What Is a Multipass Strategy?

The Multipass Strategy can help children improve their reading skills.

The Multipass Strategy is a teaching technique pioneered by Schumacher et al. in 1984 for helping learning-disabled students with reading comprehension.

Passes

Rather than read an article directly, students make three passes through the article, each with a different purpose.

Survey Pass

The first pass is the survey pass. The student reads the title, introduction and closing paragraphs to get an idea of the overall idea of the article.

Textual Cues Pass

Next, the student goes through the text examining any illustrations and charts and looks for unfamiliar words. In addition, the student should look for headings and think of some questions that the student expects the section to answer based on the heading.

Sort-out Pass

Finally, the student reads the full article beginning to end and attempts to answer the questions from the previous pass.

References

• Evergreen State College: Multipass Strategy Steps
• Reading Rockets: Improving Comprehension for Students with Learning Disabilities