Reading comprehension doesn’t have to mean silent reading followed by a worksheet. With a little creativity, it can become one of the most engaging parts of your English lessons. Here are eight fun and effective ways to liven up comprehension tasks and help your pupils connect more deeply with texts.
“As we read, we forget the exact wording of a text and remember an overall representation of the meaning we have derived from it.”
– The Art and Science of Teaching Primary Reading, Christopher Such (2021)
The activities below support the development of what researchers call a situational model, a mental representation of the overall meaning of a text. Rather than recalling exact words, children build an evolving understanding of events, characters and ideas.
As they continue reading, they naturally update and refine this model in response to new information, character actions and plot developments. These creative approaches to comprehension help make that meaning-building process more vivid, memorable and meaningful.
Transform comprehension questions into a quiz-style game with buzzers, mini whiteboards or team competitions. Assign points for different types of questions (e.g. retrieval = 1 point, inference = 2) to keep things exciting. This adds friendly competition and helps reinforce key skills in a memorable way.
Choose a key scene from the text and let pupils bring it to life through role-play. Acting out character interactions or dramatic events encourages deeper understanding of motives, emotions and themes. Follow up with reflective questions to develop inference.
After reading, challenge pupils to write their own comprehension questions about the text. They can swap with a partner or group and try to answer each other's questions. This strategy helps children think critically about what they’ve read and reinforces their understanding.
Incorporate audio stories, video clips or comic-style versions of texts to offer variety. Different formats can help children who struggle with long blocks of text, and make comprehension more accessible and enjoyable for all learners.
Design a simple escape-room-style challenge where pupils answer comprehension questions to unlock the next clue or solve a final puzzle. This adds a sense of purpose and adventure to their reading, encouraging them to re-read carefully.
Invite pupils to retell the story or summarise a key scene as a comic strip. This is a great way to assess understanding of sequence, character and setting while allowing pupils to be creative. Provide comic templates to support structure.
Ask pupils to imagine and script a conversation between two characters in the story. This encourages them to explore character motivations and viewpoints. It works well as a written activity or as a short performance in pairs.
Have pupils respond to different moments in the text using emojis to express how a character might feel or how the event made them feel as a reader. Then ask them to justify their choices. It’s a quick and inclusive way to build emotional literacy alongside comprehension.
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