Cedar Valley is committed to being a SIM campus. Our Resource Language Arts and Math classes are emphasizing Learning Strategies. We have been working on the Self-Questioning Strategy since school began. As the year progresses, we will add two additional strategies: Word Identification Strategy and Visual Imagery Strategy. Kansas University developed SIM. Here is an overview from the K.U. website of the three strategies we will be using.
(1) The Self-Questioning Strategy helps students create their own motivation for reading. Students create questions in their minds, predict the answers to those questions, search for the answers to those questions as they read, and paraphrase the answers to themselves. Research results have shown average gains of 40 percentage points in reading comprehension on grade-level materials after students have learned this strategy.
(2) The Word Identification Strategy provides a functional and efficient strategy to help challenged readers successfully decode and identify unknown words in their reading materials. The strategy is based on the premise that most words in the English language can be pronounced by identifying prefixes, suffixes, and stems and by following three short syllabication rules. In a research study, students made an average of 20 errors in a passage of 400 words before learning this strategy. Having learned the Word Identification Strategy, students reduced their errors to an average of three per 400 words. Reading comprehension increased from 40 percent on the pretest to 70 percent on grade-level passages.
(3) The Visual Imagery Strategy is a reading comprehension strategy for creating mental movies of narrative passages. Students visualize the scenery, characters, and action and describe the scenes to themselves. Research results showed that students who demonstrated a 35 percent comprehension and recall rate before learning the strategy improved to an 86 percent comprehension and recall rate after learning the strategy.ize the scenery, characters, and action and describe the scenes to themselves. Research results showed that students who demonstrated a 35 percent comprehension and recall rate before learning the strategy improved to an 86 percent comprehension and recall rate after learning the strategy.
Self Questioning Strategy: ASK-IT
Attend to the clues as you read;
Say some questions;
Keep predictions in mind; Identify the answers; Talk about the answers