Research indicates that expert readers use a variety of strategies as they read to construct meaning from the text. A strategy is a deliberate activity that guides a student to independently read for meaning. Regular modeling and coaching of reading strategies by teachers is a critical part of all reading instruction. A student has mastered a strategy when he or she can use it independently. In addition to using reading strategies, expert readers also use a variety of comprehension and word recognition skills. Students develop as readers when they are given repeated support to master comprehension, word recognition, and strategic reading skills. To promote my sixth-graders’ understanding of their reading, I will use the reading strategies presented in the book Mosaic of Thought by Ellin Oliver Keene and Susan Zimmerman. These seven strategies are:
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- Connecting the Known to the New
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- Determining Importance, learning the essence of text
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- Questioning, delving deeper into meaning
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- Using Sensory Images to Enhance Comprehension
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- Inferring, finding the intersection of meaning
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- Synthesizing, discovering the contour and substance of meaning
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- Solving Reading Problems Independently, empowering children to move from problem to resolution
In this book, Keene and Zimmerman write in depth about each of these strategies, demonstrate how teachers can encourage their students to use them, and explain how accomplished readers use them as they read. I will model these strategies regularly throughout my unit.
Friere’s understanding of reading, that it is “grasping the soul of an author’s meaning,” implies the use of concrete strategies as students interact with text. There are four guiding principles of strategic reading:
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- The meaning of a text is not contained in the words on a page. It is
constructed
by the reader.
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- The single most important variable in learning with texts is a reader’s
prior knowledge
.
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- How well a reader comprehends a text also depends on
metacognition
, one’s ability to think about and control his thinking process before, during, and after reading.
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- Reading and writing are integrally related.