Reading Strategies

Before reading the story Bat Loves the Night you may want to create a KWL about bats with your students (what you Know, what you Want to know, what you’ve Learned (save the last section for after reading). Fill in the K portion by asking yourself: “What do I already know about this topic?” Think aloud and model for students, for example: “The topic is bats…I’ve read the book Stellaluna…I know bats like to sleep upside down.”

Next use the questioning strategy when filling in the W portion of the chart. Ask yourself: “What do I want to know about this topic?” or “What do I wonder about this topic?” Again, verbalize your ideas, for example: “I’ve always wanted to know why bats like to sleep hanging upside down.” It’s okay to continue to ask questions throughout the reading process. If students have wonderings during the reading, you can add them to the chart later. You could separate the W section of your chart into questions before, questions during, and questions after reading by just drawing a colored line under the questions when you start reading the story and again after you finish.

What We Know About Bats	What We Want to Know About Bats	What We Learned About Bats
Bats are nocturnal.	How many different kinds of bats are there?
Fruit bats like to eat fruit.	Do bats really have fangs? Why?
Bats sleep hanging upside down.

After creating your KWL chart together, you may want to create a concept map with your students to organize their ideas and questions into more specific headings. A fun way to do this might be a class Inspiration activity that you can complete after reading the story or doing more research on bats. Here is a Bats Inspiration example of what your map might look like after adding the items from the “Know” section of your KWL chart after the pre-reading activity. After reading the story you can add all the facts students learned. Knowing they need to listen for items in these specific categories will give purpose to students’ listening and add to their comprehension. After completion of the chart and Inspiration diagram, intermediate teachers could even use this as a springboard to have students write a several paragraph report on bats- you’ve organized your ideas into headings which can become the paragraph topics!

After reading the first few pages of the book, stop and verbalize your thoughts about what you just learned. Fill in the L section of the chart. Continue reading the story and completing the chart together.

For older students you may want to use the individual Questioning graphic organizer.

You may want to preview the following vocabulary words with students before reading (words defined within the story not included):

Mammal- animals: whose bodies are covered with hair, are warm-blooded, produce milk to feed their babies, and give birth to live young (don’t lay eggs)

Hedge- a row of bushes or small trees planted close together; sometimes form a fence or boundary

Swoop- to sweep through the air; to come down upon something in a sudden, swift attack

Scale- one of the small platelike skin structures on the outside covering of some insects

Species- a group of individuals having some common characteristics or qualities; usually resemble one another and able to breed among themselves

Tide- the periodic rise and fall of the waters of the ocean produced by the attraction of the moon and sun- occurring about every 12 hours; anything that alternately rises and falls (in this story the author uses this word on p. 28: “the tide of night rises again”)

An alternative to defining the words for your students is to have them work in pairs or groups to complete a vocabulary concept map for one of the vocabulary words above. Each group can then share with the class what they learned about that word.

There are several short videos on GPB Video streaming that you could show students to give them more background on bats or mammals before reading. Remember, you can just watch segments that pertain to what you’re studying; you don’t have to have students watch the entire video. Suggested grade levels are included, but after previewing you may decide that a certain video has a segment that is appropriate for your grade level.

Synthesizing: Combining New Information With Prior Knowledge

In Strategies That Work, Harvey & Goudvis state that “synthesizing is the most complex of comprehension strategies.” When readers synthesize they:

Harvey & Goudvis point out that many children, when they’re learning to synthesize, have difficulty retelling stories in a brief manner. The authors also mention that in order for readers to synthesize what they’re reading, they need to stop every now and then, think about what they’ve read, and take stock of meaning before continuing on with the text.

Model retelling the story Bat Loves the Night for your students after reading by using sticky notes. Ask students to help you remember the important things that happened in the story and important facts that you learned. Put each one on a sticky note. Encourage students to think about what is important from the story and how you can write a note about it on the sticky note so that it will make sense. Your note can just be an important word from the story, for example: “echolocation” or “nocturnal”. This might be a good time to read the story a second time. Completing the sticky notes has now given students a purpose, so they’ll be listening differently the second time around. Harvey & Goudis talk about how rereading enhances understanding and leads to shared insights. (p. 36) Too often we read a story to our students once and think we’re done with it, when in reality students get little, if any, meaning from hearing a book only once.

After you have all the sticky notes completed, model for students what retelling the story looks like. Show students how when you’re retelling the story, you can just look at your sticky notes and then add the rest of the information that is in your head into the retelling. The sticky notes are merely reminders for the information you comprehended as you read.

For older students you can have them take their own notes on sticky notes after modeling how to do this. After completing the reading, have students use their sticky notes to practice retelling the story to a partner.

For more information on synthesizing strategy and lesson ideas, read chapter 10 of Strategies That Work by Stephanie Harvey & Anne Goudvis. For more information on questioning strategy and lesson ideas see chapter 7,

Batty Comprehension

Use this bat writing template from Education World to have students write facts about Bats from the story or retell the story (emphasizing beginning/middle/ending, characters, setting). For intermediate grades, you may like to have students create a book of bat facts after reading instead. Here are some book pages to print out.

You can also have older students complete a 3-2-1. This gives them the opportunity to summarize some of the important ideas from the story, rethink them to focus on the ones they’re most intrigued by, and then ask a question that they might still need answered (and may require further research). Students write:

Pre-Reading Strategies: Activating Prior Knowledge with a KWL Chart

Synthesizing: Combining New Information With Prior Knowledge

In Strategies That Work, Harvey & Goudvis state that “synthesizing is the most complex of comprehension strategies.” When readers synthesize they:

Batty Comprehension