Reading Comprehension Teaching Resources
Explore printable reading comprehension worksheets, digital activities and more to teach reading comprehension strategies in your primary classroom. Created by teachers, for teachers, the teaching resources in this collection are aligned with the Australian curriculum and have undergone a careful review by a member of our expert teaching team.
You'll find editable versions to easily differentiate your instruction for individual students, plus various options to make your lesson planning easier this school year!
New to teaching this portion of the English curriculum or just looking for fresh and engaging ways to teach reading comprehension strategies? Read on for a primer from our teacher team, including a simple definition of reading comprehension, a look at different strategies students can use and more!
What Is Reading Comprehension?
We'll start at the beginning! Reading comprehension is a skill that's hard to overestimate in terms of its importance for early years students to develop.
Defined as the ability to understand and interpret written language, reading comprehension involves the process of decoding text, extracting meaning from it, and then integrating that meaning with prior knowledge and understanding.
Not only does comprehension comprise the ability to recognise and understand individual words, but it also involves the ability to recognise patterns and relationships within sentences and paragraphs, as well as the ability to make inferences and draw conclusions based on the information presented.
This isn't just important for reading, of course.
Comprehension is all about making meaning, and it includes various levels of understanding, including:
- Literal
- Inferential
- Evaluative
- Critical
If you think about it, we rely on these skills on a daily basis — when we notice the stooped shoulders of a partner as they walk in the door or when we listen to the weather report and observe how heavily laden the sky is with grey clouds.
To develop those same skills in a reading context, our students need to build a variety of language skills, such as vocabulary knowledge, grammar and syntax, as well as cognitive processes, such as attention, memory and critical thinking.
So how do they get there? Let's talk strategies!
What Are Reading Comprehension Strategies?
As you well know, students don't start off being able to comprehend every single thing they read. But teaching them strategies to understand better and retain information will allow them to go from recognising individual words to understanding a range of texts.
Some common reading comprehension strategies include:
- Previewing — This is the process of skimming the text before reading it in detail to get an overall sense of what it is about.
- Activating Prior Knowledge — Students can draw on existing knowledge and experience to help them understand new information, such as a new text.
- Making Connections — This strategy focuses on teaching students to make connections between a text and their own experiences and understandings. Research into the science of reading has shown enhanced comprehension when students are able to connect new information to information they already know.
- Questioning — In this comprehension strategy, students ask and answer questions to clarify the meaning of the text and deepen their understanding. When you centre questioning activities around the familiar open-ended prompts of who, what, when, where, how, why, and which, students assert their understanding and identify any gaps in their comprehension of the text. Questions can be posed by a teacher, by their peers, or by the students themselves.
- Visualising — Visualisation provides both teachers and students with another means to extend their exploration of a text and deepen understanding. This reading comprehension strategy asks students to create and describe an image in their mind, centered around a place, situation, or character in the text. Visualising has been proven in research to improve student recall! Using the five senses is a great way to scaffold student comprehension through visualising.
- Summarising — Summarising is a reading comprehension strategy that asks students to reflect on the text and communicate their understanding of it. A well-formed summary is made up of the main idea of the text and the key details that support the main idea, showing that the student has understood what they’ve read well enough to write a summary that’s not merely a repetition of the text.
- When summarising, students may complete one or more of the following:
- Recount the text in their own words
- Identify the main idea, topic or purpose
- List key words or phrases
- Identify structural elements of the genre
- Using the SWBST process can help students with this reading comprehension strategy. The steps in the SWBST process are:
- Somebody
- Wanted
- But
- So
- Then
- When summarising, students may complete one or more of the following:
- Inferring — The process of drawing conclusions based on clues or evidence presented in the text is called inferring, and it involves readers using what they know and pairing it with what they read in the text to make a conclusion. You may also call this 'reading between lines!'
- Monitoring Comprehension — When monitoring comprehension, students reflect on and assess their understanding as they progress through the text. In this metacognitive process, students may ask themselves questions like 'Is this making sense?' or 'Do I need to read this again?'
- Some comprehension strategies that may be effective may include going back to reread a section of a text, slowing down or speeding up your reading rate, and using text features to help understand difficult parts of a passage. All of these are active reading strategies that students can do to help them better understand what they are reading, while they are reading!
- While monitoring asks students to identify hurdles and barriers, students also benefit from connecting this reading comprehension strategy with explicit strategies to help them pass their hurdles.
All of these comprehension strategies can be taught and practised explicitly.
