How Do You Teach Comprehension Skills in the Classroom? by Charming Hare

Syazwani

2025-06-02 04:19:52 UTC

Students are unable to read the passage independently.
Students are unable to understand/differentiate question words i.e., 5W1H
Students do not know how to answer using a grammatical sentence structure.
Students read without understanding the passage.

Huizheng

2025-06-02 04:20:31 UTC

Students can find the relevant paragraph but unable to pick out the specific point that answers the question.

Unfamiliar to 2 mark questions and how to connect their points together.

Character traits

limited vocabulary of traits
Misconception of traits vs feelings
Unable to support the chosen trait with relevant evidence

Fauziah

2025-06-02 04:20:47 UTC

Developing students' ability to provide evidence-based answers.

Inferential Questions

nur_shafiqah_rosland — 2025-06-02 04:21:06 UTC

Students taking the questions too literally / having trouble answering inferential questions.

P2 Shan

2025-06-02 04:21:09 UTC

Students cannot read the text
Students can read but don’t understand the text
Students don’t do any of the annotation techniques taught and answer questions right away
Students don’t understand the question

Amanda

thefutureofenglish — 2025-06-02 04:21:14 UTC

1) Students do not seem to know how to make text-to-text connections.

2) Contextual understanding of topics in the passage is insufficient (lack general knowledge)

2025-06-02 04:21:14 UTC

Students totally misread questions and did not answer questions correctly as a result.
Students could not do sequencing for questions that required them to identify or order events in passage.
Students could not locate details in texts and gave ‘half answers’.
Students could not read.

Sharmini

2025-06-02 04:21:42 UTC

Students don't understand the passage. They read through the whole passage without understanding it.

Nellia

missnellia — 2025-06-02 04:21:53 UTC

Students interpret the questions too literally and are not able to make accurate inferences when answering the questions.

Students often miss out key points when answering the questions. They are usually able to get the general idea but aren't able to accurately answer the question with specific points.

P1, Min Xuan (struggle to answer the questions independently)

2025-06-02 04:22:00 UTC

Students are still dependent on the teacher for reading the passage or question or require prompts or verbal rephrase of the question to understand what is required to answer the question.

Cheryl

2025-06-02 04:22:47 UTC

Before modelling the process of annotation (both surface and deep), the students will identify the text type (i.e., narrative or information) and number the paragraphs.

After annotating, questions will be analysed using the CUB strategy:

Circle the question word.
Underline the subject.
Bracket the main idea.

Swan Lynn

2025-06-02 04:23:21 UTC

Students are unable to get the gist of each paragraph.

siti_mariam_mohamed — 2025-06-02 04:23:26 UTC

Students are not able to read most of the passage.

Students are able to read but do not comprehend the passage.

Students are able to read and comprehend the passage but do not know how to answer the questions accurately.

Issues Faced by Students in OEQ

2025-06-02 04:23:41 UTC

A few strategies have been taught across different levels:

Annotation
CUB-R

It is common to see students breezing through the questions and not applying strategies taught.

Students are used to lifting from the passage to answer questions and this can be increasingly shaped from p4 so they are aware of the P5 standards.

Fauziah

2025-06-02 04:23:56 UTC

Developing students' ability to provide evidence-based answers.
Encouraging critical thinking and deeper understanding of texts.

Nicole

2025-06-02 04:23:56 UTC

1) Students struggle to understand and critically analyse the requirements of the questions asked.

2) Many of the skills required for comprehension are difficult to teach because they cannot be easily quantified and standardised in terms of how they should be taught, practised or assessed. Students may not apply comprehension skills beyond the basic annotations (which they may not find helpful beyond p2/3) as a result

Foundation English -To read and role play/ dramatise the 'story' in the passage. To understand the passage better get pupils to complete a 5W1H checklist on the passage.

2025-06-02 04:24:02 UTC

Amanda

thefutureofenglish — 2025-06-02 04:24:07 UTC

1) Expose students to a variety of general knowledge topics through class discussion, use of What's Up magazine, share about interesting / relevant news reports that students can relate to.

2) Get students to practise summarising main ideas of the passage in each paragraph and identify supporting details; to teach them how to read a text closely.

Nellia

missnellia — 2025-06-02 04:24:46 UTC

Expose students to inferential questions and focus on unpacking these question types. (Have more targeted practice for questions that require deeper thinking)

P4

murni_alidawati_mohamed1 — 2025-06-02 04:24:49 UTC

Some students were having difficulty comprehending the text. They are able to read and decode the pronunciation of difficult words.

However, they are unable to break down the text into chunks independently. Hence, require constant modeling of 5W1H questions to be able the sequence of events. Truncated thought processes.

2025-06-02 04:25:05 UTC

Routines:

Circle the question word, lines/paragraph no. etc.
Underline keywords (character/events etc).
Circle the mark(s) allocated.

For questions that ask for "change", "difference" or "compare", students have to give the before and after or difference (in feelings, behaviours, attitudes etc).

For "How" questions, it usually ask for the actions, reactions and progress. So students can keep a lookout for these.

I remind students not to answer question with another question. For example: "She was sad after what had happened."

"what had happened" is unclear.

nur_shafiqah_rosland — 2025-06-02 04:25:10 UTC

Is it possible to have dedicated practices / lessons answering different question types?

To pull out short paragraphs from articles in Whats Up newspaper and get them to read and comprehend the passage.

2025-06-02 04:25:56 UTC

Break up the questions by paragraph

2025-06-02 04:29:31 UTC

Break up the questions by paragraph.

(After each paragraph, have a question or two)

Give pupils opportunities to design open-ended questions based on a passage - do as groupwork and then they can answer each other questions and peer feedback.

2025-06-02 04:30:39 UTC

Pictorial Representation

2025-06-02 04:34:37 UTC

Pictorial representation (Put a box) beside each paragraph for students to visualise and draw what each paragpraph means.

Showing a video (activating schema)

2025-06-02 04:35:18 UTC

Show a video prior to teaching the passage to activate schema

Reading

2025-06-02 04:39:24 UTC

Emphasising reading as a phrase and not word by word. - to better understand the passage

Annotation

2025-06-02 04:39:54 UTC

Annotating the passage as students read (character / settings etc)

One-Note

2025-06-02 04:40:51 UTC

Using one-note to get the LP student to listen to the text since reading is an issue for them.

Gist of the story

2025-06-02 04:45:21 UTC

Give students options to tick / write about what the paragraph is about at the side of the paragraph.

Teaching Question Words / Types

2025-06-02 04:48:34 UTC

Teaching students the question words and types and how to identify

P4

murni_alidawati_mohamed1 — 2025-06-02 04:49:13 UTC

Strategies

Breaking the text into chunks.
Simply the questions - 5W1H.
CUB Method - Identifying question type with the answer type.
Teach evidence-based questions.
Teach explicitly the question types.
Inferential questions
Identify the 2 marks questions.
Provide a checklist to ensure that students are able to identify the different skill steps required to answer varied questions.
Identify the main ideas and indicate it at the side for each paragraph.
Paraphrasing sentences to check on their understanding VS lifting the sentences from the text.