Reading Comprehension

Reading comprehension is second nature to me and it is hard to define a particular process. I notice that I seem to comprehend more when I am reading about a topic that I enjoy and take special interest in. I feel this is because I take more time and effort into actually understanding what the text is saying. I tend to space-out and skim texts that I personally find boring and lack interest in. Unfortunately, by doing this I create more work for myself because I have to re-read texts multiple times in order to understand what it is saying. If I am reading a text with many characters and complex plot, I often write down character names with their descriptions and important points in the plot in order to keep everything straight.
When books are read together as a group, I have noticed that my CT and intern work a lot with the pictures in the books. Before the begin, they usually ask the students to predict what the book is about and what they think will happen. They often flip through the book looking at the pictures to see if they can make any other predictions. They also work a lot with summarizing. They will read a story one day, then the students are asked to write a short "re-telling" of what they read. Re-telling are not done the same day as the actual reading because the story is too fresh in their minds. They usually write them a few days later as a way of assessing what they remember. After a little while, the students are allowed to get out with story they read in order to fill in anything they forgot in their re-telling.
Although it is only a 3rd grade class, I would like to see them go into more depth with their comprehension processes. The stages that Tompkins uses for a reading process would be a great benefit for the students. They often pre-read, read, and respond but I have not seen much exploring or applying. As the students become more fluent readers, hopefully these other stages will be used more often.