I created my first set of reading comprehensions in September/October. I was finding English hard to teach at the time because the reading scheme we use was quite advanced for the early days of first class. So I created my own resources instead, for phonics and comprehension. The children are more able now for the reading scheme as we are half way through first class, and they have a lot more confidence. I still however use my reading comprehensions every day except for Friday! I chose to write a variety of fiction and non-fiction pieces. The fictional stories are ones I make up for my own children every night as they always prefer ‘stories from my head’ to actual books! The non fiction texts are based on a variety of topics, ranging from snakes, to sloths, and the rainforest to Irish woodland creatures. There is a lot about Ireland in the second set of comprehensions, including a very simple introduction to rivers of Ireland, native Irish animals, trees, the zoo and President Michael D Higgins. I also like to include a variety of writing genres in the texts. Last week for example the comprehension was a letter a class wrote to their principal thanking him for everything in the school etc. When we finished answering the questions on the text we then wrote our own letters to our own principal and delivered them to his office. So I try to tie in the comprehensions with our genres of writing when I can. We also had a procedural writing piece last week for our comprehension, which was a nice way to revise the procedural writing we did in term one. We then made our own cookies on the Friday of that week in science. I try to link and integrate as much as I can. Often the English lesson ends up being either a history or geography lesson too!
Sometimes we do a short directed drawing from youtube too, for example when we read about the panda, we found a directed drawing video on youtube and drew the panda too. So then it links in with art too!
Each of the two comprehension resources have fifty texts each. It really provides great structure to our day, the children know what they are to do as soon as they come in, and they like guessing what the story will be about each day. I also tie it in with whatever blend we are doing in phonics too or whatever we are working on. Last week they were busy looking for Magic E’s in the text.
I created the comprehensions with first class in mind, but I know they are being used by a variety of classes and in a variety of settings. The second set of comprehensions in particular would be suitable for second class too. A lot of teachers who have downloaded the resource use it in SET with all different age groups. One teacher told me she uses it with Ukrainian children, another uses it in an autism class, and a speech therapist told me she uses it in her sessions with a child too. # The feedback so far has been very positive, and I am just happy that teachers find it as useful and versatile a resource as I do.
The teaching of reading needs to include a range of comprehension strategies, i.e. mental processes the reader uses to make sense of the text they are engaging with. Comprehension skills include creating images, skimming, scanning and self- questioning. It then moves on to making connections, comparing, inferring and predicting, right up to the higher order skills of synthesising, determining importance, summarising and self-questioning.
Reading Comprehension Strategies :
- Using prior knowledge
- Predicting
- Identifying the main idea
- Making inferences
- Visualising
- Story maps
- Retelling
Table of Contents:
- Tom Crean
- The Panda
- Henry Ford
- Bees
- Neil Armstrong
- Rivers of Ireland
- Leonardo De Vinci
- Michael D Higgins
- Snakes
- The Amazon rainforest
- The Sloth
- Baking Cookies
- A Letter to Our Principal
- A Report on the Turtle
- Australia
- The Holiday
- Sarah’s First Day
- Mark’s Big Show
- The Magic Tree
- Paddy the Pixie Makes Mischief
- The Dolphin
- Irish Wildlife
- The Fox
- The School Tour
- The Magical Unicorn
- Valentine’s Day
- The Bird Who Couldn’t Fly
- The Elephant’s Trunk
- History of the GAA
- Katie Taylor
- The Little Red Fire Engine to the Rescue!
- Space
- The Life Cycle of the Frog
- Walt Disney
- Christopher Columbus
- The Runaway Goat
- School Long Ago
- St Patrick’s Day
- The Cheetah
- Dublin Zoo
- How to Take Care of a Pet
- Trees of Ireland
- Billy Learns to Swim
- Goldilocks and the Fox Family
- Saint Brendan
- The Octopus
- Spring
- Lego
- Ireland
- Minecraft