Instructional Strategy #4 Middle Grade Science – April Kauffman

Your Name:  April Kauffman

Name of Strategy:  Reading Road Map

Source (Where did this come from?):

NMSA, Strategies for Integrating Reading and Writing in Middle and High School Classrooms by Wood and Harmon.  Chapter 10, “Helping Students Gain More Information from Textbooks”

Link to the Strategy:   http://www.middleweb.com/ReadWrkshp/JK34.html

Road Map example:   http://www.middleweb.com/ReadWrkshp/RWdownld/Roadmap.pdf

Give a thorough description of the strategy and how it will be implemented. This should be a summary of the strategy according to the original source: 

One way to use questions during the reading of a selection is to develop study guides to accompany difficult chapters in textbooks. Study guides enable teachers to reduce the amount of print students must deal with at a given time by using questions interspersed throughout the text. These guides can be developed to help students vary their reading rate, monitor their comprehension, and focus on the most important information in the text.

While good readers subconsciously know when to skim over material that is not significant, less proficient readers tend to read all textual material at the same rate — either too laboriously or too quickly and carelessly. By the use of ‘road signs’ to depict reading speed, the Reading Road Map can help students learn to adjust their reading rates based on the different purposes for reading a particular passage.

Explain what part of the standard course of study is addressed by this activity.

Competency Goal 2

The learner will use and evaluate information from a variety or resources.

2.01 Analyze and evaluate informational materials that are read, heard, and/or viewed by: monitoring comprehension for understanding of what is read, heard and/or viewed. recognizing the characteristics of informational materials. summarizing information. determining the importance and accuracy of information. making connections to related topics/information. drawing inferences and/or conclusions. generating questions. extending ideas.

Explain why you think this strategy will work. How does the strategy help your students learn? 

The Reading Road Map has three parts (before, during and after reading.    First we will ask a couple of questions to assess what the students know and introduce them to the topic.  The next step will follow a road map with stops at various key concepts in the text, indicated by page numbers.  There will be questions pertaining to these key concepts which will help the students recognize important facts in the text.  The responses to these questions need to be written down as part of the students’ assessments.  After completing the assigned reading, the students are directed to questions that sum up the important information in the text passage.

I think this will aid the students in discovering that there are key points to be learned in the texts.  They will gradually develop the skills to determine these points themselves.  This will be a helpful strategy at the beginning of the school year especially as the students are learning what they are expected to gain from their reading assignments.