Reading Strategies & Comprehension Skills - Greenwood School ...

Reading Strategies
1. Asking themselves Questions before and during reading the text
to figure out why a character is feeling a certain way, make
predictions on what will happen next, ask themselves what they
would do in the same situation, etc.
2. Make Predictions: telling what they think will happen in the story
next; they can predict before and during reading the text
3. Use Context Clues to figure out unknown words (vocabulary) and
what will happen next in the story, why a problem occurred, how a
character is feeling, what was the author’s purpose for writing
the text
4. Making Connections: statements about themselves, other texts,
or things they heard the world (community, newspaper, tv)
Example of Text to self: the reader can relate to the character
in how they feel, they have been/seen things that were in the
text, they experienced the same good/bad thing as the character
Example of Text to Text: the reader relates facts or
information, similar characters, problems, or places, they are
reading in their current text to something that was also found in
a previous text they read

Example of Text to World: the reader relates something or an
event that has occurred in the world to their own state, city,
town, home, or school.
5. Re-reading paragraphs, pages, or chapters to CLARIFY any
information they didn’t understand or that they forget what they
just read
6. Summarize: telling someone what you just read (by paragraph,
page, chapter) by picking out the most important events/details
a. Oral summaries are supposed to be short
b. Written summaries should be short too, about a paragraph in
length (5-6 sentences)
7. Retelling: telling someone what you just read, BUT you include
many details from the text
a. Think of sitting around a campfire ‘telling stories’. You don’t
want to summarize the stories; you want to tell all the juicy
details by elaborating and being very descriptive.
8. Decoding an Unknown Word
a. Finger tap out the sounds you know
b. Start with the first sound then word your way through the
rest of the word
c. Look for smaller words inside the bigger word
d. Look for vowel combinations, prefixes, or suffixes (-ed, -s,
-ing, -ous, con, re, dis, non, in, un, -unk, -ank, -ay, -ai, -or, -ur,

-er, -ir, ow, ou, ar, au, etc.
e. When you see a vowel, try saying the short vowel sound first,
then try the long vowel sound
9. Visualizing: the reader makes a picture in their mind as they are
reading to help them understand the text and be more engaged
with the text.
10. Inferencing the reader uses the clues from the text as well
as their background knowledge (what they already know about the
situation or problem) to decide on some of the following:
a. How a character feels
b. Why an event/problem happened
c. Why a character said or did what they did
d. What will happen next
*Inferences are made on single events
11. Drawing Conclusions: very similar to making Inferences except
that a conclusion is based upon an entire chapter or book that
relates to a general question
a. Example: After reading this chapter, what conclusion can you
make about how water is important to all kinds of life

Reading Comprehension Skills
Text Structures (#1-6):
1. Cause & Effect
a. Cause: why something happened
b. Effect: what happened
c. Key words: because, so, as a result, since, due to, thus,
nevertheless, therefore, and
d. Sometimes the author does not use they key words in the
reading, but there are separate sentences that each have
the cause and effect
2. Sequencing: ordering events, person’s time line, how something
is made/fixed, etc.
a. Key words: first, then, next, after, after that, during, while,
later on, finally, at the end, in the beginning, in the middle,
etc.
3. Compare & Contrast
a. Compare: see how things are the same
b. Contrast: see how things are different
c. Always great to use a Venn Diagram to do this skill
4. Problem/Solution
5. Main Idea & Details

6. Descriptive: the text (non-fiction) provides descriptions of
the subject discussed throughout the book
7. Author’s Purpose: the reader thinks about the information or
story they read to decide why the author wrote the book.
Students need to provide evidence from the text (specific
details) to support which reason the author wrote the text.
Think of PIE: Persuade, Inform, or Entertain
8. Author’s Viewpoint: the reader thinks about the information
presented in the text (i.e. article) and tries to figure out what
side of the situation or problem is the author on. Students try
to figure out if the author has a BIAS for one side of the
problem.
a. Problem: Should wolves be kept to certain areas of the US
or can they be allowed to roam anywhere
b. Side A (Farmers/Ranchers): They feel wolves need to be
kept to certain areas of US because if wolves get to close
to their farms, they will loose cattle, crops, etc.
c. Side B (Wolves Activitists): They feel wolves could be
integrated into other areas of the US because some
organizations would pay the famers for crop/animals damage

9. Author’s Message or Theme: at the end of the text the reader
is supposed to think about what lesson they were supposed to
learn from the characters, problem in the story, or situations
not to get themselves into in real life.
a. This is not stated in the text, the student needs to use the
clues and events in the text to decide
10. Story Elements: these parts are always found in a fiction
text
a. Characters (main & secondary characters)
b. Setting (where, when)
c. Plot (main events from beginning, middle, end…this include
the problem, solution, rising action, climax)
d. Problem
e. Solution: how problem was solved
f. Rising Action: the events that lead to the Climax
g. Climax: the most interesting, nail-biting, hanging on the
edge of your seat moment in the text
11. Character Traits: the reader using clues from the text to
figure out adjectives to describe the character
a. Brave, courageous, loyal
b. Terrible, unfriendly, disloyal
c. Entertaining, interesting, funny
d. Spontaneous, fast-thinker, creative
WORDS LIKE COOL, AWESOME, NICE, KIND, BAD ARE
NOT ACCEPTABLE!!!!

12. Fact vs. Opinion
13. Non-Fiction Text Features
a. Illustrations, Real Photographs, Pictures
b. Captions: the sentences underneath the photographs that
describe the pictures
c. Diagrams (with labels), Graphs, Tables, Flow Charts
d. Title
e. Headings: the bold faced words to section off chapters in
the text
f. Subtitle, Subheading
g. Table of Contents: gives the name of chapter and page
number they are found on in the text
h. Glossary
i. Index
j. Bold Print or Italicized Print Words
k. Information boxes or Sidebars