Main Idea and Details -A sentence identifying the point that the text is about. What is the author specifically saying to the reader? What details are provided to help the reader understand the main idea? A good reader uses detail to make a judgment about the main idea. Compare and Contrast - When telling how things are the same, you are comparing. When telling how things are different, you are contra stinging. Readers need to compare and contrast unfamiliar thoughts, ideas, things with familiar ones to help understand the text. Good readers use their own experiences as the base for understanding those thoughts, ideas, things with which they are familiar. To strengthen reading comprehension, children need to make connections while they read. This is an ongoing process of thinking before reading, during reading, and after reading. They can make connections to their self, another text, or even to the world. The reader’s mind has an ongoing conversation while reading the text. The following list of skills will help children respond with delight, wonder, and sometimes even outrage. When children comprehend what they are reading they question the text, argue with the author, and even nod their head in agreement. Reading comprehension is much more than just answering literal questions at the end of story.

Summarize - Sum up to check your understanding. Re-read if you don't understand the text. Put the main ideas in your own words. Make Inferences - Readers take information from the text, along with personal experience or knowledge, to understand what is happening in the story. Good Readers put what they already know together with what is written in the text to understand the total picture of the story. Predict Outcomes - Clues in stories, and things you already know, can tell you what might happen next. Categorize and Classify - Putting like things together can help the reader understand the relationships set up by the author. Good readers put like actions, events, and characters together in order to make meaning from their relationships.

Fact and Opinion - A fact is a statement that can be provable. An opinion is a statement that in not provable itself, but should be based on fact. Good readers use facts and opinions to determine if what they are reading is valid (logically correct). Sequence of Events - Events in a story happen in order. First, next, then, and last or beginning, middle, and end words might be used to tell the events in order. Author's Point of View - Who is telling this story? First Person = characters uses I, me, my. Third Person = characters referred to by names or he/she, him/her, it. Good readers are aware of who is telling the story in order to determine if they are getting the full picture or just as seen through the eyes of one character. Visualize - Paint a picture in your head. Imagine the setting, characters and actions or description of the text.

Drawing Conclusions - Take small pieces of information about a character/event and put these pieces together to make a statement about the character or even. Good readers use what is written to form ideas about what is not written, but implied by actions, words and or events. Narrative Elements - The main parts of a story (story structure) are the characters, setting, and plot Character - In most stories there are people or animals that we read about and get to know. These people or animals are called characters. The character that we get to know best are called the main character. Setting - In many stories, events happen in a certain place. The place where a story happens is called the setting. Have children describe settings of their favorite stories. Plot - The plot usually involves a problem or a conflict that must be resolved. The resolution is how the problem is solved.