📑 5 strategies for reading complex texts

Bookmarked 5 strategies for reading complex texts (The Confident Teacher)

Any time a pupil is reading a complex text, it will likely prove difficult, effortful, and even frustrating. We cannot just expect to offer pupils harder and harder texts and expect them to become better readers either. However, by explicitly teaching pupils to be strategic and to cohere their knowledge and understanding, we can offer them the right tools to tackle the job of reading complex texts.

Rather than simply relying on simpler texts, Alex Quigley discusses some strategies for supporting students with grappling with more difficult texts. This includes:

  • Sharing the secret that struggling is actually normal
  • Generate curiosity by getting students to engage with texts through student questions and predictions
  • Activate prior knowledge to help make connections
  • Identify and teach keystone vocabulary
  • Read related texts

Associated with all this, one of the biggest challenges with reading comprehension is addressing the question why read any text at all? For example, should everyone be made to read Finnigan’s Wake?

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