Introduction

Thanks for visiting my blog! My name is Kristen and I'm a Reading Specialist in Virginia. Part of my role as a Reading Specialist has been teaching or co-teaching lessons with the fabulous teachers I've had the opportunity to work with. I've also worked alongside many amazing Reading Specialists who have taught and challenged me as we've collaborated in making our schools successful in teaching reading according to best practices. A colleague introduced me to Tanny McGregor's book "Comprehension Connections" and I fell in love after reading the first chapter.

The book begins by introducing the concepts of metacognition (thinking about your thinking) and schema (prior knowledge). It's such an easy read, packed with great ideas for teaching these reading comprehension strategies: Inferring, Questioning, Determining Importance, Visualizing, and Synthesizing. For each strategy she gives suggestions for starting off with a concrete experience, followed by sensory exercises, then wordless books to practice the strategy before applying it to text.

In our high-stakes-test-taking-world, my goal for students is for them to be actively engaged while reading passages (and books too!) so when they get to the questions they already have a good understanding of what they've read. I've used Tanny McGregor's ideas in teaching comprehension strategy lessons to 2nd through 4th graders at my schools and the students (and teachers!) have loved the lessons! This blog was created to be a resource for teachers looking for lesson ideas for teaching comprehension strategies. I hope it is helpful to you!

Click here for an overview (list) of lessons included on this blog.