Before reading a text, stimulate your students' prior knowledge about the subject matter through a variety of activities. Individual or group brainstorming sessions prompt students to list everything they know about a topic or the title of a text and discuss it briefly. A more organized method is semantic mapping, according to Weber State University. Semantic mapping groups together students' ideas about a topic with blank areas left to add additional information during reading. Targeted questioning or pictures for younger readers can be used in the pre-reading phase to generate discussions about students' prior knowledge of a prospective reading topic. Vocabulary previews of potentially challenging words or background information on the author are additional pre-reading activities.
While reading, students can utilize activities and strategies to increase comprehension and retain information from the text. Context clues, a strategy used in Florida's Manatee School District, are identified to help students define an unknown word without using a dictionary. Students are taught to seek out words such as is, are, was, were or such as to use as context clues and determine a word's meaning. Visualization involves drawing pictures after reading a text based on the mental images it invokes, another strategy used in the Manatee School District. The four steps include reading the text, picturing the information mentally, planning how to draw it on paper and then drawing and labeling the image. This strategy may help students, particularly visual learners, to process new information more efficiently and serves as a review tool at a later time.
Students who have difficulties focusing on texts for extended periods may benefit from listening to the text on a tape or CD, prior to reading it independently, according to Muskingum College. Professionally recorded audio versions of a book or other text may be used or students may record themselves reading to practice diction and pacing. Skimming a non-fiction text prior to reading it independently is another effective strategy for some students. Reading only the first sentence of each paragraph, students develop a mental framework of the topic before reading the text again in detail. If permitted, students may also write in the margins, or annotate, as they read for the first or second time, noting any questions or making personal connections with the text.
To reinforce comprehension and retention of information after reading, students can orally retell a partner a brief summary of the text, including characters, plot or important events and topics. A written summary may also be used independently, with a partner, or to be presented to a small group and compared with others' interpretations, according to the Panhandle Area Education Consortium in Virginia. A graphic organizer, such as a story map or Venn diagram, may also be used after reading to highlight important facts, plot sequence or character traits. Rereading with a specific purpose, full class discussions, creative writing assignments and note-taking may also be used as classroom activities for students after reading.