Teacher Language

Student Language

1.  Activating prior or background knowledge

1. Thinking about what you already know -- things you learned from reading other books, things you have done, things you have seen in movies or on TV, or things that others have taught you.

2.  Determining importance

2.  Figuring out what is most important in a book, chapter, paragraph or sentence.

3.  Asking questions

3.  Asking yourself questions before, during and after reading.

4.  Visualizing

4.  Turning words into pictures. Drawing pictures in your head from a description in a book. 

5.  Inferring

5.  Filling in missing stuff about a story because the author doesn’t tell you.  You have to think about the story and things that you know.

6.  Retelling, Summarizing, Synthesizing

6.  Retelling:  Telling a story like you read it, in the same order using facts and details from the story.

     Summarizing:  A kind of retelling but just telling about the most important parts of the story.

     Synthesizing:  Making sense out of the message of the story you read. Putting the pieces of a story together. Putting together in your head the retelling, the summary and understanding the themes or big ideas in a story. Your ideas change as you read.

7. Using Fix-up Strategies

7.   A bag of tools to help you fix your reading when something gets broken. You use the tools when you can’t figure out the words, when things don’t seem right or the story doesn’t make sense. (You have to know when to use these tools and figure out which one will do the job.)