Comprehension and Response: Examine the Topic

Reading for Meaning

In this section, you will explore an activity to better understand what factors children use to comprehend texts.

Reading comprehension is a complex activity that involves interactions between the reader and the text. It requires readers to integrate their existing background knowledge and experiences with skills in reading the text. These skills include word recognition, vocabulary development, and the ability to connect what is known with the new information.

The interactive activity below: Reading for Meaning allows you to understand the comprehension processes by reading to identify what the following passages are describing. A non-interactive version of this activity is also available as a PDF document.

After completing the activity, consider these questions:

• What strategies did you use to understand each passage?
• Were you able to use your own background knowledge to make sense of each passage?
• What elements of the text helped you in comprehending these passages?
• What made these passages difficult to understand?

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