Comprehension problem white level end of Y2

[noramum]

We have a problem. DD is in a year 2 on White band. She can read very fluently but lacks vital comprehension skills and the teacher obviously is reluctant to move her up.

We have to problem since last Summer term in Y1 and the school only half-hearted tried to solve it by giving her 1/2 term extra support with similar children but fails to explain properly to us how we can help DD. She was moved reluctantly from purple to gold and then to white as she got very bored with the reading material in school. When she gets bored she only reads faster.

We get explanations like "she needs to read between the lines" but this doesn't help a lot. That the school also provides books like Rainbow Fairies for white level is no help as you read one and you know the storyline of all of them.

Does anybody uses any websites or worksheets to help with practical examples we can work with DD?

We know she can concentrate and read properly if she wants but the school only reads in groups and she gets distracted. At home she reads a lot more difficult books and when we talk about it she mostly gets the idea. But we feel she needs to do practical work instead of just talking to us. And we need to know what questions to ask.

We will speak to the school again but I just feel not a lot will come out of it and from September she will be in a Junior school with less support.

There are hundreds of resources on www.primaryresources.co.uk/english/englishbooks.htm Some of them are based on scheme books, some are based on "real" books and some are general ideas and questions to ask when reading. There are comprehension activities, both written and oral, but you need to delve around a bit!

You can buy some 'workbooks' which are comprehension based, not many but there are some around, I saw some in Waterstones whilst looking for something else. It might be worth getting her one and starting right from the basics of it and working through.

Useful starting point

Maybe useful

Try Horrid Henry books they are fab for inference.

Personally I am a fan of kids reading books that are too easy for them to work on comprehension/inference because they don't have to us brain power working out the text iyswim.

You could also try the Happy Families series by Alan Ahlberg.

This DfE PDF is quite comprehensive.

How are the school judging your DD's lack of comprehension? For example do they use an assessment tool such as PM benchmark (there are lots of others) which ask inferential questions? Or is it just through guided reading?

In your position I would want the school to share their evidence of when your DD hasn't understood because that will help you know exactly what to focus on.

If you look at some SATS papers you will see (in the handbook part or whatever it's called) that they categorise each question, so it is easy to identify which questions are inferential. You could try a couple of those specific questions with your DD just to see how she responds.

At white level I remember working quite a lot with DD on pronouns (hope I'm getting the terminology right) because I spotted that she didn't always understand what the 'hims' / 'hers' and also 'its' were referring to. It's quite a specific area of comprehension but a critical one. This is what I mean when I say it will be useful, not to mention efficacious, to know exactly what sort of inference she needs to work upon.

It will also help to ensure that the school aren't just using it as an excuse. I'm not saying it happens often, but I think it does sometimes happen. I only say this because from your post it doesn't seem like this is a problem that you've noticed at home. Also, if her problem is actually finding it hard to concentrate due to noise, or feeling shy speaking up in a group, then working on her comprehension at home isn't going to help much.

One more point, poems tend to be full of inference, in addition many are quite short and/or humorous (well a whole range of emotions obviously) so win-win for focussing on inference.

Sorry, one more link to some on-line inferential exercises!

thinking about diamondage's comments there, have you spoken much about metaphors, idioms, synonyms, homonyms and momophones etc (all those lovely long words that we all forget about as soon as we have been taught them and no I can't remember what they all are but DD1 can!) All of these contribute to what we can get out of reading. Also the other thing I noticed probably around gold/white/lime level was sentence structure often changes and becomes more complex. the use of commas to add more information and so on. sentences become longer. characters referred to are also less obvious.

Thanks for this. I saw some workbooks but found them more designed for KS2. Will look again and also check the websites.

Last week the teacher got a long letter from us and just gave DD a list with points what they have to achieve before moving up to free reader, white is the last band here. No indication which of the points DD struggles with so we send the list back today with hopes to get some more precise answers.

DD hates books which are too easy to read, she runs through them because sentence structure and vocabulary are not a challenge. It is better with her favourite factual books as she needs to concentrate more to digest the information.

The school doesn't say how they assess them. They also don't guide them in choosing books, we "complained" about the fact that DD only brought Rainbow magic home, often the same book twice, and the astonished teacher then scolded her for not choosing different ones. Hm.

It also has effects on her confidence. She was moved reading groups, the teacher excused it with reshuffling them to accommodate PE sessions and her violin lesson but I know that most children in her old group are now free readers and the new group is still on white. She tried to soften it by saying that White is quite high level already for but I think it is rubbish.

