If you want to make sure that your students are really comprehending the text they are reading, one of the easiest and best ways of doing this is to ask them to do a paired retelling of the text. This strategy can be used with text the student either reads himself or, for younger children,  listens to as the teacher reads the text orally. Students are given a short guide that tells them what they should be listening for when their partner retells the text. To introduce the concept, the teacher reads the text and then models how to retell the details of the narrative or expository text briefly and in his own words. The children practice listening and recording the details they hear on their “listening guide.”  The teacher may want to model retellings that focus on the characters and setting, the narrative or even the main ideas and details in an expository piece. Students then practice reading text and pairing up with a partner to retell the text they have read in their own words. The partner student takes notes on the retelling form If the partner cannot remember a part of the text, the partner can prompt him or her with questions like, “Can you tell me about the main characters of the story?” or “Where did the story take place?”  or “What was important about (topic)?” The guides can be customized to the specific text or can be generic to allow students a bit more freedom in their retellings. After students become skilled at oral retelling, the teacher can ask them to write down their retelling summaries to raise the skill to a higher level. This strategy can be used at all levels and with all content material to increase comprehension and clarify understandings.