Issue 157: Nov 07, 2011 Connections Newsletter

Nonfiction Text Reading Strategies

Debbie Willingham
Nov 08, 2011

How do you ensure that students read and react to nonfiction text appropriately?

Some students already know how to read and react to text based on its purpose. Effective readers are observant; they ask themselves questions, visualize, revise their predictions, make connections to lesson content and the bigger picture, and adjust their reading style as needed. Other students, however, no matter what their age, need your guidance as they read important text for your subject area.

It is important to determine the appropriate reading style students should use that matches the purpose for reading and the text being read. You may also need to teach students how to slow down, reread, paraphrase, use context clues for new vocabulary, and use chunking to get comprehend sections of the text.

There are three important types of questions you should have students consider as they read, based on the purpose and depth of understanding you need them to acquire. Constructing a reading guide for students to use as they read that incorporates all three types of questions provides them a way to organize and consider the content of the passage.

Questions:

* Text explicit questions are those for which the answers are found "right there" in the passage. These are the lowest level questions, usually at the knowledge or comprehension level, but obviously they still have value for learning the details of the topic.
* Text implicit questions are those in which the answers are implied; students have to "read between the lines" and think about the author's intent and the connection to the topic. These are higher level questions and lead to extending students' thinking and a deeper understanding of the topic.
* Experience-based questions ask students to use their own knowledge and experience with the topic as well as what they glean from the text to answer the questions. Most often there is no one correct answer. In asking this type of questions you are asking students to make important connections and often to use inductive reasoning.

Structured note-taking on a graphic organizer is another way to help students pull important content from a reading passage. The graphic organizer may be one specific to the text structure or customized to the topic under study. It may be sections of an organizer that students began earlier in whole-group instruction on the topic and now use to fill in additional important information as they read further about the topic.

Remember that sometimes it is not necessary for students to carefully read every word of a passage. While textbooks are excellent resources to provide information that supports the standards you are teaching, they often include much additional information and detail that you may not need to have students read. Having your students find important information in a passage in order to use it in a meaningful way is the goal, and you can easily help students achieve it by planning ahead to give students a clear purpose as they read.