8 Ways to Use Video to Build Students’ Reading Skills

April 17, 2025

My daughters (a 10th-grader and a 6th-grader), like most kids, watch a lot of video content (although I like a lot of parents I do try to monitor content and limit their screen time). Video is also now a regular part of educational content they encounter during the school day. Which got me to thinking that we need to be actively teaching our kids to be skilled “readers” of video content, whether that’s a TikTok or Instagram reel, a feature film, a how-to video, or an educational documentary.

Understanding and learning from video content involves many of the same skills that apply to reading text. A thoughtful integration of video into our reading lessons will benefit our students both in and out of the classroom. Here are just a few of the ways that exploring video content is similar to reading texts, and how strategies we use in one context can transfer to another. (Read to the end—the last one might just be the most important!)

Re-Reading for Understanding

Most students have had the experience of getting partway through a video (or text) only to realize they’ve missed a thread in the storyline or no longer understand a character’s motivation. This kind of lack of comprehension means that they need to stop and reverse to the place where they last understood what was happening and start viewing (rereading) from there. It may also indicate that students are having difficulty focusing on the content and need a few strategies to help them tune in, such as reducing distractions or chunking the video (text) into manageable sections.

Pausing to Deepen Background Knowledge Necessary for Comprehension

Last summer I was watching the film Persepolis with my older daughter and realized that neither of us knew the necessary historical background to understand what was happening in the film. I suggested that we pause our viewing, just like we might stop reading, to look up some information about the Iranian revolution so we could better understand the historical context that shapes the main character’s experiences.  

Summarizing Main Ideas and Details

A how-to video (such as a math tutorial on Khan Academy) provides a great opportunity to show students how to identify and use the steps to realize the desired result. Or maybe you want to show a short  documentary connected to your content studies and ask for a summary. Students can only do this if they have been actively “reading” the video. Strategies like pausing to monitor for comprehension and annotating (making notes) about the principal ideas, key steps, a documentarian’s perspective, and important details, can go a long way to set them up to be successful with this task.

Exploring Figurative Imagery (Language)

Films, TV shows, movie trailers, and animated shorts are often replete with figurative imagery just as texts are filled with figurative language. Challenging students to better identify and understand a filmmaker’s use of light or color, the mood communicated through the musical score, the way they’ve framed certain scenes, or the inclusion of a character as a symbol of a concept can help them better appreciate and understand the use of metaphor, hyperbole, allusion, or irony in the texts they read both in and out of school.

Understanding How Setting Informs Story

In much video content, just as in most texts, the setting is key to fully understanding the content. In a news reel, just as in a news story, students often need to know where and when the event took place. And they may need to be able to place that event in a series of events to appreciate the full story. And of course, in a thriller such as Dracula, students can explore how the dual settings (England and Romania) both in the film and in the novel build suspense and a sense of dread and contrast modernity and tradition. 

Delving into Characters

One of the reasons I recently recommended my daughter watch a film version of Macbeth prior to reading the play was that I thought it would help her learn more about the characters, their motivations and emotions, their roles in driving the plot forward, etc. Carefully watching the characters, their mannerisms, their expressions, their actions, their interactions with other characters in a video mirrors the way we mine the text for information that lets us better understand and analyze characters, their story arc, their motivations, their feelings, etc.

Expanding Vocabulary

Video can be a great way to introduce students to new and complex vocabulary about a topic that you are studying. Just as you would when reading a text during a read aloud or close reading lesson, you can pause the video and slip in a quick definition or explore ways—visual clues, context, morphology—they can figure out a definition on their own. Or maybe the video includes links to key vocabulary words just as a text might include a glossary.

Strengthening Critical Thinking

Since so much of what students watch or read outside of school is video and internet content created by influencers or authors who may not be experts or by artificial intelligence, we need to equip them with the discernment to determine the veracity and validity of the content they consume. Whether it’s video or text, here are five questions students can ask to approach content with a critical lens.

1.     Who generated the content? Is it a reputable or reliable source?

2.     What is the purpose of the content, is it reasonable, and is it timely?

3.     Does the video or article include legitimate evidence to back up its claims?

4.     Can you substantiate the information with two or three credible sources?

5.     Does the video or text include odd pausing, cadence, phrasing, language, mispronunciations or misspellings, or other indicators that it may not be real or generated by AI?

When you’re teaching in ELA, science, and social studies using read aloud or close reading lesson structures, consider swapping in video “texts” from time to time. For engagement, but also because learning to “read” video content is a critical part of literacy today.

I’d love to hear from you about how you are using video in the classroom to further students’ learning.

To learn more about lesson structures, selecting texts (including video), and teaching knowledge, vocabulary and strategies in ELA, science and social studies, please check out my newest book, Teaching Reading Across the Day. For strategies to support engagement, vocabulary development, comprehension, conversation, and writing about reading, see my bestselling The Reading Strategies Book 2.0. And of course, my team of literacy specialists and I are ready to join you in your school to help you bring these and any ideas to life in your classrooms. Have your administrator reach out today.