1.

Reading Skill: Making Inferences

Sometimes an author doesn’t tell you exactly what’s happening, but gives you clues so you can figure it out yourself.

An inference is a logical guess you make based on facts in the text plus what you already know from life. Maybe you or a friend have had a similar experience. Or maybe you read about something similar in a book or saw it in a movie. You can put the facts and personal knowledge together to figure out what’s going on and why characters act or feel the way they do.

Example

A soaked Randy slipped inside the door and put his dripping umbrella in the corner. As he crossed the room to our table, his shoes made a squishy, squeaking sound. “What a day!” he moaned as he plopped into a chair and grabbed a menu.

The author didn’t state what the weather was like or where the people were, but you can infer the answers. Clues in the text and your own experiences help you infer that a soaked Randy and dripping umbrella indicate it’s raining outside.

Randy going to a table and getting a menu helps you infer he’s in a restaurant!

Some people call making an inference “reading between the lines.”

Reading Strategies

 Time Line

A time line helps students organize both fictional and nonfictional events in sequential order along a continuum. Not only do students see the events in order, but they are also exposed to the overall time frame in which the events occurred.

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Predictogram using quotes

Predictograms ask students to use what they know about words and phrases from a selection to make predictions about its content and structure. Predictions activities involve students in the text, engage their attention, and give them a stake in the outcome of the story.

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Character Change Map

A character-change map helps students understand characters in fiction. By analyzing a character over the course of the story, students can see how a character changes in response to plot events.  

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2.

Reading Skill: Visualize

The Visualize Strategy involves creating a vivid image in your mind based on what you read. Visualizations can include sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and feelings—anything that makes the scene more real.

Reading Strategies

 Story Triangle

A story triangle is a creative way to think about and summarize a story. Like a traditional story map, the story triangle helps students recognize story elements. However story triangle allows students to respond personally to a story since students most describe rather than just list characters, events and problems.

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Plot structure map

A plot structure map helps students recognize the structure, or grammar, of a fictional selection. Identifying structure grammar enhances comprehension by helping students identify important characters, predict events, and be better prepared to summarize a selection.

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Predictogram Asking Questions

Predictograms ask students to use what they know about words and phrases from a selection to make predictions about its content and structure. Predictions activities involve students in the text, engage their attention, and give them a stake in the outcome of the story.

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3.

Reading Skill: Compare and contrast

Some authors use a compare-and-contrast text structure to organize ideas. To compare, they tell how things are alike; to contrast, they tell how things are different. Words like same, different, some, all, every, also, but, both, or many signal to readers that the author is using a compare-and-contrast structure.

Compare: Every student in the school wore the same blue uniform.

Contrast: They may have to wear uniforms, but we don’t!

Reading Strategies

Story Comparison Map

A story comparison maps helps the students see the similarities and differences between two stories. By comparing two selections, students can make connections across texts- between texts structures, characters and other story elements, authors’ styles, and points of view.

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Compare and Contrast Text Frame

A compare contrast article is organized on the basis of similarities and differences of its objects. A compare-contrast text frame helps students recognize this type of expository text structure. Knowledge of this and other expository text structures helps students comprehend content area text.

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Venn Diagram

A venn diagram helps students notice and understands comparisons and contrast in text. By making comparisons and contrast in both fiction and nonfiction, students can clarify ideas within a text, across texts, and between prior knowledge and new ideas.

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4.

Reading Skill: Cause and effect

Things don’t just happen; living things and forces make them happen. Whatever or whoever makes something happen is the cause; what happens is the effect. For example, a singer hits a very high note and a glass shatters. Vibrating sound waves are the cause; broken glass is the effect. As you read, look for clues to what makes things happen. Authors may use words to signal a cause-and-effect text structure. Words like because or since may indicate a cause, and so or therefore indicate an effect.

Examples

I missed the bus because I overslept.

I overslept, so I missed the bus.

In the examples above, the signal words point out that oversleeping was the

cause and missing the bus was the effect. But sometimes there are no signal

words. Readers must figure out the cause-and-effect relationship from the text.

Reading Strategies:

Cause-Effect Frame

This type of cause-effect frame helps student to identify what happened and multiple reasons why it happened in both fictional and nonfictional text. When the students can see that there are casual relationships between events or ideas in text, they can make generalizations about other casual relationships in new texts and in life situations.

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K-W-L

K-W-L is a strategy for reading expository text that helps students use their prior knowledge to generate interest in a selection. K-W-L also helps students set purposes for reading by encouraging them to express their curiosity for the topic they will be reading about. K-W-L encourages group members to share and discuss what they know, what they want to know, and what they learned about the topic.

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Main Idea Map

The main idea map helps students recognize the main idea of a nonfictional selection and distinguish between the main idea and the supporting details. Students determine the relative importance of what they read by organizing and reorganizing information from the text.

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5.

Reading Skill: Sequence

The word "sequence" means to put something in order from first to last.

Sequence of events in a story is the order in which the events happen.

Knowing the sequence of events in a story helps us to picture what is happening and when.  It helps make the story clear and easy to follow.  When events are not in order, the story becomes blurry and hard to follow. 

We also use sequence of events to understand how to do daily activities like following a list of directions when cooking or building something.

Reading Strategies:

Details Web

A details web helps students to organize information in fictional or nonfictional text when many details are centered around one key or main idea. By completing the web students see the relationship between the key or main idea and the details that support it.

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Character Trait Web

A character trait web helps students to understand characters in fiction. By identifying character traits, students become personally involved in their reading, which increases their understanding and enjoyment of the selection.

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Story Sequence Chart

A story sequence chart helps students to recognize the sequence of the events in a selection. Keeping track of the sequence of events is a simply way to give students a sense of story. In addition, understanding sequence prepares students for more complex types of story structures.

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