Understand Retrieval Questions 1

In this activity, you will practise how to answer retrieval type questions for the SATs reading test.

The SATs reading test will ask you to read and answer questions about three different texts.

These texts will be varied, they could be fictional, factual or poetry.

Retrieval questions come in different forms and will often begin with who, what, where, when, why or how.

When answering a retrieval question, you may find the answer very easy to find, you may have already text marked it or you may need to search a little harder.

Top tips when answering retrieval questions:

Use your text marking! Especially names, places, dates, years, these could all be useful!

Do not guess!!  It can be so tempting to guess when answering this type of question but you must check back in the text again.

A retrieval question could begin with 'who' - if it does, it is asking for a person; 'where' means it is asking for a place etc.

Don't be fooled into thinking that all retrieval questions are literal and easy to answer - you will probably have to look in detail at the text to find the answer.

Over to you now to spend some time practising how to answer retrieval questions based on different types of texts. Good luck!