Literacy and Numeracy News

READING COMPREHENSION

Reading comprehension is the capacity to understand what you read. It is a function that engages both sides of the brain. The linear left side of the brain reads and interprets the text, while the nonlinear right side of the brain associates text with information. Understanding the idea behind the text is just as important as learning how to read. 

Developing a child’s reading comprehension skills is important because it is the foundation for literacy. 

Opportunities for practicing comprehension occur throughout the school day and continue at home.  Early learners engage in “very much the same comprehension processes as do their older counterparts” Therefore, the strategies that are taught in the early years of education should be practised, consolidated and expanded on throughout a student’s schooling. 

Two of the main strategies that are generally viewed to support comprehension are activating prior knowledge and making predictions. These evidence based reading comprehension strategies are especially helpful for all readers. 

ACTIVIATING PRIOR KNOWLEDGE

Prior knowledge is unique to each reader. It is the sum of all experiences and knowledge they bring to the reading or viewing of a text.

These experiences and knowledge may include but are not limited to, personal experiences, cultural awareness or subject knowledge. 

A reader/viewer has opportunities to activate their prior knowledge and make connections before reading:

• What ideas do I already know about this topic?
• What known vocabulary will help me with this text?
• What do I already know about this text type?

During the reading:

• This part of the text is just like another one I read/viewed.
• This part is just like when I…

After the reading:

• I know more about this topic now. I can add this new information to what I already knew.
• I have changed my mind about what I think on this topic because of the new information I read/viewed. This text reminds me of…

MAKING PREDICTIONS

Prediction is about anticipation. “Skilled readers learn to expect the actions, events and ideas that are coming up in the text” 

A reader/viewer has opportunities to predict before reading:

• I know this is a fairy tale so I predict it will start with ‘Once upon a time’.
• I can see a picture of a dog and a sad little girl on the front cover. I predict this will be a story about a little girl who loses her dog.
• This text is about bugs. I predict it will have a section on their life cycle.

During the reading:

• I can use prediction to help me monitor my reading. I can anticipate what words might be coming up and use the syntactic and semantic relationships of the words and sentences to make meaning.
• I can make new predictions based on what has already happened.

After the reading:

• I can reflect on the predictions I made and confirm or reject them. (For example, this book is about bugs but it only had information about endangered species, not life cycles).
• I am surprised by the story resolution. I did not predict that would happen. I thought….

Reading Comprehension is a foundation skill that needs to be continually worked on at school.