Top 10 Reading Comprehension Strategies

Reading comprehension is the essence and purpose of reading.

The Reading Sage philosophy is to make reading the top priority and goal. Replace basic/BASIL readers, workbooks, and worksheets with high-quality, engaging texts. Have students read real stories, books, fairytales, fables, poems, songs, choose-your-own-adventures, and one-page passages covering diverse topics from art to zoology. Make vocabulary building interactive, vigorous, and multimodal. Gamify academic word practice to motivate. 

Struggling readers often have a vocabulary gap of 5,000-20,000 words. Expose them to a wide breadth of vocabulary by reading varied, rich texts. Don't give up on teaching complex texts - provide scaffolding and support. Nurture a passion for reading and thirst for knowledge. 

Reading should be enlightening and pleasurable. Equip students with comprehension strategies like visualizing, questioning, and summarizing. Assess understanding through discussion and authentic tasks, not just testing. Foster intrinsic motivation by providing choice and time for independent reading.

The goal is to stretch abilities, build knowledge, and develop lifelong, skilled, engaged readers. Comprehension opens doors to new worlds and possibilities.

Here are a few key points on improving reading comprehension:

- Focus on exposing students to a wide variety of high-quality, engaging texts across different genres, topics, and difficulty levels. This builds background knowledge, vocabulary, and interest.

- Teach and model active reading strategies like visualizing, making inferences, asking questions, summarizing, etc. Make sure students are actively thinking about the text as they read.

- Build vocabulary and conceptual knowledge. Students need robust academic language and background knowledge to understand complex texts. Study word roots, prefixes, suffixes, idioms, etc. 

- Let students choose books aligned to their interests to promote intrinsic motivation and engagement. Provide time for independent reading practice.

- Assess comprehension in authentic, meaningful ways. Gauge understanding through discussion, projects, writing tasks, etc. beyond just testing.

- For struggling readers, provide scaffolding, targeted interventions, and accommodations as needed. Don't just give up on teaching them complex texts. Stretch their abilities.

- Make it enjoyable! Reading should be a pleasurable, enlightening experience. Foster a love of reading and thirst for knowledge.

The key is exposing students to high-quality, diverse texts and equipping them with the strategies and skills to derive meaning, build knowledge, and develop a lifelong appreciation for reading. Comprehension opens doors to new worlds and possibilities.

When students are learning something new? Follow the 10/2/24/7+ Rule. Teach a concept, review it after ten minutes, again 2 hours later, then yet again 24 hours later, yep again 7 days later, and periodically review, summarize, and retest to cement the memories. I use this for all critical academic concepts and tier 2 and tier 3 academic vocabulary!

1. Develop Oracy/Dialectic Skills: Read alouds, sing-alongs, role-playing games, plays, field trips, think alouds (metacognition), developing academic listening, questioning, and "conversation skills" and reflective listening skills. 

2. Improve Reading Fluency: Phonics, Alphabetics, Phonemic awareness, Decoding, Word attack, Sight words, Expression, Automaticity of words,...

3. Scale Up Academic Reading Vocabulary Knowledge: Building and developing erudite auditory and textual word and language knowledge is the first bridge to reading comprehension. 

4. Develop Multi-modal Close and Critical Reading Strategies: Interacting with the text at a deeper level that expands and grows academic background knowledge: Annotating text, ranking text, summering, cause and effect, compare and contrast, predicting, questioning, visualizing, illustrating, synthesizing. ...

5. Power Up Word Analysis Skills: Phonics and decoding, understanding the relationships between spelling, the pronunciation of letters, syllables to figure out unfamiliar words. Word Analysis Strategies help students to expand vocabulary knowledge by using the meanings and spellings of prefixes, root words, and suffixes. 

6. Enhance and Upgrade Academic Word Knowledge: Developing cogent tier 2 and tier 3 academic word and language knowledge with daily word work. 

7. Get Cracking on Taking Effective Notes and Using Strategic Reading Journals: Developing note-taking skills. Using Two and three column Cornell notes, Reading Journals, Focused note tacking, Strategic note taking,  Graphic Organizers, 10, 24, 7, and REVIEW rule...

