A strategy that has really been helping my intervention students is a system for previewing the passage to get a good idea of the main idea of the passage before they start reading. I think this has been successful because it has given them a way to see specifically what to focus on as they read the passage. Here is an example of us practicing this strategy. We are using a released 5th grade STAAR passage from TEA.
We discussed focusing on the title (and subtitles, if any), the first one or two sentences, the underlined words, and the text features (which for this passage included a map and a diagram). We highlighted those things:
We discussed focusing on the title (and subtitles, if any), the first one or two sentences, the underlined words, and the text features (which for this passage included a map and a diagram). We highlighted those things:
From those highlighted pieces they came up with the gist of the main idea (listed below in green):
This took about 2 minutes to accomplish and then they had a vision for what to focus on. When the article started to mention Canadian Geese, they didn't spend much time on that because they knew their main goal had more to do with Wood Frogs. This is a strategy that my students need because they are the ones who haven't been successful on STAAR before. So to provide them with tips for how to attack the passages has shown some success!