Session: Effective Reading Strategies for the Content Areas
Presenter: Heather Rocco
Slides are here (will post the link once Heather tweets it out!).

Love this spectrum by Margaret Early (1965)!
The research shows:
ages 0-12: Reading for unconscious delight
ages 12-15: Reading to test against main character
ages 15-22: Reading for philosophical speculation
ages 22+: Reading for enjoyment

Book rec:
Notice and Note (Kylene Beers & Bob Probst)

Quote from Bob Probst: Rigor doesn’t reside in the text. It’s what you do with it. If you look at a barbell, the rigor doesn’t come from the weight itself; it comes from trying to lift it. <– love this metaphor!

Quotes from Notice and Note
“Rigor without relevance is just hard.”
“To raise the rigor, you have to relevance.”
“To raise the relevance, the students must be the ones asking the questions.”

Reading Strategy
*Project chart with random words from an article that students are going to read. Tell students to do their best to put the words/phrases together to make a sentence.
*Heather took examples of the sentences and typed them into a chart that was projected on the board.
*She told us to work with a partner and pick one sentence from the list and write two or three about that sentence.
*We shared our questions, and Heather typed the answers in a chart (next to each sentence).
*Heather gave us the article from which the words originated and told us to read it. While we read, we were supposed to keep track (metacognitively) of what we were doing. I noticed right away that I was eagerly checking to see if my sentence was right. I caught myself reading the content with a really clear purpose. I also found that I was doing some compare and contrast between what I had predicted and what the text was actually about. I can see kids loving something like this; it adds a certain level of excitement as I read about a topic that might otherwise not feel relevant.

Reading Strategy (Read Around)
(great pre-reading strategy)
Find the one line…
*that interests you
*that confuses you (what line do you have no idea what the author is talking about?)
*contradicts your thinking
*best summarizes the text
*that shows the counterclaim
*(and anything else you want)

All you ask them to do is just highlight the one line that [does whatever you told them to this time].

Then do a read around. Have every kid read their one line out loud. They are not allowed to change their line even if they have the same line as someone else.
Five participants read their lines around, and we then discussed what happened. Say “Ok listeners, what did you hear?”)
*summarized the whole article
*pulled out the main points
*found things we didn’t notice before
*reinforced important parts of the passage

Reading Strategy (Poster Activity)
(good during reading strategy)
*Identify excerpt
*Paste in the middle of large paper
*Give students markers
*Write, but don’t speak
*NO TALKING!

I have done something similar to this before (thanks, Uzay!), but I’ve always put different extracts on the posters. What I loved about this variation is that every poster had the same extract, so it really gave a great overview of all the different interpretations. I found myself doing a lot of re-reading to help get more context for my classmates’ comments. The no talking rule also really helped find some quiet time to process.

Have to get to my next session- thanks for all the great ideas, Heather!