Chapter Glancing: Noticing and Naming Chapter Openings

Writers carefully include critical information in the opening lines of their chapters, but students often gloss over these beginning sentences, missing information that could help them better comprehend the text. To address this concern, the authors created a strategy that prompts students to examine the opening lines of chapters, helping readers notice and name what is seen, thus deepening their understanding and engagement. This article describes the Chapter Glancing strategy, showing teachers how to lift up the opening lines of chapters to help students examine the information embedded there. The strategy prompts students to predict and infer as they notice and name aspects of the text that hold promise for future understandings. By illuminating what readers do, Chapter Glancing becomes a useful strategy that students transfer into their own reading. How to introduce this strategy to students and the variations for using this strategy are addressed.