Planning Strategic Reading Lessons

The goal of strategic reading is to provide support by implementing instructional goals by creating groups with target strategies in order to facilitate fluent reading and comprehension.   Strategic reading should be teacher directed. It is the teacher's job to select themes, objectives, and instructional formats in order to ease the learning process. This process allow for exploration through the implementation of reading strategies. Later, this process can move to be more student directed. Strategic reading has been known to increase positive attitudes in young readers, allows the reader to gain multiple strategies in order to gain meaning, allows for exploration of multiple reading genres, and allows for students to think critically.

Teachers should be able to answer several questions prior to beginning the planning process. Objectives should be clearly defined, in what way can the objectives be assessed, what texts can be utilized, and the student’s purpose for reading should be identified.

Strategic reading begins with prior knowledge. It is important to allow the children to create connections before, during and after reading. Picture walks can be used to help get the students thinking in the right direction. Scaffolding and the use of KWL charts are prominent tools used in strategic reading. Read alouds, fluency, and vocabulary lessons should all be utilized in order to ensure maximum instruction and learning.