Guidance

Curriculum and
Standards

Primary
Understanding headteachers,

Reading literacy
coordinators, Key
Comprehension:2 Stage 1 and 2
teachers
Status: Recommended
Strategies to develop reading
Date of issue: 03-2005
comprehension Ref: DfES 1311-2005
 Understanding Reading Comprehension: 2

Strategies to develop reading

comprehension
Reading comprehension is an essential part of the reading process. Children need to
be taught a range of reading comprehension strategies to help them fully understand
texts.
This is the second of a set of three leaflets about reading comprehension. Leaflet 1
introduces evidence from research and gives a sequence for
teaching. Leaflets 2 and 3 give practical suggestions for
teachers to use in their own classrooms. This leaflet has
information on a range of cognitive strategies.
This information will help teachers to:
 become aware of a wide range of strategies to
encourage reading comprehension;
 know when and how to use them in shared and
guided reading;
 know how to model the strategies to children;
 know how to encourage children to use the
strategies themselves in shared, guided
and independent reading.

Activating prior knowledge

Activation of prior knowledge can develop children’s understanding by helping them to
see links between what they already know and new information they are encountering.
Here are some ideas for collaborative activities. They will encourage children to bring to
the forefront of their minds knowledge that relates to the text they are about to read or
are reading.
 Start with the title, chapter heading or picture on the front cover. Ask children what
it makes them think of. Collect ideas orally, using drawings or by making brief notes.
 Select a key word from the title or an artefact. Ask children to think of memories
associated with it. Give sentence starters such as This reminds me of …, It makes
me think of …
 Record ideas using a concept mapping or mind-mapping to show the links
between ideas.

Prediction
Stopping to predict what a text or part of a text might be about makes readers pay
more attention when they begin to read. They need to consider the reasons for their
predictions, look for evidence in the text and revise their initial predictions if necessary.
 Demonstrate how to read the text a section at a time, explain what is happening
and predict what will happen next and how it will end. Read on and point out the
explicit and implicit evidence that supports or confounds your predictions.
Demonstrate how to revise your initial ideas and suggest a hypothesis based on the
new evidence.

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Understanding Reading Comprehension: 2

 Involve children in this process as part of shared reading. Model how to make
written notes of your predictions and display these, for instance as you read a class
novel aloud. Encourage children to add their own notes based on what they have
heard.
 Support children as they make written predictions and revisions relating to guided
or independent reading, using their reading journals.

Constructing images
Creating visual images using visualisation, drawing or drama helps children to make
links between their prior knowledge and new ideas. These activities will encourage
children to go back to the text to check or look for more details, thus deepening their
understanding.

Visualisation
Model the process in shared reading:
 read aloud from a fiction or non-fiction text;
 talk about the ideas that you had while you were reading;
 ask children to think of the picture that they have in their heads.

Then read another passage; children work in pairs describing their image to one
another.

Drawing
Ask children to draw a character based on information gathered from the text.
You could do this early in the story and then return to it after reading. Ask
children to tell you if they have learned anything new about this character.
 Draw a map of a quest or journey based on details from the story.
 Draw a diagram to represent an instruction or explanation text.
 Make a model based on the description of a particular place in a story.

Drama
Select the key sentences from a text or chapter. Children work in groups to
create a still photograph (drama freeze frame) of the moment. Take a photograph
using a digital camera and put it on the computer. Children can then add thought
bubbles giving each character’s thoughts at that moment in the story.

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 Understanding Reading Comprehension: 2

Questioning
Skilled questioning will develop children’s understanding of texts but the questions need
to be carefully thought through and planned. Closed, factual questions test children’s
ability to recall knowledge but do not encourage them to use inference and deduction
or to engage closely with what they have read.
These practical ideas will help you to plan questions that will deepen children’s
understanding of the text.

Generic questions and questions relating to particular texts

Some questions may be asked of any text while others relate to particular texts or text
types. Children need to become familiar with this type of questioning as a regular part
of shared and guided reading sessions and to move towards asking these questions
themselves as they read independently.

Examples of questions
Generic questions
 What do you think and  What is the purpose of  Have you read any
feel about what you this writing? other texts like this
have read?  Who wrote this and one?
 Who is this writing when?  Did anything puzzle
intended for?  What is the form of you?
this writing?
Fiction and plays Poetry
Poetry Non-fiction
Non-fiction
 Who is the narrator?  What do you see in  How can we locate
 Who is the most your mind when you information quickly in
important character? read this? this text?
 What do we know  What is the effect of  Why does the author
about the setting? the rhyme, rhythm and use diagrams?
line length?
 Why does the writer
use dialogue?

Children generating their own questions

Active reading should generate questions in the reader’s mind. It is important to model
explicitly this kind of questioning to young and inexperienced readers, thus making
visible to them what is usually an internal monologue for expert readers.

Generating questions: Select a text and make a note of any questions that come
into your mind as you read. Focus on questions you are asking of yourself rather than
questions you would ask children. Reread the text and try to think of at least two
different answers for each of the questions.

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Understanding Reading Comprehension: 2

Demonstrate this process during shared reading and note question starters, for
example Why is this …? If this is true, then why …? What if …? Is there a reason
for …?

Hot-seating: Take on the role of a character from the text. Invite children to create
questions for the character and give answers in role. Encourage children to move
beyond factual questions to probe more deeply into motives or consequences.

Involve individuals in working in role themselves and answering questions made up by

other children.

