To be successful, students must be able to comprehend the nonfiction material they encounter in textbooks, reference materials, and testing situations. The ability to interpret nonfiction information depends on the development of several key skills and strategies:

• Main Idea/Supporting Details
• Using Text Organizers
• Summarizing/Paraphrasing
• Using Parts of the Book
• Developing Vocabulary
• Making Inferences
• Prior Knowledge/Making Connections
• Setting the Purpose
• Author's Point of View
• Questioning
• Structural Patterns
• Visualizing

This systematic approach to reading instruction, coupled with repeated exposure to a wide variety of nonfiction reading materials, provides a structure in which students can achieve significant growth.

Each book has a CD with graphic organizers (for use with Inspiration®) and activity templates (for use with Microsoft Word®).