Create exercises utilizing the different types of reading comprehension connection tools. For an exercise that connects the reader with the text, have the students read a story about encountering challenges while on vacation. Have a student consider his own vacation experiences and think about how he might resolve the issue in the book using what he knows and what new information is found in the text. Use similar exercises to connect two texts to one another or connect a text with world events.
Write a series of questions for your students. Start with questions about characters such as, “Which character was telling the story?” Progress to more intensive questions such as “If this character lived in our time, how would things be different for him? “
Draw inferences. A way to do this is to read a segment of the text aloud. Tell students that there is more than one way to understand the passage, and help them do this. Using phrases like, “Consider this scenario,” or “Think about it this way,” ask your students to discuss parts of the text where deeper meaning may be implied.
Read a segment of text and work with your students to determine which parts are most important to the story. Determining importance is a strategy that helps your students focus on key terms and avoid getting lost in the text. For example, a story that talks about a child and his pet getting lost in the woods may tell many tales of what the child and the pet experienced, but the theme of the story is probably about perseverance and survival. Help your students identify the central themes within individual stories.
Ask your students to create mental images based on the work they have read. Facilitate this by giving them a variety of images on paper, only a few of which are relevant to the reading. Ask a student to choose which images are related to the story. Have him discuss how and why he made his choices.
Synthesize information and blend ideas from your students and the text. This strategy is an advanced method that progresses students from comprehension to being able to create their own work. Have a student read one chapter and ask him to write a short continuation of the story synthesizing his understandings of the theme and tone to make his work fit with the original text.