Improving reading: drip-feed comprehension starters: poetry, prose, fiction & non-fiction

‘Practise makes perfect’ is the idea behind this resource: I believe in the ‘drip-feed’ approach because it is important to keep doing something until it becomes second nature. These starters cover all types of reading: poetry and prose, fiction and non-fiction, modern and 19th century. Essentially students should pick out what they see as key features to write about - you can decide whether their annotations should be formulated into paragraphs as a plenary or homework. The two opening slides on the PP bear repeating a few times to remind students what to do and get a strategy to become second nature. Each quote slide is followed by a ‘possible ideas’ answer slide and supported by a handout of the quote which can be annotated, either as differentiation for slow writers, or generally to speed the process. If speed and cost is an issue, the task can be done as a ‘whole class’ exercise, especially if you have an IWB or a way of annotating the projected text.