Helping students comprehend what they are reading can sometimes be a challenge when we are working with non-fiction or informational text. A great way to help students deeply think about what they are reading and “visualize” the information and the relationships in the content is by using visual texts. Ask students to read two or [...]

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,  [...]

One of the ways we can help our students improve their comprehension is by teaching them to identify “signal” words in text. For example, sequence words such as “first, second, after, next, initially, before” and similar type words, indicate that several things are being discussed in a particular order or sequence in the text. Words [...]

A great way to help students increase their understanding of content text is to get them talking and sharing with one another about a text.  Instead of asking simple knowledge and comprehension questions about the text, have students work with partners or small groups to answer 3-4 process or reaction types of questions over the [...]

Reading response journals can be a great way of helping students of all reading abilities think about the things that happen in a story they are reading.  I like to use a spiral binder for this purpose. When students start a new text, they write the details such as title, author, publication date and so [...]