Understanding and supporting comprehension (Secondary)
teaching practiceFor student year
Helps students to
- engage in learning
Helps teachers to
- support comprehension
Summary
For the primary school version of this practice, go to:
Understanding and supporting comprehension (Foundation to year 6)
We know comprehension is critical to learning, but it has wider implications. How much a student comprehends affects how much they engage with, enjoy, and benefit from classroom activities and their interactions with peers and teachers.
When students communicate using spoken language, they can tell you if they don’t understand or you can work it out by the way they ask and respond to questions. However, when students are communicating mainly in ways other than speech, it can be more difficult to gauge their comprehension. By observing carefully and systematically adjusting classroom activities, you can learn a lot about how much a student understands.
The transition from primary to secondary school can be especially challenging for some students, making it difficult to concentrate, make sense of, and comprehend new social relationships, classroom environments, and learning expectations.
This practice contains some practical tips to help you ascertain how much your students are understanding, particularly those students who communicate mainly in ways other than speech.
“Inclusive education means all students are welcomed by their school in age-appropriate settings and are supported to learn, contribute and participate in all aspects of school. Inclusive education is about how schools are developed and designed, including classrooms, programs and activities so all students learn and participate together”
Watch this video to learn more abut this practice.
Duration 2:03
Australian Professional Standards for Teachers related to this practice
1.1 - Physical, social and intellectual development and characteristics of students
1.6 - strategies to support the full participation of students with disability
3.5 - use effective classroom communication
For further information, see Australian Professional Standards for Teachers AITSL page
Preparing to teach
What is comprehension?
Comprehension is the term used to describe students’ understanding. While we generally use comprehension to refer to students’ listening and reading, in this practice we think of comprehension more broadly - making sense of other people and the classroom environment. This includes listening and reading, as well as engagement with activities and interaction with peers and teachers throughout the day.
Why does it matter?
Comprehension lays the foundation for learning and participation. The more a student ‘understands’ the more they'll be able to learn, participate in, and enjoy classroom activities. A student who's struggling to comprehend also requires more support and time from you during lessons.
Assessing and adjusting to students’ comprehension
As teachers, we align the way we teach to the strengths and needs of our students. This includes adjusting our approach based on student comprehension. However, being able to do this relies on having an accurate picture of how much each student is understanding.
3 Strategies
Here are 3 strategies to help you figure out how much a student is comprehending in the classroom when they are using minimal speech:
Look beyond words - Students will show you through their actions what and how much they understand.
- Sometimes students may not be able to verbalise or show you what they comprehend. Looking beyond words for other communication modes provides insights into their level of understanding. Three key communication modes for autistic students, for instance, beyond spoken communication, include facial expression, physical actions, and individual and augmentative communication.
Look for differences in students’ engagement in different classroom activities that may reflect different levels of comprehension.
- Looking for patterns across the week rather than focusing on one point in time, a single activity, or a single situation can help you to work out how much a student understands. This involves considering routines, the timing of activities during the lesson and week, and considering external factors that may impact comprehension.
Adjust to Assess - Making minor adjustments to classroom activities to gain clues about students’ comprehension.
- Sometimes when things don’t work as expected it can be tempting to discard the activity and start again. This strategy is about making one small adjustment to an activity at a time to assess the impact on students’ comprehension. Sometimes one minor change can create a big difference to a student.
It works better if you:
- Observe over time. Every student has different strengths and challenges, and responds differently to different supports in different situations. Use observations of students over a series of lessons or a period of time to inform the supports you put in place. This will help you to gather the information you need to identify the right type of support for the student, the activity, and the session.
- Discuss with others. Seek input from others as well as using your own observation skills. The student’s parents, support staff, and your colleagues will all have invaluable insights.
- Record this input for other subject teachers and support staff in some way, such as in a communication dictionary.
It doesn't work if you:
- Make assumptions solely based on previous experience working with other students. This can be very risky as making assumptions about a student’s comprehension can affect their learning, self-esteem, and well-being. Each student has individual strengths and challenges.
A disclaimer: Seeking support Before we go further, it's important to note if you suspect a student is struggling with comprehension, it's important you seek relevant support within your school. Beyond the school teaching team, speech pathologists and psychologists specialise in these aspects of student development and should always be considered when it comes to seeking additional support. |
Go to the In the classroom tab for more details on each of these strategies.
In the classroom
Strategy one: Look beyond words
When students can’t tell or show you what they comprehend verbally, look beyond words to other ways they are communicating. Three other key communication modes for autistic students, for example, include facial expressions, physical actions, and augmentative and individual communication.
Facial expressions
A confused facial expression can be a helpful clue that a student is not comprehending. However, many students won’t demonstrate confusion through facial expression. Fortunately, there are other expressions that reflect comprehension.
