Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR) is a powerful instructional strategy that enables students to enhance their comprehension skills. CSR involves small groups of students collaboratively reading and comprehending a text. It is a strategy that teachers can use to support diverse learners in the classroom. When used effectively, CSR can improve students’ comprehension, engagement, and motivation in reading.
One of the key features of CSR is the four comprehension strategies that students learn: preview, click and clunk, get the gist, and wrap up. These strategies help students to monitor their own comprehension and to identify gaps in their understanding. Previewing, for example, involves students skimming through the text before reading it, to get an idea of what the text is about. Click and clunk consists of identifying concepts that the students already know and those that they struggle with. The get the gist strategy focuses on summarizing the passage or chapter into a few sentences. Lastly, the wrap-up strategy helps students reflect on their reading by summarizing what they learned and generating questions that they still have.
To implement CSR, teachers should start by dividing students into small groups. Each group should have four to five members. Teachers should provide each group with a text to read, and the groups should designate one reader at a time. The designated reader should read a few paragraphs or a page aloud, and then pause to allow other group members to apply one of the four comprehension strategies.
As students gain a better understanding of CSR, they should be encouraged to apply these strategies independently while reading in class and at home. When students learn to apply CSR strategies to their own reading, they become independent learners who can monitor their own comprehension and identify areas that need further understanding.
CSR can be a useful tool for students who have difficulty with reading comprehension. CSR encourages peer-to-peer learning and helps students collaborate on understanding the text, promoting a sense of ownership and involvement in the learning process. With CSR, students become more active and involved learners, leading to increased engagement in reading and better comprehension of texts.
In conclusion, Collaborative Strategic Reading has been proven to be an effective and efficient tool for improving reading comprehension skills. Teachers who implement CSR in their classrooms will see a significant improvement in their students’ ability to critically analyze and comprehend complex texts. The four comprehension strategies of preview, click and clunk, get the gist, and wrap up help students to become independent readers and thinkers, and together as a group they can enhance each other’s learning experience. It is important to promote and encourage collaborative learning, as it produces better results and fosters a love for learning.
