Reading Comprehension Strategies Teaching Resources
Teach reading comprehension strategies your students can use for a lifetime with printable worksheets, reading passages, graphic organizers, task cards, Google Slide decks and more resources to help students learn to summarize, make connections, draw inferences and more!
This curriculum-aligned teaching resource collection was created by teachers for elementary teachers just like you! Explore the whole collection, and you'll find editable versions designed to easily differentiate your instruction for individual students, plus a variety of options to make ELA lesson planning easier this school year.
New to teaching this portion of the ELA or ELAR curriculum or just looking for fresh and engaging ways to teach reading comprehension strategies? Read on for a primer from our teacher team, including tips on helping ESL students/English language learners build their reading comprehenion skills.
What Are Reading Comprehension Strategies for Elementary School?
As you well know, students don't start off being able to comprehend every single thing they read.
Teaching our students strategies to better understand and retain information will allow them to go from simply recognizing individual words to understanding a range of texts and being power readers!
These strategies can help kids go from the early stages of developing critical thinking skills to preparing them for success in higher education and the workforce. All of these comprehension strategies can be taught and practiced explicitly.
8 Reading Comprehension Strategies That Build Students' Reading Skills for the Future
So, what are the most common strategies for reading comprehension? Our teacher team has broken down eight strategies to help your students build their reading skills.
1. Previewing
Previewing is the process of skimming the text before reading it in detail to get an overall sense of what it is about.
2. Activating Prior Knowledge
Employing this strategy, students draw on existing knowledge and experience to help them understand new information, such as a new text.
3. Making Connections
This strategy focuses on teaching students to connect a text with their own experiences and understandings. Research into the science of reading has shown enhanced comprehension when students can connect new information to information they already know.
4. Questioning
Learning to question is an important skill across a variety of elementary subjects, and developing this reading skill can help your students be better mathematicians and scientists — in addition to readers!
In this comprehension strategy, students ask and answer questions to clarify the meaning of the text and deepen their understanding.
When you center questioning activities around the familiar open-ended prompts of who, what, when, where, how, why and which, students assert their understanding and identify any gaps in their comprehension of the text.
Questions can be posed by you — their teacher — by their peers or by the students themselves.
5. Visualizing
Visualization provides both teachers and students with another means to extend their exploration of a text and deepen understanding. This reading comprehension strategy asks students to create and describe an image in their mind centered around a place, situation, or character in the text. Visualizing has been proven in research to improve student recall! Using the five senses is a great way to scaffold student comprehension through visualizing.
6. Summarizing
Summarizing is a reading comprehension strategy that asks students to reflect on the text and communicate their understanding. A well-formed summary is made up of the text's main idea and the key details that support the main idea, showing that the student has understood what they’ve read well enough to write a summary that’s not merely a repetition of the text.
When summarizing, teach your students to complete one or more of the following steps:
- Recount the text in their own words
- Identify the main idea, topic or purpose
- List key words or phrases
- Identify structural elements of the genre
7. Inferring
The process of drawing conclusions based on clues or evidence presented in the text is called inferring, and it involves readers using what they know and pairing it with what they read in the text to make a conclusion. You could also call this "reading between the lines!"
8. Monitoring Comprehension
Monitoring comprehension requires students to reflect on and assess their understanding as they progress through the text. In this metacognitive process, they should be asking themselves, "Is this making sense?" or "Do I need to read this again?"
- Some monitoring comprehension strategies that may be effective may include going back to reread a section of a text, slowing down or speeding up your reading rate and using text features to help understand difficult parts of a passage. All of these are active reading strategies that students can do to help them better understand what they are reading while they are reading!
The process of monitoring asks students to identify hurdles and barriers. With that in mind, we have found that our students tend to benefit most if we can connect this reading comprehension strategy with explicit strategies to help them pass those hurdles.
5 Reading Comprehension Strategies for ESL Students
Millions of American public school students are considered ESL students (also known as English Language learners), and it's important to differentiate instruction to ensure their needs are being met in your classroom.
If you're teaching ELA and have English language learners in your classroom, you might want to employ some of these strategies to help them build their reading comprehension skills.
- Vocabulary Instruction — Explicit vocabulary instruction can help your ESL students understand the meaning of key words and phrases in the text. This is a building block of reading comprehension!
- Simplified Texts — Using simplified versions of texts, such as graded readers, can help ESL students build their confidence and their comprehension skills.
- Cooperative Learning — Working in small groups or pairs with other students gives English Language learners a chance to practice their reading comprehension skills and develop their language abilities through discussion and collaboration.
- Visual Aids — Using visual aids such as pictures, diagrams or videos can help students make connections between the text and their own experiences and break down language barriers.
- Graphic Organizers — Designed to help kids visualize relationships and organize their thoughts, mind maps, flowcharts and Venn diagrams can all help English language learners visualize the relationships between ideas in the text.