8. Build Cooperative and Collaborative Reading Skills: Kagan. Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR), Guided Reading, Reciprocal Teaching: Collaborative strategies to bring a deeper meaning to the text and build background knowledge
Comprehension Strategies Multiple Intelligence

9. Become Philosophers using Socratic Seminars (INQUIRY): The Socratic method uses a dialectical approach to understand information in a text at the deepest level.

10. What is your favorite reading compression strategy, instructional practice?

ORACY RESOURCES:

[PDF]Promoting the Development of Oracy and Literacy through Interactive ...
Learn in a fun and pressure-free environment. Children need to be interested in what they are learning (CDC, 2006). Learn through interaction. Children learn ...

[PDF]4 ORACY SKILL SETS – A GUIDE
4 ORACY SKILL SETS – A GUIDE. Four key verbal communication skill sets lie at the centre of our oracyprovision and underpin the development and delivery ...

[PDF]Language Learning Skills & Materials (Oracy and Literacy)
(Oracy and Literacy). Teaching Reading and Writing. Note. The HOU is responsible for the editing of the publication and for the development of the texts in ...

[PDF]Assessing Oracy throughout Year 7 Oracy Skill - Faculty of Education
A teacher will probably wish to use tasks throughout the year to assess capability in specific skills, or to consider students' overall oracy capability in specific ...

Reading Fluency RESOURCES:

[PDF]PDF Version - Florida Center for Reading Research
Phonemic Awareness. Phonics. Fluency. Identifying words accurately and fluently .... “Sight wordsinclude any word that readers have practised reading ...

[PDF]Pedagogy Overview: Phonological Awareness - Lexia Learning
children's ability to learn phonic word attack strategies that are important for ... Phonological awarenessskills are targeted in Lexia Reading Core5 through a ... This automaticity is essential for developingreading fluency and contributes to efficient and ... At first, students learn to decode words by applyingphonic word attack ...


[PDF]SpellRead: Every Student Reading Efficiently - School Health
spellRead combines rigorous phonemic and phonetic activities with active ... Phonological automaticityand reading fluency are necessary but not ... reading comprehension because decoding printed wordsat the word level ..... phonemes or to become aware of the alphabetic structure through which oral language can be.

[PDF]National Reading Panel - NICHD - NIH
central to learning to read—Alphabetics, Fluency, and ... The importance of phonemic awareness,phonics, ...... phonemes to blend words—which is decoding. ..... group, with the difference expressed in standard ...... of sight word reading and its relationship to recoding. In ... analysis and synthesis as word-attack skills.

[PDF]Summary of the Research Basis for Beginning Reading - IFERI
 Phonemic awareness is taught systematically and explicitly. Understanding the alphabetic code comes naturally ... based activities; direct instruction in phonics is ... Multiple word attack strategies should be taught ... Beginning readers are taught todecode words as.

[PDF]The Reading Process - PDST
Accurate word recognition: In order to improve reading fluency pupils should be ... Automaticity: This is the ability to read words without conscious decoding. ... They echo the teachers' expression and intonation etc. .... in alphabetical order pertaining .... meaning that 'Phonological awareness' is very different to 'Phonics'.

[PDF]The Importance of Automaticity and Fluency For Efficient Reading ...
proving automaticity and fluency is critical. Although the ... at the phrase, sentence, and text levels. Wood ... application of phonic word attack strategies ... alphabetic strategies to analyze words ... mic Awareness, Phonics and Sight Word ... phonemic awareness and the development ... to move from decoding to automatic.

[PDF]READING INTERVENTION IDEAS Phonological Awareness ...
Grade 1: blending phonemes into words, segmenting words into phonemes, deleting ... Eventually, have the student to say/sing the last word of the rhyming phrase without you. 2. ..... Reading Milestones: asight word approach to decoding .... develop phonemic awareness and discover how our alphabeticsystem works by.

Vocabulary Building: 

PDF]Expanding Vocabulary Knowledge: A Critical Bridge to Comprehension
What role does vocabulary knowledge play in comprehension? ... The more complextexts a child can read, the more words they ... The gap in levels of word knowledge .... bv_b1506_build_vocab_bookmark.pdf. 32 .... After story vocabulary development .... To build students' own meanings by connecting.

