Rigor, Relevance, & Relationships

Improving Comprehension

Whether they are reviewing instructions on their standardized test booklets or researching information for admission to college or consideration for a job, students must be able to comprehend what they are reading. As you prepare your FACS students for all of the challenges that lie ahead, you need to seize upon every opportunity to hone their reading comprehension skills. The following strategies from the Glencoe Teacher Manual provide in FACS textbook Teacher Editions may help you direct these efforts.

• Preview Strategies Students learn to begin at a visual level, looking at titles, headings, subheadings, and illustrations, then skim content to determine what they are about to read.
• Predict Events and Outcomes Students learn to take educated guesses as they read, making prediction before and during reading.
• Determine the Main Idea Students seek the most important statement in a text and learn how to find clues that reveal the main idea.
• Take Notes Students learn to use methods such as the Cornell Note-Taking System and graphic organizers to help organize what they read.
• Visualize Students work to form a mental picture of what they read, using as many details and description as possible.
• Question Students ask questions throughout the reading process to better understand content, evaluate its relative importance, and speculate on what is to come.
• Clarify Students learn to use specific techniques for clarifying what they do not initially understand, such as rereading, talking through, and charting parts of the text.
• Review Students take time after reading to review what they have read, helped by graphic organizers and other notes, charts, or visual aids.
• Monitor Comprehension Students learn to check their understanding of the content they have read by summarizing and paraphrasing.

For more information on note-taking and additional study tools, go to www.glencoe.com.