Targeted skills:  Reading comprehension and study skills

Begin this strategy prior to reading. Students prepare to read by first understanding the layout of the text. This preparation will assist with reading as students will easily be able to find key points and important vocabulary as well as understand the significance of visual aids.

Survey: Survey the text. Read the title, author, and introduction. Note the illustrations and bold terms. Notice changes in font size that may indicate important concepts or facts.

Question: Create questions such as “What is it that I am going to be looking for in this passage to help me learn?”  Turn the first heading into a question.

Read: Read the passage.  While reading, students are trying to answer the question(s) asked in the previous step.  After reading, students will recite (or write on a sticky note) key phrases from the passage read.

Recite: Finally, after having gathered all of the key phrases from the whole reading assignment, students cover them and try to recite the answer to the questions. Students should use their own words and cite an example. Students may want to jot down brief cue phrases.

When to use the strategy:  

Example:  Second grade science lesson on butterflies using a science text chapter on butterflies: Survey: Teacher and student look at the chapter pages and talk about the pictures, the highlighted vocabulary words, the subheadings that are written in bold text, the summary at the end, and any charts or graphs on the pages to be read. Question:  Teacher asks students what they will probably need to learn about butterflies in this chapter based on the surveying just complete. Read:  Students are directed to look for the answers, while reading the chapter, to the questions just asked. Recite: on a sticky note or aloud, students write/say key phrases from the reading. Information should be in the student’s own words and indicate what they feel was the most important information in the reading. Review:  Students can do this by discussing what they read with someone else or by covering the information they wrote and reciting it aloud as a strategy for remembering.

How can it be adapted or differentiated? A way this strategy can be differentiated is to have a pile of post it notes and write down the most important thing read on each page.  Do this page by page and then stick the note onto that page.  When the student is done reading, he or she will have a summary of important points.