COMPREHENSION

The study of English is founded upon comprehension skills but too often we just test comprehension without actually teaching it. These resources offer ways of enabling students to address the demands of different types of comprehension. You will be able to develop your students’ competence in dealing with specific types of questions by giving them strategies that actually develop their comprehension skills. These comprehension resources are organised into four categories.

• The free Foundation Resource explains the nature of each type of comprehension and offers specific strategies for introducing them to students.  All the other resources are based upon its content and refer to the charts and texts it supplies.

• The Development Resources each concentrate on one type of comprehension and present teaching strategies specifically designed to address its demands.

• The Consolidating and Assessing Resources allow you to continue to focus on one type of comprehension and teach or assess (either formative or summative) as is needed by your class.

• The Text-Based Resources each provide a mixed set of questions for one text. These questions are accompanied by a teaching program, a marking key with sample answers and a glossary. All of these resources are grounded on the Foundation Resource and allow you to continue to teach the types of comprehension or assess your students’ understanding. Most importantly, they enable you to record and report on a student’s ability across the different types of comprehension.

Types of Comprehension

This is a key resource that you can use each year in the English classroom and across all the year groups that you teach. It will also assist with your students’ comprehension in other subjects. It describes the different types of comprehension, provides examples of questions and gives direction for dealing with them. Along with the other comprehension resources, it aims to take the mystery out of undertaking comprehension tasks.

A Framework for Analytical Comprehension

When examining the construction of a text, students fall into a number of traps, such as simply listing techniques; not fully explaining examples; not recognising how different aspects of construction work together. This resources provides a systematic way of approaching in-depth analysis so that a comprehensive and focused examination of a text is achieved.

Tackling Inferential Comprehension

When tackling inferential questions, students are very often instructed to ‘read between the lines’. This imagery is perplexing and is not an accurate description of what takes place when inferential comprehension occurs. By encouraging students to tap into their existing inferential abilities, and by making the process explicit, we can improve their responses to questions that require inferential comprehension.

Analytical: Consolidating & Assessing

This resource works to consolidate student understanding of analytical comprehension and enables them to practise providing coherent explanations of how texts are constructed. It provides a demonstration of a key strategy, a text with questions that can be used for formative or summative assessments and sample answers.

Inferential: Consolidating & Assessing

This resource works to consolidate student understanding of inferential comprehension and enables them to practise making meaning. It provides a demonstration of key strategy, a text with questions that can use formative, or summative assessments and sample answers. Students are given more opportunities to build skills and measure their progress. Teachers can use these materials in ways best suited to their students.

Differentiation: Consolidating & Assessing

This resource provides ‘before reading’, ‘whilst reading’ and ‘when answering’ strategies for students who are dealing with learning difficulties. These strategies can be used for any comprehension activity or task and aim to enable these students to show their full understanding.