This is the second stage of reading that has to do with the dialogue of a reader with the written text. At this stage, students are able to gather information, confirm predictions, and organize information.
Teachers can use various activities at this stage to help their students focus on different aspects of the text and understand it better. The number of during-reading stage activities they can conduct in the classroom will depend on how creative the teachers are. From choosing activities based on traditional types of assessment to using some technology-based ones or even mixing and matching these, teachers can make the during-reading stage more fun, exciting, and engaging for their students.
Here are some effective during-reading stage activities that teachers can use in their classrooms:
- Identify topic sentences: Typically, each paragraph includes a topic sentence that helps identify its main idea or the author’s primary message.
- General vs. specific ideas: While general ideas usually convey the main point or key idea of a text, specific ideas provide proof to explain the general or key idea further and establish it to be valid. Teachers can ask students to differentiate between general and specific ideas.
- Spot the connectors: Teachers can guide their students to identify different types of connectors or linking words to help them notice how they tie ideas within the text.
- Check predictions: Assumptions or predictions about the text made during the pre-reading stage can be checked at the during-reading stage to find if they are confirmed.
- Skim the text: Skimming refers to looking for and locating specific information within a text. Teachers can encourage students to skim the text and find the main idea, which will help them become flexible and proficient readers
- Answer questions – both literal and inferential: Literal questions are based on what the text states, while inferential questions need students to use the text as a starting point and then delve deeper to answer them.
- Coding text: This involves teaching students how to use margin marking so they can put a question mark beside a statement they don’t understand or an exclamation next to a phrase, word, or sentence that surprised them.
- Inference: This is a listening activity where students infer the meaning of new words using the text’s perspective.
- Peer conversation: This is where teachers encourage student-to-student conversations. After the students have read a section of the text or a few paragraphs, they are asked to discuss the contents with a classmate and listen to what the other has to say.
