Reading Nonfiction Can Develop Strategic Reading Skills (Pt. 2)
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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 to nonfiction. (Sources: National Geographic School Publishing Windows on Literacy and Vermont’s Nine Strategies for Reading Comprehension) Strategy: Questioning Questioning is a powerful tool that helps readers before, during and after reading. Before reading, generate questions that focus the purpose for reading. Questioning is an especially effective strategy when reading for information because asking important questions is a skill in the research process. New readers who form their own questions during reading are actively engaged in the reading process. Active readers ask a wide range of questions: • Questions showing confusion or misunderstanding indicate that the reader is aware that something does not make sense. The reader is monitoring his or her own comprehension. • Questions and expressions that show surprise, delight, amusement or curiosity show that the reader is actively engaged with the text and integrating the information into his understanding of the topic. �• Questions about word choice, the way the information is told, or where or how a picture was taken indicate that the reader is critically evaluating the work of the author. • Questioning after reading helps new readers to reprocess and reflect on what they read. The questions new readers ask often lead to further investigation of the topic. Encourage children and new readers to respond to text by asking questions that may or may not have been answered. The reader may ask questions, such as: “What is the author trying to say?” “How does this relate to my life?” “Why did the author write in the way he did?” “Am I getting the point?” “Why does this text (not) engage me?” Strategy: Making Visual Representations Drawing and making charts, diagrams and other visual representations are powerful reading tools. Children and new readers can keep track of information for later recall, use visual representations to summarize what they learned, and create visuals to organize thoughts during prewriting. Encourage children and new readers to use visuals to sort and process information. Different kinds of visuals include: • Concept webs to sort out main ideas from subtopics and details. • Diagrams to compare and contrast people, places, ideas and things. • Charts to sort and classify related people, places, ideas or things. • Flowcharts to recreate the steps in a process. �• Checklists to sort through a problem. Strategy: Evaluating, Summarizing and Synthesizing Strategic readers pause during and after reading to consider the main points, construct new ideas from two or more pieces of text, and reflect on the quality and relevance of the text. By focusing on introductory material, topic sentences, and concluding material, the reader summarizes and separates the main ideas from the details. The reader creates a hierarchy of information or ideas presented in the text. Good summaries are shorter restatements of the main ideas with some details included to support or explain the main ideas. Extraneous details are omitted. 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.
