The Strategic Literacy Initiative Home | About SLI What's New Professional Development Publications & Presentations Resources for Teachers Evaluation & Assessment Related Research & Resources Contact Information: Ruth Schoenbach Co-Director (510) 302-4255 rschoen@wested.org Cyndy Greenleaf Co-Director (510) 302-4222 cgreenl@wested.org Jana Bouc Program Coordinator (510) 302-4245 jbouc@wested.org		Reading Process Analysis   Purpose: Reading Process Analysis helps readers become aware of the demands of different texts and the strategies that they use to meet those demands in their efforts to make meaning as they read. By sharing reflections on their own reading processes in a group, readers learn from each other’s processes and appropriate new strategies. They also begin to see reading as a complex activity that requires flexible application of many strategies. This is often an important new awareness for many readers. This is a process that bears repetition, especially as readers encounter different types of text. Materials: Various texts, photocopied. (The first texts should be moderately challenging without being difficult. As the class gains experience with Reading Process Analysis, use gradually more challenging texts.) Pens or pencils with which students may write on the text. Butcher paper with the title "Good Readers’ Strategies" written on it and markers. Process: 1. Before reading, ask students what good readers do when they read. Other prompts might be: "How can you tell when someone is a good reader? What do you think teachers look for when they are trying to understand how well someone reads?" 2. Record all of the answers on the butcher paper titled "Good Readers’ Strategies." The idea here is to construct a sense of what the students’ beliefs, or theories, of reading are. Receive all answers, whether they support your notion of reading or not. Later conversations will revise and elaborate this initial list. 3. Assign a piece of text to be read. Ask students to read as they normally would, that there will be a discussion of how they read afterwards. 4. Following the reading, ask students to write briefly to prompts such as: What did you notice? What was hard? What did you do to make sense of the text as you read? 5. Ask students to share out. It is important to validate the many different kinds of thinking that lead to the successful completion of the task. 6. Record students’ observations on the butcher paper as they share out. Be sure to validate comments and point out things that are strong comprehension strategies. As you record, label students’ strategies so that your class will begin to build a common vocabulary about reading process. (If you have already made a Good Problem Solvers’ Strategy list from "Making Thinking Visible with Animal Creations," you may want to compare the two lists as you write.) 7. As students share their strategies, revisit the initial items on the list and ask if there is anything they might add or revise based on this reading experience. For example, a common comment on many initial lists is, "Good readers read fast." If students share out that they had to slow down because the text was confusing, the revised list might read, "Good readers sometimes read fast, but they know to slow down when they need to." Scaffolding: Read the same text that you assign to your students, and do the reflective writing. Begin by sharing one or two of the strategies you used while reading the text. Prompt students gently with questions such as: "Did anyone notice that they had to re-read any part?" or "Did anyone think of something else that they knew about that was kind of related?" If this still does not yield much conversation, you may want to model thinking aloud to give them a view of some strategies that they may recognize. (see "Modeling and Practicing Think-aloud" in the next section.) Try making a "Good Readers Solve Problems With…" list to acknowledge that as readers, we all commonly face many of the same comprehension challenges. From here, you can prompt strategies by asking things like, " Did anyone else have trouble with this part? How did you get through it?" These strategies can be written on the "problem solving" list next to the difficulty, and then written separately on a Good Readers’ Strategies list. For example: A student says that he did not know a particular word. Write "vocabulary" on the "problem solving" list. Ask the class if anyone else had trouble with that word. You can also ask a more general question like, "What kinds of things do people do when they come to new words?" Help generate a list of strategies for dealing with this problem: read ahead read the sentence before the word substitute a word you know that sounds right and makes sense look for parts of the word (roots) that are used in other words that you know write it down and go on look it up or ask someone… Soon even students who do not see themselves as readers begin to see that the problems they face are common to all readers, and that they, too, read strategically and are in fact good readers. As students use Think-Aloud and Talking to the Text, they will become more able to observe and share their strategies. Return to this Reading Process Analysis activity intermittently throughout the year as they have more opportunities to practice metacognition. Remember to add to and revise the Good Reader’s Strategy List each time you do!   Good Readers’ Strategies Read fast (change the speed of their reading depending on how difficult the text is) Re-read Ask questions Have a reason to read (set a purpose) Think about what they know already that’s related (Use background knowledge) For example, about topic, genre, era, author… Say, "this reminds me of my…" (Make personal connections) Try to picture what the author is saying (visualize) Good Readers Solve Problems With Weird words (difficult vocabulary) Read ahead Re-read the previous sentence Write it down Substitute a word you know that sounds right and makes sense Distractions (focusing attention) Disagreeing with the author Being nervous (about reading aloud or reading for a test) Reading about something they don’t know much about Knowing why to read something, or caring about something (Setting a purpose)           This information can be found at http://www.wested.org /stratlit/ideas/readingprocess.shtml Last modified March 16, 2001 ©2008 WestEd® || (415) 565-3000 || www.WestEd.org All rights reserved. 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