Practical Recommendations and Interventions: Reading Comprehension
Have students predict possible answers to the possible questions using their background
knowledge and thinking abilities.
Direct students to read the text to confirm their predictions.
Have students engage in a question and answer activity similar to the television game
show Jeopardy! For this activity, ask students to write questions in their notebooks
related to the information presented in each paragraph of the textual material.
Recite
Encourage students to enhance their understanding of the text through writing and
paraphrasing the answers to the question in the previous step.
Review
Have students go back to each heading and try to recall the questions and answers.
Have students write a summary that ties together all of the ideas that have gathered.
Try other versions of the SQ3R strategy. These include: K-W-L (KNOW, WANT to
learn, did LEARN), POSSE (predict, organize, search/summarize, evaluate), story
mapping, and brainstorming before readings.
Provide students with a variety of opportunities to review what they have read. Try
story maps, or story re-telling.
Encourage students to make connections between the reading passage and their
worlds. Connection charts can be set up where students are encouraged to link what they
learned to their experiences and world knowledge.
Use cooperative learning activities. Assign each student a part of the reading they are
responsible for teaching to other group members. This provides the opportunity for
students to paraphrase what they have read, which may help commit the information to
memory.
Encourage students to re-read passages. They will be able to read with increased
speed and fluency, which will allow them to extract more knowledge from what they
read.
Allow students to demonstrate their understanding of readings in a variety of ways.
Students may like to draw pictures, make charts, write a poem, write a play, etc.
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