1. Comprehension Keys
The strategies and tools to help unlock reading comprehension

2. Research studies have revealed
*Reading is an interactive process.
*Good readers naturally engage in constant internal conversation with text
*This engagement helps the reader understand and elaborate on what they have read

3. *These strategies are used regardless of the type of text: for recipes, Shakespeare, instruction manuals….
*MOST IMPORTANTLY, there is a way to teach all students to use this interactive processes.

4. *Students need to learn WHEN and HOW to use the strategies if they are not using them.
*Content teachers (the expert at reading text from their content area) must learn to model these strategies when they are using content texts.

5. 1. CREATE MENTAL IMAGES
Good readers use a wide range of visual, auditory, and sensory images as they read to become emotionally involved with what they read.

6. Readers need to use all their senses to make understanding, but a key place to start is with VISUALIZING. Have the reader practice creating mental images of what they have read.
Have students DRAW or WRITE about their mind images as they read.

7. 2. Use background knowledge to MAKE CONNECTIONS
Good readers use their relevant prior knowledge before, during and after reading to enhance their understanding of that they’re reading.

8. Train students to connect the NEW to the KNOWN three ways:
Text to Self - a personal connection to something done, seen or felt
Text to Text - connections to other books, films, etc.
Text to World - connections to events in the past/present
This connection process needs to occur before, during and after reading

9. 3. MAKE INFERENCES
Good readers use their prior knowledge and information from what they read to make prediction, seek answers to questions, draw conclusions, and create interpretations that deepen their understanding of the text.

10. Inferring
*is the ability to “read between the lines” and extract information that is not directly stated in the text.
*involves DRAWING A CONCLUSION or making an interpretation.
*is the LINK between reader knowledge of, and reader experiences with, vocabulary, content, context, and clues within the text.

11. Inferring strategies include:
*using context to figure out the meaning of words
*using text evidence to infer themes and bigger ideas
*merging background knowledge with clues in the text to surface themes and bigger ideas

12. *thinking beyond the facts read in textbooks and other nonfiction text
*infer and draw conclusions from informational text using features and text structures
*thinking beyond the facts read in textbooks and other nonfiction text

13. 4. DETERMINE IMPORTANCE/THEMES
Good readers identify key ideas, or themes, as they read and they can distinguish between important and unimportant information.
Good readers also establish a purpose for reading, sifting essential information in order to glean key ideas and themes.

14. Essential vs Interesting
Determining importance is simply being able to delineate between what is essential and what was interesting in the passage.
This can be come through TEXT FEATURES, and TEXT EVIDENCE as proof for ideas.
Students also need to be trained to separate the distinction between what they think is important and what the author wants themto think is important.

15. Summarizing to determine importance
Summarizing is the ability to condense a longer piece of text into a shorter statement to get the essense of the text.
Summarizing occurs THROUGHOUT reading, not just at the end.
Summarizing is also putting the ideas from the text in the reader’s own words.

16. 5. SYNTHESIZE INFORMATION
Good readers have thinking that evolves during reading. They get new overall meaning by taking the new information and adding it to their background knowledge.

17. Synthesizing incorporates many strategies: The students must be able to determine importance, ask questions and summarize to be able to synthesize.
Synthesizing can be found in oral, written, dramatic, artist expression. It is the crossing from literal meaning to inferial meaning.

18. 6. ASK QUESTIONS
Good readers ask questions as they read to keep their thought engaged with the text.
They use the questioning to clarify and make meaning.
This is the core of thoughtful reading.

19. Students must be able to self-generate questions to seek out information, solve problems and extend understanding.
Create opportunities for students to generate questions as they read. “I wonder if.... I wonder what.... I wonder why?”
Asking questions is the art of carrying on an inner conversation with the author.

20. 7. USE FIX-UP STRATEGIES
Good readers self-monitor their understanding. If they have trouble understanding words, phrases or passages, they use a wide range of problem-solving strategies to regain their understanding.

21. There are countless books and websites available on strategies and lessons. Please note the website LINKS on the Literacy Tool Kit home page.

22. final thoughts.....
Comprehension instruction is all about being STRATEGIC. That is different from just teaching strategies in a rote manner. Strive to model, guide and release a variety of strategies, in a variety of flexible circumstances, with a variety of texts.

23. Most importantly
Comprehension strategies are TOOLS to expand the readers thinking.... to get deeper.... to a more profound understanding.