Building Comprehension Strategies for the Primary Years + CD

Skilled readers are active readers, using many comprehension strategies to make meaning before, during and after reading. Building Comprehension Strategies focuses on strategies often used to develop the comprehension ability of primary school students:

• making connections to prior knowledge
• prediction and re-prediction
• visualisation
• asking and answering questions
• inference
• retell and paraphrasing
• summarisation.

Building comprehension strategies provides:

• an explanation of each strategy, giving examples of learning goals and success criteria
• examples of "talk-aloud" and "think-aloud" teaching and learning approaches
• examples of deliberate instruction based on commonly used reading texts
• self and peer assessment tasks in relation to strategy use
• advice on how teachers can integrate the strategies in one or a series of lessons.

The accompanying CD Rom contains blackline masters and graphic organisers that can be used for independent, pair and small-group work during instruction and as part of planned practice and maintenance throughout the year.

Dr Alison Davis is well known and highly respected as a leading literacy researcher, writer, speaker and staff trainer. She is particularly well known for her research on reading comprehension and leading initiatives focused on accelerating and sustaining improved levels of comprehension achievement. She has extensive experience in working in Asia, Australia, the Middle East, New Zealand and the United States.