March 29, 2024

I If Graphics

Transforming Houses Into Homes

Reading Comprehension Exercises – Three Great Ideas For Teaching Reading Comprehension

These reading comprehension activities are designed for primary/elementary students.

1. Home Sweet Home
Ask your students to do the following. Choose three characters from the story you are exploring and draw the house they live in. If they all live in the same house then draw their room. Make sure you include personal items that show the individual nature of each character. Here are some things that you could include: a lounge chair and table (show what’s on it), bookcase (show what type of books are read), television (show what program is on), kitchen table with food, bathroom (toothbrush, toothpaste, shampoo, soap), bed with stuffed toys, pets, and garden.

2. Grid Work
Ask your students to do the following. Write the name of each character in the story you are reading on the far left hand side of your page; use a new line for each character. Now use a ruler to draw 5 columns on the right hand side of the names. This is simple if you just make them the width of the ruler. At the top of the columns write these headings: Lives, Age, Likes, Dislikes, Eats.

Now fill in the grid with the appropriate answers. For example, for the First Pig in the Three Little Pigs, I would write,

Lives – in a stick house,
Age – Not sure but fairly young,
Likes – building houses and visiting his brothers,
Dislikes – wolves,
Eats – just about anything.

If you have more room or want to use another page, you can add headings of your own.

3. All Mixed Up
Choose 1 or 2 paragraphs from the story your class is exploring and write all of the sentences on the board in a jumbled order. Your students can then write them out, in the correct order, in their workbooks. If you have the time, you could type or write the jumbled sentences onto an A4 piece of paper. Make enough copies for your students so that they can then cut them out, arrange them in the correct order and glue them into their workbooks. If you have a number of bright student in your class you could ask one or two of them to create the jumbled version.