Reading Nonfiction Can Develop Strategic Reading Skills (Pt. 1)
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Cindy Cates, Exec. Dir.-
Introducing nonfiction to new readers will help develop strategic reading skills because fiction and nonfiction have different organization patterns. Typically, fiction follows a time-ordered sequence of events, while nonfiction employs a wider range of patterns including specialized vocabulary and deeper concepts than do fictional stories. Encountering different organizational methods, the reader develops new comprehension skills. Teachers and parents can help children and new readers acquire and apply reading strategies by incorporating nonfiction. (Sources: “National Geographic School Publishing Windows on Literacy” and “Vermont’s Nine Strategies for Reading Comprehension”) Strategy: Understanding Nonfiction Organizational Patterns Nonfiction incorporates more text structure, such as a table of contents, subheadings, bold print, diagrams, photographs and lists, in addition to transition words and chapter headings used in fiction. By reading fictional stories, new readers develop a sense of narrative structure, but need exposure to nonfiction texts to understand different organizational patterns to improve comprehension. These nonfiction organizational patterns include: �• Cause and Effect Books explain causal relationships by showing the results of certain actions or conditions. �• Classification Books sort information into categories. �• Compare and Contrast Books explore similarities and differences. �• Description Books describe information and may include definitions, uses and hierarchies of importance. • Main Idea and Detail Books explore a stated or unstated main idea supported and explained through details and examples. • Opposites Books categorize things based on opposite properties. • Parts of the Whole Books examine how the parts of something work together to make the whole. • Question and Answer Books frame information by asking a question followed by the answer. �• Sequence Books traces the sequence of events behind activities. • Steps in a Process Books explain that making things and doing tasks involve following a set of steps in a specific order. In response to the type of text, strategic readers modify the pace and rhythm at which they read and take notes to clarify their understanding. They also may reread and read aloud the passages. Strategy: Using Prior Knowledge to Connect the Known with the New To become a strategic reader, the reader connects the new material with the known. Before reading the new material, the strategic reader reviews what they already know about the topic and anticipates what they might learn from the text. By integrating new information and making connections with prior knowledge, the reader develops deeper meanings and understandings. Making inferences includes recognizing cause-and-effect relationships, making predictions, developing analogies and extending logic. For example, before reading a story about the planets, the parent or teacher relates what the reader knows about the earth, sun and moon to the planets. Parents and teachers can help children and new readers make these connections by: • Using the book title and cover illustration to talk about the topic of a book. • Previewing the pictures to help new readers anticipate the information that will be included. • Discussing personal experiences related to the text. Strategy: Thinking Aloud Thinking aloud is a highly effective tool in which teachers, parents and new readers can exchange ideas and engage each other in the text. This technique allows teachers or parents to model a range of thinking – puzzlement, prediction, appreciation, critical evaluation and solutions to problems. By thinking aloud at any time during the reading process, readers interact with the text. A teacher or parent needs only to talk about what might go through a reader’s mind as he or she reads. Strategic readers actively construct meaning as they read, interacting with the text. They set purposes for reading, select methods of accomplishing these purposes, monitor and repair their own comprehension as they read, and evaluate the completed task. Good readers use a range of strategies before, during and after reading to construct meaning. Readers should ask themselves questions about what they are reading and notice the way the text is organized. Reading a variety of books with various organizational patterns develops different methods of understanding and develops reading organizational skills.
