Metacognition is the ability to think about your own thinking process. Longer books geared to young readers, such as J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series or Rick Riordan’s “The Lightning Thief,” allow you to teach children some basic metacognition techniques. You can have readers think about their methods of looking for information, such as rereading an earlier chapter, looking up words or phrases in a dictionary or reading another source about the book. One way to practice this is to select a response from a character, instruct your students to draw a picture of the scene with large thought bubbles over the character’s head and ask them to write some of the specific events from previous chapters in the thought bubbles explaining why the character is responding as she is in the present situation.
Effective reading comprehension requires a student to identify words, phases or events the student does not understand. Short poems, such as Shakespeare’s Ballads or Robert Frost’s poems, present images and ideas challenging a reader’s understanding. Have a student read the poem out loud while other students follow along silently. After each line or when you feel the reader encounters an unfamiliar phrase, ask your class questions about the meaning of the section; show them how to look up the information in an dictionary or encyclopedia or by using an online resource. Use this technique to teach students to identify words they do not understand and then to look for an explanation for the line in which it appears.
Teach your students to create visual maps, helping them understand the work and keep up with the information in it. Use detective stories such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” or the Nancy Drew series for this technique, as these stories often use long sequential events and complicated clues to reveal a plot. Have students use two sheets of paper to first list the main events in the story in the order in which they occur and then list each clue to the mystery. Use this technique to help students understand stories from a sequential point of view, while reading for important information.
Understanding story structure is a comprehension tool you can teach using various short stories. Give the students note cards when you assign the story and as they read, have them write information about the story on the card, listing characters and each character's traits, the setting, problems or complications and resolutions. Invite a few students to read their cards in class and compare the differences in each student's response. Use this technique to teach students to look for these story elements in every work they read.