| What are useful comprehension strategies? |
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Research Taster
Skilled readers have a wide range of strategies for gaining knowledge about text. These include: 1) generating questions about the text, 2) predicting what text might come next, 3) clarifying the meaning of the text and 4) summarising the text. When pupils who initially struggle with reading comprehension find out about and have a chance to practise such comprehension strategies, their reading comprehension often markedly improves. 
Your evidence
You might like to explore in more detail which of these strategies you currently use to teach comprehension to your pupils. If so, you could audio-tape or videotape a lesson in which you aim to teach comprehension skills to your pupils. Afterwards, you could analyse the tape to a) tally the number of times you used any of the four strategies listed above and b) note any details of what you did that seemed to work particularly well. Alternatively, you might wish to ask a supportive colleague to observe you teach and log the same information. Moving forward Having identified which of these strategies you use and the extent to which you use them, can you see any areas where you might like to try something new? If you or your colleague spotted something that seemed to work well, is this something you could build on for the future? If you know that you’ve never tried modelling a particular strategy for pupils before, might it help to role-play doing so with a colleague before trying it in the classroom? Find out more  Hurry, J. & Parker, M. (2004) The role of awareness in the teaching and learning of literacy and numeracy at key stage 2, TLRP Annual Conference, (Cardiff, November). Available at: http://www.tlrp-archive.org/cgi-bin/search_oai_all.pl?pn=15&no_menu=1&short_menu=1The full project is The role of awareness in the teaching and learning of literacy and Numeracy in Key Stage 2 (2001 – 2004) by Prof. Terezina Nunes, Prof. Peter Bryant and Dr. Jane Hurry. The project website is at: http://www.tlrp.org/proj/phase11/phase2h.html |
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