Teaching Reading Strategies
Providing effective instruction in reading strategies follows the same sequence found in models of effective instruction, such as:
- Basing initial instruction on more than one piece of evidence of need.
- Providing direct instruction of sufficient length and duration to provide opportunities for developing competence and automaticity.
- Appropriate modeling of the skill or strategy.
- Providing opportunities for guided and independent practice.
- Providing positive feedback as students produce closer approximations to the desired behavior.
- Opportunities to employ the newly learned skills.
- Providing periodic reviews and extensions.
In addition, strategy instruction is also enhanced when students are:
- Shown how the strategies can be combined, for example; how previewing the text can help students set a purpose and select a pace for reading
- Given opportunities to practice strategies with a variety of text
- Shown how strategies can be used for in and out-of-school reading