START Comprehending: Students & Teachers Actively Reading Text

Scharlach, T. D. (2008). START comprehending: Students and teachers actively reading

text. The Reading Teacher, 62(1), 2031.
Designed by Tabatha Dobson Scharlach to improve classroom reading instruction, START
consists of eight crucial comprehension strategies. Easily implemented on a daily basis by
teachers through modeling and scaffolding during teacher read-alouds and actively engaging
students in strategic reading independently. The ultimate goal is to teach these comprehension
strategies through a gradual release of responsibility that leads to students self-monitoring
themselves.
Teacher Read-Aloud
Can be either fiction or non-fiction text.
Begins with teachers explicitly modeling and explaining the comprehension strategy in
the initial introduction, and then providing guided practice for students (making teacher
support available if needed) to scaffold their learning of these new strategies.
A START Instructional Sequence is provided to help teachers

The 8 Comprehension Strategies
Predicting/Inferring, Visualizing, Making Connections, Questioning, Determining Main
Idea, Summarizing, Checking Predictions, and Making Judgments

Independent Reading
Students only read self-selected texts.
Students use sticky notes to jot down any one of the eight comprehension strategies
they used while reading.
These sticky notes answer questions on the ART of Comprehension Recording Sheets:
o In this chapter I think(Prediction)
o In my mind I see(Visualization)
o This reminds me of(Making Connections)
o I wonder(Questioning)
o I think the most important thing(Main Idea)
o In 10 words or less(Summarizing)
o After reading, my original prediction(Checking Predictions)
o My favorite part of this chapter was(Making Judgments)

START is a program I could see myself using to successfully teach reading! The ART of
Comprehension Recording Sheet is an excellent resource! We often see and hear students
reading efficiently, yet become speechless when asked comprehensive questions about the text
just read. These worksheets force students to actively think about whats being read and
reading in general, improving their understanding of the text as well as their metacognition!