Talk to the author: Read a text in shared reading and then demonstrate how to
note any questions that you would like to ask the author, for example Who was this?
Why did this happen? Children can then try this for themselves. Discuss what you have
found out about the difference between fact and opinion and any signs of bias.

Focus journals: Children read part of a text independently before their guided
reading session. Write a focus question on the board, for example What seemed
important to you in what you learned about x? The children read the focus, reflect on
their response and write in their journals. This then serves as a basis for discussion.

(See also Leaflet 3, p. 6 ‘Helping children to monitor their own understanding’.)

Questioning at different levels

Questions can operate at different levels, taking children deeper into texts and requiring
different levels of thinking. An effective strategy is to ask questions that make increasing
cognitive demands on children moving from simple recall, through inference to
questions that ask for evaluation and response, following Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Higher- and lower-order levels of thinking

Bloom’s Taxonomy, starting from the simplest behaviour to the most complex:

1 Knowledge – for example Who? What? Where? When? How?

2 Comprehension – for example What do we mean by …? Explain …

3 Application – for example What other examples are there?

4 Analysis – for example What is the evidence for …?

5 Synthesis – for example How could we add to, improve, design, solve …?

6 Evaluation – for example What do you think about …? What are your
criteria for assessing …?

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 Understanding Reading Comprehension: 2

Questions to develop children’s understanding of the text should promote thinking at

three levels:
1. Literal questions ask children to recall information that is directly stated in the
text.
2. Deductive or inferential questions ask children to work out answers by
reading between the lines, by combining information found in different parts of the
text and by going beyond the information given by drawing on their ‘world view’.
3. Evaluative or response questions ask children to go beyond the text by, for
example, thinking whether the text achieves its purpose, or making connections
with other texts.
At any stage of reading development children should be expected to be able to think
about the text at all three levels.

Alternatives to questions
Asking too many questions can discourage children from giving elaborate or thoughtful
answers. Alternative strategies can provide more thinking time, allow more children to
respond and open up deeper discussion, for example:
Discussion starter: Select a key sentence from a text, such as a cliffhanger at the
end of a chapter or one character’s opinion of another. Read it out and use it as the
starting point for a discussion, encouraging alternative responses: Who has a different
point of view?

Further information
Read pp. 61–73 in the unit Conditions for learning in Excellence and Enjoyment: learning and teaching
in the primary years for more information about questioning.
See also leaflet Talking in Class available as part of the pack Teaching and learning literacy and
mathematics in Year 3 (DfES 2003).

Text structure analysis

Research suggests that readers use their growing knowledge of stories to help them
predict and understand what is happening and is likely to happen in new stories. This
can also be applied to the structure of non-fiction texts.
Story maps, story shapes and story charts
 After reading, demonstrate how to draw a ‘map’ of events in a story. Involve
children in recalling and retelling the story. Ask children to work collaboratively to
map other stories and make comparisons between them.
 Use story mapping to make the structure of particular stories explicit, for example a
circular story or a journey from ‘A to B’.
Structural organisers: Demonstrate how to map the content of a non-fiction text
onto a structural organiser grid, for example point and evidence grid; cause and effect
grid; argument versus counter-argument list.

(See ‘Non-fiction fliers’ – download or order from: www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/

literacy/publications/text/63353/)

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Understanding Reading Comprehension: 2

Sequencing texts
Children can learn to apply their knowledge about texts and reading when carrying out
sequencing activities. The text is jumbled up and then readers are asked to reorder
lines of a poem, or paragraphs of a fiction or non-fiction text.
Poems: Demonstrate how to look for clues for the correct order of a jumbled poem,
for example matching rhyming words at the ends of lines; assembling lines into verses
of the same length; thinking about the meaning and checking that it makes sense;
identifying lines that suggest a beginning and a conclusion.
Give groups of children a similar activity and compare the sequences. Talk about the
effect of any differences in order.
Recount or instructional text: Jumble paragraphs from a chronologically
sequenced text. Demonstrate how to look for a logical order of events and make use
of connectives such as first, later, next, finally.
Comparing texts: Look at a range of examples and discuss texts that have several
possible orders. Involve children in suggesting which texts have only one possible
sequence and why.

Summarising
Children need to learn how to identify the main idea in a text. Effective summarising
involves children in evaluating a text and deciding which elements of it are most
significant.
Teacher modelling: Demonstrate how to skim read a text and then give an oral
summary. Support children as they skim read and summarise short passages.
Go through a text paragraph by paragraph, highlighting the key sentence(s) in each.
Demonstrate how to restructure key information into a non-prose form, for example
producing a labelled picture using the information in the text.
Guided practice: Stop at regular points in shared and guided reading and ask
children to summarise the section you have just read. Challenge them to summarise
within a given word limit.
Ask children to write a brief summary at the end of each chapter outlining key events
and further insights into character and plot.

DARTs (Directed Activities Related to Text)

A group of activities for developing reading comprehension were developed in the
1980s by Lunzer and Gardner. They are known collectively as DARTs and include:
 Prediction (see p. 2).
 Text analysis and text marking activities: underlining, highlighting or
numbering parts of the text.
 Cloze activities: words or phrases are deleted from the text and readers work
out what the missing words could be through the use of contextual and syntactic
cues.
 Sequencing activities (see above).

© Crown copyright 2005 Primary National Strategy DfES 1311-2005 7

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THE COLOURWORKS 03-2005