Modeling Reading Strategies
Strategies you might model include: asking questions, making connections, identifying confusions, using prior knowledge and using word parts to understand unfamiliar words. Turn this list into a poster for the classroom and reference it often. Add to the list as students discover other strategies. We call the poster our “Reading Strategies List” and it serves as a reminder for students as they read difficult texts throughout this unit.
We use Think-Aloud to model what we want our students to do. As reading apprentices, students observe the expert reader and writer in the room (the teacher) do the thinking work first. This gives students a clear picture of what they should do when it is their turn. They also learn new strategies for approaching texts.

Start by reading the first sentence. What comes to mind? This should be a short one-to-two-sentence model, not a lecture. For instance, after reading the first line, I might think-aloud, “What makes their work “back-breaking?” or “Are they really getting hurt or is ‘back-breaking’ just an expression?” Though students will not be annotating the text when they do their Think Aloud, we often annotate as we are talking, projecting the text so that there is a record of the Think Aloud for students to reference. Stop after the first or second paragraph and have students share out what they saw you do. List what they say as the strategies on your list.

If you are creating a Reading Strategies List for the first time, record all of the students’ contributions. If you have already started a list, you can add any new strategies to the Reading Strategies List. This task should take no longer than 8 minutes, including the teacher’s model.
You may want to ask your students to number the paragraphs for easy reference.