This session will provide fun and easy-to-use strategies taken from the NAF Learning Handbook for educators whose students struggle with reading comprehension, vocabulary, writing and note taking. These activities are research-based, proven to increase student learning and can be used in any course. Participants will try some of the activities themselves and have some laughs as they learn some of the new techniques.

1. Empowering Literacy for
Students and Liking It: The
NAF Learning Handbook
Andrew Rothstein, Ph.D.
Special Advisor, Educational Policy
NAF

2. What Are Literacy Skills That Your
Students Struggle With the Most?
NAF Learning Handbook Strategy
List-Group-Label
Purpose: Brainstorming and
Categorizing
#NAFNext

3. Free Literacy Resource: The NAF
Learning Handbook
 Research based and proven literacy strategies:
o Reading comprehension
o Vocabulary
o Writing Skills
o Note-Taking
o Active Listening
o Presenting
#NAFNext

4. Finding The NAF Learning Handbook

5. 5 Critical Experiences to
Teaching Literacy
 Responding to a variety of texts.
 Composing in oral and written form.
 Studying and mastering language patterns.
 Sustained reading of a variety of self-selected
books.
 Learning how to learn.

6. Defining Format: Question,
Category, Characteristics
 Defining terms clarifies understanding.
 Using the Defining Format makes it easier to
recall definitions coming from the dictionary.
 Gets students out of the “thing” habit.
 Prepares students to write what they know.

7. Deep Understanding of Key Terms
NAF Handbook Strategy:
The Defining Format
#NAFNext

8. Define a Key Term in Your Theme:
Internet, money, motel, medicine, architecture
Question Category Characteristics
W hat is a ____?
A ________ is a(n) that
1)
2)
3)

9. Write to a Martian

10. The Reading Comprehension Teaching Cycle
Before reading
•Preview Text During reading
•Activate/access •Confirm/redefine
knowledge predictions
•Focus interest •Clarify ideas
&set purpose •Construct meaning for
each segment of text
After reading
•Construct meaning
for a whole passage
•Assess achievement
of purpose
•Consolidate/apply learning

11. How to Teach Summarizing
NAF Learning Handbook
Strategy
Anticipation Guides
Key Word Notes
Metacognitive Statements

12. Anticipation Guide
 Murfles, a long defunct word for freckles or pimples.
 I don’t like it when people groak, but I have done it myself.
 An ecdysiast is not one of the careers that NAF themes
encourages.
 People used to sleep in their closets.
 Teaching is a prestigious profession.
 Shakespeare was so good at writing, he even made reeking
smell good.

13. How to Organize Words for Instruction
The Story of
Words
Categorizing Expanding Word
Defining History of Words
Meaning Word Play
Taxonomies
Defining Format Etymology
List-Group-Label Morphology

14. Key Word Notes
 Skills Addressed
o Reading with attention to meaning, not just “word
calling”.
o Purposeful reading (rereading) of text (to tell partner
what you learned.
o Self-monitoring of comprehension (“What do I really
understand?”)
o Recalling what was read while not looking at text.
o Distinguishing more important from less important
words and concepts.
o Writing information in own words rather than copying
from text.

15. Key Word Notes: Prerequisites
 Understanding that reading is more than
pronouncing words.
 Experience with thinking about the meaning
while reading.
 Willingness to talk to and listen to a partner.
 Ability to express what one learned from a text
orally and in writing.

17. Key Word Notes: Steps
 Students work in pairs; each individual gets Key Word Notes form.
 Everyone reads designated piece of text individually, silently.
 Each student selects 3-4 words as memory aids, writes in Box 1.
 Partners tell each other what words they selected and why.
 Student repeat steps 2-4, completing all segments, using boxes
2,3,4.
 Books closed, each student uses his/her Key Words to write a
summary in Box 5

18. Metacognitive Statements
 As a result of this session, I will do the following
three things:
• First,
• And,
• Finally,