Literacy Impact Educational Services

I’ve been thinking about something that was discussed at the DSF Conference by Kris Boulton.

We can easily be misled into believing students are comprehending what they are reading by the questions we ask.

Let me share an example:

The plifeth flaffled frebbily beside the gangoose while its hembershams watched.

Now answer these questions:
What did the plifeth do?
What stood beside the gangoose?

You can probably answer them.
The plifeth flaffled.
The plifeth stood beside the gangoose.

But now answer these instead:
What is this sentence about?
What is going on here?

Suddenly, the limitations in our understanding become obvious. We don’t have enough vocabulary, background knowledge or understanding to make sense of the sentence. We don’t have a mental model of what is happening.

Can we read it? Yes.
Can we answer questions about it? Yes. We can identify the relevant facts in the text and connect them to answer the questions.

But if I asked, “What is going on here?” or “Explain this sentence in your own words,” how would you go?

How often do we see students being asked questions that they can simply fish around in the text for, locate the answer and respond correctly? A child could potentially score 100% on those questions and still have very little understanding of what they have actually read.

This is why interspersed open-ended queries (Questioning the Author) and gist statements (Vaughn & Spear-Swerling) are so powerful. They require students to articulate what they understand about the text rather than simply retrieving and connecting facts.

That gives us a much more valid indication of whether a student is actually constructing meaning.
As Kris said—and as we already know—our goal is for students to be making meaning.

The challenge for us as educators is to ensure we provide students with opportunities to do so.

If you’d like to learn how to ensure your practices are maximizing reading comprehension across all subject areas, check out www.literacyimpact.com.au online masterclasses for teachers and school leaders, or join me for The Literacy Improvement Webinar on Wednesday.

👇 Answers to the gangoose and plifeth mystery are in the comments.

“We collect so much data… but we don’t know what to do with it.”
I hear this from principals constantly.
Here’s the truth: a school without effective data-informed practices in an RTI/MTSS system is a leaky bucket. There will always be a constant stream of students slipping through the cracks.
Schools are sitting on DIBELS, PAT, Phonics Check, On Entry/FELA, writing data, ORF progress monitoring… but leaders feel uncertain what it’s actually telling them.
Teachers are asking:
→ Is this decoding? Language-based? Fluency related?
→ Should this student go into phonics intervention? Spelling intervention?
→ Are we using the wrong intervention altogether?
Without a clear decision-making pathway, these questions get answered inconsistently — or not at all.
Schools that do this well move from saying “this student is at risk” to saying: “We know exactly what the likely difficulty is, what to assess next, and what instruction is required.”
At Crib Point Primary School:
📊 Foundation students at significant literacy risk (DIBELS) dropped from 67% to 5% across 2024
📊 Students at Benchmark and Above Benchmark rose from 7% to 79%
📊 Year 1 ORF Accuracy: significant risk dropped from 35% to 6%, while Benchmark and Above rose from 56% to 94%
How? Not by working harder.
✔️ A clear process for data analysis and next steps
✔️ Scheduled data chats where staff feel confident using data
✔️ Targeted Literacy Cycles — 5-week cycles of improvement
✔️ Codified instructional practice
✔️ A relentless “whatever it takes” mentality
✔️ A strong ORF decision-making tree
The answer wasn’t more intervention. It was strengthening Tier 1 instruction — and being skilled in using data to prevent literacy difficulties before they happen.
Want to build this in your school? Self-paced courses are live now at literacyimpact.com.au