CLOSE and CRITICAL READING STRATEGIES: 

[PDF]A Close Look at Close Reading (PDF)
Close reading is thoughtful, critical analysis of a text that focuses on significant details or patterns in order to develop a deep, precise understanding of the text's form, craft, meanings, etc. It is a key requirement of the Common Core State Standards and directs the reader's attention to the text itself.

[PDF]Five close reading strategies
Five close reading strategies. (Adapted from an original blog post by Court Allam). I walked in to my first college class, Political Science 101, eager to learn.

[PDF]Close Reading, Vocabulary, and Text Dependent Questions
Three Key Strategies to. Implement Common. Core Standards. Close Reading, Vocabulary, and. Text Dependent Questions ...

[PDF]CLOSE AND CRITICAL READING
Effective readers engage in close reading to extract the most meaning from complex text. ... Circling specific items is also an effective close reading strategy.

[PDF]Steps for Close Reading
Read with a pencil. 4. Summarize in the left margin. 5. ... ask questions in the right margin. Steps forClose Reading. 1, 2, 3 ... simple-close-reading-strategies.html.


[PDF]Close Reading.pdf
It shouldn't come as a surprise, then, that when you read in order to write a paper, you must adopt certain strategies if you expect your efforts to be fruitful and.

[PDF]SUppORTING STUDENTS IN CLOSE READING - Center on ...
The emphasis on close reading in the ELA & Literacy CCSS means that ..... key words, types of sentence structures, visual components, and text cohesion strategies.7 ...... fisherandfrey.com/_admin/_filemanager/File/Text_Dependent.pdf.

[PDF]A Close Reading Strategy
A Close Reading Strategy. 1. Introduction. Provide some context (background) for the text. The instructor reads the text aloud. The students read the text ...

[PDF]Close Reading Strategy - The Syracuse City School District
Close Reading Strategy Tool Kit. Basic statements or questions of a close read includes: ∙ Let's look closer at this section of the text. / Let's investigate this part ...

[PDF]CLOSE READING EXAMPLES FOR SOCIAL STUDIES
literacy strategies that complement the close reading method. Finally, we understand that these examples are not perfect, and as we grow in our practice, we will ...

[PDF]Word Analysis – Student Workbook
Word Analysis refers to strategies used to figure out the meaning of ... word analysis skills, the ability to approximate the meaning of unfamiliar words is a skill ...

[PDF]MODULE 1 WORD STRUCTURE ANALYSIS:
vocabulary: using the parts of a word to unlock its meaning. .... Word structure analysis is just what it sounds like: using the structure, or parts, of a word to figure ...

[PDF]DesCartes (Combined) Subject: Reading Goal: Word Analysis and ...
Goal Strand: Word Analysis and Vocabulary Skills. RIT Score Range: Below 151. Skills and Concepts to Develop. Below 151. Skills and Concepts to Introduce.

[PDF]LD Online_Word Analysis to Expand Vocabulary Development.pdf
When students engage in “word analysis” or “word study,” they break words down into their smallest units of meaning—morphemes. Each morpheme has a ...

[PDF]Sylvia Greene's Informal Word Analysis Inventory - LINCS
Sylvia Greene's Informal Word Analysis Inventory. Directions: Reading (Decoding):. 1. Give the learner the "Learner Copy" of the inventory and explain that he/ ...

[PDF]Structural Analysis: Common Word Parts Following is a list of some ...
Structural Analysis: Common Word Parts. Following is a list of some common prefixes, roots, and suffixes along with their meanings and examples of words ...

[PDF]Vocabulary - Florida Center for Reading Research
Vocabulary. 2-3 Student Center Activities: Vocabulary. 2006 The Florida Center for Reading Research (Revised July, 2007). Word Analysis. Word Wake-Up.

[PDF]Vocabulary Vocabulary - Florida Center for Reading Research
Depending on the number of words, students may need more than one student ... Students sort wordsbased on understanding of meaning. 1. ..... Word Analysis.

[PDF]Knowledge Discovery Through Co-Word Analysis - IDEALS @ Illinois
co-occurrence frequency of pairs of words or phrases, co-word analysis is used to ... development of co-word analysis, summarizes the advantages and disad-.

