The document outlines strategies for teaching 6th graders about nonfiction texts, categorized into three phases: before, during, and after reading. It provides a total of 15 strategies that enhance comprehension through activating prior knowledge, setting reading purposes, and reinforcing understanding, focusing on cooperative learning and research-based methods. Each category contains specific techniques, such as making predictions and think-pair-share activities, aimed at improving students' reading skills and engagement.

1. Strategies for Before, During,
and After Reading Flip Chart
Critical Assignment 1
RED4348
Tanda Johnson
Spring 2018

2. Purpose
• The purpose of this assignment is to create a
flip chart that has 5 before, 5 during, and 5 after
reading strategies.
• The strategies are to be used with 6th grade
nonfiction texts, but the strategies can be
adapted to be used with any grade texts.
• This is a tool that will be useful for teachers to
help them teach students strategies that can be
used to aid in comprehension.
• Reading for comprehension takes concentration
and commitment, on part of the teacher and
student. All strategies listed help students to
enhance their comprehension of nonfiction
texts.
• These strategies were selected because they
are research based, they help facilitate explicit
instruction, and they promote cooperative
learning.

3. Before Reading Strategies
• Before reading strategies help to activate students prior
knowledge and set a purpose for reading. Before the teacher or
student begins reading, these strategies are used to help students
get ready for what they will be reading.
• Before reading strategies:
1. Activate Prior Knowledge
2. Frontloading Vocabulary
3. Set a Purpose for Reading
4. Preview Text
5. Make Predictions

4. 1. Activate Prior
Knowledge
• In order to understand new
material in a text, students must
have some prior knowledge about
the topic. Teachers can help
students activate this prior
knowledge by asking students
what they know about the topic
and filling in important gaps
before reading.
• Some students may know more
about a topic than others.
Students can share what they
know with the class, helping
everyone to better understand.
One example that can be used to help activate prior knowledge
is a KWL chart.
In a KWL chart, the whole class explains what they know about
the topic and puts it in the K section of the chart.
What students want to know goes in the W section, and after
reading, what students learned goes under L.

5. 2. Frontloading Vocabulary
• Frontloading is a strategy in which different techniques can be
used to explicitly pre-teach important vocabulary words that will
help aid in comprehension of the text.
• Stowe explains “Frontloading or pre-teaching vocabulary is a
powerful before-reading instructional strategy to facilitate
comprehension of a passage” (William &Mary School of
Education).
• One example of frontloading vocabulary is using the frayer model
in which the vocabulary word is put in the middle, and a
definition, examples, characteristics, and non-examples are
placed around the word.

6. 3. Set a Purpose for
Reading
• Before reading, it is important to know
what the purpose of reading the text
is.
• Teachers should help their students to
set their own purpose for reading the
text on top of the purpose set by the
teacher (such as an end of unit test on
what students learned on the topic).
• One example of teaching students to
set a purpose for reading nonfiction
texts is to ask how and why questions.
• When reading books that expand their
knowledge of a topic or unit that they
are studying, students can use
questions to figure out what they
want to learn from the text.

7. 4. Preview Text
• Previewing the text is a strategy in which students
look through the book, finding important details,
before reading.
• Previewing the text helps students set a purpose
for reading.
• One example of previewing the text is the THIEVES
pre-reading strategy in which students look at the
title, headings, introduction, every first sentence of
paragraphs, visuals and vocabulary, end of chapter
questions, and the summary of the book.
• After looking through the book to find important
text structures, ideas and details, students begin
reading the book.

8. 5. Make Predictions
• Making predictions is a strategy in which
students are asked to predict what they
believe the text will be about or what will
happen in the text.
• Students make predictions before reading,
and revise or adjust their predictions during
reading. After reading students explain why
they made their predictions or why they
revised them.
• Teachers can have students write down their
predictions and revisions as they read, then
look back at them after reading to see if what
they thought the text was about was correct.

9. During Reading Strategies
• During reading strategies help students make sense
of what they are reading and monitor their reading
while they read.
• During reading strategies:
1. Think-Alouds
2. Self-Questioning
3. Make Text Connections
4. Make Inferences
5. Monitor Comprehension

10. 1. Think-Alouds
• Using Think-alouds are helpful when
students need clarification, have
questions, or are reflecting on the text.
• Think-alouds are a critical thinking skill in
which students talk themselves through
an idea.
• An example of a think-aloud in which a
student is predicting is “I predict that this
book will be about oceans because the
picture on the front is of an ocean”.

11. 2. Self-Questioning
• Self –questioning is a strategy in which students ask
questions throughout reading. Some self-questioning
stems that are commonly used are seen to the left.
• One strategy teachers can use to teach students how to
use self-questioning is teaching them how to question
the author.
• In Questioning the Author (QtA) teachers give students
questions that they can learn how to ask themselves as
they read. Questions that teachers use with Questioning
the Author include:
1. What is the author trying to tell you?
2. Why is the author telling you this? (Bursuck &Damer,
2017).

