"This book is intended for middle school and high school teachers of social studies, science, English, English-language development, and any other subject with challenging texts and classes with readers who struggle to understand them. The activities are especially meant to help readers who are below grade level to access and organize the content of grade-level texts." - Preface.

Teaching students to comprehend the content and meaning of what they read can be a complex and challenging process; it is also an urgent educational priority.

First Published in 2007. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Radically change the way students learn from texts, extending beyond comprehension to critical reasoning and problem solving. Is your reading comprehension instruction just a pile of strategies? There is no evidence that teaching one strategy at a time, especially with pieces of text that require that readers use a variety of strategies to successfully negotiate meaning, is effective. And how can we extend comprehension beyond simple meaning? Bestselling authors Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, and Nicole Law propose a new, comprehensive model of reading instruction that goes beyond teaching skills to fostering engagement and motivation. Using a structured, three-pronged approach—skill, will, and thrill—students learn to experience reading as a purposeful act and embrace struggle as a natural part of the reading process. Instruction occurs in three phases: Skill. Holistically developing skills and strategies necessary for students to comprehend text, such as monitoring, predicting, summarizing, questioning, and inferring. Will. Creating the mindsets, motivations, and habits, including goal setting and choice, necessary for students to engage fully with texts. Thrill. Fostering the thrill of comprehension, so that students share their thinking with others or use their knowledge for something else. Comprehension is the structured framework you need to empower students to comprehend text and take action in the world.

This book addresses the need to help all students, including English learners, improve their ability to read with understanding so that they can succeed not just in their language and literacy classes, but also in their subject area classrooms. The book brings together a group of experts representing the fields of first and second language reading, whose chapters contribute in different yet complementary ways to the goal of this book: Improve students' reading for understanding across languages with metacognitive awareness and use of reading strategies instruction.

Use these fun, easy-to-use activities to tackle the most challenging aspect of reading! "Finally, someone has written a practical book filled with easy-to-read comprehension strategies. I will definitely use this book with teachers in my district to teach about and review comprehension strategies. The section on ′How Can We Learn More′ is also fantastic. Thank you, Kathleen Jonson." --Hazel Brauer, Literacy Coordinator Jefferson Elementary School District, Daly City, CA "This book is a comprehensive, well-organized guide to teaching reading comprehension. The clear, consistent layout of the lesson plans makes it easy for the teacher to locate and implement appropriate lessons quickly. The examples are very helpful and the templates allow a teacher to begin lessons immediately. The wide variety of lesson plans makes this guide truly useful for all grade levels." --Myra Gamble, Reading Specialist Spring Valley School, Millbrae, CA Comprehension is the final goal of reading, but because it involves several cognitive processes, it remains the most difficult facet of reading development to teach. Based on the recommendations of the National Reading Panel Report, 60 Strategies for Improving Reading Comprehension in Grades K-8 provides teachers with a ready-to-use toolkit of tried-and-true learning strategies designed to actively engage students in cognitive processes, including predicting, visualizing, making inferences, monitoring, synthesizing, and summarizing. Developed as specific instructional procedures with clearly delineated steps for implementation, these entertaining activities are effective in all types of classrooms. Each of the 60 strategies in the book includes: Grade-level recommendations Goals for each strategy Step-by-step instructions Graphics and examples of student work Directions for modifying strategies for different grade levels Literary expert Kathleen Feeney Jonson has created an exciting resource to help educators teach the most difficult piece of the reading process: comprehension. Offering a rare combination of fun and function, these strategies are sure to get students to listen, laugh, and most important, to learn.

All key issues of research and practice in comprehension instruction are addressed in this highly regarded professional resource and course text. Leading scholars examine the processes that enable students to make meaning from what they read--and how this knowledge can be applied to improve teaching at all grade levels. Best practices for meeting the needs of diverse elementary and secondary students are identified. Essential topics include strategies for comprehending different types of texts, the impact of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), cutting-edge assessment approaches, and the growing importance of digital genres and multimodal literacies. User-friendly features include end-of-chapter discussion questions. New to This Edition Incorporates the latest research and instructional practices. Chapters on the CCSS, critical theory, culturally responsive instruction, and response to intervention. Chapters on teaching fiction and informational texts in the secondary grades. Expanded coverage of multimodal literacy learning. Timely topics such as text complexity, close reading, digital literacies, and neuroscience are discussed in multiple chapters.