comprehension | Aidan Severs

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Aidan Severs Consulting

Empowering, Enhancing and Enriching in Education

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Along with being a primary school teacher and leader, blogging is where this all started for Aidan. If it wasn't for his passion for writing and sharing his learning and experiences, he wouldn't be working as an education consultant with schools across the country today. Shared best practice should be available to all and here on the Aidan Severs Consulting blog you can get ideas for making a difference in your own school. The blog is also a great place to learn exactly the kind of work that Aidan can partner with your school on.

Reading Roles: Teaching Metacognitive Reading Comprehension Strategies

Reading Roles: Teaching Metacognitive Reading Comprehension Strategies

Reading Roles: Teaching Metacognitive Reading Comprehension Strategies

What is (or are) Reading Roles? Reading Roles is a resource designed to aid children’s metacognition when reading. Metacognition can be defined simply as ‘thinking about thinking’. Reading Roles takes familiar job titles and assigns them to reading strategies and skills thus giving children an easy-to-refer-to system for being more deliberate with their thinking during reading, with the ultimate goal of being able to comprehend texts. Most children will already understand wh

Jan 306 min read

Reading Roles Based on Research-Backed Reading Strategies

Reading Roles Based on Research-Backed Reading Strategies

Reading Roles Based on Research-Backed Reading Strategies

Explore effective Reading Strategies to enhance comprehension in students.

Jan 306 min read

Reading Roles Generic Reading Activity Exemplified

Reading Roles Generic Reading Activity Exemplified

Reading Roles Generic Reading Activity Exemplified

In my blog post Reading Roles: Teaching Metacognitive Reading Comprehension Strategies I mentioned a generic activity which can be used with any text. Here's that activity in full: The aim of this activity is to help children gain a better understanding of a text. It focuses on using 5 of the main widely-acknowledged reading strategies. Although the activity itself has a goal of enabling understanding of one text, the cumulative effect of doing several of these activities is

Jan 3010 min read

Reading Roles: The Philosopher Role and Answering Philosophical Questions About Texts

Reading Roles: The Philosopher Role and Answering Philosophical Questions About Texts

Reading Roles: The Philosopher Role and Answering Philosophical Questions About Texts

In my blog post Reading Roles: Teaching Metacognitive Reading Comprehension Strategies I mentioned the Philosopher role. Here's some more information about that Reading Role: Philosopher – thinking Asking and answering philosophical questions about a text allows children to engage further with what they have read. Doing this has the potential to improve comprehension for the same reasons as we have discussed under other Reading Roles: the deliberate act of thinking about wha

Jan 302 min read

Reading Comprehension: Teaching a Metacognitive Approach to Inference-Making

Reading Comprehension: Teaching a Metacognitive Approach to Inference-Making

Reading Comprehension: Teaching a Metacognitive Approach to Inference-Making

Whilst searching for something else on my old blog I came across an old blog post by Clare Sealy , who is now the Head of Education Improvement, for the States of Guernsey. In it, she referred to a particular blog post I had shared and called it 'incredibly useful' and noted that it had ' set twitter mulling over ‘reading comprehension’ as a thing' . Well, those were the days! Now, teachers think a lot about reading comprehension, and that's a good thing. Now I can't guarant

Nov 26, 202410 min read

Teaching Reading: Boosting Background Knowledge To Aid Inference-Making

Teaching Reading: Boosting Background Knowledge To Aid Inference-Making

Teaching Reading: Boosting Background Knowledge To Aid Inference-Making

A few years ago, the author Tom Palmer sent me a copy of his latest book Wings: Typhoon. It's a great read aimed at 8 to 10 year olds and is a stereotype-breaking brew of the supernatural, football, fighter jets and the relationship between two sisters. But before I knew all of that I was intrigued to find that the covers of the book extend to contain a cut-out-and-make Typhoon aeroplane model. Is this a gimmick, or is there something more to it? One of the complaints about s

Nov 22, 20247 min read

SATs 2025: Answering 3-Mark Reading SATs Questions - An Update

SATs 2025: Answering 3-Mark Reading SATs Questions - An Update

SATs 2025: Answering 3-Mark Reading SATs Questions - An Update

Since I last wrote about helping children to answer 3-mark questions , the way those questions are asked has changed. Whilst much of the advice given in the previous blog post still stands (indeed I will be referring to it a lot in this one), it needs a little update. As part of this update, I have expanded the matching resource which can be downloaded here : Let's have a look at the 6 (2 per test) 3-mark questions from the 2022, 2023 and 2024 papers : 2024: 3-Mark Reading Qu

