English and Language Arts Information

	KEY 1: Visualizing —the cinema unfolding in your mind that make reading three-dimensional. Readers who don’t create sensory images when they read often find reading to be a chore rather than a pleasure.	TIP: Talk about the images that you have in your head when you are reading to your child. ASK: What did you see when you read/heard those words? Where is that picture in your head coming from? How does your picture change as you read/hear more?
	KEY 2: Making Connections —strong readers make connections between what they read and what they know. This is called “activating background knowledge”. It helps new information adhere.	TIP: As you read or listen to your child read, think out loud about the things that what you’re reading reminds you of. Good readers make connections to themselves, their understanding of the world, or another text they’ve read/heard. When you lack sufficient information to understand what is being read, model consulting an outside source (teacher, friend, expert, dictionary, encyclopedia, reference book, etc.)
	KEY 3: Questioning —Questions lead readers deeper into a piece, setting up a dialogue with the author, sparking in readers’ minds what it is they care about. Make it clear that some of the questions will be answered when you read the book, but some might not be. Teaching your child to question helps him gather information and get himself ready to read.	TIP: Play the “I Wonder” game before your read a book or during the reading. ASK: Do you have a question before we start this book? What questions do you have now that you’ve read this?
	KEY 4: Drawing Inferences — By using inferences, you elaborate upon what you read, drawing conclusions, going beyond what is written on the page. You make guesses, find connecting points, ask questions, make predictions, see a scene more clearly in your mind, figure out an unknown word, answer questions. You personalize what you read to build a deeper meaning. Inferring involves your “best guess” about what the evidence means.
	KEY 5: Determining Importance --Determining importance has to do with knowing why you’re reading and then making decisions about which information or ideas are most critical to understanding the overall meaning of the piece.
	Key 6: Synthesizing —adding your own thinking to what’s important. Synthesis is the process of ordering, recalling, retelling, and recreating into a coherent whole the information with which our minds are bombarded every day.	TIP: Start by helping your child retell the most important parts of a story, a movie, a TV show, and then pare it down to a simple summary.
	KEY 7: Fix-UP STRATEGIES: Go back and reread. Sometimes that is not enough. Read ahead to clarify meaning. Identify what it is you don’t understand: word, sentence, or concept. If it is a word, read beyond it and see if its meaning is clarified later in the text, or think about the content so far and predict what word might make sense. If those approaches don’t work, ask someone or look it up in a dictionary. If it is a sentence in a picture book, look at the pictures and think about what has happened so far; then reread, and read ahead, to see if understanding comes. If you’re still confused, talk with a friend, parent, or teacher about it. If it is a concept, try to summarize the story up to the confusing spot. See if that clears up the confusion. It might be necessary to build more background knowledge. That means going to an encyclopedia, checking out the Internet, having a conversation with someone who knows about the topic, or doing research at the library.
NOTE: It is the reader’s responsibility to know when the text makes sense and when it doesn’t. Zimmerman, Susan, and Hutchins, Chryse. (2003) 7 Keys to Comprehension: How to Help Your Kids Read It and Get It! NY: Three Rivers Press. (This book can be ordered by going to www.amazon.com.)