A child can read a passage aloud without stumbling and still be unable to say what it was about. Decoding and understanding are separate skills, and the second one grows through questions, from the simplest (“who? where?”) to the subtle (“what does the text hint at without saying it?”).
The questions on this wheel are not tied to any particular text: they work with a picture book, a novel, a short story and, for most of them, a news article. The “Early readers” variant practises retrieval and retelling; the “Confident readers” variant moves on to inference, point of view and the author’s purpose. Each question explains what a good answer should include.
How to use it
- After reading, spin the wheel: the question it lands on is the one the pupil or group answers.
- Read the description aloud: it explains what form the answer should take.
- Always ask for evidence from the text: a quoted sentence or a line number.
- In a reading circle, spin once per pupil so each one prepares a question while the others reread.
All the options
- Read between the lines
- Find something the text does not say outright but hints at, and quote the clues that lead there. That is an inference.
- Who is telling the story?
- Is the narrator a character who says “I”, or an outside voice? What do they know, and what do they seem to be unaware of?
- Explain the title
- Why did the author choose this title? Suggest an alternative and say what it would highlight instead.
- Author’s purpose
- Is the text mainly trying to inform, persuade, move or entertain? Back it up with two specific features: word choice, tone, structure.
- Switch viewpoint
- Retell one scene from a minor character’s point of view. What do we learn that we did not know before?
- The turning point
- Identify the event that changes the course of the story. Explain what would have happened without it.
- Theme in one sentence
- The subject is what the text is about; the theme is what it says about life (friendship survives distance, courage can be learned). State the theme in one sentence.
- A detail that matters
- Find a detail that seems unimportant at first but gains meaning later on. Quote both passages.
- Text-to-text link
- Compare this text with a book or film you know: one thing they share and one important difference.
- Ask the author
- Write the question you would most like to ask the author, then the answer they might give based on the text.
Frequently asked questions
What are the main types of reading comprehension questions?
Teachers usually distinguish literal questions, whose answer is stated in the text, inferential questions, which require working something out from clues, and evaluative questions, which ask for a reasoned opinion. A good session mixes all three.
How do you teach inference?
Start with short texts where a piece of information is deliberately left out (“She shook her umbrella as she came in”: it was raining). Keep asking “how do you know?” and have pupils underline the words that act as clues.
What can I do if my child reads well but does not understand?
Pause during reading and ask them to retell what just happened in their own words. Encourage them to picture the scene like a film and describe what they see. If the text is long, break it into shorter chunks.
How many questions should I ask after reading?
Three or four well-chosen questions beat a worksheet of fifteen. Open with a literal question to build confidence, then follow with at least one inference question.