This document outlines an overview of reading comprehension strategies presented by Dr. Christine Ybarra. It discusses the four main comprehension strategies of predicting, clarifying, questioning, and summarizing. For each strategy, it provides explanations of what the strategy is, why it is important to teach, examples of how to teach it with teacher and student roles, and language prompts to use. It emphasizes explicitly teaching the strategies through modeling, providing guided practice and feedback, and gradually releasing responsibility to students. The purpose is to help students actively engage with texts to improve comprehension.

1. An Overview of Reading
Comprehension Strategies for
Practical Application in the
Classroom.
Presented by Dr. Christine Ybarra

2. Session Outcomes
Become familiar with the four most common
comprehension strategies
Understand how to use these strategies within the
Balanced Literacy framework
Connect current classroom practices to
strategies for immediate implementation
Classify strategies by their effectiveness in whole
and small group instruction

3. What is Comprehension
The process during which students
 Clarify words, sentences, or paragraphs they do
not understand
 Generate questions about any element found in
text
 Use clues in the text to predict what will happen
next
 Connect the text to their own experiences,
the world, and other text
 Monitor their understanding

4. How Do We Help Students
Comprehend
Explicitly teach comprehension strategies
through modeling
Allow students ample opportunity to practice
applying the strategies with guidance
Allow students many opportunities to listen and
observe other students using comprehension
strategies
Teach students to monitor their use of
comprehension strategies

5. Successful Comprehension
Strategy Instruction Should Include:
Large amounts of time for actual text
reading
Teacher-directed instruction in
comprehension strategies
Opportunities for peer and
collaborative learning
Occasions for students to talk to
one another and the teacher about
their responses to reading
Fielding, Pearson, 1994

6. Gradual Release of
Responsibility

7. Predictions Can Be Made
Based On...
Logical next events
Pictures and graphic information
Questions within the text
Headings, captions, titles and sub-titles
Implied items
Big ideas introduced at the beginning of the text
Topic sentences

8. Why Teach Predicting?
Assists students in setting a purpose for reading
Helps students monitor their own comprehension
and interact with the text
Heightens interest in the reading material and
improves understanding

9. Comprehension Strategy
Instruction: Predicting
Teacher Role
 Review elements of
structures
 Preview book covers
 Discuss headings,
illustrations and maps in
non-fiction books
 Stop periodically to ask
students to gather
clues
Student Role
 Look for clues and key
events in the story
 Stop to check the
accuracy of predictions
and make new
predictions
 Support predictions with
evidence from the text
(clues)

10. Predicting
Good readers make predictions as they read. They preview the text to anticipate what may happen
next. They use information from the text and their prior knowledge (background knowledge) to make
logical predictions before and during reading.
Predicting nonfiction and fiction text:
 Preview front and back covers, illustrations, and headings before reading
 Predict what is likely to happen next based on clues from the text or illustrations
 Use what we know…our background knowledge
 Stop to predict during reading
 Continue to make logical predictions based on clues from the text
Language of prediction:
 I think…because…
 I’ll bet…because
 I wonder if…because
 I imagine…because
 I suppose…because…
 I predict…because….
Adapted from Reciprocal teachings at Work: Strategies for Improving
Reading Comprehension by Lori D. Oczkus © 2003.

12. We Clarify Information by ...
Re-reading
Decoding or pronouncing the word
Skipping a word in order to get the “big idea”
Looking for familiar root words or word parts
Using a dictionary or glossary

13. Explicitly demonstrates self-monitoring and
problem solving during reading
Develops additional strategies students can use
to make meaning of difficult material
Why Teach Students to
Clarify?

14. Comprehension Strategy
Instruction: Clarifying
Teacher Role
 Model how to figure out
difficult text
 Ask students to share
methods of strategies used
for clarifying difficult text
 Share strategies that help
to construct meaning of
unclear text
Student Role
 Identify unclear words,
sentences, passages,
and chapters
 Develop and share
strategies that help to
construct meaning of
unclear text

15. Clarifying
Good readers clarify difficult words, ideas, and phrases when they
read to help them understand the text.
Identify the Problem
 I didn’t understand the part where…
 This (sentence, paragraph, page, chapter) is not clear.
 This doesn’t make sense.
 I can’t figure out…
 This is a tricky work because….
Clarifying Strategies
To clarify an idea:
 I reread the parts that I didn’t understand.
 I read on to look for clues
 I think about what I know
 I talk to a friend
To clarify a word:
 I reread.
 I look for word parts that I know.
 I try to blend the sounds together.
 I think of another word that looks like this word.
 I read on to find clues.
 I try another word that makes sense (a synonym)
Adapted from Reciprocal teachings at Work: Strategies for Improving
Reading Comprehension by Lori D. Oczkus © 2003.

