This series is based on the most current research and thought concerning the teaching of reading comprehension. This series not only sharpens traditional reading comprehension skills (main idea, story plot, topic sentence, sequencing, etc.), but it also reinforces the critical reading comprehension strategies that encourage your students to use prior knowledge, experiences, careful thought, and evaluation to help them decide how to practically apply what they know to all reading situations. Traditional comprehension skills recently have been woven into the larger context of strategy instruction. Today, literacy instruction emphasizes learning strategies—those approaches that coordinate the various reading and writing skills and prior knowledge to make sense to the learner. Our goal in this series is to provide you and your students with the most up-to-date reading comprehension support, while teaching basic skills that can be tested and evaluated. Reading Comprehension Strategies vocabulary knowledge activating prior knowledge pre-reading—previewing and predicting previewing and predicting text mental imaging self-questioning summarizing semantic mapping This series gives your students a variety of opportunities to apply reading comprehension strategies as they read, while reinforcing basic reading comprehension skills. In addition, we designed this series to help you make an easy transition between levels (grades 7, 8, and 9) in order to reinforce or enhance needed skill development for individual students. Reading Comprehension Skills and Strategies is designed to reinforce and extend the reading skills of your students. The fun, high-interest fiction and non-fiction selections will spark the interest of even your most reluctant reader. The book offers your students a variety of reading opportunities—reading for pleasure, reading to gather information, and reading to perform a task. Characters throughout the book prompt the student to apply one of