What is a Strategy?

Jennifer Serravallo is one of my reading teacher heroes! She is a teacher, writer extraordinaire, and professional development speaker specialist, as far as I’m concerned. I have all her books — even 2 copies of Conferring With Readers (I thought I lost the first copy, so I purchased a replacement.) — The Literacy Teacher’s Playbook, and now The Reading Strategies Book. One of the main reasons I chose this particular book to buy, besides that it was written by Serravallo, was that it addresses the needs of every reading teacher where they are. If you’re trying to teach reading without a set curriculum, she’s there for you. If you must follow a district program or use a basal in your classroom, she knows how to help. Serravallo explains, in detail, step-by-step, category-by-category, level-by-level, 300 reading strategies to use with students. And the book is a great desk resource — pull it out and everything is right there, ready to go.

At the All Write Institute, Jennifer started her quick-but-chock-full-of-information session by asking us, “What IS a strategy?” Strategies, skills, goals…the hierarchy helped me to picture in my mind the ways that I can help readers to learn. Then she said what makes sense: “A strategy is a step-by-step HOW you do something.” Concentrate on the verbs — the ACTIONABLE steps needed to meet a reading goal. For example, what do you do as a reader to figure out the main idea? Well, I find key words in the title, visualize the scenes, read the first sentences of paragraphs as clues, look for repeated words, think about how all the scenes fit together…(“Strategies are wordy!”) Serravallo pointed to the fact that strategies have actionable steps that can be taught.

I don’t think that I ever thought that much about what is involved with teaching a goal before. I just did it. Now I understand that the goals I want to teach have visible parts. Also, I will remember to make sure that the strategies I teach (to reach the goals) are authentic and transferable.  These strategies can be used with any text. I will place this book at my reading table to use every day next school year. I will read the quote on the back of the book to myself each time I sit down with my students. I will remember “Strategies make the often invisible work of reading actionable and visible.” Thank you, Jennifer Serravallo, for your time and efforts to help reading teachers become the best teachers they can be.