25 Reading Strategies That Work In Every Content Area
Reading is reading. By understanding that letters make sounds,
we can blend those sounds together to make whole sounds that symbolize meaning
we can all exchange with one another.
Without getting too Platonic about it all, reading doesn’t
change simply because you’re reading a text from another content area. Only
sometimes it does.
Science content can often by full of jargon, research
citations, and odd text features.
Social Studies content can be an interesting mix of itemized
information, and traditional paragraphs/imagery.
Literature? Well, that depends on if you mean the flexible form
of poetry, the enduring structure of a novel, or emerging digital literature
that combines multiple modalities to tell a story. (Inanimate
Alice,
for example.)
This all makes reading strategies somewhat content area
specific. Stopping (maybe
the most undervalued strategy ever) and Rereading
might make more sense in science, while Visualization
and Text Connections
may make more sense reading literary works. Questioning
the Text may make equal sense in both.
But if you’d like to start with a basic set of strategies, you
could do worse than the elegant graphic above from wiki-teacher.com. (Useful site, by the
way. Check it out.) It lists 12 basic reading comprehension strategies. READ MORE @
