Skill & Strategy Definitions
ReadWorks’ Lessons Help You Develop Specific, Essential Comprehension Skills in Your Young Readers
For a consistent, coherent approach to teaching reading comprehension, we encourage you to use all the ReadWorks lessons for your grade over the course of the year. We recommend the following order, although you may vary the order to best fit your needs:
| Concept | Abbreviation | Definition |
| Genre | G | A category or type of text, organized by common literary elements. |
| Explicit Information | EI | Details that can be clearly found “right there” in the text. |
| Drawing Conclusions | DC | Combining background knowledge, personal experience and textual information to determine meaning. |
| Vocabulary in Context | ViC | The meaning of a word within a text. |
| Predicting | Pre | Using information from a text to decide what will most likely happen next. |
|
Pronoun Reference |
PR | Tracing a pronoun to the source noun to which it refers. |
| Character | C | The looks, traits, thoughts, and relationships of a person, animal or object with life-like qualities in a text. |
| Setting | S | Where and when a story takes place. |
| Sequence | Seq | The order of events or steps in a text. |
| Plot | P | The structure of events that make up the main story of a text. |
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Cause and Effect |
C/E | The reason something happens (cause) and what happens as a result (effect). |
| Main Idea | MI | The big idea in a text that tells the reader what the text is mostly about. |
| Classify & Categorize | Cl/Ca | To arrange or organize details from a text into groups with similar traits (categorize), and to name or label that group (classify). |
| Compare & Contrast | Co/Co | How two or more things are alike (compare) and how they are different (contrast) |
| Fact & Opinion | F/O | Information that can be proven true or false (fact) and a personal statement of what one believes about a subject (opinion). |
| Point of View (introduced in grade 3) | PoV | The perspective from which a story is told to the reader (i.e. first person). |
| Author's Purpose (introduced in grade 2) | AP | The reason an author has written a text for readers. |
| Voice (introduced in grade 2) | V | The author’s tone or attitude toward a subject in the text. |
| Figurative Language | FL | Language enriched by word images and figures of speech. |
| Theme (introduced in grade 2) | Th | The underlying message or lesson that the author is trying to convey to the reader. These often include universal values dealing with life, society or human nature. |