During-Reading Strategies

        In When Kids Can't Read, Kylene Beers states, "I'd like to suggest that it is more critical for dependent readers to talk about texts during the reading experience than after it" (104).  Pre-reading strategies help students help students activate prior knowledge and post-reading strategies might prove that they made meaning out of what they just read, but during-reading strategies are the bulk of the effort that must happen for students to make meaning from their texts.
        The first big strategy Beers shares in this chapter, she calls "Say Something."  In my elementary school setting we have many units which focus on Partner Talk, which I had always thought of as a valuable activity, but not necessarily a reading strategy.  We also push a strategy called "Stop & Think."  The "Say Something" strategy adds Talk to that, so the pattern is more like, "Stop, Think, and Talk with a partner."  These activities make students more accountable to their texts because in order to have a conversation, you must be attending to the things you read.  Even if you don't understand all that you read, having a dialogue with a peer is a good chance for both parties to construct deeper (or even just literal) meaning from their texts.  We still have conversations about books as adults, and it's clear that it makes reading more powerful and meaningful.  All language is up for interpretation, after all, so why not give students chances to see other points of view.
        While reading this section, a wrote a note down that in primary grades we spend a long time teaching into these types of conversations, making them very concrete by giving students specific prompts for how to talk about their reading.  I was pleased to see that Beers also offered a whole list of prompts for conversation, what she called "stem starters" (108).  These stem starters are very, very useful for a classroom.  For a class of struggling readers, I can envision a whole unit's worth of lessons by just teaching into these prompts that would lead students to: 1) make predictions, 2) ask a question, 3) clarify something, 4) make a comment, 5) make a connection.  These talking prompts, or stem starters, could easily be charted around the classroom for reference.  Students would need a lot of opportunities to practice having conversations like this, every day.  They may be horrible at first, but the more modelling, practice, and feedback they receive, the better it gets.  It's a great way to get students to engage in their reading while also being social.