When I first started teaching, I envisioned that by the time students came to middle school, they would be proficient readers. Of course, as it turns out, many middle schoolers still struggle with reading. In fact, it is worse today than it was in years gone by. So, what can a teacher do to help increase reading success these days? Scaffolding.
Here are my top 3 tips for scaffolding secondary reading:
1. Provide background information.
Once, we were tasked with reading a story about the Grimke sisters.
These sisters were prominent women who were early advocates for abolition during a time when women were not allowed to vote, and speaking out against slavery was highly controversial. Students needed to understand these two critical points to read the story.
We discussed life at that time so that they could understand why their activism was so important yet controversial.
2. Specialized Notes
Good readers do a variety of things internally when they are reading. They predict, connect, visualize, formulate questions/clarify, and summarize. Most of these things good readers do without thinking. However, our students don’t necessarily do these without thinking, so we must provide them scaffolding. To do this, I use notes that highlight these unique strategies.
In this example, I have used the strategies to provide guided questions for the text. We stop reading as these questions arise. I give students think-and-write time, and then we discuss the answers.
This gently directs students to use the strategies they need to understand texts better.
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3. Cloze summaries
This example is from The Outsiders. I gave my students word, bank, a partner, and some struggle time. From struggle comes growth! Then, before we leave for the day, we go over the answers so that I can be sure everyone has an accurate record of the chapter.