1. The Magnificent Seven Reading Comprehension Strategies Richard Staton
Language Arts Instructional Specialist
&
Tiffany Johnson
Title I Reading- Instructional Specialist

2. Effective Reading Program
Five Components of Reading
Phonemic awareness
Phonics*
Fluency*
Vocabulary*
Comprehension*
Are the four components that are starred included in each reading/English lesson in your school?

3. Strategy vs. Skill vs. Activity
What is the difference?
Strategy: actions readers do to solve a problem while reading
Skill: what readers need to understand to follow the plot
Activity

4. Strategy vs. Skill
Skills are used with specific texts.
Strategies are used daily & can be applied to all texts.

5. Strategies All content areas All day Math Language Arts Social Science
Tell your students to use these strategies all day in all content areas.
Social
Studies
Science

6. Magnificent Seven Make connections Ask questions Visualize Infer
Determine important information
Synthesize
Monitor comprehension
Why these strategies? Researchers have discovered that proficient readers do these things when the read.

7. Making connections Pay more attention Need a hook
Growth when there is a connection
Other reading material, movies, TV, events, other people
Good readers make connections when they read to what they know, their experiences or experiences they have heard about
Students pay more attention when they can relate to what they are reading
Students need something to make them interested in what they are reading
Growth occurs when there is a bit of information to hook new material to, more work in involved when there isn’t any prior knowledge
Can also make connections to . . .

8. Making connections
We ask our students to make connections to their experience, reading material or to the world or
we call this text to the self, text to text or text to world.

9. Making connections * Students say to themselves
That reminds me of . . .
It made me think of . . .
I read another book where . . .
This is different from . . .
I remember when . . . *

10. Ask Questions Reading is thinking
Ask questions before, during and after reading
Clarify and gain understanding
Of author and of themselves
Good readers ask questions when they read

11. Students ask themselves . . .
What is the author saying here?
I wonder what I would have done in this situation?
What is the author’s message?
What is the author talking about?
What does the author mean here?
Does the author explain this clearly?
The point is for students to formulate questions when they read. They probably do this at other times in their life.
Good to relate to something the students are familiar, a tv show or a movie, in The Prestige, one character I kept asking why is he in the movie? What is his purpose?

12. Bloom’s Taxonomy * Evaluation Synthesis Analysis Application
Comprehension
Knowledge
Make sure that your teachers are asking questions for each of the underlined levels as well as the more common recall questions.
I used the question cards to help me remember to ask those questions.
Teachers can also highlight (not literally) in some way the questions from the teachers edition that ask higher order thinking questions.
These can be found on the reference cards provided by William and Mary as well as on the RPS Instructional CD for secondary. *

13. Visualize Create a picture in your head What are you doing?
do you see?
do you smell?
do you feel?
Good readers create a picture in their heads
Haven’t you ever been disappointed in a movie you saw after you read the book?
Imagine you are on vacation, answer these questions and share with a partner.

14. Visualize
Visualizing not only includes making a mental picture in your head, it also includes using drawings, graphs and tables to visually make sense of the text. *

15. Drawing inferences What is known + clues from the text = judgment
Reading
Must find proof
Because reading is thinking good readers are always trying to figures things out and come up with their own conclusions

16. Drawing inferences QAR- Question Answer Relationships
What might you infer about this man from the picture?
In the Book Questions
Right There
Search and Locate
In My Head
Author and Me
On My Own

17. Drawing Inferences Drawing Conclusions vs. * Text MUST +
Background Knowledge +
Text
FIND
PROOF *

18. Determining Important Ideas
Weed out unimportant details
Including but not limited to
Main idea
Theme
Major events
Facts the author wants the reader to know
Good readers are able to eliminate minor details and pick out the most important ones

19. Determining Important Ideas
Fiction
&
Nonfiction
Determining Important Ideas
The students will ask themselves . . .
The big idea is . . .
The most important ideas are . . .
So far I have learned that . . .
This is important because . . .
I can use this information to help me . . .
This idea is similar to . . .
This idea changed my mind because . . .

20. Determining Important Ideas
Nonfiction
Determining Important Ideas
Text features
Titles & headings
Bold print
Pictures & captions
Graphs & charts
Chapter objectives & questions
Post-it notes
* = interesting or important
L = learned something new
SM = summary
R = research
Can also create other codes *

21. Synthesize Information
New information + existing knowledge = new ideas
Summarizing and predicting
Employers want this
Good readers are making predictions, coming up with what if
When asked what traits employers wanted in employees, they stated that they wanted employees who could come up with new ideas
The person who first did a slam dunk combined the old concept of scoring a point in a new and fancy way
The person who created an ipod, took the concept of a walkman or portable CD player and added new technology

22. Synthesize Information
Students will ask themselves
Do I compare and contrast what I’m reading with what I already know?
Do I think of new ways to use this information?
Do the connections I make across text help me to create new generalizations or new perspectives? *

23. Monitor Comprehension
That doesn’t make sense.
Student fix up process
I am confused by or because . . .
I will try . . .
Good readers realize when they don’t understand and they stop to figure out what they don’t understand

24. Fix-it List Make connections Make predictions Stop and think
Ask and answer questions
Reflect in writing

25. Fix-it List Use text clues Retell Reread Look for text patterns
Adjust reading speed

26. model the tell the strategy strategy guided practice
Instructional flowchart
model the
strategy
tell the strategy
guided practice
independent practice
Flowchart for explicitly teaching students what to do
Students write down how they applied the strategy

27. AUTOMATICITY conscious unconscious Students should . . .
Students should use reading strategies unconsciously. If they don’t we have to make them consciously aware of the strategies and give them enough practice so that they use the strategies unconsciously.
We want these strategies to be automatic.

28. Instructional Specialists
Richard Staton
Language Arts Instructional Specialist
k12.va.us
Tiffany Johnson
Title I Reading Instructional
Specialist

29. The Magnificent Seven Reading Comprehension Strategies Richard Staton
Language Arts Instructional Specialist
&
Tiffany Johnson
Title I Reading- Instructional Specialist