Our objectives today are:- To read and complete a comprehension. To know how and when to skim and scan a passage

What does ‘comprehension’ mean?

When you do comprehensions in school, they test whether you have understood what you have read. Comprehension means ‘understanding’

You must read the passage carefully before you answer the question. You need to skim and scan through the passage. How do you think you do this?

Skimming means reading through a passage quickly to find out what it’s about. Remember you only have an hour to complete the whole test. Scanning is what you do after you’ve read the passage once and have read the questions. You scan through the text and look for words that are linked to the questions. These are called key words.

Read through the following passage and answer the questions. The Black Death The Black Death, a terrible plague, reached England in It spread from the port of Weymouth to Bristol and, in spite of closing the roads, quickly spread to Gloucester. It then passed to Oxford and from there to London. By the spring it was at its height. It seemed to attack men rather than women, and the young and strong rather than the elderly. The plague continued to ravage Europe for centuries. The Tudor period saw repeated plagues. People carried sponges soaked in vinegar and posies of flowers, called tussie-mussies, to ward off the plague fumes. They did not realise that the plague was carried by the fleas on the rats they saw everywhere. When did the plague reach England? Who seemed the most likely to be infected by the plague? How did people avoid the plague? What was the plague really caused by?

Right now you have completed a class comprehension, it’s your turn to do one on your own. Remember to skim and scan the passage carefully!

Have we met our objectives? Can you complete a comprehension successfully? What does skimming and scanning mean?

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