A few questions to help you develop and deepen your habits and reflexes as a reader.

Notice your thinking (including when you are “off task”)

• What are you thinking about as you read? (It’s too hot! When’s lunch?)
• What is your mind telling you while you are reading this text? (This book is great/hard/weird!)
• What did you notice about this text? (No detail is too small…)

Focus on reading

• Where did you feel like you were really “in” the text?
• Where did you begin to get confused or to lose focus?
• What part of the text caused you trouble?
• Was there a particular word or sentence that got in your way? (Dictionary!)

Focus on solving reading problems

• What did you do to refocus your attention or clear up your confusion?
• How could you put the section into your own words?
• How could you get an overview of what the section is about?
• Where do you think this section is going?
• What do you already know that might help you figure out the section?

Focus on context

• What do you know about the author of this text?
• What do you know about the time and place where it was written?
• What claims does this text make? What evidence does it present?
• Whose voice is represented? Whose voice is missing?

Adapted from Schoenbach, et al, Reading for Understanding (West Ed 2012)