A teacher’s questions about the text can be rather mechanical. They generally ask their students to extract obvious information. If taking the text above as an example, the questions can be as follows:

Where did people work?
How many clouds were there in the sky?

These questions don’t help a reader to understand the real meaning of the text and don’t contribute to the development of critical thinking. They are good for easy testing, but they don’t help develop literacy.

Deep reading comprehension can be organized into 3 types:

1. Text level — exploring the meaning of individual words and phrases. For example:

Find words that show that this story is a fairytale.
Underline a sentence about the weather.

2. Between the lines — speculating and making guesses using the information that is available in the text. Ask questions that will lead to a discussion. The child needs to work with the meaning of the text they have read, give reasons and arguments to support their opinion. For example:

What do you think the cloud really is?

Discuss how the characters of the story feel and their motivation. Identify the most important moments, and speculate about what will happen next.

3. Behind the lines — information that the reader has before reading, their knowledge that helps to comprehend and interpret the text.

Did dragons really exist?

By working with deep reading comprehension, you help your child use text as a grounds for exchanging ideas and opinions, developing their writing skills, and exploring the meaning of words.

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