The basic reading/thinking strategies

Wonder what you do as you read? What all good readers do. However, our struggling readers don’t always know what goes on in the minds of good readers; they need to be explicitly taught the strategies and guided to use them on their own. Daniels and Zemelman (Subjects Matter, 2004) list the following good reader strategies:
1) Visualize (to make mental pictures or sensory images from ideas, situations, details in the text)
2) Connect (to make connections between what they read and their lives, other texts or media, and the world)
3) Question (to ask questions of the text, of the author, of themselves as they read; to actively wonder)
4) Infer (to predict, hypothesize, interpret, draw conclusions)
5) Evaluate (to determine what’s important, to make judgments)
6) Analyze (to notice text structures, the author’s craft, vocabulary, purpose, theme, etc)
7) Recall (to retell, summarize, remember information)
8) Self-monitor (to realize when they are confused or uncertain or have lost attention)

It’s not enough, however, to just talk about the strategies and model them for the students. These strategies need to be embodied in very specific, concrete tools that we provide for our students as they read. That means that the graphic organizers we use to guide students’ reading must ask students to try out these strategies; the guiding questions we ask must lead students to use these strategies; the collaborative activities we plan must engage students in these strategies; and the language of our classrooms must reflect these strategies.