Comprehension

__ Summerization **:**__

 * __ Student Engagement __: Over 30 comprehension strategies to help increase student engagement in learning.**

**__ Working With Texts: __**
= Before/During/ After Ideas: = __Vocabulary & BDA__: 52 Activities with a chart explaining the focus. Each activity source is well cited for quick reference as well. =Before:= __Anticipation Guide__ : This can be used for any subject and any topic.   __Building Concepts__:  Great before reading strategy for science, social studies, or math.  __ Jigsaw:  Terrific strategy for any subject! __ 

__Plausible Predictions:__ This is an organized thinking process that elicits plausible predictions from the student. This strategy provides a thinking model for students to follow as they actively apply knolwedge to make plausible predictions. It can be used before, during, and after readint to help develop a stronger knowledge base. 

__ Posing Questions:  __  This strategy is used to jumpstart and record students’ inquiries and investigations of a topic or unit; use it to teach students how to write questions worth thinking about and discussing. 

__ Problematic Situation:  __ Use this before reading strategy to help your students to identify a topic from your text about which you can develop a problematic situation for students to analyze. Prepare a short paragraph describing the problem using an example from your content area or use the middle school geogrphy example that is included. 

__ Reading Drawing Line by Line:  __  This strategy helps students see the difference between reading as literal decoding and reading as seeing stated or simple implied relationships (reading line-by-line, bringing accumulated meanings forward)/ reading as seeing patterns of more complex implied relationships (reading between the lines, filling in implied and missing meanings); and reading as elaboration and connection to concerns outside the test (reading beyond the lines to make text-to-test, text-to-self, and text-to-world connections). The goals are to use the sequence to help students create initial visualizations and to build metacognitive awareness – to know how they form mental representations as they read. They will become aware of how mental pictures change and build upon each other as the poem’s lines unfold and more information is provided. 

__  Reading Pictures:   __     A variety of techniques can help students to study paintings, drawings, photographs, and other artwork to make analogies between what they are doing as viewers or “picture readers” and what they must do as readers of written text. This is a great way of frontloading readers with knowledge of concepts, since you can match the content of the artwork to that of a text. It can also frontload readers with knowledge of procedures, since artists and authors use analogous techniques for communicating meaning, such as comparison, mood, and irony.  __  Setting a Purpose The House:   __    This is a great strategy to help students visually see that they should have a reason for what they read; a reason more than 'because the teacher said to'.

__  Text Picture Matching   __

__    Why, Why, Why Chart:     __      The Why, Why, Why Chart is a simple activity for building the habit of setting up a purpose for reading different types of text. It challenges students to think about various purposes for reading and to think about the topic of each text. 

__Background Knowledge Backpack:__ This is a simple way to help students build the habit of accessing different types of background knoweldge for comprehension. 

__  CATAPULT:   __<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"> <span style="font-family: comic sans,comic sans ms,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">This is a prereading activity that is useful for getting students to survey and "launch" into works of literature. It gives struggling readers some tricks of the book reading trade. If we can get students to mentally prepare as many ideas about the content and theme as possible before they read a text, they will have a much better framework on which to attach the details and ideas of the text. They will be less likely to get lost in the reading. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">

__    Concept Poster Preview:     __        <span style="font-family: comic sans,comic sans ms,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Research has shown postivie effects from using advance organizers and building background knoweldge before reading. This is a short teacher presentation that uses a large poster that you cdreate with markers whilee you explain the concepts to be learned. Powerful way to build background. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">

=<span style="color: #ff0000; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">During: = __ <span style="font-family: comic sans,comic sans ms,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">  A few Scaffolding Strategies:     __ <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">

__ <span style="font-family: comic sans,comic sans ms,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">  Four Box Comprehensor:     __  <span style="font-family: comic sans,comic sans ms,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">   <span style="font-family: comic sans,comic sans ms,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">This strategy gets students thinking deeper about their reading and includes a little MI. This could also be used as an after reading strategy. This is easy to modify to your specific needs. Good for any subject area, grades 3 - 12. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">

__ Building Concepts: __ This strategy will help students understand concepts when they have little to no background knowledge. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">

__   Comprehension Constructor    ____<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> : __  <span style="font-family: comic sans,comic sans ms,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">This is a graphic organizer to guide students in making connections with their reading. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">

__My Answer Comprehension Construction__: <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">

__  Double Entry Diary:   __     A double-entry diary is an “access tool” that students can use to hold their thinking. Like sticky notes or highlighting text, access tools help students slow down as they read and begin to track their thinking. This is the explanation. Look for the graphic organzier. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">

__   Double Entry Diary So What? __   Graphic Organizer    <span style="font-family: comic sans,comic sans ms,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Landscape view.

