You will understand more about a story or web page if you 'connect' with the ideas that you are reading about. There are three main types of connections you can make while reading. Make these connections before, during and after you read.

• Text-to-Self (T-S) refers to connections made between the text and the reader's personal experience. 

• Text-to-Text (T-T) refers to connections made between a text being read to a text that was previously read.

• Text-to-World (T-W) refers to connections made between a text being read and something that occurs in the world.

Don't just 'blast through' your reading assignments.  Asking questions as you read will help you to have a clearer and deeper understanding of the story or web page.  Here are some questioning strategies that will help you to remember/understand more about what you read.
 

Visualizing, making mental pictures as you read, will help you to make the story or web page personal and memorable.   As you picture ideas and concepts in three dimensions, you'll be helping yourself to understand and remember what you read. 

Have you heard of the expression, "reading between the lines"?  Sometimes the answers to your comprehension or research questions are not 'right there' on the page.  You'll have to use one of the following strategies to help you understand what you're reading.

• Forming a best guess using evidence -- context clues, picture clues, etc.

• Making predictions

• Drawing conclusions

• Finding meaning of unknown words

How will you know what is important to remember while reading?  Which facts should you include in your research paper or web page?  What ideas should be included in your story summary? Here are some tips to help you out.  

You're doing a great job of learning how to improve your reading comprehension skills.  Keep in mind that a reader's thinking changes as he or she gathers more information.   This change is called synthesizing information.  Mastering this skill will mean that you have strong comprehension skills.

Here is a picture of synthesis.  Click to enlarge.

Books on Comprehension Strategies
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