G) What Are Strategies?

What Are Strategies?

From kindergarten on, students learn about strategies, talk about strategies, practice strategies and use strategies. So...what exactly are strategies?

Strategies are tools readers use. There are strategies that enable readers to figure out how to read words and strategies to discover what they mean. There are strategies that readers use to maintain, improve and strengthen their comprehension. Other strategies focus on reading behaviors such as: handling a book, staying focused on your reading, talking about a book, and how to select a Just Right book. 

According to the research, readers who comprehend well are Active Readers. Active Readers automatically use strategies, often several at the same time, to understand, remember and to gain a richer, deeper meaning of the text.

Students learn a range of strategies and are shown how they can apply them, first with support and then, independently. We teach students to pay attention to their thinking and become aware of the strategies they are using. As Active Readers, they also notice when their reading stops making sense and what they need to do to get back on track.

                           Strategies enable the reader
                              to "get inside" the book.  
           They are the tools that lead to understanding.

The major comprehension strategies are listed below:             

Making Connections
Readers connect what they know with the text they are reading.

Questioning (Wonderings)
Readers ask questions to learn more, seek answers, and to clarify any confusion.

Inferencing
Readers read between the lines, make predictions and draw conclusions.

Visualizing
Readers make mental images based upon the author's words and what they already know.

Determining Importance
Readers figure out the main idea/author's message.

Synthesizing
Readers, after finishing a text, create new thinking by pulling together what they already know, the strategies they used and the author's words.

Monitoring/Fix Up 
Readers pay attention when meaning breaks down or when they lose their focus. At this point, readers need to use a fix-up strategy (i.e., rereading, slowing down, using word clues, trying a comprehension strategy).
 

Information about Comprehension Strategies is based on: Strategies That Work by Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis (Stenhouse Pu