PUnderstanding Levels of Comprehension - At this level, you must read between the lines to
understand the texts in the reading material.
To be successful in reading an article,
story, poem, or novel, one has to draw on - It involves understanding the facts even if not
reading strategies to develop the skills explicitly stated in the reading material.
needed in comprehension.
- It explores answers to questions that begin with
These include retrieving information, “Why and How” because such questions have to
interpreting implicit and explicit ideas, get their implied meaning answered or
integrating and reflecting on concepts and comprehended.
evaluating the information.
C. Evaluative
Active Reading
- Evaluative comprehension requires a deeper
- is done by attending to the various understanding of the topic or event.
comprehension levels
- It involves analyzing and weighing an event or
- it is done when students are proactively involved an author’s intent, opinion, language, and style of
in the reading of a text which leads to presentation.
comprehension.
- It also includes evaluating the appropriateness of
LEVELS OF COMPREHENSION the author’s devices in achieving his aim and then
making inferences based on the fact or idea
- is a devise that aids in literature analysis.
implied in the event or reading material.
- One way to conduct this literature analysis is
D. Appreciative
using a system called “ Levels of Comprehension
“ - Comprehension goes beyond merely decoding
the text or audio and making sense of it.
What are these
- It also involves giving reactions and thoughts
LEVELS OF COMPREHENSION?
about material or events based on a deeper
understanding of the situation or text.
These figure presents the - The appreciative level of comprehension fits
here as it requires reading beyond the lines and
breakdown of each level from involves recognizing the author’s philosophy and
the modified Mt Sac Levels purpose of reading material.
of Comprehension - The philosophies are not stated explicitly but are
implied in the text and involve having an
emotional response and reflections on the
material.
E. Essential
A. Literal -requires the reader to consider an issue that is
addressed in the story “outside” of the story.
- is the basic understanding of a text, including
facts and information that are directly stated. - Bring the concepts of the story to the world
today, can this happen today, does it?
- It involves getting specific answers to questions
or information gathering for questions that start - Write down all the possible world issues that the
with “what, where, when, who,” etc. story discusses or implies.
B. Inferential F. Critique
- is the ability to make valid inferences from the
facts and information received or found in a text.
- When you're reading at the critical level of Basic Phonological Awareness Skills Include:
comprehension, you're moving further beyond the
• Rhyming words
text and making judgments as you read.
What rhymes with whale: tail or tack?
- Students at this level make decisions, such as
whether the text or author is accurate and reliable, • Categorization
or discern if a statement is a fact or an opinion.
Which first sound does not belong: bus, bun, rug?
Other authors, included lexical
comprehension level. In this level, • Segmentation
students’ understanding from vocabulary How many sounds do you hear in “bike” – /b/
in the text are determined before, during, /i/ /k/- “bike”?
and after reading the story/text.
• Identification
Activities include previewing vocabulary
and reviewing new vocabulary. What sound do you hear at the beginning of the
word: dig?
Reading Comprehension
• Substitution
- is the ability to easily and efficiently read text for
meaning. Listen to this word: pen. Take away /e/. Add /a/.
What word do you have now?
- It is the last step of the reading process taught to
children, after they’ve acquired phonological • Insertion
processing skills and learned phonics, fluency, and Listen to this word: crack. Add /er/ to the end of
vocabulary. crack. What word do you have now?
The 5 Steps to Learning to Read: Teaching Phonological Awareness:
1. Phonological Awareness The list of Phonological Awareness skills
2. Phonics goes from simple to complex. Generally
speaking, each basic skill has three
3. Fluency components: Mastering the skill with the
4. Vocabulary Development word’s initial sound – the final sound –
and the medial (or middle) sound.
5. Reading Comprehension
2. Phonics
1. Phonological Awareness
- Phonics teaches children the link between letters
- includes a broad set of skills that identify and and the sounds they make.
manipulate sounds in oral language.
- You teach phonics after teaching your child
- Teaching Phonological Awareness begins with phonological awareness.
introducing children to the idea of Phonemes.
- Phonics instruction provides children with skills
- Phonemes are the basic units of sound a for blending individual sounds into words.
language makes.
It involves lightening fast connections
-While we have 26 letters of the American between different parts of the brain, where
alphabet, we have about 44 phonemic sounds that a person must:
we use to create hundreds of thousands of words.
1. Visually see printed text
2. Identify individual letters within a word
3. Associate the appropriate sound that goes with
a certain letter or letter combination
4. Remember each letter-sound unit while 1. Lexical Comprehension
continuing to decode the remainder of a word
- Understand key vocabulary in the text.
