The four bookmarks. Cut four strips of card. Write PREDICT, QUESTION, CLARIFY and SUM UP. Each person at the table takes one.

Read a fable together. Any short story will do. Stop after the title (PREDICT: what will happen?), after the first half (QUESTION: why? how? what if?), at any hard word (CLARIFY: what do the words around it tell you?), and at the end (SUM UP: what did they want, what did they do, what happened?). Swap bookmarks next time.

Try the crow's trick. A tall glass, a little water, and a handful of marbles or pebbles. Drop them in one by one and watch the water rise.

The grown-up layer. Predicting, questioning, clarifying and summarising together are called reciprocal teaching, a classroom routine with decades of use. The summary job is the hardest; "what did they want, what did they do, what happened" is a good scaffold. In 2009 scientists showed that rooks really do drop stones to raise water. ReadQuest practises each job.

For the ride home. Ask: which job was hardest for you today?