Watch the student’s expressions when you talk about a topic they’re passionate about.
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It’s often difficult to describe exactly, but when you see how a student responds using facial expressions to something they know and love, you’ll be able to recognise similar expressions around other classroom topics, activities, and interactions.
Physical actions
Gestures such as raising a hand or shrugging their shoulders make it easier to recognise a student’s level of understanding. However, often we need to look beyond these signs for others. Pay close attention to the student’s body language during activities and interactions to observe how they show they’re listening, understanding, and engaging.
When the student is engaged in a preferred activity observe their behaviour.
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Focusing on how a student engages during preferred activities and interactions will help you recognise changes in their physical actions that indicate their comprehension may be waning.
Augmentative and individual communication
Augmentative forms of communication such as the use of pictures, sign language, and communication devices are equally important forms of communication. Students use and preference for these modes of communication should be supported.
In addition to these, there are an individual’s unique ways of communicating. Understanding these will help you make sense of and monitor students’ comprehension.
Keeping in mind the way one student shows comprehension and understanding of a topic or interaction may be quite different from another student.
Strategy two: Looking for differences
Look for differences in students’ engagement in different classroom activities that reflect different levels of comprehension.
One of the best ways to work out how much a student understands is to look for patterns across the lesson or week of lessons rather than focusing on one point in time, a single activity or situation.
The school day and week is full of routines — providing a great support to working out a students’ comprehension. From the moment students walk into your classroom there are routines:
• finding a desk
• marking the roll, and
• when it’s time to leave the classroom — completing activities and packing away materials.
Routines help students make sense of their world. They can be:
• structured — such as a seating plan
• flexible — a music class might follow a general structure, but could involve the student trying a different instrument each lesson or working individually or in a group.
Observe and ask yourself questions, such as: Does a student find the routine for lining up easy, but find unstructured activities difficult? If so, this might suggest that consistency and familiarity is supporting their comprehension. Do you see a difference when the activity is group-based or involves copying work from the board, compared to an individual creative project? If so, this might indicate comprehension is easier when observing others’ work or working with classmates. |
By looking for these differences in engagement in different classroom activities, you’ll start to see patterns to help you understand a student’s strengths in comprehension as well as their difficulties.
Strategy three: Adjust to assess
Adjust to assess means making adjustments to observe the difference they make. As a teacher, you’re constantly tailoring your approach to your students’ needs. Using ‘adjust to assess’ doesn’t require additional work. Instead, it’s a deliberate way of designing a task or lesson.
If you want to know how much a student understands, look for differences in engagement and participation as well as task progress and completion as you increase and decrease supports across the lesson and week, within and between activities.
Step | Example / Elaboration |
| 1. Select a classroom activity to focus on. | Subject area: Math Topic: Learning how to use graphs Type of activity: individual |
| 2. Observe how the student is currently engaging in the activity | Is this a new task or have they done a similar task? Are they enjoying or engaged with the task? Do they know what they have to do? (Understanding the instructions is different from understanding the task)
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| 3. Identify what could change and what must stay the same in the activity. | For example:
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4. Modify and observe Choose one element to focus on. | Does the student find it easier and more enjoyable when their comprehension is better supported (e.g., more structure, other people to observe, an example to follow)? or Do they find it easier when there is less structure, because there are fewer demands? |
These types of observations provide clues to the student’s comprehension and support needs, enabling you to modify tasks and increase or decrease supports.
Tips and strategies
Begin with an observation plan:
• record your student’s engagement, involvement, and interactions with different activities throughout the lesson or week of lessons.
• take note of the types of activities that work best — structured, familiar, individual group, etc
• choose one area to focus on — make some adjustments before you assess.
Practice toolkit
Practice implementation planner template
We know it's not always easy to keep track of what's working and what isn't. So, we've created this template for you to record and reflect on what you're doing to create more inclusive classrooms. The implementation planner contains:
- guidance around goal setting
- a reflection section (what worked, didn’t work, what to change, and next steps)
- prompting questions.
Implementation planner with examples
Download Set your professional learning goal for:
Understanding and supporting comprehension (Secondary)
Benefits of goal setting
Setting, working towards, and reflecting on goals helps you grow professionally and improve your practice. You can access AITSL learning resources for teachers to learn more about:How to set goals
The Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership recommends using the SMART matrix to frame your goal setting.SMART goals refers to goals that are:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Relevant
- Time-phased
Resources
Evidence base
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Related Practices
Understanding and supporting comprehension
TEACHING PRACTICE
For student years
Helps students to
- engage in learning
Learning Cycle
Evidence
Evidence from professional practice
This practice emphasises the importance and value of teachers collecting information as part of their routine teaching practice as a source of evidence. This practice acknowledges the expertise that teachers bring to the task of understanding students’ comprehension.