Strategies for Reading in

the Content Areas

Presented by
Rebecca Derenge
Title I Reading Coordinator
Why teach reading in the
content areas?

What benefits would students

gain being able to read about
the content with greater
understanding?
Reading is the key to
success in all content
areas!
What about kids who can’t
read?

• Students who struggle with reading KNOW

they struggle with reading: they know they
lack the single most important tool for
success in school… and they know that not
having that skill opens them to ridicule from
peers and from teachers.
•They do anything they can to distance
themselves from the place and the people
who will remind them that they can’t read.
Kids who can’t read….

• Non-readers would prefer to get into

trouble for not doing their work rather than
be embarrassed in front of their peers for
doing it wrong.
• They KNOW they can’t read; they’ve known
it for years.
• Not all struggling readers sit at the back of
the room, head down, bored look…give the
gifted student the right text and s/he can
stumble over ideas, worry over words, get
lost, and be confused about meaning.
What strategies do you use
when you encounter text you
don’t understand?

What strategies do your STUDENTS

use when they encounter text they
don’t understand?
Marzano’s 9 Categories of
Instructional Strategies That
Affect Student Achievement
1. Identifying similarities and differences
2. Summarizing and note taking
3. Reinforcing effort and providing
recognition
4. Homework and practice
5. Nonlinguistic representations
6. Cooperative learning
7. Setting objectives and providing feedback
8. Generating and testing hypotheses
9. Questions, cues, and advance organizers
Independent Strategic Readers

• Know how to make text make sense

• Have strategies to use
• Know how to struggle with text
• Develop the patience and stamina to stick with
a text
• Know what is separating them from success
with the text
• Know what they should do to fix the problem
3 Types of Reading Problems

• Lack of cognitive abilities…comprehension,

vocabulary, word recognition, fluency,
automaticity
• Negative attitudes toward reading…
• Don’t know how to read different kinds of
text… they read social studies like science,
lack the ability to stick with difficult text, lack
stamina to find or complete a text
“We need to discover how a
student’s unique brain is wired
for reading and writing and
then use a range of approaches
that matches his or her
“literacy style.”
- Thomas Armstrong
The KEY PREDICTOR of
reading success is the
student’s background
knowledge.
Factors Affecting Student
Performance on the Reading Task

ABILITY

CULTURE
GENDER INTEREST
READING
SES
TASK

PRIOR
ENVIRONMENT KNOWLEDGE
LEARNING
STYLE
Students often know how to
read, they just don’t use (or
know how to use) effective
strategies to get the full
meaning from the text they
read.
3 Phases of Reading:

1. Pre-Reading
2. During-Reading
3. Post-Reading
 LEARNING/READING AND
RETENTION

CONSTRUCT MEANING
PRE-READING

ORGANIZE
DURING-READING

Time
STORE
Spent AFTER-READING
 3 Main Barriers to Content
Area Reading

1. Content-specific vocabulary
2. Prior knowledge about the content area
subject
3. Understanding of text features and
organization of the text
1. Strategies to use when
encountering new words

What readers can do:

•Use clues to help define the word
• Try to connect the unknown word to
words/ideas/concepts they know
• Use available resources (e.g. glossary,
thesaurus, dictionary)
• Know they must use the new word about 7
times in the next few days
•Create a definition in their own words
1. Strategies to use when
encountering new words (continued)

What readers can do:

•Create a mental or visual image of the word
• Identify key characteristics of the word
• Identify examples and non-examples
• Periodically review the understanding of the
word
1. Strategies to use when
encountering new words

What teachers can do:

•Provide a consistent structure of attacking the
new word
• Make connections with students’ prior
knowledge by telling stories or creating
descriptions that explain the definition
• Identify key characteristics of the word
•“Front load” the vocabulary by sharing the
words at the beginning of the new unit
1. Strategies to use when
encountering new words

What teachers can do:

•Insist the students learn the meanings
of prefixes, suffixes, and roots that are
used often in their content area
• Talk about how this strategy can help
the students become independent
strategic readers
 Connect new knowledge to make
meaning.

Readers construct meaning from the information

the author provides in the text and the information
they bring to the text.

“External Text” “Internal Text”

Text
Meaning
(Author) (Reader)
1. Tools to use when encountering
new words (vocabulary)

• What it is and What it’s Not

• Vocabulary Wheels
• Random Connections
• My Personal Vocabulary
• Word Sorts *
• Concept-Definition Mapping
• Visual-Verbal Word Association
Root Woods, Affixes
The KEY PREDICTOR of
successful comprehension

BACKGROUND
KNOWLEDGE

How do you help your

students prepare for the
reading task?
2. Connect new knowledge to existing
knowledge to make personal
meaning.
What readers can do:
• Be aware that their prior knowledge is
important to understand the text.
• Seek new ways to connect new knowledge
to what they already know
• Read widely from multiple sources
• Constantly increase background
knowledge experience
• Take a few second before reading to
review what is already known
2. Connect new knowledge to
existing knowledge to make
personal meaning (continued)

What readers can do:

•Demonstrate interest in multiple topics
• Read and discuss often to deepen their
understanding
• Share ideas with another person about
what is known about the topic prior to
reading
2. Connect new knowledge to
existing knowledge to make
personal meaning.
What teachers can do:
• Provide multiple opportunities for students to
read
• Encourage students to share their experiences
• Use graphic organizers to help students make
connections
• Use brainstorming to identify prior knowledge
and interests or experiences
• “Plant seeds” in early units to create prior
knowledge
2. Connect new knowledge to existing
knowledge to make personal
meaning (continued)
What teachers can do:
•Share content specific vocabulary at the
beginning of the unit
• Give students opportunities to identify
similarities and differences
• Encourage students to reread when they don’t
understand, stopping to think about how the
reading relates to their own life and experiences
• Provide reflective journals with prompts or
questions to help students connect their learning
with their prior knowledge
3. PREDICT WHAT MIGHT BE
COMING NEXT

