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Reading comprehension strategies aren't just classroom activities—they're the cognitive tools that transform passive reading into active meaning-making. When you're tested on literacy instruction, you're being assessed on your understanding of how readers construct meaning, when to deploy specific strategies, and why certain approaches work for different comprehension challenges. These strategies connect directly to schema theory, metacognition, and the gradual release of responsibility model that underpin effective instruction.
The strategies in this guide fall into distinct categories based on their cognitive function: some activate existing knowledge, others generate new understanding, and still others help readers monitor and repair comprehension breakdowns. Don't just memorize strategy names—know what mental process each strategy targets and when a skilled reader would naturally use it. That's what separates surface-level recall from the deeper understanding exam questions demand.
These strategies prepare the reader's mind before diving into text. They work by activating relevant schema and establishing purpose, which gives new information a place to "stick" in memory.
Compare: Activating Prior Knowledge vs. Predicting—both occur before deep reading and rely on existing schema, but activating prior knowledge is receptive (what do I already know?) while predicting is generative (what do I think will happen?). FRQs often ask how these strategies work together in a lesson sequence.
These strategies operate while students engage with text. They represent the active cognitive work of comprehension—building mental representations, making connections, and generating understanding.
Compare: Visualizing vs. Making Connections—both create mental elaborations that deepen comprehension, but visualizing builds internal representations of the text itself, while making connections links text to external knowledge and experience. Strong readers use both simultaneously.
Compare: Inferencing vs. Determining Importance—inferencing asks "what does this mean beyond what's stated?" while determining importance asks "what matters most here?" Both require analysis, but inferencing generates new understanding while determining importance filters and prioritizes existing information.
These strategies help readers consolidate meaning after reading or repair comprehension when it breaks down. They represent metacognitive awareness—knowing what you know and what to do when understanding fails.
Compare: Monitoring Comprehension vs. Clarifying—monitoring is the detection system (something's wrong), while clarifying is the repair system (here's how to fix it). Effective instruction teaches both together; monitoring without clarifying leaves students stuck, while clarifying without monitoring means students don't know when to use it.
| Concept | Best Examples |
|---|---|
| Schema-based strategies | Activating Prior Knowledge, Making Connections, Predicting |
| Mental representation | Visualizing, Inferencing |
| Active engagement | Questioning, Predicting |
| Metacognitive strategies | Monitoring Comprehension, Clarifying |
| Synthesis and analysis | Summarizing, Determining Importance, Inferencing |
| Before-reading focus | Activating Prior Knowledge, Predicting |
| During-reading focus | Visualizing, Questioning, Making Connections, Inferencing |
| After-reading/repair focus | Summarizing, Monitoring Comprehension, Clarifying |
Which two strategies both rely on schema theory but differ in whether the reader is recalling versus generating information?
A student reads fluently but cannot explain what a passage was about. Which two strategies would most directly address this comprehension gap, and why?
Compare and contrast inferencing and determining importance: how do both require analysis, yet serve different comprehension purposes?
If an FRQ asks you to design a lesson using the gradual release model, which strategies would you introduce before reading versus during reading, and what's the rationale?
A reader encounters an unfamiliar word and loses track of the paragraph's meaning. Which two strategies should work together to resolve this, and in what order?