Strategies That Work, Second Edition - Chapters 1-3

It is interesting that I find myself reading the second edition of Strategies That Work by Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis as I complete the final semester of my masters in reading program.  The first edition  was actually one of the first books I read when I began my teaching career and, as an English education major, had to learn how to teach reading to high school students.  I found this book to be an invaluable resource then, and now I look forward to seeing what new insights the second edition can offer.

In chapter one, Harvey and Goudvis made a profound, yet seemingly obvious statement, “If the purpose for reading is anything other than understanding, why read at all? (p. 20)”  This was a response to a teacher’s complaint that teaching comprehension is just one more thing they have to teach (in addition to fluency, vocabulary, etc).  I think that this statement clarifies the importance of teaching comprehension strategies within all subject areas, not just reading and language arts.  After all, if a teacher wants their students to read and understand to information in their science, social studies or health textbooks, they might need to teach them how to do so.  In fact, showing students how to utilize comprehension strategies to enhance understanding was also emphasized in this chapter.  A teacher must “make what is implicit, explicit” (p. 21).  Good teaching never assumes that students know how to perform tasks, that is why modeling, thinking aloud, and providing examples is critical to any effective instruction.  Can you imagine a baseball coach stating a list of steps for holding a bat without showing students what that looks like?  It is equally unreasonable to assign reading without demonstrating how a specific text can be read and understood.

Ch. 2 discussed metacognition, moving readers to the level of understanding how to think while they read.  That is the purpose of the reading comprehension strategies in this book.  Readers should be able to monitor their understanding as they read.  Strategies for comprehension become necessary when the reader recognizes that something they are reading is not making sense – but they must learn to recognize that comprehension has broken down before they can be expected to fix it.

I had a “lightbulb” moment when, in Chapter 3, the authors pointed out that students don’t always realize that the purpose of the strategy is to help them comprehend the text.  I realized that I need to make this clear to my students.  They may think that the graphic organizer or text annotation that I am requiring is just “work” rather than a tool that I am providing to help them and that they should consider using even when it is not “assigned”.