Well, the school was great 3 years ago, unfortunately the change of head seemed to result in sever lack of communication and too much focus on either really good pupils or the ones lacking a lot.

Do you know what. Just let her read what she wants to read outside of school. There's nothing more offputting than being forced to read books you perceive as boring and I don't think some schools get this.

Encourage her to ask questions and listen to her, but honestly, if she likes reading, just let her get on with it. She can be a free reader at home.

We do a trawl of charity shops for books about once a month and what they read at home bears (bares?) no relation to what they bring home in their bookbags. They both now have v reading high levels.

When she's reassessed in sept, she'll probably leap forward.

I have just looked and the comprehension book we have is a collins one - Collins Easy Learning Comprehension Practice Age 5-7. £3.99 from Waterstones. blue book with a picture of a green martian on the front.

it starts with basic what happens next, put things in order, then answer the questions based on pictures, tables etc then based on general knowledge like 'who puts out fires? doctor, teacher, fireman. then there are short poems/passages with questions asked with multiple choice answers, then yes no answers, then some writing/paragraph answers. things like how do you think the troll felt when the billy goat went over the bridge (following a little cartoon about it and some questions) , bit on dictionaries, and so it goes on. I think it is very good and whilst some bits will seem very easy to her it might just help fill in the little gaps or give you some starting points for things like what tells you the troll was feeling hungry/happy or whatever she has picked. how else could he have been feeling. what other words could have told you that.

From a layman's perspective - not a teacher - I wouldn't worry too much 'comprehension concerns' because she is so young. If she is not interested she may not be retaining the story or if she is still solidifying her decoding skills or recognition of high frequency words she may be more focused on deciphering words rather than following the story. She may just find it boring:-)
I would read the school books at home and then read harder chapter books at home that she finds not too challenging. This will enable her to build her comprehension of longer texts

A child reading securely at white level should be decoding fluently and automatically so should be free to focus on comprehension. They should be beyond the simply recalling what they have read stage and be able to make deductions and predictions about why a charagter acts in a certain way or what the character might do next for example. They should be able to offer opinions and make comparisons about characters, settings and themes. They should be able to identify and talk about the features of the text and why the author used different words and devices in the text .... the best way to develop this is by talking about what they have read with a supportive adult not from workbooks.

I agree with simpson it's easier to do this if the child can read the text effortlessly which is why schools often use texts that the child can read easily to work on comprehension.

noramum

You've had some great advice there and lots of useful links about comprehension/ inference.

For my part I just want to say you're not alone - this kind of thing happens at our school all the time.

My advice is with reading scheme books - especially ORT (Oxford Reading Tree) or Collins Big Cat - there often are comprehension exercises at the back of the book. Have a look at these (especially if you've had the book assigned for several days) and see if after having finished the story, working your way through these questions helps your DC think about deeper meaning (life lessons), character's feelings, author's use of language, alternative endings, etc....).

I stumbled across this Manchester school system guide to reading - and found it helpful - perhaps it will help answer questions and give you ideas too: www.mewan.net/curriculum/english/getfile.php?src=25/a_guide_to_pregression_in_reading_skills.pdf

(Have a look on page 38 of this document - which goes through both the reading skills and comprehension skills necessary to have fully achieved 'White Reading Band').

A senior school English teacher (a good friend) helped a lot by explaining that a lot of comprehension is about a child demonstrating through paraphrasing & later precisely referring back to the text to support their answer.

So (just as an example) if your daughter was asked: 'How do we know Little Red Riding Hood was scared?'

your DC should be able to say 'In the story, there's a part where Little Red Riding Hood keeps turning around becuase she thinks she hears something behind her and shivers.' The author also describes the forest with lots of words that make it seem a bit of a scary place - like: eery, creepy, haunted, dark, unfriendly, etc...

HTH

mrz when I suggested workbooks I meant for them to do together, so that the workbook would give the OP the information SHE needs to prompt the responses from her daughter. Not everyone has been trained in how to do this, what questions to ask etc. launching into a long book and just discussing a paragraph is great but only if the parent knows what they should be talking about otherwise it could be a potentially pointless exercise.

No nickname - I think we have had the same work book! DD is obsessed with workbooks & wants to learn "all about literacy" however for a child that doesn't want to do work books I would just keep listening to them read and just as importantly read to them although my DC refuse to as they say they are too big

Mrz - sorry I have to disagree. Yes, they should decode and understand but not all children do so.

I could read - by decoding - a lot of texts but it doesn't mean I can understand the content. And DD just runs to an easy text and reads but not understandd. As I said, she is ok with more difficult texts as she has to concentrate more. We also hear lots of storytapes, she is bi-lingual and we use them for the minority language, and you can see the difference, because she has to concentrate.

