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Gunning (2016) describes a text walk as, " going through the text page by page and discussing the selection and highlighting unfamiliar expressions, unknown concepts, and difficult words" (p. 360). A picture walk is very similar in that you go through the book and look at the pictures and discuss what the concepts of the book are going to be able. You also can identify unfamiliar concepts in the book that might need further explanation for students to fully comprehend what is happening in the story.

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This strategy is wonderful for my young students. Most of my students are non-readers. Helping them understand that the pictures connect to what is going on in the text is crucial not only for comprehension, but also provides modeling for a reading strategy to decode unfamiliar words in a text when they do begin to read. Being intentional to draw my student's attention to the pictures, allows them to have a visual of what the words are saying and helps those who need visuals to understand more.

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I believe that students who are visual learners will benefit the most from this comprehension strategy. Instead of just hearing the words, those visual learners will know to also look at the pictures, in order to gain meaning about what the text is saying.

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A picture walk can be taught during a guided reading lesson or in a whole group lesson. According to Reading Rockets (2017), a picture walk encourages other types of comprehension strategies in whole group. In a guided reading setting, picture walks gets students thinking about what the book will be about and can activate prior knowledge, which is crucial for comprehension. I prefer to use a picture walk in a whole group setting. This helps those visual learners start to think about what the story might be about before even reading a word from the story. This also provides modeling that there are different ways to read a book, such as just reading the pictures, which is an important pre-reading skill for students to have.

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To assess if students are able to complete a picture walk, I would keep notes on how well students can do a picture walk independently. After modeling how to complete a picture walk and practicing many times whole group, I would have students take me through a picture walk of one of their books in their book box during our Daily 5 center time.

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Gunning (2016) quotes Fitzgerald (1989) saying students "use a sort of structural outline of the major story categories in their minds to make predictions and hypotheses about forthcoming information" (p. 341). In other words, when students know the structure of the story they are better able to understand what is happening and what is going to happen in the story.

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Gunning (2016), states that questions "can be used to develop concepts, build background knowledge, clarify reasoning processes, and even lead students to higher levels of thinking" (p.349). In other words, questioning used at different points of reading help build different aspects of comprehenion. According to Gunning (2016), questions in the pre-reading stage can help build background knowledge which is important for students to recall to have a frame of reference. Questions during reading, can clarify misconceptions about the text, and questions after reading can help students recall the events of the story.

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Building a sense of story for my students is very important. The more my young students are exposed to story structure, such as setting, characters and plot, the more they will be able to comprehend what is happening in the story.

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I believe that all of my students will benefit from developing a sense of story, because they are so young. Most of my students are non-readers and need exposure to all different types of texts, to understand and build their sense of story.

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Gunning (2016) states, " the most effective strategy is to read aloud to students from a variety of materials..." (p.341). When you read aloud to students, this exposes them to different text structures and can draw their attention to those story elements that build their sense of story. I love to read aloud to my students, because it is so beneficial for them not just for comprehension reasons, but for fluency and vocabulary practice as well.

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After reading aloud to students, discuss the story elements whole group to build that sense of story. After modeling, have students answer those story element questions independently, to assess if they are building that sense of story.

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Retelling a story is a student's ability to recall the events of the story. Gunning (2016) states, " if children fail to grasp the meaning of a selection, they will not be able to retell it" (p. 343).

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This strategy is extremely useful in my classroom, because it can be done orally. Most of my students are just learning to sound out words and form a sentence when writing. Since, retelling can be done orally, my students can demonstrate their comprehension by retelling a story orally or by using drawings to represent their retelling of a story or an event.

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I believe all students will benefit from this type of comprehension strategy. This strategy can be easily differentiated for all of my student's abilities and learning styles. Students who learn better through auditory experiences can orally retell a story. Students who learn better visually can draw pictures to help them retell the events in a story.

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Retelling can be taught through modeling. Gunning (2016) also states that a student's retelling skills can be practiced by engaging in "pretelling." Pretelling is when "students learn to explain everyday tasks" (Gunning, 2016, p.343). Students must think about the steps it took to complete those tasks by putting those steps in order to retell how they completed the task. This is a great way to help with retelling skills. This past Christmas, we did some pretelling on decorating our Christmas trees. Students drew the steps they took in decorating their Christmas tree and then orally presented them to the class.

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After modeling and practicing this strategy with familiar texts. See if students can retell a new story.

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Questioning is very important for my young students, because it can be used for a variety of reasons to help support their comprehension. Again, since my students are young and most are non-readers and in the emergent writing stages, questioning is an easy way for me to quickly draw upon prior knowledge, check for understanding and help students recall events in a story.

