Overview

The Youth Literacy Curriculum was designed to engage struggling students in reading and to help them make sense of texts - particularly informational texts - that are difficult to understand for students who don’t have a great deal of academic knowledge (but may nevertheless have to cope with content-based materials). To help students become confident and competent readers who know how to approach different types of texts and gain meaning from them, we have focused on the use of comprehension strategies, instructional techniques that are based on research on how the mind processes information and how skilled readers make sense of the written word. These strategies are designed to foster thoughtful interaction with texts and give students, who have previously not been successful, the tools to experience success even when confronted with challenging materials.

Through the use of these strategies, students learn new ways of approaching texts and engaging ideas. They gain control over materials that previously had appeared incomprehensible to them. In demonstrating how reading works, teachers can make the world of reading comprehension visible and make the process of meaning-making transparent. These strategies help students make connections between texts and their own lives, between new knowledge and knowledge previously acquired, and between the ideas and experiences of others and their own.

Some are designed to help students brainstorm ideas and predict meaning using various text aides; others focus on the need to monitor one’s understanding of a text and stop, reread, and fix-up misunderstandings. Still others ask students to think and offer opinions, to retell and synthesize information. All reflect reading as a thinking process and emphasize the importance of grappling with ideas, asking questions (of the teacher, the text, and of each other), and gaining insights through the process of reading. But most importantly, these strategies are meant to get students excited about their own ability to understand new ideas and integrate them into what they already know.

The strategies in this section can be used singly or in combination, and can be taught through any of the Readings in the curriculum. They are likely to yield the best results if they are used often and with different types of texts so that the key processes for making meaning are reinforced and become internalized. The sample Lesson Plans included in this site, help illustrate thoughtful use of these techniques. The Seven Habits of Successful Readers (text and PowerPoint presentation) provides hands-on practice with some of the key strategies.