LTL Episode 28: How and Why We Teach Reading Strategies to Elementary Students

Today’s episode of the Literacy Teacher’s Life is focused on reading skills and reading strategies. This has been a topic that I have been asked questions about lately, and it is also a topic that I have been reading a lot about since the summer.

The episode begins with definitions of skills and strategies as well as some examples of each. I show how strategies can be taught using the book, The Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de la Peña. The order of teaching strategies can be important. I was recently working with a group of third graders who were supposed to be paying attention to character traits while they were reading, but when I looked at their work, they were actually finding character’s feelings. They were not clear about what a character trait was after I asked them what they knew about character traits. For this example, I explain that in order to teach kids to make inferences, they should begin with identifying character feelings and then move to identifying character traits.

The episode ends with a fun story from my reading methods class. I had my students read the book Black and White by David Macaulay. This is a postmodern picture book, so it does not contain the elements of story in the ways as traditional books. The students had to figure out how to read the book and then they really had to focus and think while reading the book. They enjoyed the reading and identified many skills that they used when reading.

I do hope you will listen to this episode!