English Reading Comprehension

I've had some time to look closer into the abilities of our project kids. The 4th Class have been learning about different genres of music, this has involved watching videos and reading texts in English alongside listening for different instruments and learning about famous music artists. So far, we have explored 4 different genres of music and last week, the children discussed what they had learned together to create a mind-map on the board. This activity was spontaneous - an idea to help them to review what they had learned - but I'm so glad I did it because it was evident that they had a strong comprehension of the information they had collected.

What is interesting about the skill of reading comprehension in another language is the many key skills that need to be applied before being able to tackle such a task. Not only do the children need a firm understanding of the words they are reading, they need to comprehend the flow of the sentences and paragraphs and understand the grammar. They need to be able to absorb content and gain meaning through word processing which is a skill that comes with experience and exposure.

This task was a perfect example of how a whole-rounded English education can further children's comprehension. The children have developed these skills by having English outside of English lessons. All of their contextual understanding in other themes has taught them to think outside the box when approaching difficult tasks and piecing information together to understand the task in hand.

In the 3rd Class, the children listened to a story and had to use the information from the story to create their own monsters. They had to use the adjectives and body-parts we had learned in class to create their monsters. Actually, the most interesting bit about this task was that the children were able to easily answer questions about the story and explain their reasoning. It was really clear to me from the answers to my questions that the children understood the book on a deeper level and could comprehend the lessons and morals from the story.

It's sometimes difficult to measure progress because of the ongoing changes and different factors. This for me really was a WOW moment and I'm excited to delve deeper into this project as we continue to learn English together.

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