Readers Strategy List

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What is a readers strategy list (RSL)?

A readers strategy list is a student-generated list of approaches they use to figure out text.  This is a living community document.

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One easy way to get the conversation going in your classroom is to ask your readers how they read. Given an  opportunity to reflect and think about how they approach a text is insightful , and students will reveal some of their approaches to reading. This opportunity to share in discussing reading processes helps others think about their own approaches to reading.

 

Reading Apprenticeship methods suggest that students first individually document their own methods or strategies for reading a specific text.  Remember that there are many ways of approaching text.  Next the students should pair up and share what they have written.  Once that conversation has taken place, the class should report out their findings. In this way, readers have an opportunity to report on their own habits, listen to the reading habits of others, and then create a shared document, which is hung in the classroom as a living document.

The Readers Strategy List is generated by students for students. It is an ongoing dynamic classroom artifact. It serves as a reminder to students that there are different ways of reading, that different texts require different methods, and that the process of reading discipline-specific texts is essential to understand if one hopes to improve his effectiveness and mastery of complex academic texts.

How is it created?

•We query students about how they made sense of a text and then create a living classroom document for their use.
•This is a student-generated list. The language on the list is the students' terminology.
•You may have multiple lists: one for math problems, one for a manual, one for a primary text.
 
Why are the Readers Strategy Lists helpful for students?
These give students a way to voice how they approach text. It allows for sharing across the four dimensions. Students often uncover how they are reading text and this gives the instructor insight into how they read the disciplinary texts. You can model strategies of how to read the text that they may not have considered.