Growing up as an Armed Forces Child - Reading Comprehension Lesson!

This whole class reading session aims to develop children’s fluency and comprehension skills, whilst also helping them to understand what life is like for children growing up in military families. The non-fiction text that the children read has been carefully extracted from the Children’s Commissioner’s report on ‘Kin and Country: Growing Up as an Armed Forces Child.’

The lesson is particularly useful for schools in which there are a significant proportion of children from service families.

The reading is followed by a series of activities aiming to develop children’s VIPERS skills: vocabulary, inference, prediction, explanation, retrieval, sequencing and summarising. It also contains a vocabulary check immediately after the extract is read to clarify any unfamiliar/ difficult language.

The tasks are comprised of quick-check questions, solo thinking, pair/ group discussions and deeper thinking activities. The extract needed is provided as a PDF and Word document (the word doc is in the zip file).

The session is best suited for children in years 4-6, although with minor adaptations it could feasibly be used with slightly younger and older age groups.