1.
Create mental images: Good readers create a wide range of visual,auditory,
and other sensory images as they read, and they become emotionally involved
with what they read.
2.
Use background knowledge: Good readers use their relevant prior knowledge
before, during, and after reading to enhance their understandingof what
they’re reading.
3.
Ask questions: Good readers generate questions before, during, and after
reading to clarify meaning, make predictions, and focus their attention on
what’s important.
4.
Make inferences: good readers use their prior knowledge and information from
what they read to make predictions, seek answers to questions, draw
conclusions, and create interpretations that deepen their understanding of the
text.
5.
Determine the most important ideas or themes: Good readers identify key ideas
or themes as they read, and they can distinguish between important and
unimportant information.
6.
Synthesize information: good readers track their thinking as it evolves
during reading, to get the overall meaning.
7.
Use fix up strategies: Good readers are aware of when they understand and
when they don’t. If they have trouble understanding specific words, phrases,
or longer passages, they use a wide range of problem-solving strategies
including skipping ahead, rereading, asking questions, using a dictionary, and
reading the passage aloud.
Good
readers use the same strategies whether they’re reading Reader’s Digestor a
calculus textbook.
There
is nothing fancy about these strategies. They are common sense. But to read
well, readers must use them.
Excerpted
from: 7 Keys to Comprehension: How to Help Your Kids Read It andGet it!
Authors:
Susan Zimmermann and Chryse Hutchins.Three Rivers PressNew York2003
ISBN:
0-7615-1549-6
