Into the Book
Into the Book is a reading comprehension resource for K-4 students and teachers. It focuses on eight research-based strategies:
- Using Prior Knowledge
- Making Connections
- Questioning
- Visualizing
- Inferring
- Summarizing
- Evaluating
- Synthesizing
Try the online interactive activities. Behind the Lesson provides information and teaching resources for each strategy. Watch the 10-minute professional development videos and explore the website for lesson plans, video and audio clips, downloads, and more.
Comprehension Resources from the Reading Lady
The above link will take you to the Comprehension Resources section of the ReadingLady website where there are many lesson plans to help students develop strong Comprehension skills as they read.
Reading Strategies
FOR-PD (Florida Online Reading-Professional Development) has established a Reading Strategy of the Month for educators to use. Each month FOR-PD features a different reading strategy. The research-base for the strategy is explained, directions on how to use the strategy are provided, ideas for adapting the strategy are explained, assessment tips are shared, and examples are provided from elementary and secondary levels. Past strategies are archived according to the Five Big Ideas, as well as instructional techniques.
ReadWriteThink, established in April of 2002, is a partnership between the International Reading Association (IRA), the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), and the Verizon Foundation. It provides resources for educators related to classroom activities and professional development, as well as for parents and families related to after school activities and reading successes in other communities.
The Florida Center for Reading Research is jointly administered at Florida State University by th Learning Systems Institute and the College of Arts and Sciences. Its K-5 Student Center Activities (SCA) and K-3 Instructional Routines search page is designed to provide teacher’s access to the 522 individual SCA and the instructional routines from Empowering Teachers. Use the search tool to find and print specific instructional routines or student center activities and their accompanying activity masters by grade level, the 5 Big Ideas, or other categories.
University of Oregon IDEA Curriculum Maps
Click on the link above to download the Curriculum Maps from the University of Oregon Big Ideas in Reading website. These curriculum maps will assist teachers in identifying and planning for essential skills for instruction throughout the school year. They are more comprehensive than the Instructional Priority Maps that are located within the NYS Reading Academy.
Reading Strategies for Scaffolding Students' Interactions with Texts provides ideas and resources for a variety of reading strategies to be used in classrooms.
PALS is a screening, diagnostic and progress monitoring tool for measuring the fundamental components of literacy. It was developed at the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia and has been widely accepted across the nation as an effective assessment tool in early literacy. Additionally, this website provides classroom activities organized by skill to assist educators in making appropriate data-based instructional decisions.
Reading/Thinking Activities for Before, During and After Reading is a strategy designed to stimulate use of a student's prior knowledge. Prior knowledge is a powerful resource students use to understand text. Research indicates that students with prior knowledge of particular topics remember more information than do students with little or no prior knowledge. Students' use of these strategies is not automatic or procedural. And when they practice using these strategies, they do not use a rote set of steps. Instead students learn to use the strategies in methodical phases in a stop-start fashion before, during, and after reading. (Strategic Teaching and Reading Project, 1995)
Free-Reading is an “open source” instructional program that helps teachers teach early reading. Because it's open source, it represents the collective wisdom of a wide community of teachers and researchers. It's designed to contain a scope and sequence of activities that can support and supplement a typical “core” or “basal” program. Many of the activities are evaluated by DIBELS.