Why are reading strategies important?
Reading strategies are important for learning to make sense out of written passages. Children need to be able to make sense out of unfamiliar words before they can understand what the author is saying. A variety of reading strategies will help develop good reading skills so children won’t rely on only one or two strategies and get stuck.
Which reading strategies should I use?
Several different reading strategies can improve reading comprehension and fluency. It is up to the teachers to choose the ones that work best for them. I use these 8 reading strategies all the time. There are several different versions of them available.
I love how the children engage with the animals. I got my own stuffies so that they could actually hold them and interact with them and I use them all the time in my guided reading groups. Here is a set of bookmarks and posters to go along with them.
Check out these 8 effective reading strategies and meet the animals!
Strategy 1
Eagle Eye is one of the strategies most used by young children. It uses pictures to convey meaning. In emergent books there are very few words and lots of pictures. This strategy is very effective for more advanced readers as well.
Strategy 2
Lips the Fish helps children focus on the beginning of the word. It helps them to remember to say the beginning sound. Often this is enough to help them figure out what the word might be.
Strategy 3
Stretchy Snake helps children to stretch out the sounds rather than individually saying each one. They stretch the sounds of the words so they are still connected and they can hear how they fit together. This makes them less choppy.
Strategy 4
Skippy Frog is useful when children get stuck on a word and can’t move on. This strategy encourages them to go on and make meaning by reading the next part of the sentence or passage. When they figure it out, they are supposed to go back and read the word that they were stuck on. The danger here, is that they don’t always go back, so use it sparingly.
Strategy 5
Chunky Monkey is a great strategy for helping children who are sounding out every letter. It encourages them to start looking for small words or chunks of letters inside the word that they already know.
Strategy 6
Flippy Dolphin flips to the long vowel when the short vowel doesn’t make sense.
Strategy 7
Careful Caterpillar reminds children to read the entire word. Often children only look at the beginning of words and add in words that are incorrect that start the same way. Encourage them to look at the whole word, so they will make fewer errors and their understanding will increase.
Strategy 8
Tryin’ Lion reminds children to go back and try again when they are not sure what it means. After working through a sentence with other strategies sometimes rereading the sentence helps to make the meaning clearer.
Click here to get a copy of these bookmarks and posters.
I hope you find these tools helpful with your young readers. I would love to hear how you use strategies in reading.
This post originally appeared at Diamond Mom’s Treasury.
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