NBSS

OVERVIEW:

Comprehension strategies such as making connections; asking questions; making predictions; visualising, drawing inferences; determining importance; synthesising information; monitoring and clarifying understanding are the cognitive and metacognitive strategies readers use to accomplish the goal of comprehension. Students who are less skilled at comprehending usually focus on word accuracy rather than comprehension monitoring and generally have weak metacognition skills. Explicit instruction in comprehension and metacognitive strategies is therefore vital for these students as it enables them to monitor and assess their on-going performance in understanding what is being read.

TARGET GROUP:

NBSS Level 2 support is about identifying, targeting, planning and monitoring short-term, focused interventions for small groups of students who could benefit from this work. This can involve building mastery of specific literacy and learning skills and strategies. For example in one school the teachers saw a disconnect between students reading ability and comprehension ability. When reading the students were decoding words but not reading for meaning. Teachers also noted that with some students, acting out was most likely to occur when the students perceived the work to be too challenging.

As part of a Level 2 intervention eight 2nd year students attended one lesson a week from November to May and were explicitly taught comprehension and learning strategies. The teacher used the NBSS teacher resource ‘Comprehension and Learning Strategies for All Subjects’ for the duration of the intervention with students.

QUANTITATIVE FINDINGS:

The teacher involved administered the Neale Analysis of Reading Ability (NARA II) pre and post intervention. The Neale Analysis is an individually administered test of reading and aims to measure the accuracy, comprehension and rate of reading, monitor reading progress and obtain diagnostic observations of reading behaviour.

The following table presents the chronological ages, pre and post reading ages and pre and post comprehension ages for six of the students who attended the weekly comprehension and learning strategies class.