Developing+Reading+Comprehension

** Developing Reading

Comprehension ** Reading comprehension refers to the ability of both extracting and constructing meaning from a piece of text simultaneously. Gaskins (as sited in Hill, 2006) found there to be five road blocks that need to be overcome in order for reading comprehension to take place. The five road blocks are:
 * 1)   **** Active involvement  **
 * 2)   **** Attention  **
 * 3)   **** Persistence  **
 * 4)   **** Reflectivity  **
 * 5)   **** flexibility  **

To help children develop skills that will help their comprehension teachers can guide the students thinking before, during and after reading. To guide children’s thinking __before__ the story Hill (2006) suggests the children could be asked to **__predict__** what the story might be about. __During__ the reading of the story children should be encouraged to **__question__** what the character is intending/hoping to accomplish, to **__visualise__** what is happening and again predicting how the story might end (Kelley & Clausen-Grace, n.d). __After__ reading the text, another effective strategy to develop a child’s comprehension is to ask them to **__summarise__** the story or develop an alternative ending to the one in the story. Another activity that Hill (2006) suggests could be useful for a comprehension task is a **__ KWL __**. This particular activity involves children developing a list of what they know about a particular topic, what they want to know, and what they learnt as a result of the task they have completed. This type of activity would be especially useful when reading a report type text, for example, the life cycle of a fish. *To start this activity the teacher could ask the class as a group what they  know about fish. The class could then construct a list as a group of what  they know about fish.  *During the reading of the text the teacher could use prompts to remind children of what they wanted to learn. In conclusion to the reading the story, as a group the class make a list what they learnt as a result of reading the book.
 * Teaching Strategies For Comprehension- **
 * Example Of A Modelled/Shared Comprehension Activity (KWL)- **
 * Then, as a group, the children make a list of what they would like to  know about fish.
 * Following this, the book on the life cycle of fish is read to the group.