The primary focus of the Building Bridges Programme is the teaching of comprehension, with the ultimate aim of enabling children to become self-regulated strategic readers. This comprehension programme is currently being implemented in our school from Junior Infants right through to Sixth Class.

The nine key strategies of the programme are:

• Prediction
• Visualisation
• Making Connections
• Questioning
• Clarifying *
• Declunking*
• Determining Importance*
• Inferring*
• Synthesising*

By learning about these strategies, children can become more involved in the text they are reading and deepen their understanding of the text. Each strategy is explicitly modelled through a think aloud process using high quality fiction and non-fiction picture books which were purchased with the programme in mind. The children are taught a specific hand signal to accompany each strategy; these are known as comprehension processing motions.

Ms Mc Gee’s fourth class are using this programme three times a week with Ms Curran their Special Education teacher. The class is divided in two to work in smaller groups. They have been reading the books The Wall by Eve Bunting and Tuesday by David Weisner. So far the children have given the programme a thumbs up.