Inference-

The authors suggest using The Three Questions by Jon Muth to help children understand inference. As you read the book, stop every few pages to demonstrate inference in a think-aloud format. Be sure to use insightful inferences for your model. Keene and Zimmermann tell us to trust the children to note obvious points in the text. As the teacher, you must carefully and thoughtfully pick those inferences that demonstrate your point without obvious examples. Use books rich in ideas that inspire think-alouds about content that matters in the world.

Questioning-

According to the authors, proficient readers ask questions while they read for a number of different purposes. The authors provide an example of a teacher using Wretched Stone by Chris Van Allsburg with middle school students as a text for modelling the questioning stategy. This text lends itself well to clarifying questions about the content of the story (What is happening to the sailors on this ship?), speculative questions that attempt to predict or explain text not yet read (Is there something sinister about the stone?), questions that probe into the author's style and technique (What is the author doing to create a change in mood in the story?), and rhetorical questions that are about bigger issues and do not have one specific answer (Will the stone ever be found again?).

Schema-

One of the books the authors used as an example to activate prior knowledge, or schema was The Two of Them.  It was chosen because it is a story about a little girl and her grandfather.  Many children would be able to relate to that and make a self-to-text connection.  This is an important concept for teachers to model for students.  By activating schema, readers purposefully recall their relevant prior knowledge to make sense of new information before, during, and after they read.  Activating prior knowledge doesn't have to be from personal or emotional experiences, it can be specific knowledge about the topic.  Teachers need to help readers build schema on a given topic if they lack adequate schema for a particular reading situation.

Using Sensory and Emotional Images-

Where the River Begins is a picture book used with an eighth grade class to demonstrate a lesson evoking images as part of a comprehension strategy.  After reading the book aloud and not showing any of the pictures, students were asked what kind of images they had created in their head.  The teacher needs to prompt them to keep adding as much detail to their image as they can.  What does Grandpa look like?  What color are his shorts?  Does he have a hat on?  Is he wearing sunglasses?  Adding more detail to images can be used to amplify meaning in a book.  The teacher needs to be as detailed as possible in her think-aloud, and include images from the five senses.

Synthesis-

Synthesis differs from a summary of a read text. It is the readers ability to reflect on and understand the whole and complex meaning of a text, involving tracing the path of their understanding over time and of shifting perspectives. The strategy of synthesis maybe most visible in students' multigenre writing and research projects, where the forms and content of texts chosen to represent student ideas are composed—much like a mosaic. Student and teacher assessment of how well these projects communicate ideas and understandings—how the parts are unified and work together —offers evidence of synthetic thinking.