Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
Summary:
Since its publication in 2000, Strategies That Work has become an indispensable resource for teachers who want to explicitly teach thinking strategies so that students become engaged, thoughtful, independent readers. In this revised and expanded edition, Stephanie and Anne have added twenty completely new comprehension lessons, extending the scope of the book and exploring the central role that activating background knowledge plays in understanding. Another major addition is the inclusion of a section on content literacy which describes how to apply comprehension strategies flexibly across the curriculum. The new edition is organized around four sections:
Part I highlights what comprehension is and how to teach it, including the principles that guide practice, a review of recent research, and a new section on assessment. A new chapter, Tools for Active Literacy: The Nuts and Bolts of Comprehension Instruction, describes ways to engage students in purposeful talk through interactive read alouds, guided discussion and written response. Part II contains lessons and practices for teaching comprehension. A new first chapter emphasizes the importance of teaching students to monitor their understanding before focusing on specific strategies. Five lessons on monitoring provide a sound basis for launching comprehension instruction. At the end of each strategy chapter, the authors outline learning goals and ways to assess students' thinking, sharing examples of student work, and offering suggestions for differentiating instruction. Part III, Comprehension Across the Curriculum is new. Comprehension strategies are essential for content-area reading, where information can be challenging, and presented in unfamiliar formats. This section includes chapters on social studies and science reading, topic study research, textbook reading and the genre of test reading. Part IV shows that kids need books they can sink their teeth into and the updated appendix section recommends a rich diet of fiction and nonfiction, short text, kid's magazines, websites and journals that will assist teachers as they plan and design comprehension instruction
Through its focus on instruction that is responsive to kids' interests and learning needs, the first edition of Strategies That Work helped transform comprehension instruction for teachers across the country. For them, this new edition will be a welcome extension of that work. Those coming to it for the first time will find a current and essential resource. When readers use these strategies, they enjoy a more complete, thoughtful reading experience. Engagement is the goal. When kids are engaged in their reading they enhance their understanding, acquire knowledge, and learn from and remember what they read. And best yet, they will want to read more!
Customer Reviews:
Average Customer Rating:
Helpful!
Customer Rating:
Very thick book as far as amount of text but all extremely helpful and interesting to use in actual classroom setting! Some ideas were so neat! Very practical for today's teacher :)
Great strategies for teaching Reading Comprehension
Customer Rating:
This is a well written book. It has several great examples of strategies for teaching reading comprehension to K through 8th grade.
Philosophy put into action
Customer Rating:
This is a great book but I think its better for teachers of third grade and higher. This is like third, fourth, fifth grade version. "Reading With Meaning" is better for K, first, and second grade teachers. Its great as a part of a series.
Also buy Comprehension Connections
Customer Rating:
This is an amazing book if you've always wondered what strategies and thinking (and not specific skills that will soon be forgotten) to teach whole group in reading. I've used this in my 2nd year of teaching, but my colleagues in their 10th and 20th years of teaching love it too. The authors give specific lessons to teach THINKING strategies: metacognition, making connections, visualizing, questioning, inferring, determining important info, and synthesizing and summarizing. This book is great but will be even better if paired with this book (which isn't packaged with the "Buy Together" from Amazon) Comprehension Connections by Tanny McGregor Comprehension Connections: Bridges to Strategic Reading. S. Harvey, one of the authors of Strategies that Work, writes the foreword. This book discusses the lessons you teach before teaching each of the strategies Harvey, et al. covers (i.e. schema) by using concrete experiences to help students understand and NOT forget what schema is (i.e. using a lint roller and pieces of paper with your experiences, opinions, feelings, memories. Use the lint roller to stick everything together and this represents your unique schema.) After giving students several "sensory" experiences with the strategy, you then teach lessons from Strategies that Work with the concrete experiences in place. She gives examples of using songs, art, wordless picture books for sensory experiences and basically hits different intelligences. My students are definitely thinking more, but I think they would have retained more if they would have had these concrete experiences first. This is a glowing review for both books :)
Not happy
Customer Rating:
I read all the reviews for this book before I purchased it and was assured that these strategies would work for high school kids. I do not see that. All the illustrations etc are for grade school. I tutor freshman and do not see a correlation for use with 14 year olds. Sorry
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