• Laura Robb
Jeff Zwiers
•Cris Tovani
•Kyleen Beers
Jeffrey D. Wilhelm
Elizabeth H. Allen

Purpose: To help students understand
concepts when they have little to no
background knowledge

Text: Narrative/Expository

When to use: Before, during, after
reading

Purpose: A prereading activity,
CATAPULT = covers, author, title,
audience, page, underlying message or
purpose, visuals, and time

Text: Narrative

When: before reading

Purpose: to determine the sequence of
events in a story or historical account; to
infer the causes of events

Text: Narrative or Expository

When: before, during and after reading

Purpose: To guide students to become
independent of the teacher; to read
closely

Text: Narrative or expository

When: before, during, after

Purpose: access tool to help students
hole their thinking and analyze quality of
thought

Text: narrative or expository

When: during reading
Write your quote
help
Write your thought
So what? How does this
you understand?

Purpose: to deepen comprehension; to
help students think about their thinking

Text: narrative or expository

When: during and after reading
Four Box Comprehensor
Write a short summary of what you have read so far:
In the inside circle draw something you visualized as you were reading. In the outside
circle write connections you can make to your reading.
If you could text the author right now, what would you say to him or her?
Remember to be polite and respectful. Explain your thinking, but since
you’re texting you can use your texting shorthand.
As the illustrator, draw a picture that you would insert into the book some place. Be
sure to have the picture reflect a section that you have already read. At the bottom,
write the page number of where the picture should go in the book.

Purpose: to deepen comprehension and
help students think about their thinking

Text: narrative

When: during reading

Purpose: uses students socialness to tap
into and build background knowledge.
Similar to a brainstorming session but with
a more communicative twist

Text: narrative and expository

When: before reading

Purpose: to deepen comprehension. This
strategy includes open ended questioning,
fun, and differentiates all at the same time!

Text: narrative or expository

When: after reading

Tip – teach QAR questions and what open
ended questions are first

Purpose: This is a visual way to train
students’ brains to use evidence in order to
make logical inferences. This habit then
transfers over to reading as students use
evidence from the text (and pictures) and
combine it with background knowledge.

Text: narrative and expository

When: before reading

Purpose: to identify how authors try to
influence readers

Text: advertisements

When: before, during, after

Purpose: inferencing: a visual scaffolding
to help students organize thoughts
connecting text and prior knowledge

Text: expository

When: before, during, after
It Says – I Say – And So
Question
It Says
I Say
And So

Purpose: visual and kinesthetic
simplification of the active thinking we
use to comprehend; based on research
by Marzano.

Text: narrative or expository

When: during reading

Purpose: deepens comprehension
through enactments (Multiple
Intelligences)

Text: narrative and expository

When: before, during and/or after
reading

Purpose: This is a kinesthetic and
cooperative activity that puts a little
more fun into making predictions. It also
can be used for other comprehension
habits as a way of mixing up answers
and creating random participation.

Text: narrative or expository

When: before reading

Purpose: This activity is helpful for
teaching students to use good evidence
for making predictions. It breaks down
the process and shows students how
prediction should naturally happen in
the brain while reading.

Text: narrative or expository

When: before reading

Purpose: This activity encourages
students to read text sections and
generate a tentative heading or
subheading for a section’s information. It
also gives effective practice for textmarking and note-taking.

Text: Expository

When: during reading

Purpose: requires students to choose and
represent key details, see relationships
and patterns across details and scenes,
and summarize the whole coherence of
ideas presented through a particular text
segment.

Text: narrative or expository

When: during, after reading

Purpose: It is a way to get students to
build extensive knowledge of the text
even before they read the first ‘normal’
words of a chapter. (Adapted from
Marzano 2002)

Text: expository

When: before reading

Purpose: to develop the habit of setting
a purpose for the reading beyond “the
teacher told me to read it”.

Text: narrative or expository

When: before reading
Elizabeth H. Allen (Beth)
Contact: ehallen@wcpss.net
Reading For Teachers
Blackboard Site