Jordan School District Curriculum & Staff Development

Classroom Clips

Comprehension Instructional Strategies

Tailgate Party ~ from When Kids Can't Read: What Teachers Do by Kylene Beers

Based upon Sue Perona's instructional strategy "Tea Party," we renamed this tool with secondary adolescents in mind. "It encourages active participation with the text and gives students a chance to get up and move around the classroom" (p. 94). Just as a tailgate party is a pre-game activity where sports fans predict the game winner, this instructional strategy is a pre-reading activity that encourages participants to "predict what they think will happen in the text as they make inferences, see casual relationships, compare and contrast, practice sequencing (p. 94-95)," and draw on their background knowledge and experiences.

Gist - a summarizing instructional tool.

Being able to pull out the most important points in a brief summary demonstrates comprehension. This classroom clip illustrates how this tool helps students summarize newspaper articles. First, they answer "who, when, what, where, why, and how" questions, and then the students create a 20-word summary based upon the responses to those questions. This format can be found at ReadWriteThink - Gist. Another example can be found on under Reading Comprehension Tools.

Reciprocal Teaching - A framework of multiple instructional strategies.

Summarizing, predicting, questioning, and clarifying are the 4 strategies that make up this well-researched framework. It can be effectively used in any classroom, and with both non-fiction and fiction. Click here to find out more about using Reciprocal Teaching.

Consultant: Carolyn Gough – 567-8324 | Specialist: Renae Salisbury – 856-3146