How Students Respond To Text Matters - This is what the research tells us:

 

Summaries: 
Writing summaries has the strongest impact on reading in all grades, but especially in elementary grades. Identify the main information,and write a synopsis with supporting information for each paragraph. 


 Write Notes:
This is more effective than underlining,  Report Form and Story Form, by Project Read https://www.projectread.com/ is a great program - very kid friendly and easily modified for older students.  I've also used Postit notes.  For fiction, Comprehension Booster app is very good. (See an earlier post.)

Answer Questions In Writing:
This is better than verbal responses and more memorable.
Teach the difference between a good and poor question.  Have students create questions from the text
and answer them.   If they can't answer it, just have them make another one that they can answer.

Teach Spelling and Sentence Structure:
Both improve reading.

Other Recommendations:
My mantra - ongoing practice, explicit instruction.   All of the above can be applied to narrative texts as well as expository and across all subject ares.