Mrs. Bain's Fantastic Fourth Grade - Promenade Elementary School

Reading Comprehension Strategies are "specific, learned procedures that help create active, smart, independent readers". A good reader uses all of the strategies while reading. In first grade, the strategies are introduced 1 at a time and practiced in specific stories. The goal is that students will eventually use these strategies automatically while they are reading.

Below are the reading comprehension strategies that your child is learning in class and using throughout the year as they read. Students understand that these strategies are "tools that help them to read better and understand what they read". Parents can use these strategies at home to reinforce them with students.

• Phonics/Decoding Strategy -To blend sounds to make words. /c/ /a/ /t/ = cat

1. Look at the letters from left to right.
2. Think about the sounds for the letters, and look for word parts you know.
3. Blend the sounds to read the word.
4. Ask yourself: Is it a word I know? Does it make sense in what I am reading?
5. If not, ask yourself: What else can I try?

• Predict/Infer -Use what we have read and what we know to learn more than the author tells us. We can make predictions before we read and during reading...What is going to happen next? What makes me think this?
• Question -Figure out what part of the story you did not understand. Ask yourself questions and look for the answers in your reading (who, what, when, where, & why?)
• Monitory/Clarify -Ask questions about what you still need to understand. "I did not understand that part. I am going to read it again and see if I can understand it. I am going to look at the pictures to see they help me understand the story better."
• Evaluate -To decide if what we are reading is entertaining, informative or useful for us. We are like the judges on American Idol...Did the author do a good job of explaining things to the reader? Thumbs up, or thumbs down!
• Summarize- Tell in your own words what happened so far in the story. "First the wolf blew down the straw house. Then he blew down the stick house..."