As you start the year, I think it is important to equip students with reading strategies that will help them develop as better readers. It is important to go ahead and start teaching them these strategies so they can practice them all year long.
I am pretty sure the most popular go-to reading strategies are round-robin and popcorn reading, and, y’all, these are not highly effective strategies. When I was growing up and the teacher was doing round-robin reading, I was constantly counting the people in front of me to see which paragraph I would be reading. During all the other paragraphs, I was completely checked out. Surely I’m not alone here, right? I cannot be the only one who ONLY read my own paragraph and was not paying any attention to the others being read. Round-robin reading and popcorn reading are not really effective reading strategies to use when trying to grow your readers. I’m not saying you can’t ever use them; however, know that you’re not using the strongest strategies to help your students grow as readers when you do.
My Top Suggested Research-Based Reading Strategies:
PALS is a partner-based strategy that takes approximately 35 minutes. It is easy to incorporate and can be done with almost any text (article, novel, textbook, etc…) in any subject. During PALS, students really get to focus on the processes of reading comprehension. As a grown adult, I felt the benefits of PALS when I tried it for the first time at a conference. I had never realized that I did not retain a word of what I was reading aloud until trying this strategy out for the first time. It was humbling for me, and I know the students benefit from it just as I did. The partners in PALS are pre-determined using Lexile scores with the higher score being Partner A. While one partner is reading aloud, the other is coaching him or her by helping with any mistakes and by asking questions when the step calls for it. PALS pairs are supposed to read from the same text, so only one copy is necessary. There are four very specific steps in the PALS process, and for the best results, these steps cannot be changed in any way, so no tweaking.
Check out my PALS Resource HERE – It includes everything needed to implement PALS successfully
Reciprocal Teaching is a group strategy that allows for a little more independence than PALS does and can be done with almost any text (article, novel, textbook, etc…) in any subject. After using PALS with all of my students (including my gifted learners), I will then introduce Reciprocal Teaching to add in something new. For this strategy, you will want to chunk the text and have the groups of four are predetermined using lexiles, just as they were in PALS. Each student in the group takes on a different role for each chunk of the text. The steps are easy to follow and after a few practice runs, the students will master each part. The different roles represent the subconscious steps a good reader takes when digging into a text.
Check out my Reciprocal Teaching Resource Here – It includes everything needed to implement Reciprocal Teaching successfully
There was a time when I would have argued that this was not a strong reading strategy because the students are not the ones actively reading; however, I have grown to see the value in the modeling of read-alouds. When a teacher is reading aloud and students are actively engaged, they are able to see good reading and there is power in modeling. It also allows students to enjoy a text without struggling through it themselves.
Reading conferences are an opportunity for you to connect with the students, hold students accountable for their own reading growth, find out where students are, and help them set goals. During these, you meet with students to talk about their reading levels, set goals on where they want to be, and then discuss how they can work to meet their goals. It is a powerful tool to have in your corner. When you involve students in setting their own goals and action steps, they are much more eager to meet these goals.
Check out my Reading Growth Conference Charts Here
Check out my DIGITAL Reading Growth Conference Charts Here
There are many more powerful reading strategies that you can find to use with your students, but remember that you don’t need a wide array of options – you just need a few in your back pocket that work well. By starting the year off with a plan on which strategies you will use, you can go ahead and start using them and training the students on them from the start.
Happy Teaching Reading!