16. Why Teach Questioning?
Motivates students to read with an awareness of
a text’s important ideas
Allows students to process a text’s information
in a sequential manner in order to formulate a
question

17. Comprehension Strategy
Instruction: Questioning
Teacher Role
 Model how to ask a
question
 Teach students how to
ask several types of
questions
 Allow students
opportunities to share
their questions with
others
Student Role
 Generate different
types of questions after
reading text,
processing meaning,
making inferences and
connecting to prior
knowledge
 Formulate questions by
focusing on main ideas,
and important details

18. Questioning
Good readers ask questions as they read. They know how to
generate or produce questions about the text’s main idea,
supporting details, and inferences made in the text.
Questioning with fiction, we…
 Ask questions based on the text (literal questions- answers in
text)
 Ask questions that are based on the main idea or question of
the story
 Ask some inferential questions
Questioning with nonfiction, we…
 Ask questions based on the text (literal questions – answers
are in text)
 Ask questions that are based on the main ideas of the reading
 Ask detail questions
 Ask qu4estions based on nonfiction text features such as
maps, captions, and diagrams
 Ask some inferential questions
Language of Questioning:
 Who
 What
 When
 Where
 Why
 How
 What if
 I wonder
Adapted from Reciprocal teachings at Work: Strategies for Improving
Reading Comprehension by Lori D. Oczkus © 2003.

20. Summarizing Includes ...
Identifying the main idea
Rereading the material
Locating the topic sentence
Identifying the most important words in a
passage
Eliminating less important words
Avoiding retelling

21. Why Teach Summarizing?
Helps students construct an overall meaning of a
text
Facilitates the determination of important points
in a text
Requires students to recall and arrange the
important parts of a text sequentially

22. Comprehension Strategy
Instruction: Summarizing
Teacher Role
 Model summarizing
with both fiction and
non-fiction text
 Point out differences
between fiction and
non-fiction as well as
how summarizing
changes when working
with different text types
 Provide frequent
opportunities of
students to summarize
and listen to others
summarizing
Student Role
 Determine important
points and arrange
them in a logical order
 Determine the
needed arrangement
of the events in the
summary based on the
type of text

23. Summarizing
Good readers summarize when they read. They use their own
words to explain the main idea of a text.
Summarizing fiction:
 Give only key points in a short one or two sentence
summary.
 Summarize in logical order
 Reread to remember main ideas, and/or
 Refer to illustrations to retell or summarize the text.
Summarizing nonfiction:
 Retell the key points or ideas
 Leave out unnecessary details
 Summarize in logical order
 Reread to remember main ideas, and /or
 Refer to illustrations, headings, and other text features to
retell or summarize the text.
Summarizing Prompts:
 The most important ideas in this text are…
 This part was about…
 First…
 Next…
 Then…
 Finally…
 The story takes place….
 The main characters are…
 A problem occurs when…
Adapted from Reciprocal teachings at Work: Strategies for Improving
Reading Comprehension by Lori D. Oczkus © 2003.

24. How Can I Work on These Strategies
While Using Balanced Literacy?
Weave these strategies into your lessons
everyday
Explicitly teach the strategies and their purposes
Give students the time they need to practice
these strategies
Use them to set the purpose of your lessons

25. C. Ybarra, 2014

26. Gradual Release of Responsibility

27. Text:---------
Making Predictions
Making Predictions
Write two predictions about
what you
think will happen next.
Book Discussion Notes
Name: _ _
Making Connections
Find two points in thetext where you
made connections
l .
2.
Clarifying
List words or ideasthat you arenot sure
about
Questioning
AByou read,note at least two questions
thatyou arewondering about.
Summarizing
Use one or two sentences to summarize
themain ideas ofllie text.
2.
Clarifying
Writeyour own definitionsherewhen
you areableto clarifywords.
Questioning
I f you find the answer in the text, record
the answer.
Other Thoughts
• Did you like the book?
• Wherethere any
surprises?
• Do you have a favorite
part?

28. Prompts for Comprehension Strategies
Predicting
I think…
I’ll bet…
I wonder if…
I imagine… I
suppose… I
predict...
Questioning
Clarifying
I didn’t understand the part
where…
Who?
What?
Where?
When?
Why?
How?
What if?
This [word, sentence, para-
graph, page, chapter] is not
clear.
I can’t figure out…
This is a tricky word be-
cause...
The most important ideas in
this text are…
This part was about…
This book was about…
First,...Next,...Then,...Finally,
…
The story takes place…
The main characters are… A
problem occurs when… The
way the problem in the
story is solved is...

29. Name_
_
Chapter _
Book Title _
Literature Response Journal
Finish the following sentences as you read.
1. I wonder
2. Why did
3. I was surprised
4. I can't really understand
5. When I finished reading I thought
6. I can't believe
7. This chapter was about
8. My predictions for the next chapter are

30. Comprehension Chart - Whole Group
Adapted from Reciprocal Teachingal Worlc Strategiesfor Improving ReadingComprehension by Lori 0 . Oczkus C 2003.
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