Good readers and good writers learn habits that help them become strong and fluent. The seven habits are visualizing, activating schema, questioning, inferring, determining importance, monitoring for meaning, and synthesizing.
Visualizing allows students to form mental pictures about what they are reading to aid their comprehension of a text. By visualizing the characters, settings or events, studets will be able to make connections.
Activating Schema allows students to make connections with previous experiences to better comprehend the text. Students can make text-to-text, text-to-self, and text-to-world connections. Making connections allows students to understand and remember what was read.
Questioning gives students a purpose for reading and writing. Students may ask questions before, during, or after reading and writing. There are several different types of questions that students can ask: "right there" questions, "in my mind" questions, "on my own" questions and "author and me" questions. Initial questioning pushes students towards asking deeper questions or determining answers.
Inferring is what a student does to comprehend what is not explicitly written in the text. Students draw conclusions by using prior knowledge combined with what they have already read in the text.
Determining Importance is when a student decides which information is the most valuable to the text. As students determine importance, they will be able to remember details about the text and/or activate schema to understand the major points being offered by the author.
Monnitoring for Meaning is when students regularly stop and review what was read in order to check for understanding. Students are not reading for speed or to rad an entire text; rather, they are reading to comprehend text.
Synthesizing is when students take information from different places in the text and make new meaning out of it. students that synthesize are able to convey the author's message and support their thinking with evidence from the text.