Proficient readers know what and when they understand what they are reading, and when they are not understanding. They can identify when and why the meaning of a text is unclear to them, and can use a variety of strategies to solve comprehension problems or deepen their understanding of a text. In general, there are seven reading comprehension strategies that are key to becoming fluent or proficient reader:

Making Connections:

• Good readers use prior knowledge to help understand what they are reading, and to store new information with related memories. Activating relevant, prior knowledge comes from making connections from text-to-self (things you have experienced), text –to-text (things you have read about) or text-to-world (things you have heard about)

Determining Importance:

• Good readers can pick out the most important ideas and themes, and use these conclusions to focus their reading, while not paying as much attention to less important ideas. Good readers pick out importance at the word level (those words that are important, and those that are not), the sentence level (key sentences that carry the weight of meaning for a passage), and the text level 9the key ideas or concepts in the text)

Questioning:

• Good readers use questions to clarify and focus what they are reading. They ask questions of themselves, to others, and to the authors to help them better understand the text.

Visualization:

• Good readers are able to create visual, auditory, and other sensory connections to what they are reading, and then use these images to deepen their understanding of the text.

Drawing Inferences

• Good readers use their prior knowledge and information from the text to draw conclusions, make judgments and predictions, and form interpretations about what they are reading.

Clarification:

• Good readers use fix-up strategies when they are having problems understanding what they are reading that include skipping ahead, rereading, using the context to better understand a particular passage, and sounding it out.

Retelling or Synthesizing:

• Good readers can order, recall, retell, and recreate into a coherent whole the information that they read. They can sift through a myriad of details and focus on those pieces that are most important to know. They can organize different pieces of information to make meaning.

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