Reading Strategies

-         STRATEGIES- are plans or ways of doing things-in the case of developing readers and writers, they are ways of figuring out unknown words or thinking about the text.

-         Some Meaning based strategies that your child can try when stuck:

o   Using picture clues to think about what makes sense

o   Re-read to think about what makes sense

o   Pausing to think about what makes sense

o   Reading ahead to think about what makes sense

-         Some Visual Information strategies that your child might try when stuck:

o   Using the beginning letter sound to get themselves started

o   Looking for a known part inside the word (eg. Yesterday)

o   Thinking of another work that looks like the tricky one (shook®look;land®and)

o   Try to break the word into chunks (af/ter, un/der, to/day)

-         Remember that while we have a lot of strategies to use, not every strategy will work for every word!  Sometimes your child may need to try more than one strategy on a particular word!

-         When you are reading with your child have a conversation with them about what they are reading. If they get stuck, these prompts may help remind them of what they can try:

o   “What can you do to figure that out?

o   “Does that make sense?”

o   “What do you notice about that [word,letter,picture, etc]?

o   “What do you think it could be?”

-         Don’t let the silence of wait time make you anxious!  Sometimes kids need time to figure things out.

-         If your child is really stuck, it is OK to tell them a word so that they can keep moving! We want to preserve the meaning of what they’re reading and above all, for it to be FUN!