DRTA

Question: How introduce the DRTA (Directed Reading Thinking Activity), one of the best approaches to foster active purposeful reading?

Answer/Quote: “The DRTA is a three-step process. Teacher selects a portion of the text: (1) Predict—the teacher elicits predictions prior to reading; (2) read—the students read a predetermined portion of the story, and (3) prove—the students prove or disprove their predictions based on what they have just read.” 372.

Comment: Choose a portion of text. Read the title, subtitle, and first sentence—the topic sentence—of  the text and have children predict what will be said in the text. Finally, the students decide whether their prediction was accurate.

Predicting the ideas covered in the text becomes a habit for students, leading to SQ—survey and question when they become older and they predict the contents of chapters and articles. Survey means reading the title, subtitle, first paragraph, first sentence of each intermediate paragraph and last paragraph. Now students predict what the article or chapter will say and they read to determine if their predictions are accurate. RayS.

Title: “Add SQ to the DRTA—Write.” T Smyers. Reading Teacher (December 1987), 372-374.