ACADEMIC VOCABULARY RESOURCES: 

[PDF]TIER 2 and TIER 3 VOCABULARY TERMS – COMMON CORE STATE ...
TIER 2 and TIER 3 VOCABULARY TERMS – COMMON CORE STATE ... If you deepen your knowledge of something, you learn more about it or strengthen.

Common Core Vocabulary, Tier I, II and III Words
Common Core State Standards: Focus on Tier 2 & Tier 3 Academic Vocabulary. Tier 1 Basic words that commonly appear in spoken language. ... Tier 3 words are central to building knowledge and conceptual understanding within the various ...

[PDF]Three Vocabulary Strategies
Some Important. Definitions. You have been given stips of paper containing ... The vocabulary skills of students in my facility ... Both reading comprehension and academic ... The cumulative words of language ... Tier 2 words are more complex ..... http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/reading/practices/redbk5.pdf.

[PDF]Vocabulary- Selecting Words to Teach - NSW Centre for Effective ...
(Tier 2). More complex, frequently occurring words in academic settings. compare ... sophisticatedlanguage users. Content-specific words. (Tier 3). Highly specialised words that are ... words that are not in students' background knowledge.

[PDF]Expediting Reading2 - Danville Public Schools
peers using tier 3 vocabulary in their discussions. ... English language learners (ELLs) are learning. English at the same ... continuously; associate new readings with prior knowledge; add new ...ACADEMIC VOCABULARY MASTERY. Oracy. Reading ... Tier 2 words can also include polysemouswords across academic ...

[PDF]Vocabulary Instruction for English Language Learners - The School ...
associated with literacy and academic ... May apply knowledge of cognates ... Tier Two: • part of a mature language-user's repertoire. • words that appear in written ... Children interact with examples. Thumbs up, Thumbs down game. 1. 2. 3. 4 ...

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[PDF]Building English Language Learners' Academic Vocabulary - Eric
Tier 3 which is content specific vo- ... report that low academic language skills are ... Tier 2: GeneralAcademic and Multiple Meaning Words u important to ..

EFFECTIVE and STRATEGIC NOTE TAKING 

[PDF]10-24-7 Cornell Note-Taking Strategies - Alvin ISD
CORNELL NOTE REPETITION STRATEGIES. MINUTES -‐ HOURS -‐ DAYS. ◊ Number Chunks. ◊ Circle Key vocabulary words. ◊ Highlight main ideas.

[PDF]Cornell Note-Taking Rubric with 10-24-7 - Alvin ISD
Cornell Notes Rubric (using the Cornell Way). PART 1: NOTE-TAKING. Create. Format. O Notes are set up in the Cornell Way (name, class/period, date, topic).


[PDF]Model Cornell Notes Steps 1-2
strategies for taking Cornell notes ... How do ELCR students use Cornell notes to record, revise, question, review, and summarize ... 10-24-7 model.

[PDF]10 Steps of the CORNELL WAY
Step 1: CREATE Cornell notes format and complete heading ... Within 24 hours of having taken thenotes, revise these notes, generate questions and use ...

[PDF]Effective Listening and Notetaking - North Shore Community College
Be prepared to listen by keeping up to date with your textbook reading. ... Many students take notes in a very haphazard style claiming that they will copy them ...

[PDF]taking notes - Stanford University
Do I streamline using abbreviations and shortcuts? ... Taking notes helps you to concentrate in class. 5. .... This format can be most effective when your.

[PDF]note taking - University of Manitoba
Taking Useful Class. Notes. Academic Learning Centre. 201 Tier. 480-1481 ... How to Take Notes? ....note-taking: A strategy for effective use of Webnotes.

[PDF]Effective Note-taking: the basics
This workshop will provide some guidelines for taking effective notes in lectures and ... Active listening and reading means that you are doing something with the.

[PDF]Lecture listening and note-taking: developing an efficient approach
developing an efficient approach .... Try a note-taking method you don't normally use. ... 6 general 'macrostrategies' for successful listening:.

[PDF]10 Quick Tips for Effective Note Taking
Getting the most out of college means studying hard and using your time in class wisely. Make the most of your time in class and out with an effective note- taking ...

[PDF]Effective Reading and Note taking Strategies, Final2
Use a dictionary of the book glossary to ... Reading and note-taking strategies are essential for each college course. Review ... organize course materials, target your needs as a learner, and more effectively utilize study time.

