Reading Comprehension Mini Lesson
By MARISSA DESPINS Updated April 10, 2024
If there is one thing I love, it is a good mini lesson – something quick and easy to set up, and something that packs a lot of learning into one quick burst. In my 2/3 class, we like to start our Monday mornings with a quick reading comprehension mini lesson before we head off to to our literacy block. These are typically one off lessons that last less than 30 minutes, but are always powerful and tied directly to our learning.
Today we focused on a lesson I like to call “What the Picture Doesn’t Show”.
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Today we focused on the reading strategy of Questioning. We completed a lesson my literacy professor taught us way back in my university days. I have been doing this activity with my classes for years. I have always found it to be super effective.
For additional information on the questioning strategy, check out our guide!
Why is it important to teach kids to ask questions while they read?
Learning to form and articulate questions before, during, and after reading helps students with reading comprehension. This allows them to make sense of what they are reading so they can understand it more deeply. Basically, teaching students to ask thought provoking questions while reading helps them to monitor their own comprehension.
Reading comprehension anchor chart
For this activity, we began with an empty anchor chart titled “What the Picture Doesn’t Show”. I had students select an animal picture from a stack of animal cards we sometimes use to generate ideas for writing, and I taped it to the middle of the anchor chart. As a class, we brainstormed a list of things that the picture DID NOT tell us.
Where is this? What type of trees are those? Is that a jungle or a rainforest? Does he have friends? What are they looking at? Why is it holding the baby? Who took the picture? We had soooo many questions about the image, and quickly discovered that the image really wasn’t telling us very much at all!
For additional information on anchor charts, check out our Ultimate Guide to Anchor Charts post!
Reading comprehension activities
Afterwards, I sent the kids off to their desks with some beat up national geographic magazines from 1982 (previously scanned for inappropriate images and naked people) and a stack of old picture books the librarian was giving away. I had the students choose an image, cut it out, and glue it to the middle of their page. After, they wrote their own questions in marker all around their image.
When the students were done with the activity, we took turns sharing some of our questions. I was super impressed with some of their ideas! It was a great, quick, hands on mini lesson to introduce the reading strategy of questioning before heading into our literacy block. Later in the day, some of the students even chose to write about their images – all of those questions uncovered stories that they were just dying to get out on the page!
If you have any other great ideas to go along with this strategy, or some other fun mini lesson ideas, please share them in the comments below! As always, I look forward to learning alongside you!
For additional information on reading strategies, check out our complete reading strategies guide!
Looking for more reading related posts?
Check out my previous post about cultivating a love of reading here.
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