Explain that people use special tools to understand stories better. Tell the class that one of these tools is called connecting. Describe what it means to connect elements of the plot and characters to something familiar. Teach the children how to connect something in a text to their own lives (text-to-self), another book (text-to-text) or something in the real world (text-to-world) by modeling an example of each. Read a story and pause at different parts, saying things like, "This reminds me of the time my family had to move to a different town. I remember I felt scared too." Ask students to begin sharing their own connections with the class. Create strategy worksheets that offer the children opportunities to practice making connections by drawing pictures or writing.
Conduct several lessons on picturing. Help children visualize what is happening in a story by telling them to close their eyes while you read a sensory-rich text. Choose parts of a text with a lot of imagery. Stop reading at different points and ask them to share their visualizations. Give them prompts such as, "I can see, ... " "I can hear, ... " "I can feel, ... " "I can smell ... " and "I can taste. ..." Allow students to create their own illustrations for parts of the text without ever seeing the pictures in the book. Explain that visualizing helps us make sense of what is happening in the story.
Show children how to think about a story while reading. Pause and think out loud as you read a book, modeling how you question and wonder about parts of the text. Teach them to say things like, "I wonder why the author wrote this" and "I wonder why the main character did that." Give your students opportunities to share what they are wondering during a read aloud.
Teach several lessons on predicting. Explain that a prediction is like a guess. Write down the following questions: What might happen next? What is the author trying to show me? How is this chapter going to end? How might the problem be solved? Show children how to stop during a story and make a prediction. Use a crystal ball prop if you can find one and tell the students to imagine they can see into the future. Teach children that guessing helps us slow down and think about a story carefully. Explain that good readers guess about why an author made certain choices, why characters made certain decisions and how conflicts will be resolved.
Read a story and stop at the bottom of every page or every few pages. Ask the students to notice something. Tell them to be detectives and notice a detail in the text or illustrations. Allow them to notice a clue, a trick the author has used, a prediction they made that came true or something they realized they previously misunderstood. Explain that noticing things as we read helps us remember details and change our minds about things.
Teach a final set of lessons on figuring out how clues fit together. Ask children questions toward the end of a story or after the story ends, prompting them to recognize when in the story they figured something out. For instance, ask, "When did the light bulb go off in your mind?" or "What do you understand better now that we've read this story?" Teach the word inference and explain that when we infer something we are figuring out based on clues or new information. Review all comprehension strategies taught and hang posters around the room to remind students to use these tools while reading.