1.We have extended the repertoire of strategies for district colleagues,
    preservice teacher candidates and enable others to view and glean
    current best teaching practices and strategies that in turn impacts our
    student’s ability to earn and develop comprehension strategies.
 

2. Through integrating content areas, we help to infect all involved educators
     in more effective, child-relevant curriculum design while finding ways to
     include rigorous science instruction in this time of mandated time schedules
     to meet the criteria of No Child Left Behind.
 

3.  Having visitors has helped because the positive feedbacks at post
     observations have authenticated many of our choices and/or given
     us ideas for fine-tuning this approach.

1. The hands on science activities are both motivating and stimulating for children as they read and write about gardening and respond to other literature. 
 

2.  We drive instruction with the use of hands-on developmentally appropriate
    tools that include all learners because we combine “tools”, sunglasses (for     visualizing), seeds (relate to prior knowledge/schema), plastic shovels (to model digging for meaning), rakes (for questioning), hoes (help us determine importance), watering cans (are the synthesizing agent), and a picture of the sun (shines light on inferring), with the acknowledgement of the student’s prior knowledge of gardening.
    Students can’t wait to get their hands dirty, use real tools, and produce/nurture
    the real-life garden.
 

3. We invite parents as partners into the classroom to model effective literacy practices so parents can continue to model the same language at home.

This teaching theme is a developmentally appropriate hands-on
learning sequence, designed for teachers in the early primary grades (K-2)
 who want to incorporate comprehension strategies into their literacy curriculum.
To better understand the comprehension strategies used to enhance
 your literacy curriculum, begin by reading these books as reference.
Click to buy these books:
 

Mosaic Of Thought by Ellin Oliver Keene.

Strategies That Work by Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis

Starting With Comprehension by Andie Cunningham and Ruth Shagoury.

Seven Keys to Comprehension by Susan Zimmermann and Chryse Hutchins

Kid Writing Strategies developed by Feldgus and Cardonic. 

Before beginning each lesson, teach your students this song
 to help them remember the strategies.