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Mena Public Schools

Literacy Coach’s Corner

GOOD READERS and CRITICAL

THINKERS do the following…

BRAINSTORM

What do you already know about this (that’s called your background knowledge)? What do you think you’ll learn from it? Bringing your background knowledge out will help you connect the new information to it later on.

SET A PURPOSE

WHY are you reading this? Are looking for something? What are you supposed to get or understand or do after reading a particular text? Make sure you have a purpose BEFORE you start to read. It’ll “stick” better.

ASK QUESTIONS

What are you wondering as you’re reading? What don’t you understand? What do you want to know more about? What do you NEED to know more about to help you understand what you’re reading? Write those questions down as you’re reading.

VISUALIZE

What pictures can you make in your head as you read? Making a picture or a movie in your mind, SEEING it, can often help you understand what you’re reading.

ATTACK VOCABULARY

What words are you unfamiliar with? Can you guess the meaning from the context? If not, what resources can you go to for the meaning? Try and focus on the words you think are most important to understanding the text.

MAKE INFERENCES

Even when the text doesn’t come right out and tell you something, you can usually make a good guess. What do YOU think? Can you come up with a conclusion or decision, even when the text doesn’t “spell” it out for you? Use what the text DOES say to figure out what it DOESN’T say.

MAKE PREDICTIONS

What do you think will happen next? What’ll happen in the future? What will happen as a result of this information?

MAKE CONNECTIONS

What information or parts of the reading can you connect to your own life and experiences? Or to the world? Or to another text? Connecting to something you already know will help you understand it better.

IDENTIFY CAUSE & EFFECT

Recognizing cause and effect relationships can help you better understand the text. Identifying those relationships makes you really THINK about the text. It helps you put an order to things, see things in sequence, and see reasons for things happening.

DETERMINE IMPORTANCE

This means deciding what the “big idea” or THEME of the text is. What are the most important points or details in the text? As you read, think about what IS and ISN’T important to the big idea, or theme. In your mind, sort details and facts into two piles---important and not important.

EMPATHIZE

Can you put yourself in the place of a character, or a person you are reading about? Can you feel what that character or person feels? Can you imagine what it would be like to be that character or person? If so, you can empathize with him or her.

SUMMARIZE

After reading some text, can you explain the “gist” of it in just a few sentences? Focus on the most important details or main points to support what you think the “big idea” is.

REFLECT & PROCESS

This means to THINK, deeply and carefully, about what you’ve read. Once the information is in your head, let it spin around in there, and think about what you’ve learned, what you still want or need to know, what your OPINION is, how this information could be used---just THINK!!!