STRATEGY FOCUS
READER RESPONSE
PURPOSE
Reader Response is an active reading strategy in which students interact with
the text to construct meaning. Through written responses that compel readers
to explore, question, and challenge text, students express their individual
understandings and make their thinking visible. When responding, students are
also encouraged to reflect on what they bring to the text as readers, such as
experiences, knowledge, emotions, and concerns. Students may choose from a
set of sentence starters to begin their journals or simply “freewrite” about their
thoughts during or after reading. In addition to developing students’ thinking
skills, Reader Response prepares students to participate in small and large group
discussions that take place after reading.
PROCESS
- Ask readers to respond to a text in writing and make clear how this kind of response differs from writing a summary of what was read.
- Provide models of different ways students may choose to respond. Suggested sentence starters for Reader Response include:
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- Reading this text made me think about…
- The most important idea in the text for me was _____ because…
- I was surprised by ______ because…
- This piece helped me understand ______ .
- I agree (do not agree) with _____ because…
- I want to know more about _____ because…
- Describe the structure of your text. Why do you think the author chose this structure? How does it contribute to the meaning?
- What are the author’s claims or major ideas in the text? How do you know?
- What is the central idea in your text and how do specific details contribute to that main idea?
- Give students the opportunity to share their responses with others through
Academic Dialogue, perhaps using a strategy such as Block Party.
PROBING QUESTIONS
CONSIDERATIONS
- What did you have to consider in order to respond to this text?
- How was your thinking different from your sharing partner?
- What connections did you make with what you read?
- Keep in mind that “text” is defined differently in different content areas. Teachers can use pictures, diagrams, music, videos, etc., to elicit the same type of responses.
- The suggested sentence starters can be used with many strategies from the various literacy subdomains.
- Sentence Starts may be designed around content standards (see examples G, H and I in the Process steps).
- Ask students to travel to their group with their writing in hand, for reference, as they engage in discussion with classmates.
SCAFFOLDS
General Scaffolds
- Model how to write a response.
- Show student samples of responses.
- Provide examples of what student responses might look like.
- Provide sentence starters to help students get started:
- Reading this text made me think about…
- The most important idea in the text for me was _____ because…
- I was surprised by ______ because…
- This piece helped me understand ______ .
- I agree (do not agree) with _____ because…
- I want to know more about _____ because…
- Describe the structure of your text. Why do you think the author chose this structure? How does it contribute to the meaning?
- What are the author’s claims or major ideas in the text? How do you know?
- What is the central idea in your text and how do specific details contribute to that main idea?
- Encourage and allow students to access and use vocabulary resources and tools such as anchor charts, word walls, word bank, and personal dictionaries.
- Provide students with sufficient time to think and write.
- Provide opportunities for students to respond in a variety of ways (e.g., pictures, text, mix of English and home language, etc.)
- A text can be defined as anything used to gather information. This strategy can support reading comprehension of articles, videos, fictional stories, informational resources, websites, photographs, etc.
- Use the Gradual Release model (I do/you watch, I do/you help, you do/I help, you do/I watch to provide scaffolding for students.
- Model how to use the strategy through a Read Aloud/Think Aloud.
- Chunk the text to make it more accessible for students (e.g., number paragraphs, etc.).
- Direct students to pay attention to bolded key vocabulary, figures, maps, diagrams, and photographs.
Scaffolds for Multilingual Learners
Entering/Emerging:
- Allow students to access and use vocabulary resources in order to recount, argue, and explain.
- Model how to write a variety of responses.
- Provide examples of what students’ responses might look like.
- Allow students to respond in a variety of ways (e.g., pictures, text, mix of English and home language, etc.).
- Provide sentence stems/frames and graphic organizers.
- Bold key vocabulary words for students to use to identify icons and match key terms and ideas to images, graphs, icons or diagrams.
- Allow students to access and use vocabulary resources and tools, such as anchor charts, word walls, word banks, and personal dictionaries (including images).
- Chunk the text to make it more accessible for students to sequence events, identify patterns, and locate main ideas.
- When watching videos, turn on captions.
Developing/Expanding:
- Model how to write a variety of responses.
- Provide examples of information presented objectively with a neutral tone.
- Provide graphic organizers (i.e., Main Idea/Detail Frame) to help students with organization of claims and evidence.
- Model how to summarize evidence and evaluate and challenge evidence presented in an argument
- Pair this strategy with Main Idea–Detail Frame to help them identify topic sentences, main ideas, and details
- When watching videos, turn on captions.
Bridging/Reaching:
- Provide examples of students’ responses.
- Model how to write a concluding statement that follows from and supports the information presented.
- Model how to convey sequence and show relationships among experiences and events.
- Pair this strategy with Main Idea–Detail Frame in order to support students’ comprehension of texts for the purpose of recounting, arguing, explaining and/or discussing.
- Pair this strategy with Text Coding with Margin Notes, Double Entry Organizer (DEO), Anticipation Guide, and Jigsaw to assist in comprehension of texts
CONTENT APPLICATIONS
SOCIAL STUDIES
Students make connections between an historical event and current events.
ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS
Students read an argumentative text and write a response that shares their views using claim, evidence, and reasoning.
WORLD LANGUAGES
The teacher provides sentence starters for students to complete after reading an informational article in the target language. The sentence starters should be open-ended so that students are not expected to have just one right answer.
VISUAL & PERFORMING ARTS
Students respond to and describe the emotions created when looking at a painting or listening to a selection of music.
CAREER & TECHNICAL EDUCATION
Students in an Animal Science class respond to the most important factors when judging dairy cows.
SCIENCE
Students read a scientific article about the benefits of Maglev trains and develop predictions and ideas about how and when they might be used.
HEALTH & PHYSICAL EDUCATION
Students read an article about the benefits of regular exercise and write a response that shares their personal exercise plan.
MATHEMATICS
Students read an open-ended problem and write about the different relationships they can identify in the problem, or students read an application of a concept and write about the different characteristics of that concept they are able to identify.