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Interesting Idioms Worksheet
A worksheet using common idioms.
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The Poet's Lament - Comprehension
A comprehension activity using a poem.
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Inference vs Prediction - Presentation
A teaching presentation outlining the similarities and differences between inference and prediction.
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120 Comprehension Strategy Question Cards
A set of 120 open-ended question cards to help students apply comprehension strategies when reading.
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Monitoring Comprehension Worksheet
A 2 page worksheet focusing on the reading comprehension strategy of monitoring.
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Reading Comprehension Strategies PowerPoint - Questioning
A 15 slide editable PowerPoint template explaining the reading comprehension strategy of questioning.
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Comprehension - Roald Dahl
A comprehension activity using a biography of Roald Dahl.
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Inference vs Prediction Poster
A poster outlining the similarities and differences between inference and prediction.
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5 Elements of a Short Story Activity
Explore the 5 elements of a short story using this digital activity with five short stories.
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Sloth Adaptations – Comprehension Skills Worksheet
Read and comprehend nonfiction text about the adaptations of a sloth with a printable pack of reading skills worksheets.
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Figurative Language Posters – Onomatopoeia
Help young readers and writers recognise onomatopoeias with a set of onomatopoeia classroom posters.
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Summarising Fiction Texts Teaching Slides
Build summarising skills with fiction texts using these teaching slides.
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Animals in the Arctic - Free Mini Book
Learn about polar animals and build comprehension skills with a Year 2 Arctic animal book.
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Inferencing Worksheet
Use this worksheet with your students when teaching them how to make an inference.
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Summarising Nonfiction Graphic Organiser Pack
Help students summarise nonfiction texts with this set of graphic organisers.
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NAPLAN-Style Reading Magazine – Year 5
5 reading texts with multiple choice questions for NAPLAN Reading Year 5.
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Character Traits Interactive Activity
Analyse text and identify character traits of characters with a Google Slides Interactive activity.
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Reading Response Retelling Important Events– Template
A comprehension template for students to revise important parts of a text.
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Decodable Text Worksheets – Single Graphemes (Set 2)
A set of 10 decodable text worksheets for early readers.
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Inference Car Classifieds - Worksheet
A series of car classifieds worksheets to use when teaching your students how to infer information from written texts.
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Human Histories: World Explorers – Comprehension Worksheet
A comprehension worksheet for a magazine article about some world explorers and their achievements.
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Tiddalick the Frog Dreaming Story Sequencing Activity Cards
Use these Tiddalick the Frog sequencing activity cards as a resource for teaching Australian Dreaming Stories.
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Book Report Mini Book
Have students write about their favourite literature with this fun-sized mini-book.
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Exploring and Building Narrative Characters PowerPoint
A 14 slide editable PowerPoint template to use when teaching younger students about how to build a character for a narrative text.
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Comprehension - What are Earthquakes?
A comprehension activity about 'What are Earthquakes?'
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Story Structure Sentence Strips
Explore sentences that form the beginning, middle and end of 5 short stories with this sorting activity for younger year levels.
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Australian Conservationists: Ian Kiernan – Comprehension Worksheet
Learn about Ian Kiernan and his conservation work with this 2-page reading passage and accompanying comprehension questions.
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Echidna Adaptations – Reading Worksheet Pack
Discover the adaptations of the echidna with a printable reading passage and comprehension worksheet pack.
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Camel Adaptations - Year Five Reading Comprehension
Learn about the physical and behavioural adaptations of a camel with a set of printable reading comprehension worksheets for Year 5.
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Platypus Adaptations - Reading Passage & Questions
Learn about the physical and behavioural adaptations of the platypus with a set of printable reading comprehension worksheets for Year 3.
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Summarising Fiction Task Cards
Guide students along their summarising journey with this set of Fiction texts on task cards for students to summarise.
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Reading Response Template – Inferring and Predicting
Guide your students to make inferences and predictions with a piece of text using the one-page template.
- Reading Comprehension Worksheets
- Reading Comprehension Templates
- Reading Comprehension Posters
- Reading Comprehension Teaching Presentations
- Reading Comprehension Games
- Reading Comprehension for Foundation Year
- Reading Comprehension for Year 1
- Reading Comprehension for Year 2
- Reading Comprehension for Year 3
- Reading Comprehension for Year 4
- Reading Comprehension for Year 5
- Reading Comprehension for Year 6
- Reading Comprehension for Year 7