Before beginning to read, encourage students to analyze the knowledge they already have in connection with the text. While reading, students continue to use this skill by predicting upcoming plot action through textual clues. Activities to encourage this strategy include highlighting the main idea and prompting students to consider a related personal experience. In considering the outcome of their own experience, students can hypothesize as to whether the same results could occur within the text.
During reading, third graders' comprehension can benefit from practice in visualizing the action and images described in the text. Visualization helps students recall the text after they have finished reading. Activities to enhance this skill include providing students with a picture portraying a scene, removing the picture, then asking students to describe the image. Another option is for you to demonstrate this skill by reading a selection from a text and describing your own mental image to your students. Then give your students a similar selection and ask them to come up with a mental image to describe to the class.
Constructing and answering questions while reading allows third graders to become more actively involved in the text. In asking "why" and "where" questions concerning the main ideas, students go beyond the surface of the text. Practice this strategy by giving students index cards with the words necessary to form the questions. In groups, the students can assemble and answer questions using these words.
When third graders draw inferences from the text, they are looking beyond the literal interpretation of the information to find deeper or implied meaning. Certain key words in the text give new or alternative meanings to the obvious, making such a strategy necessary to advance comprehension skills. To practice this strategy, present your third graders with key words from the text and shown how these words imply specific meanings. For example, the word “clown” might be used to imply that the setting of the story is a circus.
Reading comprehension strategies for third graders should examine the individual aspects of the text but also should enhance students' abilities to clearly summarize what they have read. Summarizing includes written or oral reporting of the main story ideas. Summarization ensures that students can recognize the main ideas and relate the story in their own words.