Making abstract strategies real, relevant and memorable.
PREDICTING
Predicting occurs when students make suggestions about what the author will discuss in the text. In order to do this successfully, students must activate the relevant background knowledge that they already have on the topic. This also generates a further purpose for reading: to confirm or disprove their predictions.
The opportunity is also created for students to make use of text structures such as, titles, headings, subheadings and questions embedded in the text as useful means of predicting what might occur next.
The following image are prompts to use while reading.
CLARIFYING
Clarifying is a strategy that is particularly important to aid comprehension. Clarifying draws attention to the fact that there may be a reason why a text is difficult to understand such as; new vocabulary, technical language, unclear reference, unfamiliar context or difficult concepts. Discussion is vital under these circumstances.
QUESTIONING
Question generating takes the learner one step along in the comprehension process. When students generate questions they identify the kind of information that is significant enough to provide the substance for a question. They are also self-checking their own comprehension and problem solving to resolve comprehension issues. There are different question types that the children are exposed to from literal to inferential.
SUMMARISING
Summarising provides the opportunity to identify the most important information of the text. Text can be summarised across sentences, paragraphs, and across the page or the text as a whole. Summarising involves integrating this information into your own words without including your opinion.
These skills require rich discussion and verbalisation of how the strategies work, along with no pressure practise in order for mastery to develop over time. These skills are tools that will be used over a life-time of reading.