To comprehend a story or text, young readers need a threshold of knowledge about the topic, and tougher state standards place increasing demands on children’s prior knowledge. This article offers practical classroom strategies to build background knowledge such as using contrasts and comparisons and encouraging topic-focused wide reading.
Exposing young children to informational text early on can help them to handle the literacy demands of fourth grade and beyond. Practical instructional techniques can be used to promote understanding and enjoyment of informational texts. The three techniques described here — Text Impression, Guiding Questions, and the Retelling Pyramid — can help children become familiar with the language and structure of non-fiction books.
Reading in the “comfort zone” means that students read well enough to understand the text. Here’s a simple technique that students can use to determine if a book is right for them.
Our library provides effective, research-based classroom strategies to help strengthen your students’ skills in phonological awareness, decoding, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and writing.
Three patterns of reading difficulties are common. This article explains how recognizing these three patterns can provide a valuable starting point for planning reading instruction and interventions.
This article explains how to teach students to identify the compare-contrast text structure, and to use this structure to support their comprehension. It also shows how to use compare-contrast texts to activate and extend students’ background knowledge and expand and enrich their vocabulary.
