In this article, the authors offer four specific reading comprehension strategies that mathematics teachers of all levels can employ with their students when working on word problems: (1) visualizing; (2) retelling; (3) making connections; and (4) asking questions. These strategies, which have a substantial research base in literacy, are discussed…

For many secondary-level teachers working with adolescent language learners, one of the motivations for choosing English teaching as a profession is a shared love of reading short stories. At its best, entering a narrative is a sensory experience: engaged readers see, hear, and feel the words of a story and imagine themselves within its pages.…

In this article Debbie Abilock and Connie Williams apply the processes used by a food testing organization that strives to develop absolutely the best recipes for popular dishes, testing each recipe until they arrive at the combination of ingredients, technique, temperature, cooking time, and equipment that yields the best, most fool-proof recipe…

Explicit instruction on the skill of creating mental imagery from text supports reading comprehension and recall. This article shares a strategy for teaching students how to process what they read by comparing mental imagery to "brain movies." It emphasizes choosing appropriate fiction and nonfiction texts to encourage readers to build the skill…

Music and literacy share many of the same skills; therefore, it is no surprise that music and literacy programs can be used together to help children learn to read. Music study can help promote literacy skills such as vocabulary, articulation, pronunciation, grammar, fluency, writing, sentence patterns, rhythm/parts of speech, auditory processing,…

Modeled in this column is the teaching of a text mapping routine that supports students reading and remembering the salient features of the text. The authors renamed the story mapping technique "text mapping plus" because they found that as students added relational words and graphics to their maps their retells of both fiction and nonnarrative…

This paper purports to demonstrate a problem solving case in the course of the development of methodology, in which the quality of the negotiation practicum is maintained or raised without sacrificing the class contact hours for the lessons for reading comprehension skills, on which the essence of negotiation practicum is solely based. In this…

Comprehension strategy instruction has been widely studied in the past 10 years. We now know that students who actively engage and interact with text using particular cognitive strategies are more likely to understand and remember more of what they have read. Students who use these strategies are able to access knowledge that is outside the realm…

How can we teach science to English language learners (ELLs) when even our native English speakers have trouble reading the textbook? To help science teachers meet this challenge, this article presents six text-comprehension strategies used by English for Speakers of other Languages (ESOL) teachers: metalinguistic awareness development,…

The Picture It! reading strategy uses the elements of story grammar and visualization in a mnemonic format to enhance comprehension, aid vocabulary development, visually establish story sequence, and stimulate discussion of both the big picture of the story's meaning and the details which support the author's message. It is a strategy that can be…

When response activities and comprehension strategies are combined, classroom instruction can enhance student engagement and understanding of a text, enrich student response, and improve students' awareness of their own strategic reading. This article presents some activities, adapted from the new IRA book "Children's Literature in the Reading…

Talk is the foundation for thought and understanding and the key to literacy learning. Research demonstrates that powerful metacognitive strategies can be taught to help students self-monitor their comprehension when reading print and digital texts. This article provides a repertoire of speaking and listening strategies to develop the…

This article describes a teacher and class as they discover that their reading comprehension strategies cross over into mathematical problem solving. The students practice using visualization techniques to improve their understanding of word problems. (Contains 5 figures.)

An action research study was conducted using the Rainbow Dots strategy to evaluate its effectiveness on reading comprehension skills in a third-grade class with students both with and without a specific learning disability. Results of the study indicated that students' overall performances in reading comprehension have increased. Students also…

For English-language learners, comprehension can be hindered by a lack of understanding of homonyms, homophones, and homographs, but the right instructional strategies can alleviate this problem. Following a discussion of issues such as the importance of being aware of a student's literacy skills in his or her home language and the need to…