Comprehension – Year 6/7 (2018)

Learning Area: English

Topic Focus: Comprehension
Year Level/s: 6/7

Australian Curriculum Links:

Strand:
Literature
Descriptor:
Reflect on ideas and opinions about characters, settings
and events in literary texts, identifying areas of agreement
and difference with others and justifying a point of view
Identify and explore ideas and viewpoints about events,
issues and characters represented in texts drawn from
different historical, social and cultural contexts
Sub-Strand:
Literature and context, examining literature,
responding to literature
Achievement Standards:
By the end of Year 7, students understand
how text structures can influence the complexity of
a text and are dependent on audience, purpose
and context. They demonstrate understanding of how the
choice of language features, images and vocabulary
affects meaning.
Students explain issues and ideas from a variety of
sources, analysing supporting evidence and implied
meaning. They select specific details from texts to develop
their own response, recognising that texts reflect different
viewpoints. They listen for and explain different
perspectives in texts.

Learning Focus:

- Improving reading comprehension

Learning Intention:
Lesson Objective:
- Understanding language features
- Explaining and justifying ideas from a text
- Developing their own response from texts
- Predicting
- Inferring
- Making connections
- Summarising
- Vocabulary

Structure/Time: Process: Resources:

Introduction: Recap: What strategies can students use when they are Sheena Cameron:
working with unfamiliar texts? teaching reading
comprehension
- Go through the strategies students might use strategies
- What are they? (refer to Sheena Cameron book)
- Where can we use them?
- Why do we use them?
- What strategies do you think we might use in this text?

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Learning Experience: Strategy 1: Predicting and synthesising Anticipation guide (for
- Using clues to make smart guesses about what is coming each accompanying
up in the text. text).
- Students make predictions using the anticipation guide
to guess what might be in the text.
- They read an excerpt and decide before reading whether
this is true or false.
- During guided reading sessions, the anticipation guide
will be referred to.
- After reading the text the students will fill out the ‘after
reading’ section where they will synthesise the
information they found during reading
- This will be reflected on at the beginning of their next
guided reading session
- Students will be asked to justify their thoughts
- Students also infer through finding inferences (some
students struggle with this hence why it is reflected on in
the next session)

Strategy 2: Inferring and making connections Double entry journal

- Students need to make connections between what they (for each
are reading and their prior knowledge. accompanying text).
- Students will either make:
o Text to self
o Text to text
o Text to world
- Students will take quotes directly from the text
- Students will then explain why they think this is
important and how it connects to them
- This helps students to focus on the connections they are
making and how the text can be relevant
- Students are also inferring and finding hidden meanings
- Students can reflect on how the author may be
connecting with people when they imply things
- Students will elaborate on their journal entries in the
next guided reading session

Strategy 3: Vocab / making sense of key words (extension work) Key word hunt (for
- This task in an extension if students complete their each accompanying
anticipation guide AND double entry journal. text).
- This allows students to explicitly search for key words,
identify them and use them in writing a summary
- Can also be used as an assessment tool to see how well
students are grasping the idea of note taking, finding key
words and writing a summary
- Students will note key phrases in the proforma as they
re-read the text (key phrases explain the text / are vital
to the text)
- Students will then take the key words from the phrases

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 - Use the key words to write a summary of the text

Strategy 4: Summarising (IMPLEMENTED AFTER FIRST 3

GUIDED READING/READING COMPREHENSION SESSIONS)
Implemented summarising as students are focusing on Tic-Tac-Toe
summarising within their response writing summarising sheet
Students were ‘retelling’ rather than summarising a text
Adapting to students needs
- Students read through the text and note down key
words
- Students do this for the entire text
- Following this, students begin to write a summary of
the text using the key words to inform themselves
- Students share their summary with a partner
Conclusion/Reflection Closing:
Time: - Mark student work as they complete it
- During the following weeks session, have students share
their work
- Whilst sharing their work, ensure to question students to
monitor understanding
- Have students justify their work
- Have students complete an exit slip
- Reflecting on the work in the next guided reading
session is vital to ensure you are monitoring how
students are going with their comprehension and
whether they are understanding the texts they are
working with.
Self-Evaluation - This session always runs very smoothly as the students are familiar with the
work
- The only thing that changes is the text they are working with (sometimes can be
more challenging)
- All students completed it to the best of their ability
- Students focused explicitly on summarising this session
- Students needed to learn to summarise rather than ‘re-tell’
- Students were questioned and asked to justify their thinking
- We took notes of key words as a group to get students familiar with the process
- Students worked in pairs to share their summary
- Students worked individually too
Supervising teacher - Great tuning in and following a PPT to gibe students summarising information
evaluation - Gradual release of responsibility
- Students were engaged whilst reading but more engaged when the
comprehension work was incorporated
- Link the summarising to the writing
- Continue to get students to share their work as it gives them responsibility of
actually engaging with it
Student evaluation - Students liked learning what key words are
- Students liked learning what a summary is and how it differs from a re-tell
- Students said they would have liked more questioning

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Text: What are coding systems?

Name: ______________________________________________________Date accessed________________________

Statement Before Reading After Reading Reflection

True/False True/False
The text explains that coding systems can be
in all technological and electronic devices.

The text says the only things that can

understand coding are technological and
electronic devices.

The text exclaims coding systems allow

people to create instructions.

Computers can only follow instructions they

receive and identify.

Computers are procedural, the text explains

they thrive on lists and order.
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Name: Date: Text:

Tic-tac-toe note-taking
In these boxes, write down key words or notes from the text. The key
words/notes need to summarise the main ideas.

Use the key words/notes to write a brief summary

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