Friendly+Reading+Guide

Strategy 5: A Friendly Reading Guide
(during reading)

Reading guides don’t have to be clunky, boring outlines of chapters. You can use a reading guide to stimulate students’ prior knowledge, point out text features, personalize the reading with your own stories, ask questions, and give helpful reminders.

Even though this takes time, it really helps students make their way through complex reading. And if you use the same books over several years, the effort really pays off.

See a great example of a friendly reading guide in the handouts, called "Star Search Guide-O-Rama - Chapter One". It appears in Daniels and Zemelman, //Subjects Matter: Every Teacher’s Guide to Content-Area Reading//, p. 155-156. Notice the student-friendly language of this reading guide and the conversational tone. This approach is likely to increase student engagement and help build relationships.


 * Assignment:** Share a reading guide that you have created, one that students find useful. Send it as an email attachment or in the regular mail to the instructor to be posted. Teachers like to see examples from many different subject areas.