What readers can do:

• Summarize often what happened and
predict what might come next
• Use clues in the reading as well as the
structure of the text to help make
predictions
•Make use of cues like pictures, graphs,
and charts to help identify “what’s next”
in their reading
3. PREDICT WHAT MIGHT BE
COMING NEXT (continued)

What readers can do:

•Turn subheadings into questions to predict
what will be coming
• Do a 60 – to 90-second scan of the reading
material before reading to determine the
“big ideas” that will be included
• Think about how their own biases and
ideas might affect how they read the text
3. PREDICT WHAT MIGHT BE
COMING NEXT

What teachers might do:

• Use reading tools at the beginning of the
unit to help focus new learning
• Create a purpose for their reading
• Help students create questions about the
topic
• Ask questions after students read a
section in order to shape their thinking for
the remainder of the reading.
3. PREDICT WHAT MIGHT BE
COMING NEXT (continued)

What teachers might do:

• Help students generate a hypothesis
about the topic so they can test it as they
read
• Ask students to construct support for
their predictions
• Point out text features that will help
students predict what they might be
reading
3. Tools to use for prediction

• Anticipation guide *
• Thinking through the reading assignment
• Writing a response to the title
• My own perspective
4. Continually evaluate their
understanding of what they’ve
read
What readers can do:
• Connect what they just read with their
prior knowledge
• Support their point of view as well as the
points of others
• Find and describe errors in their own
thinking as well as in the information they
read
• “Stop and think” often in order to test their
own understanding
4. Continually evaluate their
understanding of what they’ve
read (continued)
What readers can do:
• Recognize when the text does not make
sense and use the various strategies to
increase their understanding
• Question their understanding of the
material on a frequent basis
• Use tools to help them remember to reflect
frequently on how well they understand the
text
4. Continually evaluate their
understanding of what they’ve
read
What teachers can do:
• Give students multiple opportunities to
clarify and categorize new information,
justifying their reasons
• Provide opportunities for student to
summarize key concepts
• Encourage students to re-read if they are
having trouble understanding text
• Provide alternative note-taking, including
the creation of visuals
4. Continually evaluate their
understanding of what they’ve
read (continued)

What teachers can do:

• Question students often throughout the
reading, prompting them to evaluate their
own understanding and support it with
details and information
• Allow students to talk and to write about
their learning
• Help students develop the ability to
create good questions about the
information in the text
4. Tools to use to check for
understanding (comprehension)

• Think-alouds
• Insert note-taking
• Pause and reflect
• Stop and think
•Coding expository text *
5. Create images of what is
being read
What readers can do:
• Know that a picture is truly worth a
thousand words
• Create pictures to summarize their
learning
• Select appropriate graphic organizers to
summarize the details and information in
their reading
• Use visual organizers to connect their new
learning to their background knowledge
5. Create images of what is
being read

What teachers can do:

• Become familiar with various graphic
organizers in order to offer the
appropriate one(s) to help students
achieve the intended learning
• Provide models of graphic organizers
and guided practice in how to use them
• Model the use of visuals and graphic
organizers
5. Create images of what is
being read (continued)
What teachers can do:

• Provide various graphic organizers that

allow for,but also assist, the students in
organizing the new learning

• Use models and charts in the classroom

• Use clips from videos that emphasize or

demonstrate key concepts

• Share students’ work by displaying it

Students often read vastly
different kinds of texts the
same way and ignore the
textual cues that would
help them develop a clearer
understanding.
6. Periodically summarize what is
being read

What teachers can do:

• Model how to summarize
• Model how to paraphrase
• Encourage students to write about what
they read
• Have students journal about what
they’ve read
6. Tools to use to summarize what
is being read

• Retell what is read orally or in written form

• Have students make connections to the real
world from what they’ve read *
• Imitate what they’ve read with their own
interpretation
7. Use textual cues, visuals, and
text organizers
What readers can do:
• Look for clues to the text to help their
understanding, including headings,
subheadings, bold-faced, and italicized words
• Identify the organizational pattern and
predict how it is tied to the intended learning
• Look for key words that predict the
organizational pattern
• Recognize that pictures in the text are there
to help provide clues to the reading
7. Use textual cues, visuals, and
text organizers (continued)

What readers can do:

• Turn the headings and subheadings into
questions to focus their reading
• Become familiar with the text cues
provided by the author
7. Use textual cues, visuals, and
text organizers
What teachers can do:
• Introduce students to the text for the class by
providing a “talk aloud” that includes the
structure and clues provided by text features
• Introduce activities to become more familiar
with the various parts of the book
• Look carefully at graphs and charts to identify
key information
• Assist students in turning headings and
subheadings into questions that can focus their
reading
7. Use textual cues, visuals, and
text organizers (continued)

What teachers can do:

• Practice using text features, such as the
glossary and index
• Use organizers at the beginning of the unit
to focus students on the big picture
• Consider the use of highlighting text to
indicate main ideas
7. Tools using cues, visuals, and
text organizers

• Using text cues

• Using pictures in the book
• Providing graphic organizers
• Creating graphic organizers
• What’s interesting/what’s important *
8. Have a plan for how to
approach the task

Do students know WHAT to read?

Do students know WHY they’re reading

(purpose)?

Are students prepared? WHAT do they

BRING TO the reading?
To increase student
understanding of the content
area, help them become
better
readers of content area text.
Materials were compiled for this
presentation from presentations from
the ASCD October Conference and
include: Robert Marzano, Sue Beers,
and Bea McGarvey
 SOMETIMES
TEACHING
IS LIKE HERDING
CATS