SRE Framework
The SRE framework presents a flexible plan for designing reading lessons for any type of text. As shown below, the framework has two parts—the Planning Phase and the Implementation Phase.
Two Phases of a Scaffolded Reading Experience
In the Planning Phase, we consider the students doing the reading, the text they are reading, and the purposes for reading it. In the Implementation Phase, we outline a set of pre-reading, during-reading, and post-reading options for creating an actual lesson. Because different combinations of students, texts, and purposes call for different sorts of activities, the activities we suggest differ from one SRE to another. For example, the activities you engage in when teaching Andrew Clements' Frindle are very different from those you engage in when teaching James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues." And the activities you engage in when teaching Russell Freedman's Eleanor Roosevelt: A Life of Discovery or Shakespeare's Hamlet are still more different.
As shown in the lower half of the figure, the components of the implementation phase are pre-reading, during-reading, and post-reading activities. Each of these components serves a different purpose:
Pre-reading activities prepare students to read an upcoming selection. They can serve a number of functions, including getting students interested in reading the selection, reminding students of things they already know that will help them understand and enjoy the selection, and pre-teaching aspects of the selection that may be difficult. Pre-reading activities are particularly important because with adequate preparation the experience of reading will be enjoyable, rewarding, and successful.
During-reading activities include both things that students do themselves as they are reading, and things that teachers do to assist them as they are reading (for example, students reading silently, teachers reading to them, or students taking notes as they read). During-reading activities are very important because they serve to make students' experience as they are reading rewarding and productive.
Post-reading activities provide opportunities for students to synthesize and organize information gleaned from the text so that they can understand and recall important points. They provide opportunities for students to evaluate an author's message, his or her stance in presenting the message, and the quality of the text itself. They provide opportunities for you and your students to evaluate their understanding of the text. They also provide opportunities for students to respond to a text in a variety of ways—to reflect on the meaning of the text, to compare differing texts and ideas, to imagine themselves as one of the characters in the text, to synthesize information from different sources, to engage in a variety of creative activities, and to apply what they have learned within the classroom walls and to the world beyond the classroom.