Response activities give you a good measure of students' comprehension, showing you where to reteach if necessary. If, for example, you notice that students are making certain inferences about the characters, go back and use examples from the book to model the strategy of inferencing and have students locate places in the book where they can also model inferencing. With children having trouble, more time on the same story may defeat your purpose. Sure, some students want to hear some stories over and over, and that's fine. But know when to move on.
Success often comes later when students have varied reading experience.
Sometimes we overcomplicate the process by trying to do too many activities that don't fit together for any real purpose. For example, often we don't need to preteach so much vocabulary. We only need to develop essential related vocabulary. Many times it's better for kids to get a sense of the story and then focus on the vocabulary. Here are some techniques I've observed in classrooms lately to foster home support.