Reading Comprehension Strategies

Make Connections

• Good readers make connections between the text and their own lives, past experiences, and prior knowledge.

• They draw parallels with:

  • Other books

  • Articles

  • Movies

  • Songs

  • Writings

  • Events

  • People

  • Issues

• To facilitate these connections, sentence starters can be helpful, such as:

  • "That reminds me of..."

  • "This made me think of..."

  • "I read another book that..."

  • "This is different from..."

  • "I remember when..."

Visualize

• Good readers create mental images while reading by using descriptions of settings, characters, and events.

• They can start with phrases like:

  • "I can picture..."

  • "I can see the..."

• Readers engage their other senses to enhance their mental imagery, using expressions like:

  • "I can taste/hear/smell the..."

  • "I can feel the..."

• These techniques help clarify and enrich the pictures in their minds.

Ask Questions

• Good readers ask questions before, during, and after reading to better understand the author and the meaning of the text.

• Ask questions of the author, yourself, and the text:

  • What is the author trying to say?

  • What is the message of this piece?

  • Do I know something about this topic?

  • What lessons can I learn from this text?

  • How could this be explained to someone else?

  • What predictions do I have about this reading?

Making Inferences

• Good readers can draw conclusions based on clues in the text and their background knowledge

• Question stems to help make inference include:

  • What does the author imply when they say...?

  • How does this detail suggest...?

  • What evidence from the text supports your inference that...?

  • What might happen next based on...?

  • How does the character's actions reveal...?

  • What background knowledge helps you understand...?

  • Why do you think the author chose to include...?

  • What can we learn about the theme from...?

Determine Importance

• Good readers look for things that help them identify big ideas and why they are important.

• Look at text features for clues:

  • Titles and headings

  • Bold print

  • pictures and captions

  • graphs and charts

• Tips:

  • Try to summarize paragraphs. Important details affect the outcome of the text.

  • The big idea is...

  • So far I've learned...

  • The author is saying...

    
    

Synthesizing

• Good readers combine new information from their reading with existing knowledge in order to form new ideas or interpretations. Synthesis is creating a single understanding from a variety of sources.

• Tips:

  • Compare and contrast what has been read with what the reader knows

  • Think of new ways to use the information

  • Can connections be made across the text to help me create new generalizations or perspectives?