What do we mean by Developing Comprehension?
Reading comprehension is the intended endpoint of any reading instruction curriculum. We teach our students to decode at word, sentence and text level with fluency (accurately and automatically, while attending to ‘low-level’ single-word meaning) so that they are able to make effective use of cognitive resources to enable them to attend to higher-level understanding of whole texts.
This means that they will then be able to achieve the following key aspects required in developing comprehension:
Useful Resources
To effectively teach reading inclusively, we must consider individual experiences and contexts when choosing reading materials that aim to develop comprehension.
Activation of prior knowledge and experience: What links do students make between the text and their own experiences? Have they had enough personal experience of the theme, to support them in understanding the text? If not, what would help them better understand the themes presented?
Vocabulary knowledge: Are there new words presented in the text which students may not understand? Have they been taught these words explicitly? Could they work out meaning using a morphological approach (E.G. breaking down words in to roots, prefixes, suffixes, etc)?
Text organisation: Do they require explicit teaching of organisational devices used by an author? For example, do they understand the impact of punctuation, text fonts, layout choices, etc?
“What matters to developing children’s comprehension is i) teacher modelling of how skilled readers deploy certain strategies in the moment of reading, using e.g. ‘think alouds’ and talk during reading lessons, and ii) encouraging and giving children opportunities to read a lot, so that they have as much prior knowledge to activate as possible”
DfE Reading Framework: 7 key take-aways for schools
Oxford Education BlogFoundations in Literacy Instruction