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Developing comprehension – ages 4-6 (W8.1)

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) setting 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, The Biggest Baddest Wolf by Nick Ward. Children can draw on their experience of wolves in other stories to predict from the cover, but prediction during the reading means that they will learn about twists in stories as Harum Scarum seems to be the ‘biggest, baddest, scariest, hairiest’ wolf in the city until he loses his teddy.

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 (accessed 30 April 2017) 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

Alonzo the Chicken gets up to all sorts of adventures so reading more than one of the series will give the children a familiar basis for prediction. Alonzo and the All-Eyed Monster by Debbie Kelly introduces Alonzo’s evil twin, Alfonso, who is in league with the monster. The fast action and short chapters provide plenty of opportunities for prediction and there is a lot of fun with words.

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. See http://www.literacyshed.com/baboon.html (accessed 30 April 2017).

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 that 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 (useful for phonics teaching) on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jyh81PF16ME (accessed 30 April 2017).

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. See http://www.literacyshed.com/whistleless.html (accessed 30 April 2017).

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

The familiar characters in traditional tales can help in making text-to-text connections. Ian Whybrow’s Badness for Beginners: Little Wolf and Smellybreff, humorously illustrated by Tony Ross, gives children the chance to talk about other books with wolves as characters (a collection of other books featuring wolves would be a good support for making these connections) but also, as this is a family story, there are opportunities to make connections between the children’s personal experience and the text.

6–7 year olds

The Story Spinner DVDs of storytellers has many traditional stories from around the world, which enable text-to-text connections. The ability to replay the stories is a great aid to discussion of how stories work. See http://thestoryspinner.co.uk/apps/ (accessed 30 April 2017).

Any collection of a range of different versions 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

Older readers can be challenged to envisage places and situations that are not familiar to them. The Herd Boy by Niki Daly tells of a day spent herding sheep by Malusi in South Africa and dreaming of becoming President of his country.