From kindergarten on, students work to develop the ability to put events in a story in chronological order. For young children, ask them simple, logical questions about the order of events in a story, or have them identify the story's beginning, middle and end. As students get older, sequencing questions can involve cause-and-effect relationships, making predictions about plot points that the student hasn't read yet, and making timeline connections between different stories set in overlapping eras.
Students in all the primary grades should be able to identify the main idea of the stories, essays, articles and poems that they read. Ask younger students about the major plot points of the stories and about how the characters feel; ask older students about the characters' intentions and plans, the turning points in narratives and the author's purposes and intended audience. Provide lists of details and of important points, and have the students tell you which are which.
One of the most basic and most important reading comprehension skills is the ability to summarize a text. Ask students about the five "w"s--who, what, when, where and why. Have them identify the problem in the story and explain how it was solved. Make sure the students are accurately separating important information from descriptive detail and that they are giving their summaries in their own words. This overlaps some with the sequencing work--students should be able to give their summaries in chronological order.
Asking students to draw conclusions based on information from their reading tests both their comprehension and their critical thinking skills. Students practice synthesizing material from texts and their own outside knowledge. Have them tell you which pieces of information they found in the reading and which they learned in other places. You can begin this process before students finish the book in question; have them draw conclusions from incomplete information. Check their conclusions for logic rather than accuracy--they don't need to solve mysteries correctly, only sensibly.