In the realm of language arts and literacy, one of the most important things we need to tackle in the classroom is reading comprehension and the strategies that we can teach our students to become active readers who can find and construct meaning from any text they read. In this document, I will teach you about some of these strategies and how you can help teach them and reinforce them with our students. 
One of the best ways to help students tackle a new context is to help them activate prior knowledge and to teach them how to do this themselves. This is a preparation strategy for reading comprehension because it is done before the students even get into reading the meat of the text. When students are able to connect their previous learning experiences and also, if possible, their personal experiences to the new text, they are more likely to recognize the importance of what they are reading, and their motivation to read it is increased. In studies done about the importance of activating prior knowledge, it was revealed that students were able to use the knowledge learned through new texts on a deeper level and were more engaged with the text 
When you introduce a new text to the students, introduce the topic or central theme of the text briefly. If you are aware of this topic or a closely related topic being discussed in class, you could remind them of that. For example, if you were going to read a story about the moon, model a think-aloud, asking yourself questions like, “what have I learned before about the moon? What do I know about the moon? What would I like to know about the moon?” and answer the questions in front of the students. 
Connect new texts to personal experiences as well, not just past academic experiences. You could model this by asking yourself what you have previously seen before in your personal life and how you have felt about this topic. Perhaps a new text is about a family subject, like getting a new baby brother or sister, and you could talk aloud about your personal experiences with that. 
After doing a think aloud, you can bring students in by doing a brainstorming session using the interactive whiteboard or the easel. Ask each of them to contribute an idea or personal experience about what they already know on the topic, or any feelings or emotions they have about it. Let students build on things that others have shared and let them have discussions on these ideas. 
After having this whole group or small group discussion where everyone is contributing ideas, break them into pairs for a think- pair-share session. Let them quietly think more about the topic and what it has brought to mind from themselves and from different
members of the group, and then let them discuss it further with their partner. After this think-pair-share session, talk to them about how they should always consider what they already know about the topic when they are presented with a new text. Explain that as they have just experienced, thinking about what you already know will help explain a lot about what they are reading.  