Nov 5, 20245 min read

5 Ways To Help Children To Access The KS2 Reading SATs

5 Ways To Help Children To Access The KS2 Reading SATs

5 Ways To Help Children To Access The KS2 Reading SATs

Not many year 6 teachers want to spend months going through past papers, and indeed, many past papers now don't match the rigour and complexity of the more recent tests. There's also a growing (and welcome) trend of moving away from reading lessons being death by comprehension questions which require a written answer and are organised by the SATs reading domains. But, it's never a bad idea to help children to feel like the tests are familiar, and there are some things about t

Jan 5, 20243 min read

S1 E7 - Subject Leaders - Monitoring, Assessing Learning and Assessment in Art with Chris Mann

S1 E7 - Subject Leaders - Monitoring, Assessing Learning and Assessment in Art with Chris Mann

S1 E7 - Subject Leaders - Monitoring, Assessing Learning and Assessment in Art with Chris Mann

In this, the 7th episode of The Subject Leaders Podcast, Chris Mann, an English and Art primary subject leader, answers the following...

May 30, 20231 min read

Brand new KS2 Reading SATs prep resource!

I've put together a new resource designed for year 6 teachers specifically focusing on the 3-mark questions in the KS2 reading test.

Feb 24, 20231 min read

Teaching Reading: Pairing Non-Fiction with Fiction

Teaching Reading: Pairing Non-Fiction with Fiction

Teaching Reading: Pairing Non-Fiction with Fiction

Matching fiction texts to non-fiction texts helps children to understand both texts better. This oost uses a case study to exemplify this.

Feb 25, 20224 min read

Forensic Assessment

Forensic Assessment

Forensic Assessment

As teachers we are all too familiar with the concept of assessment and its importance. We know that without assessment there is no...

Dec 15, 20216 min read

What Impressions Do You Get... Answering 3-Mark Reading SATs Questions

What Impressions Do You Get... Answering 3-Mark Reading SATs Questions

What Impressions Do You Get... Answering 3-Mark Reading SATs Questions

Read my updated post about answering 3-mark questions which features questions types from the latest SATs: https://www.aidansevers.com/post/sats-2025-answering-3-mark-reading-sats-questions-an-update Check out my blog post '5 Ways To Help Children To Access The KS2 Reading SATs' here: https://www.aidansevers.com/post/5-ways-to-help-children-to-access-the-ks2-reading-sats For the resources, visit the links below: To find out more, read on: At the academy trust where I was a de

Nov 26, 20215 min read

Whole Class Reading: Providing Challenge For Children Working At Greater Depth

Whole Class Reading: Providing Challenge For Children Working At Greater Depth

Whole Class Reading: Providing Challenge For Children Working At Greater Depth

With whole class reading increasing in popularity, one of the most asked questions is around the issue of catering to the needs of all learners. Recently, I tackled how to help lower prior attainers within the whole class reading session and promised at the end of that blog post to write this one. So here it is. To preface my suggestions I'd like to point out that this list is not at all exhaustive and what you do with the children in your class who are working at greater de

Nov 12, 20218 min read

Whole Class Reading: Meeting The Needs of Lower Attainers

Whole Class Reading: Meeting The Needs of Lower Attainers

Whole Class Reading: Meeting The Needs of Lower Attainers

Perhaps the biggest worry for teachers when considering the switch from the guided reading carousel to whole class reading is how children of different 'abilities' will manage in the lessons. There are, however, various strategies a teacher can employ to support learners with different needs. You'll have noticed that above I enclosed the word abilities with inverted commas. The first strategy is for a teacher to alter their way of thinking about ability. One possible problem

Nov 12, 20216 min read

Getting Ready For The KS2 Reading Test

Getting Ready For The KS2 Reading Test

Getting Ready For The KS2 Reading Test

If you're here for the resources, then here are the links: However, if you have a little more time, have a read about the thought process that has gone into the resource creation. But, before you start reading my bit, I can't stress how important it is that you read Penny Slater's blog series of reflections on analysis of the 2019 reading test (which is the last SATs reading test that we have). It is in 4 parts and it has been the reading of these that has brought me to write

Nov 2, 20215 min read

How To Write Good Comprehension Questions

How To Write Good Comprehension Questions

How To Write Good Comprehension Questions

Teachers often write comprehension questions for children, but it can be quite a difficult thing to do. Find out how to do it here...

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Oct 12, 20216 min read

Questions To Ask When Teaching Inference-Making

Questions To Ask When Teaching Inference-Making

Questions To Ask When Teaching Inference-Making

Making an inference isn't easy for children. Find out how you can guide children as they learn how to make an inference.

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Oct 12, 20214 min read

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