• Monitor Comprehension identifies ways readers listen to their inner conversations and keep track of their thinking as they read.
• Activate and Connect alerts students to the impact background knowledge has on their learning and how they continually connect the new to the known.
• Ask Questions highlights how readers can use questions to clarify unfamiliar ideas and discover new information.
• Infer Meaning teaches students how to use context clues and text evidence to crack open the new concepts and vocabulary common to nonfiction text.
• Determine Importance helps students distill the main ideas and important thinking from the detailed facts in nonfiction text.
• Summarize and Synthesize encourages students to go beyond the simple restating of facts so they can use new information to inspire or change their thinking.

The Comprehension Toolkit’s 6 Strategy Cluster books contain 26 lessons. The regular structure of each lesson provides a coherent framework on which to build your own lessons and language for understanding informational text. For lesson walkthroughs and sample lessons click here.

Informational Text
The short, engaging, real-world informational texts Anne and Steph have chosen for the Toolkit provide effective contexts for exploring comprehension strategies.
The Source Book of Short Text provides two kinds of nonfiction text: Lesson Text, 24 articles from children’s magazines; and Nonfiction Short Text, 42 short informational essays specially written for the Toolkit.
The Trade Book Pack contains the 7 engaging trade books referenced in the Toolkit lessons.

Need additional engaging informational text?
In addition to the Short Text that comes with the Toolkit and the optional Trade Book Pack that you can order, Steph and Anne have created two collections of books and magazines that work well with the Toolkit.

For original copies of the Kids Discover articles used in the Toolkit or to purchase other issues of the magazine that Steph and Anne have selected as ideal teaching text, go to www.kidsdiscoverteachers.com.

Steph and Anne have also assembled a collection of delightful nonfiction trade books from Heinemann-Raintree Classroom. For more information on these titles go to www.heinemannclassroom.com/products/toolkit.asp

Professional Support
A series of teaching resources introduce, support, and extend the Toolkit’s comprehension strategies.
The Teacher’s Guide outlines the thinking behind the Toolkit and describes its components, instructional design, and authentic assessment.
Resources for The Comprehension Toolkit CD-ROM includes a video conversation with Dr. P. David Pearson; a photographic overview of an Active Literacy Classroom; and downloadable research articles, templates, assessment masters and full-color lesson text.
Extend and Investigate helps you extend the Toolkit’s comprehension strategies across the curriculum and throughout the year. It provides strategies for content area reading and research, textbook reading and test reading, and bibliographies of informational text.