__   Four-Box Journal    ____<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">: __   The four-box journal enhances students’ ability to comprehend characters, a theme, and vocabulary, as well as to make connections. The four-box method works well with struggling readers as it does not overwhelm them and proficient readers  can extend and take the concept deeper with guidance. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">

__    It Says I Say and So     __ __:__  <span style="font-family: comic sans,comic sans ms,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">  This strategy helps with inference. Dependent readers often have difficulties making inferences. This strategy is a visual scaffold that helps students organize their thoughts as they move from considering what is in the text to connecting that to their prior knowledge. There are two different templates to choose from. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> __    It Says, I Say, and So landscape template     __ <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> __    It Says, I Say, and So template     __ <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> __   Academic Conversations   <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> :  __  <span style="font-family: comic sans,comic sans ms,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">This is a social strategy similar to Say Something with a little more mature feeling. This page is the questions stems and answer stems. Be sure to model several times. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> = = = = = After: = __Jigsaw:__   <span style="font-family: comic sans,comic sans ms,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">  This strategy can be used as a frontloading strategy but is excellent as an after/through reading strategy. It's a higher order thinking twist on sequencing. This can be used in just about all subject areas. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">

__    Paired Reading and Questioning     ____  <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> :   __    <span style="font-family: comic sans,comic sans ms,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">  This strategy will help to develop the habit of posing sentence-by-sentence questions in order to self-monitor comprehension and to pinpoint unfamiliar words. Struggling students often benefit from this strategy. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> __    Say Something Strategy     ____  <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> :   __    <span style="font-family: comic sans,comic sans ms,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> <span style="font-family: comic sans,comic sans ms,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">This is an excellent strategy that has students interrupt their reading to think about what they have read as they share thoughts with a partner. Several middle school focus lessons and high school work out lessons include this effective strategy. Look for prompts and rules in following files. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> __    Prompts for Say Something:     __      <span style="font-family: comic sans,comic sans ms,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> <span style="font-family: comic sans,comic sans ms,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">These prompts can be a support for your students as they learn the Say Something strategy. Make copies and pass them to groups or display them in your room. __    Rules for Say Something     __ <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> __ <span style="font-family: comic sans,comic sans ms,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">  Self/Text/World Triptych:     __  <span style="font-family: comic sans,comic sans ms,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">   <span style="font-family: comic sans,comic sans ms,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> <span style="font-family: comic sans,comic sans ms,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">This is a visualization strategy that includes art (great use of the Multiple Intelligences). Through the use of art students are guided in making connections with the reading. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> __    Tableaux Directions for Narrative Text     ____  <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> :   __    <span style="font-family: comic sans,comic sans ms,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> <span style="font-family: comic sans,comic sans ms,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Tableaux are usually a favorite strategy for students and differentiates easily. Be prepared for noise as they plan. Excellent visualization strategy the uses questioning techniques and drama. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> __    Tableaux - three types:     __  <span style="font-family: comic sans,comic sans ms,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> <span style="font-family: comic sans,comic sans ms,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Here are three different types of tableaux. Check the enactment file for more varieties of tableaux. __    Think Alouds:     __  <span style="font-family: comic sans,comic sans ms,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> <span style="font-family: comic sans,comic sans ms,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> Think Aloud strategy is a powerful strategy, especially for our struggling readers. Reading is an invisible process. Struggling readers do not see all that proficient readers do while they are reading in order to understand what they read. Think Alouds are a great way to scaffold.

__ **Comprehension Collaboration**:  __ <span style="color: #000000; font-family: comic sans,comic sans ms,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">This is a new strategy that takes an old one and provides a twist. This strategy taps into the socialness of our adolescents to deepend their comprehension and encourage independence. Very effective. This is a strategy to repeat frequently. Students get better and better with this which means they become more indedepend and their comprehension increases. __ **Comprehension Collaboration for Blue Diamond**:  __ <span style="font-family: comic sans,comic sans ms,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">These are directions for use of the Comprehension Collaboration strategy specifically designed for Blue Diamond. Use this after students have completed thier Blue Diamond tests ** <span style="font-family: comic sans,comic sans ms,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">. ** __  **Sorry, I Lost My Headings**:   __    <span style="font-family: comic sans,comic sans ms,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Use this after reading. This strategie provides a slightly different twist to help students with their summarizing. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> __ **Mandala**:  __   <span style="font-family: century gothic,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">The Mandala is a great culminating strategy for the end of a unit or novel. This can be applied to practically any subject area. Look for the graphic organizer and the rubric. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> __ Paraphrasing:  __  Student's ability to paraphrase lets you know whe  <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">ther  they truly understand materials they're studying. Paraphrasing is a strategy that's best learned through teach. __  One Pager:   __<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This after reading acitivy has students illustrating an important or meaningful part of the reading. Students use a quote from the reading, illlustrate it, and write a personal response. This is an AVID strategy. <span class="fnt0" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> __ Posing Questions:  __<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This strategy is used to jumpstart and record students’ inquiries and investigations of a topic or unit. It also is used to teach students how to write questions worth thinking about and discussing. __ Self, Text, World, Tryptic  <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> : __<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This strategy helps student make connections with self, text and world. =<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> =

**__<span style="color: #ff0000; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Other Comprehension Ideas: __**
__    Conversation Voice:     __  <span style="font-family: comic sans,comic sans ms,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> <span style="font-family: comic sans,comic sans ms,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">There are two basic type of reader voices. Struggling readers need to be explicitly taught the two types of voices. __    SWBST:     __  <span style="font-family: comic sans,comic sans ms,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> <span style="font-family: comic sans,comic sans ms,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">This is a quick way to assess that all your students read the required assignment in the novel. This strategy also helps to lead to other comprehension activities such as Annotations. __    Comprehension Target Talk:     __<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Jeff Zwiers put comprehension skills into a target visual with comprehension in the center. You can have students simply fill in the quadrants or even better, have them evaluate the usefulness and relevance of the thought. The more useful the thought, the closer it goes to the center. If there is disagreement great! This allows students to discuss and support their ideas with logical reasoning and evidence from the text. Model this several times and show how not all ideas are equal, and how some even waste time in the group, and in your head. This is the procedure. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">