[PDF]FIVE NOTETAKING METHODS
 Here are 5 methods that are proven to be successful. Read over each ... These styles are described in the format you would use to take notes in class. ... This allows you to take notes on the right-hand side of the page leaving.

[PDF]Note Taking Will Make You a Better Student - Rust College
This information provides students with the information needed to organize their study time moreeffectively. Taking Good Notes. Most students fail to take notes ...

[PDF]Take Effective Class Notes: Strategic Note-Taking - Intervention Central
Students who lack an efficient strategy for note-taking can miss important lecture information, fail to make meaningful connections between facts and ideas being ...

[PDF]Note Taking Strategies
headings. 0 Read the first and last paragraphs of each section. 0 Also read the first and last sentence of each paragraph. 0 Write down anything you need to ...

[PDF]strategic note taking for middle-school students ... - Semantic Scholar
strategic note-taking, students in the experimental group were taught to record notes independently while viewing a videotaped science lecture. Students who ...

[PDF]Note-Taking Strategy
Note-Taking Strategy. TN. 23. Notes are a brief record of important information, facts, or thoughts written to help you remember what you have read or heard.

[PDF]Effective Listening and Notetaking - North Shore Community College
Efficient notetaking is necessary for students to have a record of lectures for future study and review. This packet gives a variety of techniques to improve notetaking skills ..... Sherman, Thomas M., and Wildman, Terry M. Proven Strategies.

[PDF]Effective Note-taking: the basics
This workshop will provide some guidelines for taking effective notes in ... reading, give you an opportunity to explore some strategies for taking traditional notes,.

[PDF]Effective Note Taking Strategies
Taking notes aids your comprehension and retention. Researchers found that if important information was contained in notes, it had a 34% chance of being ...

[PDF]note taking 101 - Eastern Florida State College
Taking , Reading College Textbooks, TABE English, TABE Math, Test Taking Strategies,. Time/Stress Management. VPI students seeking additional information ...

[PDF]Take Effective Class Notes: Strategic Note-Taking - Intervention Central
Strategic note-taking (Boyle, 2013) primes students to more fully understand lecture content through activating prior knowledge of the topic, monitoring teacher cues that mark key points to be included innotes, recording novel vocabulary items, and pondering interconnections between lecture points. Materials.

Cooperative and Collaborative Reading Skills

Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR): Is a Cooperative and Collaborative Reading Comprehension Strategy and Instructional Model designed to develop deeper academic content knowledge and enhance reading comprehension in students. Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR) is a top strategy for teaching reading comprehension when paired with complex and demanding texts.

[PDF]Teaching Young Readers to use Reading Comprehension Strategies
Readers: Collaborative Strategic Reading. READing ... Collaborative Strategic Reading, a model for teaching reading .... CSR was primarily designed to be used with expository text. .... Put the definitionback in the sentence to be sure it.

[PDF]Collaborative Strategic Reading - National Center on Secondary ...
Collaborative Strategic Reading is an approach that works well in mixed-ability classrooms and helps students improve their reading comprehension. CSR can be implemented in a subject-area classroom, such as science or social studies, to improve student comprehension of expository text.

[PDF]The Impact of Collaborative Strategic Reading on the Reading ...
Strategic Reading on the Reading Comprehension of Grade 5 Students in ... Dr. Joseph Dimino is a coauthor of Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR), the ...

[PDF]CSR - Collaborative Strategic Reading - The Meadows Center for ...
CSR. Collaborative Strategic Reading. 4. Dr. Sharon Vaughn. Dr. Michael Solis. The Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk. The University of Texas ...

[PDF]Collaborative Strategic Reading - Amazon S3
Reading? Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR) is a peer-mediated reading comprehension ...Collaborative Strategic Reading was developed to improve reading comprehension skills for students with ..... ..

[PDF]Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR) - International Journal of ...
Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR) within Cognitive and Metacognitive. Strategies ..... Reading matrix.com/articles/asraf ahm ad/article/pdf.

[PDF]Using Collaborative Strategic Reading - CiteSeerX
CSR [Collaborative. Strategic Reading] is an excellent tech- nique for teaching students readingcomprehension and building vocabulary and also working ...