To understand the importance of what they read, students first need to figure out how the new material fits in with their prior knowledge. This is an important strategy for middle school readers as their reading materials become more complex. A graphic organizer such as a KWL chart, on which students record what the already know (K), want to know (W) and have learned (L), is a good way to record background information and apply it to new text.
Most middle schoolers have mastered the phonics skills necessary to decode unfamiliar words. They can also determine the meaning from the context of a sentence. Because students are increasingly expected to learn new content from their reading, they need continued vocabulary instruction to increase their content-specific knowledge. This should include strategies to determine the meaning of new words, such as using a dictionary or glossary, or using roots, suffixes and prefixes. Vocabulary instruction is most effective when the words are relevant to the curriculum, rather than following a separate word-study curriculum.
It is important for middle school students to develop strategies to help them learn from their reading. Assessments in middle school increasingly depend on students remembering and synthesizing information from text. Strategies learned in the lower grades, like finding the main idea and determining the author's purpose, must be incorporated into higher level techniques, like note-taking and summarizing. These do not come naturally to students, and class time must be devoted to teaching how and when to take notes on reading material.
Middle school students read for many purposes across the curriculum. Students must refine their reading styles to accommodate different purposes. Skimming an article to find specific facts is very different from following the plot of a novel or analyzing a poem. To get the most out of their reading, middle school students need to learn and practice strategies like using the table of contents and other text features, asking questions to focus their reading and rereading to clarify meaning. These strategies should be taught and reinforced in all classes, not just by the English teacher.