The RIGHT Strategies Get the Job Done for Challenged Readers with ADHD and Others

For students to become good readers, they need to be shown how to adjust their reading behavior to deal with a variety of situations, types of input, and reading purposes. Each student must develop a set of specific strategies and match the appropriate strategies to every reading situation in order to improve skills and overall reading success.

The following 5 strategies can make all the difference for readers who lack the needed focus and attention to content that must be read. In fact, these strategies have the potential to help all individuals experience more reading success!

The RIGHT Strategies That Help Students Read More Quickly & Effectively

1. Previewing
Review titles, section headings, and photo captions to get a sense of the purpose, structure and content of a reading selection prior to actually reading that same selection.

2. Predicting
Use your prior knowledge of the subject matter and about the author to make predictions about content, vocabulary and writing style.

3. Skimming and Scanning
Do a quick survey of the text to get the main idea, identify text structure, confirm or question predictions.

4. Guess-timating with Context Clues
Use your prior knowledge of the subject and the ideas provided in the text as clues to the meanings of unknown words (instead of stopping to look them up).

5. Paraphrasing
Stop at the end of a section to check comprehension by restating the information and ideas in the text.

How Teachers Can Help Students Learn When & How to Use These Reading Strategies

1. Model the Strategies
By modeling the strategies aloud, talking through the processes of previewing, predicting, skimming and scanning, and paraphrasing. This shows students how the strategies work and how much they can know about a text before they begin to read word by word.

2. Allow Class Time to Use the Strategies
By allowing time in class for group and individual previewing and predicting activities as preparation for in-class or out-of-class reading. Allocating class time to these activities indicates their importance and value.

3. Use Cloze Exercises for Vocabulary
By using cloze (fill in the blank) exercises to review vocabulary items. This helps students learn to guess meaning from context.

4. Encourage Student Discussion of Successful Strategies
By encouraging students to talk about what strategies they think will help them approach a reading assignment, and then talking after reading about what strategies they actually used. This helps students develop flexibility in their choice of strategies.

In conclusion, when students are shown and then learn how to use the right reading strategies, they find that they can control the reading experience and gain confidence in their ability to read the content. These are the important keys to reading success both in current learning situations as well in the future.

Source: Strategies for Developing Reading Skills from NCLRC-The National Capital Language Resource Center, Washington, DC
http://nclrc.org/essentials/reading/stratread.htm

For information on digital & low-tech reading tools for ADHD, dyslexia and other challenges, please visit:
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