5. Move the mouth muscles to correctly blend and
• Preview vocabulary before reading the
pronounce the individual sounds into a
story or text
recognizable word
• Review new vocabulary during or after
reading the text
2. Literal Comprehension
- Answer Who, What, When and Where
questions.
Look in the text to find the answers written in
the story.
Ask questions from the beginning, middle, and
end of the story.
3. Fluency 3. Interpretative Comprehension
- Reading fluency is the ability to read a text - Answer What If, Why, and How questions.
easily.
• Understand “facts” that are not explicitly
- actually has four parts: accuracy, speed, stated in the story.
expression and comprehension.
• Use illustrations to infer meaning.
- Each part is important, but no single part is
enough on its own. 4. Applied Comprehension
- A fluent reader is able to coordinate all four - Relate story to existing knowledge or opinion.
aspects of fluency.
• Ask questions that have no right or wrong
4. Vocabulary Development answer.
- is a process by which people acquire words. • Challenge children to support their
answers with logic or reason.
- improves all areas of communication
5. Affective Comprehension
5. Reading Comprehension
- Understand social and emotional aspects.
- is the ability to easily and efficiently read text
for meaning. • Preview social scripts to ensure
understanding of plot development.
- It is the last step of the reading process taught to
children, after they’ve acquired phonological • Connect motive to plot and character
processing skills and learned phonics, fluency, and development.
vocabulary.
Let’s take a familiar text and see how different
The 5 Types of Reading Comprehension: types of questions probe different understandings
of the same story.
1. Lexical Comprehension
The fairy tale Cinderella tells the story of a young
2. Literal Comprehension
girl, whose evil stepmother won’t let her go to the
3. Interpretative Comprehension ball. Cinderalla’s fairy godmother, however,
magically whisks her off for the night and
4. Applied Comprehension Cinderella eventually marries her Prince
5. Affective Comprehension Charming.
5 Levels of Comprehension Questions for the It is important to master the different
Cinderella Story: assessment strategies when teaching
literature.
[Link] Comprehension
These strategies help promote students’
What does “enchanted” mean?
reading comprehension, analysis, and
What words are most like “enchanted”: skills related to literature studies.
Magical or funny? Scary or special?
Assessment can be articulated through
2. Literal Comprehension open-ended writing tasks or through a
compendium of students’ performances
Who was the girl who lost the glass (oral and written) over time
slipper?
ACTIVITY 1:
Where did Cinderella go to live at the end
of the story? In 2013, Richard Beach wrote a book chapter
about Assessing Responses to Literature. Read the
3. Interpretative Comprehension abstract to identify the varied assessment
How did the pumpkin turn into a strategies that any teacher can use to obtain
carriage? students’ literary responses.
What would have happened to Cinderella
if she hadn’t lost her slipper?
4. Applied Comprehension
Do you think Cinderella was wrong for
going to the ball after her stepmother told
her she couldn’t go?
5. Affective Comprehension
What do you do when you’re disappointed
because you cannot do something fun? Is
that how Cinderella reacted?
To George Hillock’s (Hillock’s Ladder) the levels
of comprehension are expressed in terms of 3 ACTIVITY: Read, Think and Share
types.
1. According to Beach, how do you assess
learner’s literary responses?
Type 1. questions are literal questions which are 2. What type of formative assessments do you
considered the ‘right there’ or ‘on the page’ know and how do these assessments support the
questions learner’s acquisition of language proficiency?
Type 2. questions are inferential, those which 3. What are the advantages and disadvantages of
require the students to figure out the answers, allowing students to do self-assessment of their
called as ‘think and search question’ discussion responses?
Type 3. generalization questions, themes are With the numerous possibilities to express
deducted to inform personal action. the students’ understanding of literary
pieces, English teachers have to come up
An evaluative questions characterized by ‘beyond
with diverse ways to assess the students’
the text’ question.
response.
Employing Assessment Strategies in Teaching
Literature
Inclusion of critical theories in teaching literature class? Describe comprehensively your future
literature class.
- provides a potent avanue for students to reflect
their own understanding and interpretations of the THANKS FOR LISTENING
text
- extend their critical analysis skills
Here are some of the formative assessment tasks
that can be given to the students in any type of
assessment:
locating and engaging with variety of
literary and theoretical sources
extracting key points from articles
identifying arguments as well as the
evidences that support these arguments
participating in a debate in set text and
resources
Students can also benifit from
indicative reading lists - to hone
their information literary skills, or
provide them connections to the
varied texts to analyze.
ACTIVITY 2:
Bisese et al. (1998) have captured the portrait of
an ideal English class. The account in the next
slide describes the pedagogical practices of a
literature teacher.
Activity 2. If I were, I would...
**If you were Teacher June, what activities and
assessment tasks would you have in your literature
