Strategies for Improving Student’s Content Area Reading to Acquire Information

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Before a student can even begin to understand how to read expository content within a text book, they must first begin to read meaningfully and they reasons behind why they read. Reading is not just for entertainment, it is also used to acquire information. Reading any form of text opens its audience, the reader, to the world without them having to buy a plane ticket or putting them in dangerous situations to gain firsthand experience (content within storybooks or novels). Reading opens one’s “cognitive eye”. Once a tolerance for reading is achieved, students can gather information from every text that they read, whether fact or fiction. Reading in content area is basically about “students interacting with text before, during, and after reading.” When presented with a topic, students “draw on their prior knowledge, set a purpose, and anticipate questions ... use word identification strategies (e.g., structural analysis, syllabication) to decode unfamiliar multisyllabic words and context clues to figure out the meaning of technical terms. They read between the lines to make inferences” then “reflect, synthesize ideas across sources, and make further interpretations.” There are several strategies that can be implemented for improving students’ content area reading. It is possible for teachers to help students by previewing the focus of work prior to the assignment of independent reading. The context and background schema of new material become a lot easier for students to retain by implementing this strategy. By engaging students in a group discussion about what they already know about the topic, it is possible that the students may learn from one another. The use of anchor charts citing students’ prior knowledge and questions ... ... middle of paper ... ...ved December 28, 2009, from Reading Strategies: Scaffolding Students' Interaction with Test: http://www.greece.k12.ny.us/instruction/ela/6-12/Reading/Reading%20Strategies/interactivenotebook.htm Greece Central School District. (n.d.). Sociogram. Retrieved December 28, 2009, from Reading Strategies: Scaffolding Students' Interactoin with Text: http://www.greece.k12.ny.us/instruction/ela/6-12/Reading/Reading%20Strategies/sociograms.htm Lemon, D. (2004, January). Strategies for Teaching Reading Across the Content Areas. Retrieved December 28, 2009, from http://uncw.edu/ed/ncteach/documents/ReadAcross.pdf Williams, M. (n.d.). ESL Strategies for Content Area Reading: Making Science and Social Studies Texts Comprehensible for ELLs. Language Study. Retrieved December 28, 2009, from http://languagestudy.suite101.com/article.cfm/esl_strategies_for_content_area_reading

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