Texts Made Easy Read, Understand, Succeed

Comprehension

Reading strategies for Year 7. Two lesson series: one to repair how a page is read, one to use what has been read for school work.

Improve your comprehension

For a reader who gets to the bottom of a page and cannot say what it was about. Each week is one strategy, hung on a subject the class is already studying.

  1. Week 1: How the page looks

    TAS — Woodworking

    Changing the size, the typeface and where the pictures sit can change how easy a page is to read - and what helps you is not what helps the person next to you.

  2. Week 2: Before you read

    History — The Vikings

    Look at the headings, pictures and captions first and work out roughly what is coming before you read a single sentence.

  3. Week 3: Unfamiliar words

    Science — Forces: push and pull

    What to do when you hit a word you do not know: look inside it, look around it, check the glossary - and keep going rather than stopping dead.

  4. Week 4: What's in a question

    Maths — Area, volume and worded problems

    Take a question apart before you answer it. What is it actually asking, and what kind of answer does it want back?

  5. Week 5: Questions first, then the text

    Geography — Water in the World

    Read the questions before the text. Scan for where the answers live. Then read it properly, knowing what you are looking for.

  6. Week 6: Colour coding ideas

    PDHPE — Personal hygiene

    Mark up a paragraph by what each part is doing - what to do, why it matters, how often - so the main idea stops hiding in the detail.

  7. Week 7: One paragraph at a time

    Languages — Why learning a language matters

    Stop at the end of every paragraph, dump what you got, and ask yourself two quick questions - out loud with someone first, then silently on your own.

  8. Week 8: What's said and what's meant

    English — The Day the Maps Changed

    Sometimes the page tells you something without saying it. How to spot it, and how to point at the words that made you think so.

  9. Week 9: Symbols and techniques

    Visual Arts and English — Colour, symbol and mood

    Why red means something. The choices a writer or an artist makes on purpose, and how to talk about them.

Look: