POSSE READING STRATEGY

POSSE is a reading comprehension strategy designed to model habits of strong readers to students and teach them how to utilize these strategies. This reading comprehension strategy includes many reading practices that have been shown to aid reading comprehension, such as graphic organizers, text structures, stimulation of student background knowledge, and self-monitoring. This strategy was developed by Carol Englert and Troy Mariage in 1991.

Reading Strategies using POSSE

POSSE provides steps for before, during and after reading the article. The POSSE training consict of two pre-reading strategies-predict an organize-and three strategies to use during reading- search , summarize, and evaluate.  The POSSE steps include the following :

P- Predict Ideas

In the predict step, students use cues from the article such as the title, headings, pictures, and the initial paragraph to predict what the story will be about. This brainstorming activity allows students to tap into their prior knowledge. During this step, the teacher guides students to relevant responses and records responses on the strategy sheet.

O- Organize the Ideas (can use note-taking or graphic organizers)

During the organize step, the teacher directs students to choose ideas that are similar, so that they can be organized. Once the ideas are arranged, the teacher then organizes them into a cognitive map with the students.

S- Search for the Structure

      In the search step, students begin reading the passage as they search for the

ideas to map out in the next step.

S- Summarize the Ideas

In the summarize step, students identify the main idea for a portion of the passage (such as a paragraph). This is done through group discussion an consensus. The teacher then records the agreed-upon main idea and places it in the circle of the cognitive map. The group leader-the teacher or students who has been assigned to lead the group – then takes the main idea and converts it into a question. As students answer this question , their responses become the details that the teacher records on the map. At the end of the passage, the students have now created a second cognitive map.

 E- Evaluate your Understanding

In the evaluation step, the students compare the two maps, clarify by asking question about unknown vocabulary or unclear information, and predict what would be in the next section of the text. This starts the process all over again for the next passage.

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