Which comprehension strategies are central to achieving strong early literacy comprehension, and how should teachers model them?

• A. Predicting, questioning, summarizing, clarifying, inferring; model think-alouds, guided practice, and collaborative discussion with text evidence citations.
• B. Skimming, scanning, speed reading, and note-taking.
• C. Rereading and memorizing facts with no discussion.
• D. Listening-only activities without student talk.

Answer: (A)

Explicit instruction in comprehension strategies helps young readers actively construct meaning from text. Predicting, questioning, summarizing, clarifying, and inferring give students tools to anticipate content, ask and answer questions, distill main ideas, resolve confusion, and read between the lines. Teachers model these processes with think-alouds that reveal how they reason about a text, what questions they pose, what evidence they notice, how predictions are revised, and how inferences are made. They provide guided practice with scaffolded supports and then shift responsibility to students through collaborative discussions that require citing specific text evidence. This approach builds metacognition, oral language, and the ability to monitor and repair understanding, which are essential for strong early literacy comprehension. Skimming and speed reading miss the depth of processing needed for meaning-making; rereading solely for memorization with no discussion does not cultivate strategy use; and listening-only activities without student talk fail to develop the active engagement and discourse that support comprehension.