Defining “Comprehension”
This activity introduces the concept to students that there are three levels of comprehension:
- Literal comprehension
- Inferential comprehension
- Critical comprehension
The activity further engages students with the three levels of comprehension by asking students to formulate questions in response to a passage. This ultimately helps students understand the difference between knowledge, understanding, and interpretation so they may set clear learning goals and adopt behaviors that will help them develop as critical readers.
Teaching Resources
PPT/Word
Preparation
- Choose a passage or short text that all students can read and annotate at the beginning of class (a poem, extract from a short story or essay, etc.) An example has been provided.
- Optional: Pre-prepare a teacher-generated list of questions and organize them by the level of comprehension required to answer the question: literal, inferential, or critical.
Process
- Provide the definitions for “understanding” and “interpretation”.
- Ask students to explain the difference between “understanding” and “interpretation” in their own words with an elbow partner.
- Introduce and define the three levels of comprehension for students, engaging with the example text/sentence provided in the presentation. At each stage, ask students to identify what we know, infer, and might evaluate based on the information provided in the text.
- 3 Levels of Comprehension:
- Literal Comprehension
- Inferential Comprehension
- Critical Comprehension
- Example text: My brother had a destination wedding in Hawaii last summer.
- 3 Levels of Comprehension:
- Introduce the activity “3 Check Comprehension Questions”.
- Ask students to read and annotate the passage provided (an excerpt from The Painted Veil has been provided above).
- Ask students to formulate 5 questions about the passage.
- Ask students to write each of their questions on a separate sticky note.
- Instruct students to form groups of 3 and place all their sticky notes in the middle of the table/floor.
- Instruct students to work together to classify each of their questions using check marks. Repeat questions can be thrown out.
- 1 check: Literal Comprehension
- 2 checks: Inferential Comprehension
- 3 checks: Critical Comprehension.
- Ask students to organize the questions into the three classifications, type the questions up, and turn them in.
- Ask students to reflect in their portfolios: What did you learn about “comprehension” from this lesson? How might this new understanding be helpful for your reading practices? For inferential and critical comprehension, why might it be more useful to write questions as opposed to taking notes on the reading?
Post Activity
- Compile all the students’ questions into one document and organize the questions by their type: literal, inferential, and critical comprehension. Note and correct any errors. Distribute this to students the following class as a way to review the activity and provide teacher feedback. Alternatively, the teacher’s generated list of classified questions could be provided as a form of feedback.
References
Brassell & Rasinski (2008)
