Active Reading Strategies

Active Reading

Strategies to help you understand and remember what you read

Reading Aloud

Reading out loud to focus and stay engaged

Purpose of Reading Aloud

Helps with dialogue and keeps your brain active

Annotating

Writing small notes or symbols in the text

Purpose of Annotations

Helps remember key points and find them later

Highlighting

Using colors to mark important information

Color Coding

Yellow for themes; blue for characters

Gisting

Writing 1–2 sentence summaries of sections or chapters

Purpose of Gisting

Helps track what’s happening overall

Prediction

Guessing what will happen next in the story

Purpose of Prediction

Keeps your brain thinking while you read

Questioning

Asking questions while you read and writing them down

Purpose of Questioning

Unanswered questions help with discussions or essays

Graphic Organizers

Charts or maps to organize information

Purpose of Organizers

Helps plan essays and gather evidence

Active Reading Formula

Read Aloud, Annotate, Highlight, Gist, Predict, Question, Organize