Effective comprehension and instructional strategies help students make connections, visualize, make inferences, determine the main idea, and demonstrate understanding through various means. Such strategies educate students by building on their background knowledge and using multiple sources and models to increase academic achievement for all learners. Specifically, these strategies aid students in combining prior and new knowledge, acquiring information from texts, making predictions, sharing perspectives, and summarizing, visualizing, and questioning texts.

1. DEFINING
COMPREHENSION
AND
INSTRUCTIONAL
STRATEGIES
Dimitra Collier
Read – 6707-0-4, Fall 2014
Reading and Literacy Growth
November 16, 2014
Dr. Casey Stoll

2. WAYS READING COMPREHENSION
IS IDENTIFIED IN STUDENTS
 Connections with Text-to-Self, Text-to-Text, and
Text-to-World
 Visualization
 Inferences (Ability to read between the lines)
 Ability to determine the main idea by using key
details from the text
 Create a product to demonstrate their
understanding of the text
Reutzel, D. R., & Cooter, R. B., Jr. (2011). Strategies for reading assessment and instruction: Helping every
child succeed (4th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

3. HOW DO STUDENTS MAKE
CONNECTIONS?
 The main goal in reading is the ability to comprehend.
 Students are able to make connections to what they
are reading by their background knowledge and
metacognition.
 Other factors that affect their ability to comprehend
and make connections is the learning environment
(home, school, cultural background)
 The type of text that the student reads is also vital.
Connections are made based on the type of vocabulary
used in the book, the content and how its organized.
Laureate Education (Producer). (2014i). Metacognition: Thinking about thinking [Multimedia file].
Baltimore, MD: Author.

4. READING COMPREHENSION
TAKES PLACE WHEN STUDENTS
ARE ABLE TO…
 Think about how the story remind them of
something that has occurred in their lives.
 Compare the text that they are reading to
other texts that they have read and make
connections.
 Understand what is happening in the text
and relate it to things that are going on in
the world around them.

5. HOW DOES READING
COMPREHENSION HELP
STUDENTS AS A READER?
 Reading comprehension helps students become
better readers.
 As I think about the things occurring in the story,
I am able to gain a better concept of the main
idea by using key details, such as the setting and
characters.
 When I understand what the story is about, I am
able to easily recall and share information about
it. It also becomes easier for me to write and
draw pictures to illustrate my understanding.

6. WHY IS VISUALIZING IMPORTANT?
Students must be able to create a
mental image of what is
happening in the story. They should
information that they already know to
help increase their understanding of
what is going on in the text.
Students must use prior
Knowledge, key details,
Connections and inferences to help
Them create this mental picture
(Hollenbeck & Saternus, 2013).
Hollenbeck, A. F., & Saternus, K. (2013). Mind the comprehension iceberg: Avoiding titanic mistakes
with the CCSS. The Reading Teacher, 66(7), 558–568. Retrieved from the Walden Library
databases.

7. WHAT HAPPENS WHEN
STUDENTS VISUALIZE?
 Students create pictures in their head
 The words in the text become real to the students
and they are concrete
 Students create a movie of the text in their minds
 Students are able to construct meaning of the
text
 Students use their senses to help them create
images about the text

8. VISUALIZING HELPS
STUDENTS THINK AS THEY
READ BY…
 Helping them to increase meaning by their mental
images
 Allowing students to connect the words and images
from the text to their previous experiences
 Encouraging them to put themselves in the story as a
character
 Stimulating their imagination
 Engaging them in the text
 Bringing enjoyment/interest to them while reading
 Allowing the words that they are reading to come
alive
Laureate Education (Producer). (2014i). Metacognition: Thinking about thinking [Multimedia file]. Baltimore,
MD: Author.

9. MAKING INFERENCES
I wonder…
Could it be?

10. WAYS THAT STUDENTS MAKE
INFERENCES…
 Read between the lines
 Discover things on their own without the author
specifically stating/giving the information
 By creating questions to create an ending or
conclusion about the story, using previously
acquired knowledge, and using context clues

11. WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF
MAKING INFERENCES?
 Conclusions are made based on the clues
given in the text
 Predictions are made. They also help
students to gain understanding about the
story
 Themes are created and understood
 Comprehension is gained before, during
and after reading the text
 They gain meaning by looking at the
pictures

12. WHAT IS THE MAIN IDEA? WHAT IS
THIS TEXT TELLING ME?
I understand that reading comprehension is
increased when students are interested in
what they are reading (Reutzel & Cooter,
2011). Also, when students are
intererested in what they are reading, it
helps to shape the focus of the students’
comprehension.

13. HOW DO STUDENTS
UNDERSTAND THE MAIN
IDEA?
 Themes
 Context clues and special features in the text
 Headings, words written in italics, pictures, key words
 When students browse through and read the text from
front to back, searching for information to gain meaning
 Highlighting key details as they go through the text

14. STUDENT APPLICATION
Effective instructional strategies help
students retell information from the
text, reflect on text ideas to decide if
they are sensible, construct summaries
and synthesize
(Laureate Education, Inc., 2014i).

15. EFFECTIVE STRATEGIES
HELP STUDENTS TO…
 Combine previous and new knowledge to
gain reading comprehension
 Acquire new knowledge from the text
 Make predictions
 Identify different perspectives from peers
and the text
 Summarize the information, make
inferences, make connections, visualize
and ask questions
 Share information in drawings and/or
writing to demonstrate their reading
comprehension

16. EFFECTIVE COMPREHENSION AND
INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES HELP
STUDENTS…
Educating our children today starts with knowing the background knowledge of our
students, and then using the sources of various ideas and models to increase
academic success for all learners (Reutzel & Cooter, 2011).
 Make Connections
 Visualize
 Make inferences
 Discover the main idea from the text
 Complete tasks to demonstrate reading comprehension
Reutzel, D. R., & Cooter, R. B., Jr. (2011). Strategies for reading assessment and instruction: Helping every
child succeed (4th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

17. REFENCES
 Afflerbach, P., Cho, B.-Y., Kim, J.-Y., Crassas, M. E., & Doyle, B. (2013). Reading:
What else matters besides strategies and skills? The Reading Teacher, 66(6), 440–
448. Retrieved from the Walden Library databases.
 Hollenbeck, A. F., & Saternus, K. (2013). Mind the comprehension iceberg: Avoiding
titanic mistakes with the CCSS. The Reading Teacher, 66(7), 558–568. Retrieved
from the Walden Library databases.
 Laureate Education (Producer). (2014i). Metacognition: Thinking about thinking
[Multimedia file]. Baltimore, MD: Author.
 Reutzel, D. R., & Cooter, R. B., Jr. (2011). Strategies for reading assessment and
instruction: Helping every child succeed (4th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.