READING COMPREHENSION

1. Literal Comprehension
Literal comprehension involves what the author is actually
saying. The reader needs to understand ideas and information
explicitly stated in the reading material.

Some of this information is in the form of recognizing and

recalling facts, identifying the main idea, supporting details,
categorizing, outlining, and summarizing.

The reader is also locating information, using context clues to

supply meaning, following specific directions, following a
sequence, identifying stated conclusion, and identifying explicitly
stated relationships and organizational patterns.
These organizational patterns can include cause and
effect as well as comparison and contrast. For example,
some questions and activities may include:

What words state the main idea of the story?

How does the author summarize what she/he
is saying?
Outlining the first paragraph of the story.
What happened first, second and last?
How are these things alike? How are they
different?
What things belong together?
Here are examples of the type of information
that could be identified as literal meaning:

The main idea

Stated facts
The sequence of events
Characters in the story
 Activity 1
Who, What, Where, When,
Why and How scaffold.

Using teacher selected text, students consider the structure of

the text and discuss what information they would expect to be
included. Provide students with a copy of the text, post-it notes
and the Who, What, Where, When, Why and How
scaffold.
The teacher discusses the scaffold (Who, What, Where, When,
Why and How). The teacher then models constructing a
question and uses the scaffold to record the answer. The
students can then be either paired or grouped (teacher
discretion) to construct questions that can be answered from
the text.
The students should then have an opportunity to retell or
summarise the text verbally prior to creating a written
summary.
Activity 2: what is it
about?
Students use a graphic organiser to find key information from
the text and create a succinct summary from the text.
During the activity students may need to be prompted to
question the text including the visual and labels.
This activity can be completed at a class level, group level, pair
level or individually. Students need to be clear they are to
record key facts from the text. The teacher may pose a few
questions to assist, such as: 'What ...? Who ...? How ...?'
The facts then lead to a general statement regarding the text
subject matter with students including at least one or more key
facts taken from the text.
Students discuss their facts and summary.