Reading Comprehension Teaching Resources
Explore printable reading comprehension worksheets, digital activities and more to teach reading comprehension strategies in your primary classroom. Created by teachers, for teachers, the teaching resources in this collection are aligned with the Australian curriculum and have undergone a careful review by a member of our expert teaching team.
You'll find editable versions to easily differentiate your instruction for individual students, plus various options to make your lesson planning easier this school year!
New to teaching this portion of the English curriculum or just looking for fresh and engaging ways to teach reading comprehension strategies? Read on for a primer from our teacher team, including a simple definition of reading comprehension, a look at different strategies students can use and more!
What Is Reading Comprehension?
We'll start at the beginning! Reading comprehension is a skill that's hard to overestimate in terms of its importance for early years students to develop.
Defined as the ability to understand and interpret written language, reading comprehension involves the process of decoding text, extracting meaning from it, and then integrating that meaning with prior knowledge and understanding.
Not only does comprehension comprise the ability to recognise and understand individual words, but it also involves the ability to recognise patterns and relationships within sentences and paragraphs, as well as the ability to make inferences and draw conclusions based on the information presented.
This isn't just important for reading, of course.
Comprehension is all about making meaning, and it includes various levels of understanding, including:
- Literal
- Inferential
- Evaluative
- Critical
If you think about it, we rely on these skills on a daily basis — when we notice the stooped shoulders of a partner as they walk in the door or when we listen to the weather report and observe how heavily laden the sky is with grey clouds.
To develop those same skills in a reading context, our students need to build a variety of language skills, such as vocabulary knowledge, grammar and syntax, as well as cognitive processes, such as attention, memory and critical thinking.
So how do they get there? Let's talk strategies!
What Are Reading Comprehension Strategies?
As you well know, students don't start off being able to comprehend every single thing they read. But teaching them strategies to understand better and retain information will allow them to go from recognising individual words to understanding a range of texts.
Some common reading comprehension strategies include:
- Previewing — This is the process of skimming the text before reading it in detail to get an overall sense of what it is about.
- Activating Prior Knowledge — Students can draw on existing knowledge and experience to help them understand new information, such as a new text.
- Making Connections — This strategy focuses on teaching students to make connections between a text and their own experiences and understandings. Research into the science of reading has shown enhanced comprehension when students are able to connect new information to information they already know.
- Questioning — In this comprehension strategy, students ask and answer questions to clarify the meaning of the text and deepen their understanding. When you centre questioning activities around the familiar open-ended prompts of who, what, when, where, how, why, and which, students assert their understanding and identify any gaps in their comprehension of the text. Questions can be posed by a teacher, by their peers, or by the students themselves.
- Visualising — Visualisation provides both teachers and students with another means to extend their exploration of a text and deepen understanding. This reading comprehension strategy asks students to create and describe an image in their mind, centered around a place, situation, or character in the text. Visualising has been proven in research to improve student recall! Using the five senses is a great way to scaffold student comprehension through visualising.
- Summarising — Summarising is a reading comprehension strategy that asks students to reflect on the text and communicate their understanding of it. A well-formed summary is made up of the main idea of the text and the key details that support the main idea, showing that the student has understood what they’ve read well enough to write a summary that’s not merely a repetition of the text.
- When summarising, students may complete one or more of the following:
- Recount the text in their own words
- Identify the main idea, topic or purpose
- List key words or phrases
- Identify structural elements of the genre
- Using the SWBST process can help students with this reading comprehension strategy. The steps in the SWBST process are:
- Somebody
- Wanted
- But
- So
- Then
- When summarising, students may complete one or more of the following:
- Inferring — The process of drawing conclusions based on clues or evidence presented in the text is called inferring, and it involves readers using what they know and pairing it with what they read in the text to make a conclusion. You may also call this 'reading between lines!'
- Monitoring Comprehension — When monitoring comprehension, students reflect on and assess their understanding as they progress through the text. In this metacognitive process, students may ask themselves questions like 'Is this making sense?' or 'Do I need to read this again?'
- Some comprehension strategies that may be effective may include going back to reread a section of a text, slowing down or speeding up your reading rate, and using text features to help understand difficult parts of a passage. All of these are active reading strategies that students can do to help them better understand what they are reading, while they are reading!
- While monitoring asks students to identify hurdles and barriers, students also benefit from connecting this reading comprehension strategy with explicit strategies to help them pass their hurdles.
All of these comprehension strategies can be taught and practised explicitly.
