Download Comprehension Strategies - Webberville Community Schools

Making Connections –
To use personal and collective experience to enhance understanding of
what is read.
•
Think Aloud: Thinking aloud to introduce connection making, It reminds me of…
•
Text-to-Self: Linking the text to our own life.
•
Text-to-Text: Connecting big ideas and themes across texts.
•
Text-to-World: Sharing connections to build historical understanding.
•
Building Background Knowledge to Teach Specific Content: Collect information and list prior
knowledge to build and store knowledge about a content area.
•
Building Background Knowledge for Literary Elements:
Genre: Become familiar with the special characteristics and conventions of each literary form or
type.
Format: Learn the differences among picture books, novels, nonfiction trade books, and other types
of books to better understand what is read.
Form: Learn to distinguish among essay, editorials, manual, feature articles to heighten
understanding of these forms.
Author: Learn that certain authors carry similar themes, issues, and topics throughout their writing.
Text Structure: Recognize the differences between narrative and expository text and other
structures and learn the characteristic of each to comprehend text better.
Cue Words: Identify cue words that alert the reader to about what is to come in text. For example,
but suggests a coming change, in other words is followed by a definition, and most important
means an important idea.
Writing Style: Notice the various writing styles of different authors, develop an appreciation of
them, and begin to make connections between them.
Literary Features: Search for themes, identify problems, and recognize settings when reading.
Questioning – Ask questions and search for answers to monitor comprehension and interact with text
to construct meaning.
•
Share Questions About Your Own Reading
•
List and Categorize Questions to Promote Understanding
•
Monitor Comprehension to Clarify Confusion or Answer Questions About Text
•
Gaining Information Through Questioning: Explore thinking and wondering.
•
Differentiate Between Large Global Questions and Smaller Clarifications Questions in a Content
Area
•
Make Meaning Through Asking Questions
•
Organizing Content Knowledge to Answer a Specific Question: Use questions webs to expand
thinking.
Visualizing – Create a picture or mental image in your mind to enhance understanding.
•
Visualize to Fill in Missing Information
•
Merge Prior Experience and the Text to Create Visual Images
•
Visualize to Better Understand the Dimensions of Size, Space, and Time
•
Create Image With Nonfiction
•
Use All the Sense to Comprehend Text
Inferring –
Reading faces, reading body language, reading expressions, and reading tones as well as
reading text. Read between the lines.
•
Infer feelings of self and others
•
Infer From the Cover and Illustrations as Well as the Text
•
Differentiate Between Plot and Theme, and Infer the Big ideas or Themes: A theme represents the
bigger or underlying ideas of a story. It may be the morals and lessons that give the story its texture,
depth, and meaning. The plot is what happens in the narrative.
Determining Importance – Determine important ideas and information in text to make sense of
reading and move toward understanding.
•
Essence of Nonfiction Text:
Overviewing – Skimming and Scanning
Activate prior knowledge.
Note characteristics of text length and structure.
Note important heading and subheadings.
Determine what to read and in what order.
Determine what to pay careful attention to.
Determine what to ignore.
Decide to quit because the text contains no relevant information.
Decide if the text is worth careful reading or just skimming.
Highlighting
Look carefully at the first and last line of each paragraph, important information is often contained
there.
Highlight only necessary words and phrases.
Don’t get thrown off by interesting details.
Make notes in the margins to emphasize highlighting.
Note cue words which they are usually followed by important information.
Pay attention to nonfiction features.
Pay attention to surprising information.
Only about one-third of the paragraph should be highlighted.
Nonfiction Features
Fonts and Effects: different fonts and effects such as title, heading, boldface print, color print,
italics, bullets, captions, and labels signal importance in text.
Cue Words and Phrases: Signal words warn reader to pay attention to text. Writers choose
phrases such as for example, for instance, in fact, in conclusion, most important, but, therefore, on
the other hand, and such as so readers will take note.
Illustrations and Photographs: Enhance reading comprehension and capture readers’ attention to
lead them to deeper meaning.
Graphics: Diagrams, cut-aways, cross-sections, overlays, maps, word bubbles, table, graphs, and
charts inform reader of important information.
Text Organizers: The index, preface, table of contents, glossary, and appendix help reader in
surveying different texts for information.
Text Structures: Understanding different expository text structures helps reader determine
important information. These structures include cause and effect, problem and solution, question
and answer, comparison and contrast, and description and sequence.
•
Build Background Knowledge of Nonfiction Conventions
•
Become Familiar with the Characteristic of Nonfiction Trade Books
•
Determine What Is Important When Writing Information
•
Coding Important Information on Unfamiliar as Well as Familiar Topics
•
Finding Important Information Rather Than Just One Main Idea
•
Read to Find Specific Information
•
Discriminate Between Key Topics and Supporting Details
•
Read Persuasive Material Carefully to Make an Informed Judgement
•
Use Questioning and Inferring to Determine the Essence of the Text
Synthesizing –
Merging new information with existing knowledge to create an original idea, see a
new perspective, or form a new line of thinking to achieve insight.
•
Make Synthesizing Concrete
•
Retell Story to Begin to Synthesize Information
•
Make Margin Notes In Your Own Words to Synthesize Sections of the Text
•
Compare and Contrast Properties of Text to Better Understand
•
Summarize the Content of Text and Respond Personally
•
Take Notes and Use a Variety of Strategies to Synthesize
•
Write From a First-Person Perspective to Better Understand Personalities From the Past
•
Move From Short Text to Chapter Books
•
Synthesize to Access Content and Acquire Knowledge
•
Notice the Style of a Piece, Content, and the Reading Process
•
Synthesize Information by Attempting to Answer Difficult Questions