Predict the story by looking at the title, cover art or illustrations. Teach students how to "finger walk" through a book. Without looking at the words, a student looks through the story, looking at the cover and then the illustrations. She should be able to predict who the characters are and a few plot points by "finger walking" through the story.
Make a character map. This strategy works especially well for novels with many characters. Ask the student to draw one circle for each main character and to write the name of the character inside the circle. She can then draw rays coming out of the circle. On each ray, she can write a character detail, such as "young girl," "jealous" and "main character."
Draw a timeline of the plot. Visual aids will help a student understand what the main events of the story are and when each event happened. By creating a timeline of the plot points, she will also be able to identify the climax and main idea of the story. Alternatively, the student can fold a piece of construction paper into eight boxes. In each box, the student can write one main event from the story and draw a matching picture, says The Vaughn Gross Center for Reading and Language Arts.
Encourage the student to make text-to-text, text-to-self and text-to-real world connections, says ReadWriteThink.org. If a student can identify another story that has a similar theme, compare the story with his real life experience or with a real world example, he will have brought his comprehension to a more advanced level.