That’s a Strategy!

My mom and I were talking about books and reading. It’s a popular topic of conversation for us that wends its way in and out of the dialogue whenever we are together. Anyway, recently she was talking about the articles in The New Yorker I had recently earmarked for her to read.

“This article was so good,” she began, “I found myself reading it twice. I do that a lot. I read something and wonder if I got everything out of it so then I just read it again.” 

I stood there grinning. Little did she know she was preaching to the choir!

“Mom, that’s a strategy!” I told her. “You supported your comprehension by reading something twice. That was really smart!”

“Well, I don’t always reread something over. Other times I take notes, that helps me too,” she said.

“Yes!” I said, “Another great strategy! Jotting things down, like on a post-it or in a notebook, that you think are important and want to remember.” 

I was just giddy at this point, having a real time conversation about reading strategies that my mom pulls out and uses all on her own!

“Oh, I use post-its all the time. Especially if I’m reading a book and there are a lot of characters. Otherwise I get so confused,” she continued. “You know, I’m not a strong reader, I never was, so I have to do these things to help myself.

“But Mom,” I declared, the excitement in my voice growing, “You are a good reader. A really good reader. Because you have strategies that you pull out when you need them. And you use those strategies to support your reading.”

I then went on to give her an overview of how we help children learn to read with comprehension, how we teach workshop. I explained to her that:

• Understanding what you read is a skill called comprehension.
• To help children learn to read with comprehension we break down the steps we use to understand what we read.
• Then we teach those steps to our students.
• These steps, we call them strategies, offer learners a scaffold, a support, until they acquire the skills needed for independence.

Somewhere along the way, my mom figured out the steps she needed to take in order to understand what she was reading. She broke those skills down into actionable steps and she uses those strategies, even today, to support herself when reading complex text.

Pretty awesome, Mom!