Generating accurate inferences is crucial for the successful comprehension of text and is a skill that needs to be supported starting in the early grades. Teachers can support inference-making during read-aloud lessons by asking inferential questions and providing scaffolding and feedback on students' inference-making. In this article, we describe…

The advent of Generative AI technologies, such as ChatGPT, in November 2022, necessitated immediate and critical attention from the educational research community. The impact of GenAI in education, though not yet clear, has the potential to be transformative. More specifically, the focus of this paper is on how to integrate GenAI into elementary…

Theory and research have demonstrated the importance of teacher scaffolding to facilitate effective classroom conversations during shared book reading. When teachers scaffold conversations, young students can develop language skills more quickly. The authors describe a scaffolding framework and findings from research on how open-ended questions…

Students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) display social communication differences that may affect reading comprehension. The enjoyment of storybooks is a natural part of childhood. Students with ASD experience difficulty with understanding the thoughts and feelings of others, which may impede their comprehension of character motive in…

Posing text-dependent questions is crucial for facilitating students' comprehension of the text. However, text-dependent questions should not merely ask students to reflect the author's literal or even inferential meaning. The author's message is the starting place for comprehension, rather than the end goal or object of comprehension. The text…

When literacy instruction is driven by student-generated questions, students are able to dive deeper into text. This article explores the cognitive and motivational benefits of question generation to foster reading comprehension. The author presents classroom vignettes where students become inquisitive readers by posing their own questions. As…

Intermediate-grade teachers often express concerns about meeting the Common Core State Standards for Reading, primarily because of the emphasis on deep understanding of complex texts. No matter how difficult the text, if teachers demand little of the reading, student meaning making is not challenged. This article offers a tool for teachers to…

This article provides teachers with ideas on how to address students' self-generated questions. Following a third-grade classroom, the article explores the use of a "parking lot" -- a repository for the seemingly off-task questions which curious students naturally pose. As students encounter informational text with genuine purposes,…

The ability to ask questions is essential to learning, reasoning, and understanding. This column introduces a sequence of activities that incorporate the use of digital images and online texts into intentional opportunities for even the youngest learners to work with their teachers and classmates as they wonder, anticipate, explore, and think…

See, Say, Write is an adaptable classroom writing routine that teachers can use across a range of activities in the preschool classroom. This preschool writing routine offers an opportunity for teachers to build on a shared experience through engagement in rich conversation and writing. After a shared experience, teachers will provide a visual…

Vocabulary development is critical for children's ability to learn to read and their success at school. Vocabulary has also been identified as a key factor in the achievement gap, with children from low-income families knowing significantly fewer words when they enter school. Although book reading has long been celebrated as an effective way for…

Inference generation makes a strong, unique contribution to reading comprehension. Young children engage in many of the same inference generation processes as sophisticated readers. This article discusses instructional practices that can be used in prekindergarten through grade two to help children think beyond the words of the text. Suggestions…

The purpose of this article is to describe the changes in reading instruction that teachers made that contributed to students' growth in reading. Teachers made the transition from instruction that was primarily teacher-directed and focused on lower-level questions to instruction that supported students in their higher order talk and writing about…

Using hand gestures is a great way to get students engaged in learning and more focused on reading comprehension strategies. This article presents descriptions of simple hand motions that teachers can use to help their students predict, question, clarify, and summarize while reading.

This article reviews theoretical and research evidence to support the explicit and systematic teaching of five comprehension strategies that will help all students tackle expository texts with success. The article explains the "High 5!" strategies and how to teach them. An example of a lesson is included to show how the five strategies connect…