Reading Strategies

This white paper outlines strategies to improve reading comprehension and retention in social studies classrooms. It emphasizes that teachers can support students without being reading specialists by implementing targeted approaches. Key strategies include setting reading purposes, such as previewing texts, predicting content, and adjusting reading speed based on the material. Vocabulary development is highlighted as crucial, with techniques like relating new words to known concepts, using structural analysis (prefixes, suffixes, roots), and leveraging context clues. Comprehension-focused strategies include inferencing, summarizing, questioning, visualizing, and connecting the text to personal experiences. Note-taking is encouraged to help students organize essential information and stay focused, while summarizing aids in identifying main ideas and answering key questions. These methods aim to strengthen both struggling and advanced readers.