Basic understanding questions:
ALL of your students, no matter what level they are on, need these basic understanding tasks. Do not assume that any of your students fully understand the text that you are teaching. Fourpoint students need even more scaffolding and help in order to achieve good basic understanding of the text before they can move on to Analysis and Interpretation later on. a.
Use questions for reading comprehension and for guided reading – basic questions which aid the student in keeping track of the character, the plot and the setting. Questions as: Who?
What? Where? When? How? ONLY ask questions which can be answered by reading through the text.
In addition to the WH- open ended questions, here are some ideas for different question formats to use: i.
true/false ii.
multiple choice iii.
fill-in (gaps) iv.
complete the sentence v.
match the beginning and end of the statement b.
Use graphic organizers to aid the student’s organization of information: i.
sociograms for characters ii.
charts for following changes in setting iii.
story charts for plot development iv.
sequencing bank of events v.
trait charts for characters vi.
sketching out the set in a play

vii.
explicit characterization (ONLY what we are told by the narrator –
“He was good-hearted”, “She always played fair”).
c.
Sometimes background information is crucial for the basic understanding of the text even before beginning to read. Often, this may be necessary to enable students to understand certain cultural, social or historical concepts before they come across them in the text. For example: i.
the IRT (subway line) in A
Summer’s Reading ii.
the fact that private corporations had military contracts in WWII (for
All My Sons)
Note: This should not be confused with the
Bridging Text and Context task later on, although you may decide to use such information for this purpose. We will discuss this in greater detail in
Session 6. d.
Scaffold summaries (guided writing) of the plot or of a character development.