from Strategies That Work,
Mosaic of Thought, and Reading with Meaning,
this page gives you information on the six comprehension
strategies known as making connections, questioning,
visualizing, inferring, determining importance, and
synthesizing.
Some tips for
teaching these comprehension strategies:
Model each
strategy whenever you are reading text to or with children,
such as during a read aloud, guided reading, content area
text, independent reading, etc.
Keep anchor charts
of your thinking as well as students' thinking.
If you are going
to use post-it notes, as mentioned in many books, please keep
in mind that children will overly concentrate on the post-it
notes instead of the strategies themselves. Although
post-it notes are great ways to jot down their thinking,
expose them to other ways of recording their thoughts, such as
a reader's response journal, T-charts, graphic organizers,
etc.
Children make
personal connections with the text by using their schema
(background knowledge).
There are three main types of connections we make while
reading text.
Text-to-Self
(T-S) refers to connections made between the text and the
reader's personal experience.
Text-to-Text
(T-T) refers to connections made between a text being read
to a text that was previously read.
Text-to-World
(T-W) refers to connections made between a text being read
and something that occurs in the world.
It is important
to activate children's schema (background knowledge) before,
during, and after reading.
Questions help
students clarify and deepen understanding of the text they are
reading. Teachers should model coding of the different
types of questions.
Codes for questions vary according
to different authors and books on comprehension strategies.
Use codes that suit your students' needs.
You can even
create your own codes with your students' help!
and 
to teach the six comprehension strategies listed above. Those
books were my "bible" for teaching comprehension. Below
are more resources that will help you plan comprehension
instruction!
