Cover and Tell

Description:

“Cover and Tell” is a reading comprehension strategy.  It enables a student to independently, break up their reading into smaller parts, giving them a chance to focus on what they just read and retell the information. In doing this, students and teachers will be able to assess right away if the reader understands what they read.  If a student knows ahead of time they will have to retell, they tend to have a stronger focus and read with the intent to understand.

Targeted Skills:

Reading text for understanding, chunking the text, and retelling

When to use the strategy:

The Cover and Tell Strategy should be used when a student is having trouble comprehending text or remembering what they have read.  It is especially helpful when reading expository text. It is also a good strategy for students to use to help with retention.

Example:

Student takes their hand and “covers” the text to be read--that is the text they will be “telling” about.  Once they see what text is being considered they then begin to read, knowing that when they get to the end of the text they will have to “cover” up the text with their hand and “tell” what they just read.

Differentiation

This strategy is best used with multi-paragraph text and while reading expository text that contains a lot of information.  It can also be used with a single paragraph and 1-2 sentence could be covered up at a time.

For students who are not quite fluent readers, detailed pictures and comic type strips could be used and student could then talk about the picture one part at a time.  They will be working on retelling what they saw and predicting what may occur next in the picture.