3 Ways to Target Content Area Reading

This school year, we’ve introduced three new activities to Imagine Learning English that prepare students to overcome a common problem. Even good readers can get hung up on content area reading. Topics they are not familiar with, like science or history, often leave students stumped over specialized vocabulary. This problem begins early and compounds until the “fourth grade slump”—the year students’ lack of content area comprehension finally catches up to them, and achievement levels across the country are at their lowest.

So how do we stop the slump? Before students ever read one of our forty-four new stories or articles, they are introduced to key vocabulary words from the story in the new activity Word-A-Tron: Discover Story Vocabulary. They see and hear the word and definition in English and their first language. A few other activities help them use each key word in different contexts.

Then, students read a story or article in Read Leveled Text. Each story or article is paired with another to familiarize students with specialized content. For example, before students read about ancient writings in the article Petroglyphs, they first read a short story about a child who discovers cave drawings while playing a game of hide and seek. That way, students form their own background knowledge on a subject in which they may not have had prior experience. This prepares them to learn more about it—and to actually understand.

Once students read a story or article, another activity, Understand What I Read, checks to make sure they understood what was going on. Students can be asked questions dealing with main idea, author’s purpose, comparing and contrasting, and inference. It even includes intertextual questions, which ask about two different texts students recently read.

In combination, these much-needed activities prepare students to succeed in the classroom and standardized testing, teaching them where to look for answers to comprehension questions. Classrooms across the country are receiving these new additions with excitement and appreciation.