RAN

(Reading and Analyzing Non-Fiction)

Content Area Strategy - Comprehension

 

What: 

Teachers often use the K-W-L strategy in science and social studies to help students consider what they know, what they want to know, and what they’ve learned about a specific topic. Although this can be a powerful strategy to strengthen students’ literal comprehension, it doesn’t always have the desired effect of increasing content knowledge. Unlike K-W-L, the RAN strategy (Reading and Analyzing Nonfiction) is a comprehension strategy that helps students confirm prior knowledge and identify misconceptions.

The RAN strategy allows students to:

- tune in and access their background knowledge;

- compare and contrast information read with prior knowledge;

- summarize and reflect.

 

Who:

This strategy can be utilized in the 3rd-12th grades. Can be utilized in younger grades with an increased amount of scaffolding.

 

Why:

The RAN strategy helps students become aware of and critically examine their thinking and helps them organize their research information in preparation for writing.

 

When:

This strategy should be used prior to reading non-fiction text so that students can compile information that they think they know about the topic, and then used again after reading to disprove misconceptions, confirm knowledge, and sorting what new information they have learned.

 

How:

1. Create a RAN chart prior to class including the basic headings across the top (see example below). To specify the chart (recommended with younger students), you can break the table into rows labeled with categories.

2. Prior to reading the nonfiction text, walk the students through the table explaining what each of the categories means, and what you would place in each category.

3. When the students have a better understanding of the meaning of the chart, ask the students about their prior knowledge (what they already know) about the topic. Have students work in pairs or small groups, write what they know on sticky notes, and place them on the appropriate column.

4. Read through the text once.

5. Refer back to the chart – have the class move the sticky notes from the column of what they though they knew to whether it was correct (confirmed), or not correct (misconceptions).

6. Have the partnerships/small groups work together to write on a sticky note the new information that they learned from the text for the new learning column.

7. Work as a class to determine the wonderings that the students still have them, and place those on sticky notes into the last column.