Tool Bag: Reading Strategies

Chapter five of Harvey Daniels and Steven Zemelman’s Subjects that Matter: Every Teacher’s Guide to Content-Area Reading discusses specific tools students can use as reading strategies. In order for students to learn these tools, they must be explicitly taught and modeled by the teacher. Not all strategies are multi –purpose, some are helpful at different times. For example, double entry journals are helpful during reading, but dramatic role-play can be used before or after reading.

This chapter really encourages teachers to diversify their strategies and gives teachers real ways to help students adapt these tools to their own learning needs. Also some strategies might work better in some content areas than others. Teachers should experiment with the different strategies and find a few that seem to work well with the material and will reach a diverse student population. Teachers should then teach and model these strategies to their students. Ideally, students will begin to use these strategies on their own to make sense of the material they are assigned to read. All students can become “smart” readers if they are given the tools to succeed.

Pre-reading activities such as brainstorming, clustering, anticipation guides, reading aloud, dramatic role-play, and probable passage are common strategies used in foreign language classrooms to activate prior knowledge and link knowledge between the native language and target language. Also, students are frequently encouraged to code in their books to help them understand and remember what they read.Word meaning graphic organizers are also popular to help students make the connection between related vocabulary words. Foreign Language teachers also use lots of discussion: whole class, small group, and partner to scaffold students reading comprehension. All of the strategies presented in this chapter could be successfully adapted to the language classroom.