Level D - Zaner-Bloser

How to Use the Strategy Transfer Chart
Read for Real teaches students important comprehension strategies for
nonfiction reading. Ultimately, however, these strategies are valuable only
if students are able to transfer them to other reading materials.
Students are required to read a variety of nonfiction, or informational, texts
in school and out of school. Science and social studies textbooks are the most
obvious in the school setting. Students also read newspaper, Internet, and
magazine articles, essays, and speeches. Outside of school, students must
read, understand, and apply information from charts, schedules, maps, game
directions, instructions for repairs, warranties, recipes, job applications, and
other types of forms.
The Strategy Transfer Chart provides a way for students to practice using
the Before, During, and After strategies in Read for Real with other reading
materials. Use the transparency to model the use of the Strategy Transfer
Chart as a whole-group activity with another piece of nonfiction, such as a
magazine article or a chapter from a science or social studies book. Have
students use the blackline master to begin their own Strategy Transfer Charts.
Provide opportunities for students to regularly add to their charts when they
read other nonfiction text.
Here are more suggestions for using the Strategy Transfer Chart:
• Enlarge the chart and post it in your classroom. Remind students
to think about the strategies as they read other materials and to
identify when they use a particular strategy.
• Give the Strategy Transfer Chart to content area teachers who
work with your students. Ask them to encourage students to use
these strategies as they read.
• Send the Strategy Transfer Chart to students’ families with the
School to Home letter. Suggest that parents post the chart on
the refrigerator or bulletin board. Encourage parents to find
opportunities to discuss the strategies with their children—as
the children do their homework, by reading and discussing
newspaper and magazine articles together, and while watching
television shows, movies, and newscasts.
The real value of the strategies that students learn in Read for Real is the
transfer of the strategies to other nonfiction reading that students do.