Helping Your Child Become a Strategic Reader

Helping Your Child Become a Strategic Reader

As we read, we are constantly asking ourselves questions, making visual pictures in our head, and making connections to other things we have done or read about. That's what good readers do! The following six strategies will help students become better at understanding what they read. Parents can also use these techniques at home to help their children.

Connections

Children think about personal connections to what they are reading

• Text-to-Text: this story reminds me of when I read...

• Text-to-Self: this book reminds me of when my family and I did...

• Text-to-World: it reminds me of something I heard about...

Questioning

Children ask questions and look for answers before, during, and after reading

• I wonder...

• Who, what, where, when, how come

• I didn't understand when...

Determining Importance

Children pick out the main ideas or events and the author's message

• The important details were...

• The theme of the story was...

• The author is trying to tell me that...

Synthesizing

Children combine what they know, add in what they learned from the text, and respond with how their thinking and ideas have changed

• My thoughts before the story...

• My thoughts after completing my reading...

• I understand now because...

Visualization

Children create pictures in their mind as they read

• This is the picture I have in my head...

Inferring

Children draw conclusions, make predictions, and reflect on the author's meaning and characters' interactions

• Why did the character do that...

• I think this is going to happen next...

• I think the author wants me to know...

Parents play a very influential role in each child's education. Please continue to encourage your child to read at home. Use these techniques as a guide to reinforce the comprehension strategies .

(Cleveland Elementary School)