12. 3. Make Text Connections
• Making text connections includes:
• Text-to-self
• Text-to-text
• Text-to-world
• Teachers can explicitly teach students how to connect
the text to themselves, other texts, and the world
around them by having the students ask questions such
as:
1. What does this remind me of in my life? (text-to-self)
2. How is this text similar to other things I’ve read? (text-
to-text)
3. How does this part relate to the world around me?
(text-to-world)
(Zygouris-Coe, V. & Glass, C., 2004).

13. 4. Make Inferences
• Making inferences means digging behind what
is really said in a text to learn the real meaning
of what the author is trying to say.
• Sometimes authors leave out things that could
be of importance, or say them in other ways.
By knowing how to infer what the author
really means, students can get a better
understanding of the text.
• Inference worksheets and guided reading
questions can help students learn how to infer
when reading.

14. 5. Monitor Comprehension
• When monitoring comprehension students determine
whether they understand what they are reading or
not.
• Most successful readers monitor their reading without
thinking about it, but some readers need extra help,
so there are strategies that students can be taught to
guide them in monitoring their comprehension while
reading.
• A few examples include re-reading the paragraph that
they may not understand, looking up unfamiliar terms
in a dictionary, or referencing a graph, chart, or
picture in the text for missing information.

15. After Reading Strategies
• After reading strategies help students reinforce their
comprehension of the text after they finish reading the text.
These strategies also show the teacher if the students
understood the material to the degree at which he or she
would have liked them to.
• After reading strategies:
1. Summarize
2. Reflect
3. Exit Tickets
4. Graphic Organizers
5. Think-Pair-Share

16. 1. Summarize
• Summarizing is a way to sum up the main ideas of a
text using your own words.
• Students can write a summary and the class can
present their summaries and do a whole class
discussion after reading to compare students
summaries.
• One way to have students summarize the text is
with a 5 sentence summary. A five sentence
summary for non-fiction text includes a topic
sentence, 3 main fact sentences, and a concluding
sentence.
• If students do not know how to complete a
summary, a paragraph outline for the 5 sentence
summary (like the one on the right) can be helpful
for teaching students how to summarize a text
successfully.

17. 2. Reflect
• Reflecting is a strategy that helps students remember
what they read, think more about the text, and get
different perspectives of the text.
• Reflecting on a text can be done in a few ways. If the
whole class is reading the same text, the teacher can
have students come back as a whole class and reflect
on what they learned, asking and answering questions
and explaining new and different ideas to others.
• If students are reading different texts (sometimes
done with leveled readers) students can complete
reflection questions or the teacher can hold small
group reflections with students who read the same
texts.
• On the right is an example of a reflection questions
worksheet.

18. 3. Exit Tickets
• An exit ticket can be used to check students
understanding of what they read.
• An example of an exit ticket is the 3-2-1 form (3
things I learned today, 2 things I found
interesting, and 1 question I still have).
• A 3-2-1 exit ticket can be good for seeing what
questions students still have, and reteaching of
ideas that students may not understand. Because
the teacher is the only one who sees the exit
ticket, students may ask more questions and
explain what they do not understand more than
if they were asking questions in class.

19. 4. Graphic
Organizers
• Graphic organizers can be
used for nonfiction text to
help students sort out
information they learned.
• In the graphic organizer to
the right students put 3
important facts, an opinion
from the article, their
opinion, the main idea,
supporting details, the
authors purpose, and the
text structure.
• Graphic organizers are a
great way to see if students
understand the main point
of the text.

20. 5. Think-Pair-Share
• Think-pair-share is a strategy in which students
think about what they read, pair up with another
student, and then share their ideas with their
partner or with the whole class.
• Think-pair-share can be used to get students
talking about what the book is about, main
ideas, facts, or in depth discussion such as why
something is done in a certain way in the text.
• After being taught how to complete a think-pair-
share successfully, students usually can complete
the action again with little input from the
teacher, so the teacher can walk around and talk
to the pairs, getting their ideas and helping with
misunderstandings if needed.

21. References
• Bengel, J. (2015). Reading Responses: Reflecting. TeachersPayTeachers. Retrieved from:
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Reading-Responses-Reflecting-1686859
• Bursuck, W.D. & Damer, M. (2017). Teaching Reading to Students Who Are At Risk or Have Disabilities. Boston: Pearson.
• K12Reader. (n.d.). Reading Activities for Making Inferences. Retrieved from: http://www.k12reader.com/reading-
activities-for- making-inferences/
• Stowe, M.M. (n.d.). Frontloading Vocabulary in Core Content Classes: Instructional Strategies. William & Mary School of
Education. Retrieved From:
http://education.wm.edu/centers/ttac/resources/articles/teachtechnique/frontloadingvocabulary/index.php
• Tantillo, Sarah. (2017). Teaching Students to Set a Purpose for Reading. MiddleWeb. Retrieved from:
https://www.middleweb.com/34655/teaching-students-to-set-a-purpose-for-reading/
• Vanderbilt Peabody College. (2018). What should content-area teachers know about comprehension instruction?
Retrieved from: https://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/module/sec-rdng/cresource/q3/p10/
• Zygouris-Coe, V. & Glass, C., (2004). Making Connections: Text to Self, Text to Text, Text to World. Retrieved from:
https://sites.google.com/a/alaska.edu/diane-kardash/Home/making-connections