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Maybe you’ve seen it in your classroom: Students who zip through chapters but then can’t tell you much about what they just read. To move those kids from fluency to sense-making, you’ve got to teach them the habits of good independent readers.

In this episode of School of Practice, educator and literacy specialist Nina Parrish walks us through evidence-based strategies that keep kids focused as they tackle challenging texts—from pre-reading tactics that make vocabulary stick and activate prior knowledge, to active reading protocols that turn kids into engaged, metacognitive readers who are always asking themselves, “Did I really understand that?”

Related resources:

• Learn more about this episode
• 5 Ways to Support Students Who Struggle With Reading Comprehension
• 5 Research-Backed Ways to Build Better Readers
• 4 Reading Strategies to Retire This Year (Plus 6 to Try Out!)
• How to Move From the ‘Main Idea’ to ‘Background Knowledge’
• Slowing Down the Reading Process to Build Students’ Comprehension Skills
• Aiding Reading Comprehension With Post-its
• 4 Ways to Teach Vocabulary and Reading Comprehension
• Sweeping Round Robin Reading Out of Your Classroom
• Research: Promoting Fluency Through Challenge: Repeated Reading With Texts of Varying Complexity 
• Research: A Longitudinal Randomized Trial of a Sustained Content Literacy Intervention from First to Second Grade: Transfer Effects on Students’ Reading Comprehension 
• Research: Effects of a Read Aloud Intervention on First Grade Student Vocabulary, Listening Comprehension, and Language Proficiency 
• Research: Understanding Specific Reading Comprehension Deficit: A Review 
• Research: The Effect of Mandatory Reading Logs on Children’s Motivation to Read