Focus on Learning

Dear Parents and Carers,

Welcome to Term 2 and a big thank you for your support in enabling your child / children’s learning to continue during the home schooling period. It is wonderful to have the children back, their smiling faces and eagerness to be at school is uplifting. Our Focus on Learning topic this week is on the development of Comprehension Skills.

The process of comprehending a text begins before children can read. When someone reads a picture book to them, they listen to the words, see the pictures in the book, and may start to associate the words on the page with the words they are hearing and the ideas they represent. Readers who have strong comprehension are able to draw conclusions about what they read – what is important, what is a fact, what caused an event to happen, which characters are funny. Thus comprehension involves combining reading with thinking and reasoning.

In order to learn and improve their comprehension strategies, students need modelling, practice, and feedback. The key comprehension strategies are :                                                  1. Making Connections  

 2. Predicting   

 3. Questioning 

 4. Monitoring 

 5. Visualising       

 6. Summarising

To assist you in reinforcing these skills with your child/children when reading with them at home further information on the strategies can be viewed below.