using reading strategies won’t help a student. The student may need a text at an easier reading level. There are many students (EAL and not EAL) who are reading below a high school level.

We have many texts at easier reading levels (novels, short stories, science/SS readings, etc) in our EAL Resource Centre. If you need an easier text on a certain theme, please ask one of us to help you find something appropriate.

Below is a sample of the reading strategies graphic worksheet.