COMPREHENSION STRATEGIES AND SKILLS

Comprehension strategies are specific, learned procedures that foster active, competent, self-regulated and intentional reading.

** Think of the strategies as the sport of soccer.

Comprehension skills are procedures students use to grasp the organizational structure of the text.

** Think of the skills as the drills and practices that enable you to become good at the sport of soccer.

To develop comprehension abilities:

1. Teach decoding skills.
2. Encourage the development of sight words. 
3. Teach students to use semantic context clues to evaluate whether decodings are accurate.
4. Teach vocabulary meanings to a richer and deeper level: teach not only what a word is but what it is not, its morphology, and its internal structure.
5. Encourage extensive reading.
6. Encourage students to ask themselves why the ideas related to the text make sense.
7. Teach self-regulated use of comprehension strategies and skills (metacognition).

Each of these posters have a short, concise definition of the comprehension strategies and a student-friendly definition. Learning the "what it is" will help students when they are trying to apply the strategies to their reading.

Summarize

Question

Predict and Infer

Phonics/Decoding

Monitor and Clarify

Evaluate

Each of the posters below feature a short, concise definition of the comprehension skills. These have been added to the student-friendly graphics that are on the mini-posters below.

•  Fantasy                         
•  Realism                           
• Cause and Effect           
• Categorize                   
• Classify                            
• Problem Solving             
• Compare                 
• Contrast                         
• Predicting Outcomes
• Noting Details                 
• Drawing Conclusions      
• Making Generalizations
• Making Inferences         
• Story Structure               
• Characters
• Setting                           
• Plot                                 
• Author's Viewpoint
• Making Judgments         
• Sequence of Events
• Fact and Opinion    NEW!

Check out the strategies and skills mini-posters created by June Sears from Ojai Unified School District. Each page contains two of the Comprehension Strategies or Comprehension Skills with great graphics that define the strategy or skill in a student-friendly way. Our thanks to June for her creativity and willingness to share!

Comprehension Strategies

• Monitor/Clarify with Question
• Summarize with Evaluate
• Phonics/Decoding with Predict/Infer

Comprehension Skills

• Fantasy/Realism with Story Structure
• Sequence of Events with Cause and Effect
• Compare and Contrast with Noting Details
• Author's Viewpoint with Drawing Conclusions
• Predicting Outcomes with Categorize and Classify
• Making Generalizations with Problem Solving
• Making Inferences with Making Judgments

Teachers have been asking for a poster that has the Comprehension Skills with "kid-friendly" icons. Well, here it is! The poster is three pages long but each of the fourteen comprehension skills feature a graphic that will scaffold the skill for your students.

Comprehension Skills

This poster lists all of the 5th and 6th grade comprehension skills. Use the poster maker in the IMC to create a complete list for your focus wall.

Fifth and Sixth Grade Comprehension Skills Poster