CARS & STARS Online is a digital reading program designed to turn every student into a proficient and capable reader, with advanced levels of reading comprehension.
The core reading strategies that underpin the entirety of the CARS & STARS Online digital reading comprehension program form an underlying instructional framework that recurs throughout every level and provides consistency of understanding and instruction for students and teachers alike.
The twelve reading strategies progress from simpler, lower-order thinking skills such as Finding the Main Idea and Recalling Facts and Details to more complex, higher-order concepts such as Identifying Author’s Purpose and Summarising. Initial questions determine students’ mastery of the text at a literal level, while later questions build on this understanding to get to the heart of their conceptual understanding. In this way, in every reading passage across every reading level, students are being asked to perform the same essential tasks – with their difficulty and complexity increasing as the student progresses through the reading levels.
Figurative language is a type of language that uses figures of speech rather than more literal language use so as to be more florid, effective or persuasive.
Figures of speech include elements such as metaphors, similes and allusions. These devices go beyond the literal meanings of the words – what is simply and directly said. Other devices and styles such as alliteration, imagery or onomatopoeia are figurative techniques that appeal directly to the senses of the reader.
Put simply, figurative language is any type of linguistic device that goes beyond the literal.
Reading figurative language requires a more developed level of reading comprehension because it involves a student not simply understanding what is directly stated but moving to thinking in a more abstract and complex way.
It’s fair to say that the ability to derive meaning from direct, literal language illustrates a type of lower-order thinking, whereas the ability to understand and interpret figurative language is evidence of a less conventional, higher-order thinking.
Figurative language is regularly employed in more advanced texts as readers get older. Understanding it is an important part of being able to appreciate adult novels and poetry, for example.
For this reason, the skill of being able to interpret figurative language is a vital one, and as such it makes up one of the twelve main reading strategies that underpin the CARS & STARS Online reading comprehension program.
Questions about Interpreting Figurative Language in the program ask students to engage with examples of language where words are used in a way that is different from their usual meaning.
Being able to interpret figurative language effectively is one of the crucial differences between simply reading because it is required and reading for deeper enjoyment, and so is an important step in developing an advanced and interested reader.
If you are interested in learning more about the CARS & STARS Online subscriptions and how they can help children to achieve better results, then sign up for a free trial to be an integral part of your child’s reading success.
