A teaching idea that engages a student’s prior knowledge about a topic by setting up the purpose for reading and confirming the original understanding of the topic. This is also a great time to revise or expand the original understanding. A traditional KWL chart requires readers to ask what they

A teaching idea created to help encourage students to ask more questions and to provide a model for active thinking while reading a given text. The statements can be used with any type of text either before, during, or after the reading. The “I wonder” statements can be made orally,

A teaching idea designed to encourage students to become engaged readers by inserting different symbols into the text. This gives students an opportunity to reflect on what they know and make decisions about the different ideas presented in the text.

A teaching idea that encourages readers to tap into their prior knowledge, create visualizations, solve problems, and use their imaginations. This technique can be utilized with narrative or informational texts that elicit a mental image.

A teaching idea designed to help students make visualizations during a reading assignment and gives them a better way to share their mental images. Gallery images are usually used after students are finished reading an informational text.

A teaching idea that can help to monitor reading comprehension and make evaluative judgments about the text simultaneously. This technique can be used for in-class assignments and homework assignments using narrative and expository texts.

A learning development theory based on the schema that concludes that learning takes place when prior knowledge is combined with new information.

A teaching idea designed to engage prior knowledge, introduce content-specific vocabulary, and organize new information about a topic. In order to make a semantic map, the teacher or the student will choose a word. Students will then brainstorm more information about that word, creating a graphic organizer with categories and

A teaching idea designed to help students express a connection through visual representations. Students read the text and consider a connection that they can make, sketch the connection, and label it (text-self, text-text, or text-world). They must then explain why it is that type of connection. Sketch and label connections

A broad concept that covers instructional settings, resources, approaches, and tasks.