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Design Your Own Book Cover Worksheet
Design a new book cover and summarise a book using this one-page, printable template.
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Reading Monitoring Comprehension Activity Pack
Explore easy ways to monitor comprehension with this quick draw activity pack perfect for elementary students.
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Free Making Predictions When Reading Journal
Encourage deeper thinking with this Making Predictions When Reading Journal template.
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Reading Fix-Up Strategies Anchor Chart
Support your students in becoming confident, independent readers with this Fix-Up Strategies Anchor Chart!
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Reading Comprehension Strategies PowerPoint – Making Connections
A 14-slide editable PowerPoint template explaining the reading comprehension strategy of making connections.
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Self Monitoring Reading Strategy Poster
Help students reflect on their reading with this Self Monitoring Reading Strategy Poster.
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Reading Response Template – Inferring and Predicting
Guide your students to make inferences and predictions with a piece of text using the one-page template.
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Making Connections Worksheet Set
Allow your students to record their connections to a particular text with this Making Connections Worksheet set.
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Novel Study – Making Predictions Before Reading Worksheet
Make predictions before reading a novel with this novel study worksheet.
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Drawing Conclusions and Making Inferences – Comprehension Task Cards
Use this set of comprehension task cards with your students to help them draw conclusions and make inferences when reading.
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Reading Comprehension Question Stems - Anchor Charts
Enhance instruction on the six reading comprehension strategies with our printable Reading Comprehension Question Stems Chart Pack.
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Free Monitor and Clarify Anchor Chart
Display and remind students to monitor and clarify their comprehension of a text while reading with this Monitor and Clarify Anchor Chart.
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Making Predictions from Sentences Worksheets
Practice making predictions with sentences using this set of making predictions worksheets.
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Making Predictions Assessment – Interactive Game
Assess predicting skills with this Making Predictions Assessment digital quiz.
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Free Story Prediction Worksheet
Encourage students to think critically before reading with this Story Prediction Worksheet.
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Making Predictions Worksheet Set
Build early comprehension skills with these Making Predictions Worksheets that include age-appropriate activities using pictures, sentence starters, and simple texts.
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Predictions in Reading Comprehension Task
Help students to engage with prediction during reading with this predictions in reading comprehension task.
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Making Predictions PowerPoint
Use this Making Predictions PowerPoint to engage students in the learning of predicting during reading.
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Summarizing Nonfiction Graphic Organizer Pack
Help students summarize nonfiction texts with this set of graphic organizers.
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Novel Study – Chapter Summary Worksheet
Reflect on a chapter in a class novel using this one-page worksheet.
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Reading Comprehension Strategies PowerPoint - Visualizing
A 12 slide editable PowerPoint template explaining the reading comprehension strategy of visualizing.
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Cause and Effect Comprehension Worksheets
Use these cause and effect comprehension worksheets to give your students practice reading, sequencing, and matching effects to their causes.
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Fix-Up Strategies in Reading Flipbook
Explore different fix up strategies with your students using this Fix Up Strategies in Reading Flipbook template.
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Self Monitoring Reading Comprehension Strategies Flipbook
Get students practicing their self monitoring while reading skills with this activities flipbook.
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Monitor and Clarify Reading Strategy Digital Task Cards
Help students gain more practice in monitoring while reading using these Monitoring and Clarifying Reading Strategy Practice digital task cards.
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Making Predictions Sentence Starters Flashcards
Use these Making Predictions Sentence Starters Flashcards to guide students in making accurate predictions using prompts.
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Making Predictions Anchor Chart Pack
Support student learning with these Making Predictions Anchor Charts explaining when and how to make predictions.
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Making Predictions Short Stories Digital Task Cards
Enhance reading comprehension with these Making Predictions Short Stories Digital Activity Cards, where students read short stories, predict what happens next, and justify their thinking using text evidence.
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Making Predictions Graphic Organizer Pack
Enhance reading comprehension by using these Making Predictions Graphic Organizer templates in your classroom.
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3rd Grade States of Matter - Reading Worksheets
Teach science and reading skills with a set of printable 3rd Grade Reading Worksheets about the 3 states of matter.
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Making Predictions Using Pictures - Worksheets
Practice making predictions based on illustrations with a set of printable Making Predictions With Pictures Worksheets.
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Summarizing Teaching Slides
Teach students all about summarizing with 15 teaching slides of summarizing goodness.
- Reading Comprehension Strategies Worksheets
- Reading Comprehension Strategies Templates
- Reading Comprehension Strategies Posters
- Reading Comprehension Strategies Games
- Reading Comprehension Strategies for Kindergarten
- Reading Comprehension Strategies for 1st Grade
- Reading Comprehension Strategies for 2nd Grade
- Reading Comprehension Strategies for 3rd Grade
- Reading Comprehension Strategies for 4th Grade
- Reading Comprehension Strategies for 5th Grade
- Reading Comprehension Strategies for 6th Grade