Reading comprehension – it’s such a big subject that it’s hard to know where to start (and where to stop!), but if we eliminate some big groups of topics that are often taught together – such as story elements or text structures, which I’ve covered elsewhere anyway – that leaves us with a good assortment of basic reading comprehension material, so that’s where I’ll focus today!
I’ll include articles about teaching reading comprehension skills with both fiction and informational texts.
Reading Comprehension Round-up
Making Inferences
Let’s begin with the reading skill of making inferences, since being able to infer meanings and connections is at the heart of reading comprehension.
Photos, riddles, quotes, rhymes, even road signs can be a good source of material for a lesson on making inferences. Check out the ideas in this post!
Finding Passages
Skill at reading informational text is a necessity for successful students, but informational passages are often geared more toward content-area classes rather than language arts, so finding just the right non-fiction materials can be a challenge!
Finding and using non-fiction passages that are the perfect length for a reading skills lesson is not difficult, but it helps if you know where to look!
Creating Assignments
Fiction or non-fiction, sometimes writing your own questions and activities is an option. Sometimes it isn’t.
What is your go-to method for getting the assignments that you need to accompany each story or article that your class reads? Check out these ideas for assignments to accompany any novel study – a particularly time-consuming task if you are creating from scratch!
Grouping Skills
Do you teach reading skills individually? Or all together in a single piece of reading?
And which of these skills do you include – story elements, text structures, key ideas and details, using context clues. making inferences, drawing conclusions, writing responses, others?
Building Interest
Non-fiction, or informational texts, are great for reading skills lessons, but before you can teach all those great reading skills, you need your kids to actually read the text. So what if your kids love to read stories but are not so enthusiastic about informational text? Here are a few ides for building interest in informational readings.
Prereading activities and reading previews like these can get kids interested in a topic so they will want to read.
Alternate Resources
Sometimes you just want to teach a particular reading skill, not a whole “everything” reading lesson. But you still need some type of text for your material. Or do you?
This post expands on the idea of using photos and riddles to teach reading skills. Practice with longer, more difficult texts can follow later.
Free Task Cards
Here are your free cards – a set of eight half-page task cards with reading comprehension passages and questions addressing a variety of reading skills. Both print and digital versions are included.
The cards in this sampler introduce essential reading objectives that can each be found in more depth in the full-size sets of cards in my store.
