Read, Write, Grow! 1st Grade Ongoing Comprehension

In this course, pupils will develop their reading comprehension skills by engaging in dialogue. We will 'talk' our way into understanding a text through using the four strategies of 'Reciprocal Reading': predicting, clarifying, questioning and summarizing. 

Predicting: What do we think might happen based on.......?

Clarifying: What words are unfamiliar? What do we think the word _______ means?

Questioning: What questions can you think of related to this text? What do you want to find out? What do you want to learn more about?

Summarizing: Can we think of a sentence to sum up what we have read?

By working to help each other make sense of the text, we will try to understand exactly what the author is trying to convey. Often reading comprehension is all about just writing answers to questions. In this course, we will answer questions BUT ONLY AFTER we've had a good chat first! We'll be doing lots of talking so this will be a fabulous way of improving pupils' speaking and listening skills too! Pupils will also be asked to draw pictures to depict their understanding of the text e.g. pictures of characters/setting/plot. We'll explore a range of fiction and non-fiction pieces to enable them to tackle a variety of texts. 

As an example these are the texts that will be covered during the first four weeks:

Week 1: Tuesday 15th June - 'A New Pet' - A short story about a boy called Tom who desperately wants a new pet but will he be able to get one if he lives in an apartment?

Week 2: Tuesday 22nd June - 'George's Marvellous Medicine' - One of Roald Dahl's classics about a boy who conjures up a magical medicine formula. We will explore the first few pages from Chapter 1. 

Week 3: Tuesday 29th  June - 'Microhabitats' - An information booklet exploring habitats and microhabitats. 

Week 4: Tuesday 6th July - 'Sally McDuff' - A poem about a girl called Sally McDuff who has a habit of dropping snails in the stew...amongst others...