Reading competence is the third central element of the program. Reading comprehension is a crucial skill that develops throughout life and is central to school success. Reading comprehension involves developing cognitive skills (decoding, vocabulary knowledge, grammar, syntax, etc.) and metacognitive skills (awareness and ability to enable word processing strategies: thinking, controlling and adjusting the reading activity to the goals of reading). OECD (2009) suggest the importance of teaching strategies to promote its learning. Moreover, Block & Lacina (2009) suggest strategies such us scaffolding, modelling, thinking aloud, direct instruction or guided participation to encourage pupils to achieve better reading comprehension and the processes of self-regulation.
The programme Llegim en parella tries to create situations of authentic reading comprehension, PISA-style, featuring real texts. These texts are selected according to three criteria: variety of formats, difficulty according to the child age and choosing contents witch are unity of meaning. The Activity sheets are structured in three sections: a previous one, before reading: children thinks about questions witch help them to explore the characteristics of the text, to formulate hypothesis or predictions about the content and to activate previous knowledge. A second one, the reading activity: the tutor and tutee read using the pair reading technique, PPP (Pause, Prompt, Prize). And finally, a comprehension section with questions to promote inferential and deep comprehension answers to stimulate interpretation and reflection.
