• Explicitly build students’ world and word knowledge, so they can understand the text they read.
  • Develop students’ world knowledge that is relevant for making sense of the text they are reading.
  • Teach the meaning of words that are critical for understanding the text.
    • Write these words somewhere for all students to see, such as a whiteboard.
    • Provide a brief simple definition of the word, provide an example and non-example, and visual representation of the word.
    • During reading, stop when needed to briefly explain the meaning of additional words that are difficult for students to understand.
    • Provide students with opportunities to work with these words and their meanings. This will help students remember the words and their meanings.
  • Teach students how to determine the meanings of unknown words using context.
    • Teach and explicitly model how to use context clues .
  • Teach prefixes and suffixes to help students determine the meaning of unknown words.
    • Teaching students prefixes and suffixes will help them read and understand multisyllabic words.
    • If the intervention curriculum does not have a sequence for teaching prefixes and suffixes, first teach commonly used prefixes such as un-, re-, dis-, and commonly used suffixes such as -s, -es, and -ed.Then, teach the less frequently used prefixes such as trans-,under-, anti- and less frequently used  suffixes such as -ial, -eous, and -ence.
  • Teach students how to divide words into parts to determine the word’s meaning.
  • Teach the meaning of Latin and Greek roots.
• Provide students with consistent opportunities to ask and answer questions to better understand the text they read.
  • Explicitly teach students how to find and justify answers to different types of questions.
    • Right There Questions: The information needed to answer the question is written in the text.
    • Think and Search Questions: The information needed to answer the question is in different parts of the text, so the student needs to “think and search” to find the answer.
    • Author and Me Questions: The student must connect information in the text with information they already learned to answer the question.
  • Provide opportunities for students to work together to answer questions.
  • Teach students to ask questions about the text while reading.
• Teach students a routine for determining the gist of a short section of a text.
  • Teach how to use a routine to develop a gist statement using the gradual release of responsibility instructional model.
  • Teach students how to use text structures to write a gist statement.
• Teach students to monitor their comprehension as they read.
  • Help students acknowledge when they do not understand the text.
  • Teach students to ask themselves questions as they read to check their understanding of the text.
  • Provide opportunities for students to discuss what they learned from the text.
• Provide students with opportunities to read stretch texts (challenging texts) that will expose them to complex ideas and information.
  • Use texts that are at the upper range of the students’ reading level. Teachers should sequence stretch passages so that the difficulty of the passages gradually increases.
  • Provide students with support as they read the stretch texts.
  • Utilize electronic devices with audio features to support the students when they are independently reading a stretch text to assist with pronunciation of difficult words.

Source: Vaughn et. al, 2022