Within guided reading sessions, the teacher leads a small group of readers and models how to use metacognitive strategies. Through this, the children are taught a range of strategies to use before, during and after reading, in order to equip children with the skills and thought-process to understand and adapt within their own learning. Through the mini-lesson with a teacher, children are able to learn how to use the key comprehension strategies through modelling from the teacher. The strategies used are outlined below:

Strategy 1: Monitoring Comprehension

Pupils should use metacognitive strategies to monitor and control their reading by understanding the skills needed for success, regulating their approach through planning and evaluation, recognising what they do and don’t understand, and applying strategies to resolve difficulties. For example: 

• While reading, check for understanding and stop to ask questions.​

• Make predictions about: the text being read, the plot, main ideas or important facts.​

• Make links to prior knowledge.​

• Find and identify key clue words to help make clear stated or implied information.

Strategy 2: Answering Questions and Strategy 3: Child-Generated Questions

Children may: ask questions before reading to build their understanding; ask questions as they read, to help their understanding or revisit with questions after reading to ensure their understanding. They should use the “find it, prove it, talk about it” approach, including evidence such as page references to justify responses. Children are taught to both answer and generate questions using the 3 questions types: literal (the answer is explicitly stated in the text; inferential (the author gives us clues but does not explicitly state the answer) and evaluative (linked to our own thinking, experiences, opinions or ideas).

Strategy 4: Story Structure

Through each lesson, children are taught to identify story structure (plot, setting, characters etc). When talking about story structure, the teacher teaches and explains how an author organises a text and how all of the pieces are integral to their understanding of the story. Learning to identify how different parts of a story work together to create meaning, it helps to deepen childrens overall comprehension.

Strategy 5: Story Structure

Children are taught to summarise a text by identifying the most important events or information. After identifying these, children are able to paraphrase and sequence the story, putting them into their own words. This can be done orally or in writing and helps them to understand the main points of the text.

Strategy 6: Graphic and Semantic Organisers

Graphic plans or organisers are used to help children visualise the story. For example, schema maps of events and characters, story maps of characters and their actions or examples of diagrams, notes under headings or other visual cues, if non-fiction. The graphic organisers help children to organise their thinking and support their comprehension.