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Teachers and parents, you may be unsure of where to start when teaching your child how to comment on a book.  The National Assessment of Educational Progress (the only nationwide assessment for literacy that can also be used for both national and international comparison) has developed a framework with three main targets for reading comprehension. These targets apply mainly to grades 4-12 but can be adapted for use at other levels. 


You can use these targets to think of ideas for comments.

Locate and Recall: When locating or recalling information from what they have read, students may identify explicitly stated main ideas or may focus on specific elements of a story.

Example: "The main idea of this book/story was..." or "These are the main characters in the book..."

Integrate and Interpret: When integrating and interpreting what they have read, students may make comparisons, explain character motivation, or examine relations of ideas across the text.

Example: "The character acted that way because..." or "These two characters were similar in the way..."

Critique and Evaluate: When critiquing or evaluating what they have read, students view the text critically by examining it from numerous perspectives or may evaluate overall text quality or the effectiveness of particular aspects of the text.

Example: "I was disappointed by the ending because..." or "This reminded me of my favorite book..."

Don't be nervous! Try your hand at posting some comments today!