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Since my students are so young, and questions can be easily differentiated, I believe that all of my students will benefit greatly from good questioning before, during and after a story. Using this strategy I can help those who need to gain more back ground knowledge. At the same time, I can check everyone's understanding and finally I can work on all of my student's recall. Questioning is a great strategy to use to work on many aspects of a student's comprehension.

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When using questions to build comprehension, Gunning (2016) states that planning and placement of questions are very important.When using questions to build comprehension, Gunning (2016) states that planning and placement of questions are very important.

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When assessing questions, I need to model how to first answer questions. After modeling, I can keep tract of students who are able to answer different types of questions on a checklist or keep tract of who is struggling to answer what types of questions in anecdotal notes.

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Gunning (2016) states " because comprehension involves relating the unknown to the known, it is important that students become aware of what they know about a subject" (p.299). In other words, students need to draw upon what they know to comprehend what is going on in a story. For example, if a student has never played baseball before, they might have a hard time understanding vocabulary in a book about baseball.

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Activating prior knowledge in very important for my young students because, they might not have a lot of real world experiences yet. Discussing what they know and want to know or need to know to understand a book is an important part of building understanding and vocabulary that will aid with comprehension.

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I think students with little experiences, little vocabulary or have not been read to previously will benefit the most from activating prior knowledge. For those students who have a wealth of prior knowledge they can still be actively engaged by sharing their prior experiences or knowledge with their peers. All students come in with different experiences, and activating prior knowledge not only helps build comprehension, but helps build community within the classroom to help create a safe place for students to ask questions if they do not understand something.

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According to Gunning (2016), " the teacher activates prior knowledge through questioning" (p.299). However, the ultimate goal is to have students to activate their prior knowledge while they are actively listening to a story or thinking about a concept. Modeling how to activate prior knowledge is a must when teaching it. I can model how a specific event in a story reminds me of something that I have experienced. Letting student's actually share their experiences, also helps encourage students to activate prior knowledge during a story.

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To assess if students can activate prior knowledge. I would use questioning to draw upon those experiences, before, during and after reading a story. If a student can recall some sort of experience or even knowledge of the topic, I know that the student can activate their prior knowledge.

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According to Frey, Fisher and Lapp (2009), establishing purpose is "identifying and understanding why something is being read" (p.38). In other words, if students know why they are reading a story (to simply enjoy, or gain information) they will better understand what to look for and listen for in the story. Therefore, increasing their understanding of the story.

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It is important to let my young students know why we are reading a story. Most of my students are non readers and therefore, do not have experience deciding why they are reading a text. For example, we just did a unit on penguins. I read a fictional story that included the penguin life cycle. I made sure to let my students know, we were reading that specific story to help us identify the penguin life cycle. That way my young students knew what to pay attention to. If I did not draw their attention to the purpose of the story, they would have remembered the character's names instead of looking for aspects of the penguin life cycle.

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I believe all my students will benefit from learning how to establish purpose of a text. Again, my students are young and have little experience with this, so any exposure of establishing purpose is beneficial for students down the road when they become emerging and fluent readers.

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According to Frey, Fisher and Lapp (2009), teachers must model their inner dialogue when reading a text. Such as " why am i reading this?What am I trying to learn? What is the information about? What type of text is this?" (Frey, Fisher, Lapp, 2009, p.39).

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After modeling the types of questions to ask and how to answer them, I would ask students those same questions about a different book to see if they can establish the purpose of why we might be reading a text or what information we should be looking for throughout the text.

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Anticipation Guide | Classroom Strategy. (2017, December 20). Retrieved February 10, 2018, from http://www.readingrockets.org/strategies/anticipation_guide

Fisher, D., Frey, N., & Lapp, D. (2009). In a reading state of mind: brain research, teacher modeling, and comprehension instruction. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Gunning, T. G. (2016). Creating literacy instruction: for all students. Boston: Pearson.

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Frey, Fisher and Lapp (2009) state "readers regularly make connections between tests they are reading and their own life, other things they've read and the world around them" (p.52-53). In other words, students must connect what they are reading to something familiar to better understand the text.

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It is important for my young students to draw upon all sorts of connections to better understand a text. In my classroom, I like to focus on text-to text connections when I am intentionally thinking about teaching connections. I focus on text-to- text because my young students are pretty egocentric and can connect themselves or their world to a text, however recalling other stories that are similar or have similar features are often times hard for them.

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I believe all of my students benefit from focusing on connecting to build comprehension. Again, they are extremely egocentric at their stage of their life and helping them connect to other things they read, just deepens their understanding of a text we are reading.

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When teaching text to text connections, I like to pick texts that have similar topics. Frey, Fisher, and Lapp (2009) suggest that posing questions to compare and contrast texts help students connect texts together.

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After modeling thoughts about how two texts are similar or different, having students answer questions such as suggested by Frey, Fisher, and Lapp (2009) can tell me if students understand how to connect text to text.