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Reading Comprehension Strategies
Presented by:
What are Reading Comprehension
Strategies?
• Conscious plans that students use to determine
the meaning of what they are reading
• Tools that assist students in becoming
purposeful, active readers
Strategies for Reading Comprehension
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Making Connections
Asking Questions
Visualizing/Creating Mental Images
Monitoring/Clarifying
Inferring/Predicting
Evaluating/Analyzing
Summarizing/Synthesizing
Making Connections
Students make personal connections and link
the text they are reading to their background
knowledge to enhance understanding.
How Do Good Readers Make
Connections?
• They reflect about what the story reminds them of
• They think about how the story relates to their
own lives
• They think about other books they have read
• They make connections to real world situations
Helping your Students in Making
Connections
• To help your students make connections while
they are reading, you may try questioning
strategies, such as…
– What does the book remind you of?
– What do you know about the book’s topic?
– Does this book remind you of another book?
http://reading.ecb.org/downloads/mc_MakingConnections.mp3
Asking Questions
Questions allow students to understand the text
on a deeper level by clarifying confusion and
stimulating further interest in a topic before,
during, and after a reading.
How Do Good Readers Ask
Questions?
• Stop periodically to ensure that they understand
what they are reading
• Ask themselves questions about what they are
reading
• Discover new information with their questions
• Clarify their confusion with their questions
Helping your Students with
Questioning
• To help your students with this strategy, you may
do the following:
– Model questioning in your own re-reading
– Ask your students to come up with questions before
reading to see if it is answered within the text
– Stop and make predictions
– Discuss what questions the students may have after
reading
http://reading.ecb.org/downloads/qu_Questioning.mp3
Visualizing/Creating Mental Images
Students create mental pictures and visualizations
while they read to represent ideas in the text.
How Do Good Readers Visualize?
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Create mental pictures in their head
Make the words on the page real and concrete
Create a movie of the text in their head
Build meaning as they visualize
Create images using all of their senses
Helping your Students with
Visualization
• To help your students visualize while they are
reading, you may try the following:
– Share wordless picture books
– Have students tell the story
– Make frequent stops while reading aloud to describe
the pictures in their minds
– Have students draw pictures of what they have read
http://reading.ecb.org/downloads/vis_Visualizing.mp3
Monitor/Clarify
Students monitor and clarify when they stop to
ensure that the meaning of the text is clear to
them.
How Do Good Readers
Monitor/Clarify?
• They ask themselves if what they are reading
makes sense
• They re-read selections that do not make sense
• They look at pictures for clues
• They keep reading for context clues
• Ask a friend for clarification
Helping your Students with
Monitoring/Clarification
• To help your students with monitoring/clarification,
you may ask them the following questions:
– What is happening in the story?
– What clues have lead you to think that?
– Does that make sense?
– Does this text remind you of anything you already know?
Inferring/Predicting
Students make inferences about the text they are
reading to interpret and develop a deeper
understanding of the text.
How Do Good Readers Infer/Predict?
• Read between the lines
• Make their own discoveries without the author
directly stating
• Use text clues, prior knowledge, and questions to
come up with a conclusion
• Create meaning based on their own notions
Helping your Students with
Inferring/Predicting
• To help your students infer/predict, you may ask
the following questions:
– How did you know that?
– Why did you think that would happen?
– What do you think this story was about?
– How do you think the character feels?
– Does the story remind you of anything in particular?
http://reading.ecb.org/downloads/in_Inferring.mp3
Evaluating/Analyzing
Students evaluate and determine the importance
of what they are reading to make decisions
about what information or ideas are most critical
for understanding.
How Do Good Readers Evaluate?
• Get the bigger ideas and themes
• Use text features and clues to help them figure out
the important information
• Look over the entire selection to get an idea of
what the topic is about
• Carefully highlight key information
Helping your Students with Evaluating
• To help your students determine the importance of
reading, you may do the following:
– Initiate discussion before reading
– After reading, discuss important information they have
learned
– While reading, help your students look for clues
– Pay attention to titles, headings, captions, fonts, etc…
http://reading.ecb.org/downloads/ev_Evaluating.mp3
Summarize/Synthesize
Students weave together what they have read with
their own ideas to form new and complete
thoughts during and after reading.
How Do Good Readers Summarize?
• Take individual pieces of information and combine
them with background knowledge
• Form new ideas from pieces of information
• Create an original idea
• See a new perspective
• Combine different strategies of reading
comprehension
Helping your Students with
Summarization
• To help your students summarize, you may use
the following:
– Discuss current events with an emphasis on
judgments and opinions
– Ask questions with no clear answers
– Ask, “How has your thinking changed from reading
that piece?”
http://reading.ecb.org/downloads/sum_Summarizing.mp3
Additional Activities to Support
Reading Comprehension
• Expanding Vocabulary
• Thinking Maps
• Helpful Resources
Expanding Vocabulary
Expand vocabulary by using Marzano’s Six Step
Process, which will support reading comprehension.
Examples of Activities to
Expand Vocabulary
Thinking Maps
Visual representations that support the
understanding of texts and may be used to
support reading comprehension.
Examples of Thinking Maps
Helpful Resources
• Into the Book Strategies for Learning
http://reading.ecb.org/teacher/index.html
• Strategies for Reading Comprehension
http://www.readingresource.net/strategiesfo
rreadingcomprehension.html
• PowerPoint Games
http://jc-schools.net/tutorials/ppt-games/
• Thinking Maps
http://www.mdianeharrison.com/Thinking%2
0Maps.htm
• Reading Comprehension Activities Packet
Strategies in Action!
Probably the single most important factor in a
child’s initial reading instruction is his or her teacher.
No books, no curriculum, no computer can replace the
enormous value of good human-to-human teaching.
Any Questions??
Remember…
“The more that you read, the more
things you will know. The more that
you learn, the more places you'll go.”
-Dr. Seuss