Developing comprehension ages 4–7
These suggestions for developing comprehension cover the strategies:
Predicting
Questioning
Summarising
Connecting
Visualising
The examples here include some ‘classics’, some newer books as well as films, poetry and songs. Any of the suggestions can be used for clarifying – asking children to expand on their responses and prompting further thinking by asking ‘why do you think that…’ questions.
Predicting
Predicting asks children to think about what might happen next in a story - before, during or after reading. Although children will use a range of clues such as the pictures and the written text, prediction primarily requires them to draw on their knowledge of other texts, including moving image texts.
4–5 year olds: choosing a book with a familiar (real or imaginary) theme is more likely to aid prediction. A strong cover image is also important as this will be the starting point for the prediction, for example, Where is the dragon? by Leo Timmers.
Children can draw on their experience of dragons in other stories to predict from the cover, but prediction during the reading from the silhouetted images means that they will learn about twists in stories as the three not-so-brave knights search for the dragon.
5–6 year olds: film can be very useful for prediction. Any of the Pingu animations available on the official YouTube site ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pHO-mx7Ieg) are ideal for prediction but children particularly love the humour of ‘Pingu as a Babysitter’ because they can bring their own home experience to the story.
6–7 year olds: Oluwalase Babatunde Benson is the No. 1 car spotter in the village – maybe even the world! In The No 1 Car Spotter there is always a problem or a crime to solve, so the whole series offers plenty of opportunities for prediction.
Questioning
Experienced readers unconsciously ask questions of whatever they read or watch. Learning to ask questions of a text is developed by experience of responding to questions before, during and after reading. Children are often asked to answer the teacher’s questions but it is important that children themselves pose questions in order to understand or clarify the content of what they are reading. These questions can be literal (looking questions), inferential (clue questions) where they read between the lines, or evaluative (thinking questions) where they comment on what they have read bringing their own experience to bear on the text. (See Chapter 8 section 8. 5.)
4–5 year olds: Where Oh Where is Rosie’s Chick? By Pat Hutchins is the perfect addition to Rosie’s Walk. Both of these not only offer opportunities for questioning but are visually appealing and very funny.
5–6 year olds: The Bog Baby by Jeanne Willis offers opportunities for much speculation: Where did the Bog Baby come from? Is this the right way to feed the baby? What shall we do – the baby seems to be very ill…
6–7 year olds: the wordless short film Baboon on the Moon offers enormous possibilities for questioning. There is no explanation of why he is there. His scientific activities prompt more questions and there is plenty of scope for wondering what it feels like to be so far away from home (http://www.literacyshed.com/baboon.html)
Summarising
Summarising helps children to gain an overall understanding of a text by recalling key events or sequencing the narrative.
4–5 year olds: songs are often good for recalling events, particularly if they have a repetitive form. Bought Me a Cat is a cumulative song which can be supported by puppets or animal figures of the cat, hen, duck, goose, sheep, cow and horse who feature in the song. There is an animated version with animal sounds which is useful for phonics teaching (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jyh81PF16ME).
5–6 year olds: the short animated film Whistleless shows a little bird who has lost his whistle and the many people and animals he meets who try to help him (https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=whistleless+video&view=detail&mid=3C3E1F929693C04FCCD53C3E1F929693C04FCCD5&FORM=VIRE).
6–7 year olds: as children become more fluent readers, summarising should be more demanding. A complex picturebook like Anthony Browne’s The Tunnel requires summarising the relationship between the boy and the girl before getting on to the action in the story.
Information texts can also be good for summarising, for example, The Life of a Car by Susan Steggall (4–5 year olds) with clear and appealing illustrations describes the process of making a car; A River by Marc Martin (5–6 year olds) follows the route of a river through contrasting landscapes; the wordless picturebook Window by Jeannie Baker illustrates the growth of a place and a young boy (6–7 year olds).
Connecting
In order to make sense of texts, children need to make connections between their own lives, other texts and their knowledge and understanding of the world.
4–5 year olds: the youngest children find it easiest to make text-to-self connections so it is good to choose a story with a familiar setting and a main event that could happen to any child. Monster by Michael Rosen gives a different spin to the first day at school as Rover tries to rescue his pet human from what he sees as imprisonment.
5–6 year olds: children will connect with the experience of starting a new school, and Shu Lin’s Grandpa by Matt Goodfellow, with illustrations by Yu Rong, will allow every child to find themselves in the classroom pictures and look for the logos on the lunchboxes in the wonderful double page spreads. And they will also connect with the idea of drawing to express your ideas.
6–7 year olds: the beautiful and fascinating My Pet Goldfish by Catherine Rayner tells the simple story of a child’s pet goldfish called Richard and how as he grew bigger he went to live in the next door neighbour’s pond with other goldfish. Children will connect their own experiences of watching wildlife with the different creatures that live in the pond as well as learning a great deal about goldfish.
Any collection of a range of different version of the same story (there are over 350 Cinderella-type stories) will offer opportunities for comparing and contrasting texts. A Year Full of Stories, collected by Angela McAllister and Christopher Corr, contains stories from around the world.
Visualising
Visualising requires children to notice the images or visual sensations that spring to mind when listening to stories. Journeys are often good for visualising different settings or characters and drawing and drama/role play can help children visualise.
4–5 year olds: The Train Ride by June Crebbin tells the journey of a little girl as she goes to visit her grandmother. The train passes many things and places and children can be asked to choose one and draw it to make a class frieze.