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Guided Reading Groups - Organiser Template
Use this template to easily identify your guided reading groups and move students to different levels.
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Compare and Contrast - Objects Worksheets
A pack of 5 worksheets comparing and contrasting pictures of similar objects.
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Sophia the Superdog! - Comprehension Text and Questions
A superdog themed text and set of questions to help develop comprehension strategies in the classroom.
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Activating Prior Knowledge - Comprehension Strategy Task Cards
A set of 12 task cards to help students activate their prior knowledge before reading.
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Identify Author's Purpose Poster
A poster highlighting how to identify the author's purpose when reading a piece of text.
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#SUMitUP Summarising Activity
Summarise fictional text through this whole-class station activity.
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Animals in the Arctic - Free Mini Book
Learn about polar animals and build comprehension skills with a Year 2 Arctic animal book.
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Gingerbread Man Retelling Activity Cards
Teach your students about retelling with this set of sequencing cards for The Gingerbread Man.
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Year 5 Magazine - What's Buzzing? (Issue 2)
A beautifully designed, 24-page reading magazine specifically designed for Year 5 students.
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Types of Soils – Comprehension Worksheets
Explore the properties of sand, silt, loam and clay with a set of 4 reading passages with accompanying comprehension questions.
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Story Elements Worksheets – The Goose and the Golden Egg
Practise identifying the story characters, settings and main events with this set of worksheets based on a traditional tale.
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Story Elements Cut and Paste Worksheets – Little Red Riding Hood
Explore story characters, settings and main events with this set of cut-and-paste worksheets based on a well-known fairy tale.
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Nonfiction Summary Checklist
Give your students a checklist when summarising nonfiction texts to make sure they include everything required.
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National Tree Day – Why Plant a Tree? Infographic Analysis Activity
Teach about the importance of trees on National Tree Day with an infographic poster and cloze note-taking worksheet.
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Reading Response Journal – Comprehension Templates
A journal with comprehension sheets designed for students to study texts.
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The Firefighter Story – International Women's Day
A story and accompanying worksheet that explores issues regarding female gender stereotypes.
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The Three States of Matter – Worksheet
A comprehension worksheet for a scientific report from the Year 5 magazine (Issue 3).
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Guided Reading Folder - Cover and Dividers
Use this collection of templates to organise your guided reading folder.
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Predicting a Text - Poster and Worksheet
3 pages of resources for students to practise predicting text.
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Story Sequencing - Template
A worksheet to use when teaching students how to sequence important events when reading.
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Interpret Figurative Language Poster
Provide students with a visual reminder of the types of figurative language with this classroom display poster.
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Character Adjective Concertina Template – Blank
Learn how adjectives can be used to describe a character's appearance and personality with a hands-on craft activity aligned to the English curriculum.
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What are Bushfires? Cloze Worksheet
A cloze worksheet about bushfires.
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Making an Inference – Graphic Organiser Pack
Use these graphic organisers with your students when teaching them how to use text evidence to make inferences.
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Story Retell Interactive Activity
Use this Interactive activity to practise retelling stories.
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The History of Codes - Comprehension Worksheet
Learn about the history and development of Morse code with a comprehension worksheet.
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Text Connections Clouds Craftivity
Enjoy this fun literature craftivity with your students, which prompts them to answer comprehension questions for making personal connections to text.
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Main Idea and Details - Interactive Peg Cards
Practise identifying the main idea with these interactive peg cards.
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Beginning, Middle and End Mini-Book - The Three Little Pigs
Teach your students about the beginning, middle and end of a story with this mini-book retell of The Three Little Pigs.
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NAPLAN Reading Magazine – Year 3
5 reading texts with multiple choice questions for NAPLAN Reading Year 3.
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The Enigma of AX29 - Narrative Plot Worksheet
Explore the features of narrative plot structure with this gripping science fiction story.
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Win a Trip to the Moon – Worksheet
A comprehension worksheet for a fake advertisement from the Year 1 magazine (Issue 3).
- Reading Comprehension Worksheets
- Reading Comprehension Templates
- Reading Comprehension Posters
- Reading Comprehension Teaching Presentations
- Reading Comprehension Games
- Reading Comprehension for Foundation Year
- Reading Comprehension for Year 1
- Reading Comprehension for Year 2
- Reading Comprehension for Year 3
- Reading Comprehension for Year 4
- Reading Comprehension for Year 5
- Reading Comprehension for Year 6
- Reading Comprehension for Year 7