The moment you've all been waiting for, the last 4 strategies for reading comprehension!
4. Determining importance: This one is exactly as it sounds. When we read, there are so many words and so much information that it is important for us to be able to automatically prioritize the importance of everything. Some things are important to keep in mind, some is less important. This is just working with kids to look at things like text features (bold words, headers, graphs, pictures, captions, etc) in non-fiction texts and things like strong verb choice in novels to look for clues about each things importance.
5. Creating mental images: This one is another easy one to figure out. As kids read, they should be making pictures in their minds about what is happening. There are a couple of reasons for this. The first is the ability to gather extra meaning from a picture. If the author doesn't give pictures, you can create one yourself to try to figure out what they are talking about. I know I often stop reading just to think about and imagine what is happening to be sure I understand the meaning. The second important part is if you can make a picture, you are probably understanding what is happening. It's an easy check!
6. Repairing understanding when meaning breaks down: This is a lot of words for one small, but extremely important thing. Kids need to be able to monitor themselves when they are reading. If they realize that they don't understand what's going on, they have to be able to fix that. The best way to do so is to re-read. Good readers do this all of the time. Think about a time when you were trying to read, but were distracted by something, so you ended up reading the same page about a million times. Why did you keep reading it over and over? Because you were distracted and didn't remember what you were reading. Kids have to be able to realize they've lost the meaning of what they were reading and then go back and figure it out!
7. Synthesizing information: Blah, blah, blah, right? Let's make this short, sweet, and easy. Synthesizing information is a very high leveled skill. When you have synthesized information, you have taken it in, thought about it, connected it to other things you know, and basically made it a part of all of the things you know. In the future you'll be able to pull out that piece of information and use it easily, perhaps to build on with more information, to help you solve a problem, to make a comparison to, etc. It's pretty much owning the piece of information.
Okay, that's that article in a nutshell. Lots of really good information. Lots for the brain to process. Feel free to post any questions, comments, or concerns and I'll do my best help you out!
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