5–6 year olds: The Jungle Run by Tony Mitton where Cub is told she is too small to race allows children to envisage any part of the jungle or the competing animals as they race to the finish.
6–7 year olds: Too Small Tola Lives in a block of flats in Lagos, Nigeria and the different scenes described, like the market and the surrounding, area offer plenty of opportunities for visualising.
Children’s books
Atinuke (2010) The No 1 Car Spotter. Walker Books. ISBN 9781529503289.
Atinuke (illustrated by Onyinwe Iyu) (2020) Too Small Tola. Walker Books. ISBN 9781406388916.
Browne, Athony (2008) The Tunnel. Walker Books. ISBN 9781406313291.
Crebbin, June (illustrated by Stephen Lambert) (1996) The Train Ride. Walker Books. ISBN 9788962245561.
Goodfellow, Matt (illustrated by Yu Rong) (2021) Shu Lin’s Grandpa. Otter-Barry Books. ISBN 9781913074029.
Hutchins, Pat (2009 edition) Rosie’s Walk. Red Fox Picture Books. ISBN 9781862308060.
Hutchins, Pat (2016) Where Oh Where is Rosie’s Chick? Hodder Children’s Books. ISBN 9781444918281.
Martin, Marc (2016) A River. Templar. ISBN 9781783704330.
McAllister, Angela and Corr, Christopher(2016) A Year Full of Stories. Frances Lincoln. ISBN 9781847808592.
Mitton, Tony (illustrated by Guy Parker-Rees) (2012) The Jungle Run. Orchard Books. ISBN 9781408311752.
Rayner, Catherine (2021) My Pet Goldfish. Walker Books. ISBN 9781406385786.
Rosen, Michael (illustrated Neal Layton) (2015) Monster. Bloomsbury Children’s Books. ISBN 9781408846964.
Timmers, Leo (trans. James Brown) (2021) Where is the dragon? Gecko Press. ISBN 9781776573110.
Willis, Jeanne (illustrated by Gwen Millward) (2008) The Bog Baby. Puffin. ISBN 9780141500300.
Case study: The Water Cycle
Salma was planning to teach her class of eight and nine year olds about the Water Cycle as part of the geography curriculum. The National Curriculum in England for KS2 (seven to eleven year olds) states that children should be taught to ‘describe and understand key aspects of physical geography, including: climate zones, biomes and vegetation belts, rivers, mountains, volcanoes and earthquakes, and the water cycle’ (Department for Education, 2014).
Salma was intending to share with the children a double page spread of the water cycle that included lots of information about each part of the process but when she looked at the text beforehand, she noticed that much of the vocabulary related to subject content and concepts that the children were likely to be unfamiliar with. These included molecules, water droplets, evaporating, evaporation and water vapour. Because the children’s background knowledge and understanding of this area was low they would find making sense of this text very difficult without some practical experiences before being presented with the text and reframing the information it contained.
Selma decided to introduce the topic with an experiment that would enable her to introduce concepts such as evaporation and water vapour, the understanding of which would then support their comprehension of the text. First she asked the question ‘Where does rain come from and where does it go? The children in small groups discussed this and Salma wrote up their ideas on a large piece of paper. Some of the ideas were; rain comes from dark clouds. Rain falls from the sky. The clouds pick up the water as the wind blows them. The rain goes down the drain and into the sea. The children were very unsure how the rain got into the clouds so Salma placed some shallow plates of water near the window of the classroom. She asked the children what will happen to the water. The children then observed that the next day the water had disappeared and discussed where it had gone. Salma introduced the terms water vapour and evaporation/evaporating as part of this discussion. When she was happy that the children now had some background knowledge, she gave them the Water Cycle text. They read it through as a class and clarified words such as molecule, droplets, intense and breeze.
Salma them gave them three questions to discuss in groups of three:
- What happens to the water droplets (looking)?
- Where does rain come from (clue)?
- Why do you think it is called the water cycle (thinking)?
The looking question was designed to ensure that children understood that gist of the journey the water droplets took. The clue question was formulated to support the integration of information across the text to infer where rain comes from. The looking question was designed to ensure the discussion linked explicitly with the geographical concept/process in the subject curriculum.
During the whole class plenary they shared their ideas of each question in turn and Salma prompted for reasoning, dealt with misconceptions and challenged thinking.
Finally Salma asked the children to create a circular diagram which contained the essential information about the water cycle.
Reference
Department for Education (2014) Statutory Guidance: National curriculum in England: Primary curriculum. www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-curriculum-in-england-primary-curriculum.
Questions
These three types of questions can be used to focus of particular aspects of texts. For example, in narrative, questions might focus on character, plot and setting.
Character
- How many animals did the wolf eat in the story? (looking)
- Can you think of a word that describes what this character is like ? How do you know? (clue)
- Did xxx do the right thing? Why? Why not? (thinking)
Setting
- In what places does this story happen? (looking)
- When does this story happen? What are the clues to when the story is set? (clue)
- What do you think would change if the story was set nowadays? (thinking)
Plot
- How does the story begin/end? (looking)
- Is it like any other stories you know? How? (clue)
- What is the problem that has to be sorted out in this story? Would you have sorted it out in a different way? (thinking)
In texts that are found in different subjects the questions can not only be focused on the meaning of the text but also the conceptual understandings of the subject. For example:
- What were houses in Roman times made from? (looking)
- Life in Anglo- Saxon times for ordinary people was hard. True or false? (clue)
- Is Florence Nightingale a significant person? Why? (thinking)
- Has this text left anything out? Is there other information that you know that would help? Do you think this text is a reliable source? (thinking)