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Chapter 7

💡 Understanding

Comprehension is not just remembering what was said — it's making meaning, connecting ideas, and knowing when you're lost.

What does poor understanding look like?

Children often mask comprehension difficulties — they nod, copy peers, or give plausible-sounding answers. Watch for the patterns below.

🎭 Surface Compliance

  • Says "yes" to questions without real understanding
  • Copies what peers do rather than following instructions
  • Gives a rehearsed answer that doesn't quite fit

🔗 Concept Gaps

  • Confuses abstract words (before/after, more/less)
  • Cannot categorise or sort by attribute
  • Doesn't understand cause-and-effect language

❓ Literal Interpretation

  • Takes idioms literally ("It's raining cats and dogs")
  • Misses implied meaning in stories
  • Cannot infer how a character feels from context

🧩 Integration Difficulty

  • Understands individual sentences but not the whole text
  • Cannot connect new information to prior knowledge
  • Struggles with "why" questions more than "what" questions
💡 Distinction that matters: Literal comprehension (what happened?) develops before inferential comprehension (why did it happen?). Always confirm literal understanding is solid before expecting inference — pushing inferential questions on a child without literal footing creates confusion, not growth.

3 Core Strategies

Think Aloud

Adults model their own comprehension process by narrating their thinking out loud while reading or problem-solving. Children internalise these strategies and eventually apply them independently.

  1. Read a page aloud and stop: "Hmm, I'm confused here — let me re-read that sentence."
  2. Predict aloud: "I think the bear is going to hide, because earlier it said he was scared."
  3. Make connections: "That reminds me of the time we went to the park — remember?"
  4. Summarise: "So far the story is about… a lost puppy who is trying to find home."
  5. After several modelled sessions, hand over: "Now it's your turn — what are you thinking?"
MetacognitionInferenceModelling

Concept Mapping

Visual maps externalise the relationships between ideas — making abstract conceptual links visible and manipulable for children who struggle to hold them in working memory.

  1. Start with a central bubble: write the main topic (e.g., "Rain").
  2. Ask: "What do you know about rain?" — write each idea in a connecting bubble.
  3. Ask: "How are these connected?" — draw lines and label the connections ("causes," "is part of," "helps").
  4. Use colour coding: blue = facts, green = examples, orange = questions.
  5. Revisit and expand the map after new learning — the visual growth is motivating.
Visual learningPrior knowledgeVocabulary

Vocabulary Anchoring

New words are understood and retained when they are anchored to sensory experience, personal context, and multiple exposures — not just a dictionary definition.

  1. Introduce the target word in context: read the sentence containing it.
  2. Provide a child-friendly definition using familiar words.
  3. Show or act out the concept: if the word is "enormous," spread arms wide and gasp.
  4. Create a personal link: "When was the last time you saw something enormous?"
  5. Revisit the word in 3 different contexts across the week — spaced repetition anchors it.
Semantic depthMultisensorySpaced repetition

4 Structured Activities

🎲 Question Dice

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⏱ 15 min👥 Pair or small group🏠 Indoors

A large foam die with a question type on each face (Who? What? Where? When? Why? How?). After reading a story or watching a short clip, players roll and answer that question type — building the full range of comprehension skills.

  1. Make or buy a large foam die; label each face with a question word and a matching icon.
  2. Read or watch a short narrative together.
  3. Take turns rolling and answering: "You rolled 'Why' — why did the character do that?"
  4. For children who struggle with "Why," scaffold: "Was it because he was hungry, or because he was bored?"
  5. Track which question types are consistently hard — those become strategy targets.
💡 Tip: "Why" and "How" questions are inferential — if these are the hard ones, use the Think Aloud strategy (#G1) before rolling.

🔍 Odd One Out

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⏱ 10 min👤 Individual or pair🏠 Indoors

Present three items — two that share a category and one that does not. The child identifies the odd one out and explains why. The explanation is the target, not the identification.

  1. Start concrete: apple, banana, chair — "Which is different and why?"
  2. Progress to attributes: red apple, green apple, orange — "Two ways they are the same?"
  3. Progress to abstract: happy, excited, sad — "Which feeling is different?"
  4. Accept valid alternative groupings and celebrate them: "I hadn't thought of it that way — good thinking!"
  5. Build to sets of 4, then 5, with increasingly subtle differences.
💡 Tip: Use real objects before pictures, and pictures before words. Concrete → pictorial → abstract is the developmental ladder for concept formation.

🎭 Emotion Detective

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⏱ 15 min👤 Individual or small group🏠 Indoors

Children practise inferential comprehension specifically around emotion — a core weakness in ASD/social communication difficulties. They look for "clues" in faces, body language, and context to identify how a character feels.

  1. Show a picture of a person or character in a situation (no facial expression visible initially).
  2. Ask: "What clues can you see? What do you think they are feeling?"
  3. Reveal the facial expression — did it match? Discuss why or why not.
  4. Progress to short video clips: pause and predict, then watch on.
  5. Connect to personal experience: "Have you ever felt that way? What made you feel better?"
💡 Tip: Use a "Feelings Dictionary" — a child-made booklet where each page has an emotion word, a face drawing, a body clue, and a personal memory.

🕸️ Concept Web

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⏱ 20 min👤 Individual🏠 Indoors

The child builds a personal concept web for a new vocabulary word — connecting it to their own experiences, synonyms, antonyms, and images. Multi-directional connection = deeper understanding.

  1. Write the target word in the centre of a blank page.
  2. Draw 5 branches: Definition, Example, Non-example, Synonym, Personal memory.
  3. Child fills in each branch — use drawing for non-writers.
  4. Share the web with a partner: "Teach me this word using your web."
  5. Post webs on the wall — the child can add to them as they encounter the word again.
💡 Tip: Having the child teach the concept to someone else (even a soft toy!) produces the strongest retention — the Protégé Effect.
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