We have concentration problems with her generally, making silly mistakes in writing and maths as she rushes, and I think if we would get explicit tasks to do instead of a bit of wish-wash "talk about the characters" it would help a lot more. Why can't teacher give out worksheets a child does with the parent like "We read book xx and homework is to complete the following questions". Grrrr. Teacher must have resources when they talk about certain books in school.

No Nick - exactly. I am sure some parents know how to talk literacy but not all.

Pastsellbydate - the school never really had a reading scheme, I think we didn't get any ORT since DD was on turquoises. We get all kind of books, factual, toddler stories, small chapter books.

OK Noramum:

I think if your child is now reading 'proper' fiction/ non-fiction books than my advice would be to get on a search engine and type worksheets for...

so DD2 at that age was reading things like Roodica the Rude (which by the way is a great series of books, very funny and DD2 liked clever, naughty Roodica)

Just typing in Worksheets on Roodica the Rude got me this:

www.scottishbooktrust.com/files/roodica_the_rude_learning_resources.pdf

and from that I could use those questions - to help prime me for discussing her reading (i.e. comprehension tasks) after we finished a chapter or the book.

Genuinely the internet is amazing - there are tons of free resources out there - it takes your time/ effort - (and trust me I totally get the resentment as a parent of having to do this kind of thing and your frustration that the teachers can't give you little sheets to prime you for this kind of exercise) - but if this is your child's current stumbling block and it bother's you/ you want to help/ you feel strongly you NEED to help - then it's time well spent.

Also - look at some of the book review templates for KS1 children. These help you think through aspects of a story working that 'comprehension muscle' - link here from primary resources for varoius 'review' activities: www.primaryresources.co.uk/english/englishbooks.htm - the numbers next to documents are year and KS1 = Y1/ Y2 and KS2 = Y3-6.

HTH

Pastsellbydate - Thanks

No prob noramum - I've been there and feel your frustration

The Six question types exercise on primary resources (4th down left hand column) looks a good start for a 6 year old.

There's tons of ideas there - so explore and enjoy.

If your school asks your child to keep a summer scrap book and show examples of reading over the summer (as ours did) - use the book report forms off primary resources after finishing books. That really helped DD1 (between Y3 and Y4 - she was not even at white level at that point sadly).

Hope that helps.

My DD1 is similar but has improved significantly.

When reading to her now, we explain idioms and point out the obvious like we never did before e.g. a comprehension passage mentioned someone borrowed someone else's car. One of the questions was, Do you think X has a driving licence?. DD1 (6) didn't know if the person had one or not because we had never thought to explain to her that people need a driving licence though we had talked about you have to be 16 to drive etc.

I think some of these will come with time of course but, I'd recommend "Collins Primary Focus - Comprehension: Introductory Pupil Book", it goes beyond the introductory book to other levels but this is the first of them. It initially gets the child to answer basic questions for which the answers are obvious, then answer questions that are not so obvious i.e they need to read between the lines or think about it, finally they need to put themselves in a similar situation and write about what they might do differently etc.

Sorry noramum but you seem to have misunderstood what I wrote. I'm saying some children can decode at a very hight level but their comprehension is at a much lower level. For these children it is useful to develop comprehension skills with texts they find easy to decode ... so if your child is decoding fluently at white level and beyond it is better to give slightly easier books for comprehension purposes.

The problem with worksheets once children are beyond the basic recall stage is that the questions tend to have a right or wrong answer whereas it's more important that the child can offer an opinion and justify their view.

nonicknameseemsavailable would it shock you to learn that most teachers haven't been trained to teach reading/comprehension either?

no not given some of the teachers I have worked with over the years - it wouldn't shock me but that is where sometimes workbooks etc can have a really useful place. They can help guide an adult who doesn't know to ask the questions like how does x feel? how do we know that? what word tells us that?

Sometimes I actually wonder if SOME teachers have actually been trained in much at all but that is another story (thinks back to the teacher who didn't see it was wrong for a child to be jumping up and down on a desk in her classroom with a mouthful of beads.....)

Most teachers I talk to had very little input on reading during their teacher training - seems to be a belief that if you can read you will know how to teach others. That's why some like workbooks and handbooks ... it's a bit like teaching by numbers saves thinking.

The point is you don't need to ask the type of questions found in workbooks ... you just need to talk about the book with your child. Just like the child jumping on a desk with a mouthful of beads ... the teacher doesn't need to be trained to know that's not a good idea ,,, they just need to employ some common sense.