Company
Kentucky Teacher Shares Strategies for
Teaching Comprehension Questions
Part 3: Vocabulary Question
Comprehension Questions Bookmark
To help remind students of these strategies for answering the comprehension questions, download and print a free Comprehension Questions Bookmark for your students.
The bookmark can help students focus on what is required to answer each type of question correctly.
View the
bookmark
Continuing last month’s feature on teaching the comprehension questions, this month we provide a strategy for teaching students to answer the vocabulary questions (questions 3 and 6).
Most Read Naturally stories include five common types of comprehension questions: main idea, literal, vocabulary, inferential, and short answer. It is important for students to understand the different types of questions and have strategies to answer them.
Angela Walker Foster from Anderson County Schools in Lawrenceburg, KY has provided a great instructional strategy for teaching the comprehension questions, and we're pleased to share the strategy with you.
Vocabulary: Look at the sentence before the word, the sentence the word is in, and the sentence after the word.
- Give each student the same five stories.
- Display what vocabulary means, and highlight the key words you want the students to remember: "before the word," "the word is in," and "after the word."
- Read the first story with the class out loud.
- After the story, examine each possible answer for the vocabulary question. Search for the vocabulary word in the story text, and circle it.
- Then underline or highlight the sentence before the vocabulary word, the sentence the vocabulary word is in, and the sentence after the vocabulary word.
- Look for context clues in the highlighted sentences. Then read all three sentences to see what the vocabulary word means in this story.
- As a group, choose the correct answer.
- Repeat steps 3–7 for the second story. The object is for the students to understand how you arrive at the answer. This is a think-aloud exercise.
- Have the students try it themselves for the third story.
- Talk about the different choices after they pick their answer(s).
- Go through each step to make sure they use context clues around the vocabulary word to find the meaning.
- Repeat steps 9–11 for the fourth story.
- Use the fifth story as an assessment to determine whether the students understand how to find the answer to a vocabulary question. If they are still unable to find the answer, choose a few more stories to practice as a group. As with any new lesson, some students will need more practice and instruction than other students.
Part 1: Teaching the Main-Idea Question
Part 2: Teaching the Literal Question
Part 4: Teaching the Inferential Question
Part 5: Teaching the Short-Answer Question
