Making Predictions (Part 1): “It’s about dolphins” is not enough!
Posted on September 2, 2025Share This Content
teaching reading
Noticing an Author’s Purpose Can Lead to Transformative Understanding
Posted on February 9, 2023Noticing an author’s purpose helps us 1) determine what’s important in a source, 2) begin to think critically about the information in a source, and 3) remember what we read. What follows are a few recommendations for teaching “author’s purpose.” Integrate WHY into your discussions of author’s purpose The WHY of noticing an author’s purpose …Read more
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Thinking Aloud for Students – The What, Why, How & When
Posted on January 13, 2022When we realize a student does not understand a complex chunk of text, we may need to stop asking questions for understanding and “think aloud” for the student, modeling how to make sense of the text. What follows is an excerpt from a middleweb.com column “Letting Go is Messy” that I co-wrote with Julie Webb …Read more
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Orally rehearsing with key words can boost writing
Posted on April 14, 2017Do your students struggle to compose sentences about nonfiction topics that make sense or sound right? Do they lack structure at the sentence and paragraph level? Here’s a few tricks I’ve been trying with small groups of late-early and transitional stage readers. Generate key words As part of a conversation generate key words they will …Read more
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How Authors Reveal Different Points of View
Posted on April 15, 2016Here’s a middle school lesson for teaching students to analyze how two authors writing about the same topic may shape their presentations of key information by emphasizing different evidence or advancing different interpretations of the facts. Preparation Go to Science News for Students and locate an article that cites a study. Most of these articles …Read more
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Writing Authentic Letters as Reading Responses
Posted on February 26, 2016Are your students tired of writing analytical essays? I’m shaking up how students respond to informational texts. I’m experimenting with letters to real people that still nudge students to think about the big ideas in sources. With small groups of 4th and 5th grade students, I explored what writing letters might look like. Here’s the …Read more
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“Building” analogy to teach “text structure”
Posted on January 10, 2016How many of us hunt for the perfect texts to teach “text structure” and end up just banging our heads against the wall? It’s because texts are more complex than five simple structures. Below I describe an analogy I’ve started using with students to get beyond this problem. A building has a purpose (to be …Read more
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The Coding Strategy – Helping Students Monitor for Meaning (Updated)
Posted on December 8, 2015Have you ever conferred with a student who had difficulty recalling what they’d read? Or who seemed to recall the “easy to understand” parts of a text but not the harder parts? These students may need instruction on monitoring for meaning. I use the Coding Strategy (Hoyt, 2008) to reinforce self-monitoring. After each sentence or …Read more
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The Pasta Analogy-Helping Students Determine What’s Important
Posted on November 12, 2015Do your students struggle with determining what is important when reading informational texts? Are they unsure of what to underline and annotate? I remember one fifth grade student saying, “Well, I underlined the whole text because it was all important!” What follows are suggestions for introducing this analogy during a Phase 2 Meet the Strategies …Read more
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Complex sources? Give students a head start with THIEVES
Posted on September 5, 2015Teaching students to use the mnemonic THIEVES (Manz, 2002) to preview a text is an easy way to nurture students’ sense of agency as they tackle feature-dense nonfiction sources. The poster below (created by a colleague!) reveals the details of this strategy–students preview, predict & then summarize their predictions. A FEW TIPS Create THIEVES bookmarks …Read more
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Do your students’ predictions ever feel superficial? Thoughtful, text-based predictions can make a big difference in students’ comprehension of complex informational sources but frequently our students only make shallow predictions – predictions that don’t offer much bang for their buck. For example, take a look at the two predictions below. Why would the second one …Read more