Before Reading Strategies

The purpose for before reading strategies is to engage students' prior knowledge and interests. It builds a common foundation for knowledge, which in turn will result in success. Teaching essential vocabulary before the reading also helps the student when reading. Before students begin reading, engage them. Engagement involves cognitive and affective aspects. Using their cognitive abilities, the student can generate intellectual interest, or schema. An affective aspect is motivating the students by giving praise and by making the reading relevant. Brainstorming activities, commonality or relatability with the reading, movement, discussions, humor, videos, technology, and personal stories can all help engage students. Some engagement strategies are anticipation guides, vocabulary strategies, list, group, label exercises, concept maps, opinionaires, and story or text impressions. In PE I think I would use a lot of relatability strategies or ones that are very hands-on. In PE I want my students to be constantly moving, so if I wanted them to read an article about baseball I may have them play a game before they go home to read the article.