Unlocking Texts: Practical Strategies to Empower Striving Readers for Deep Comprehension

This practical, engaging session equips secondary teachers in all subject areas with strategies to support striving readers as they navigate complex academic texts. We will examine time-efficient ways to embed vocabulary support and meaning-making strategies into everyday instruction, focusing not only on decoding but also on helping students connect words and ideas across sentences and paragraphs. We will also explore simple ways to help students notice and use key letter patterns and morphological clues that frequently appear in content-area vocabulary. Participants will leave with ready-to-use instructional moves that build students’ confidence and capacity to read, understand, and engage with challenging course materials.