Developing Reading Comprehension Skills Year 5-6: Classic Poetry

Developing Reading Comprehension Skills Years 5-6: Classic Poetry is a flexible teaching resource designed to give children a greater understanding of poems, and to increase their confidence in anchildren in swering questions about poems in the KS2 SATs. It introduces children in upper Key Stage 2 to carefully selected classic poems, which have stood the test of time. their meaning is universal and timeless: as true now as it was when they were first written. The resource will help pupils to develop a love of poetry by introducing them to a world where playing with language is the norm and there are a multitude of answers. through exploring the language and themes of the poems, pupils will find out more about themselves and the world around them. The activities help to guide children through the poems, providing them with opportunities to understand the poet's choice of vocabulary, widen their knowledge of synonyms, develop understanding of challenging language devices and practise their reading comprehension skills. All the activities are linked to the eight question types for the reading content domain that appear in the KS2 Reading SATs papers: vocabulary, retrieval, summary, inference, prediction, textmeaning, author's use of language and compare and contrast. Through working through the activities, pupils will become more confident at answering these types of question. The flexibility of this resource means that it may be used in many different ways: for whole class sessions, smaller teacher-led sessions or for independent tasks. During the activities pupils will be learning some wonderful classic poems and improving their comprehension skills.