Teaching Comprehension Strategies

Teaching Comprehension Strategies is a series of seven books designed to guide pupils through their comprehension development.

The Teaching Comprehension Strategies series methodically and creatively teaches pupils the strategies and skills needed for effective comprehension and prepares them for the next stage of comprehension development.

Download a sample of Teaching Comprehension Strategies

Teaching Comprehension Strategies is an innovative series designed specifically for primary school teachers and pupils in Ireland. This series equips educators with effective tools to enhance pupils' comprehension skills through modelling, discussion, guided, and independent practise:

• Carefully selected pieces of fiction and non-fiction text tailored and designed to best suit the teaching strategy.
• Each strategy has a teacher page to help model the strategy, directly followed by independent practise activities to master the strategy.
• Each strategy has a test page to ensure the strategy is used and transferred.
• Detailed teacher pages for each strategy, including answers.

Aimed at fostering reading comprehension across various text types, this resource is essential for developing skilled, thoughtful readers.

Key features of Teaching Comprehension Strategies

• Modelling techniques: Demonstrations of comprehension strategies provide pupils with clear examples to mimic and learn from.
• Interactive discussions: Encourages pupils to share thoughts and engage actively with texts.
• Guided practise: Provides structured learning environments where pupils can explore texts under teacher guidance.
• Independent practise: Allows pupils to apply learned strategies, promoting self-reliance and confidence in reading.
• Format options: Available in both Photocopiable Book and eBook formats, these resources offer flexible teaching and learning opportunities.

Developing reading comprehension skills

The series focuses on developing a robust set of reading comprehension skills through a blend of theoretical and practical approaches. Each lesson is structured to introduce new comprehension strategies incrementally, ensuring a solid foundation that builds towards mastering complex skills as pupils advance through their primary education.

Curriculum links

The Teaching Comprehension Strategies series is meticulously aligned with Ireland’s Primary Language Curriculum, making it relevant for Senior Infants through to 6th Class. It supports curriculum objectives such as predicting outcomes, recalling details, engaging with various texts, developing study skills, and distinguishing between fact and opinion.

Benefits for teachers

• Teacher resources: Provides teachers with a structured pathway to impart comprehension skills, saving time and enhancing lesson effectiveness.
• Curriculum-aligned: Directly links with Ireland’s Primary Education Curriculum, making it easy to integrate into daily lessons.
• Easy to implement: Materials are easily integrated into existing lesson plans, with activities suitable for whole-class or small-group instruction.
• Professional development: Enhances teaching strategies by incorporating proven methodologies in reading comprehension.

Benefits for pupils

• Enhanced comprehension: Helps pupils develop a toolkit of strategies to approach reading tasks effectively.
• Increased engagement: Interactive and varied activities keep learning enjoyable and dynamic, maintaining student interest.
• Skill development: Supports the growth of critical thinking, deduction, problem-solving, and evidence-based reasoning skills.
• Confidence building: As pupils master new strategies, their confidence in reading and understanding complex texts increases.

Key comprehension strategies

The series introduces 12 essential reading comprehension strategies integral to developing proficient readers. These strategies include predicting, questioning, visualising, inferring, summarising, evaluating, synthesising, and more. Each comprehension strategy is explored in context, providing pupils with the tools to understand and engage with texts deeply.

12 reading comprehension strategies

Teaching Comprehension Strategies details 12 key strategies essential for developing proficient readers:

• Predicting: Encourages pupils to use textual clues to anticipate content and plot developments.
• Visualising: Builds mental images from text to enhance understanding and memory.
• Questioning: Develop critical thinking skills by prompting pupils to formulate and answer questions about the text.
• Connecting: Helps pupils link the text to personal experiences or other knowledge.
• Clarifying: Teaches strategies to resolve confusion and develop a clear understanding of the text.
• Evaluating: Encourages judgments about text content, themes, and structures.
• Inferring: Develops ability to read between the lines and understand subtle aspects of text.
• Summarising: Enhances comprehension and recall through concise explanation of main ideas.
• Analysing: Examination of text structures and their contributions to meaning.
• Synthesising: Combines new information with existing knowledge to form unique insights.
• Skimming and Scanning: Develop quick search techniques for general ideas or specific information.
• Interpreting: Guides pupils in deriving meaning from fiction and non-fiction text.

Prim-Ed comprehension strategies in your classroom

Transform how your pupils read and comprehend with Teaching Comprehension Strategies. Add the series to your teaching toolkit to provide your pupils with the robust reading comprehension skills they need for academic success.