Improving Reading Comprehension
Reading comprehension is a skill that kids need to continue to develop into adulthood as they read more and more challenging texts.
Reading comprehension, a complex cognitive skill, transcends basic word recognition. Comprehension involves the ability to understand, analyze, and interpret written text. It requires active engagement, critical thinking, and strategic reading techniques which are learned skills. Vocabulary is key to comprehension, aiding in grasping nuanced meanings along with understanding contextual clues. Recognizing sentence structures and adapting strategies based on text types are essential, making reading comprehension adaptable across diverse genres. Parents can play a crucial role in guiding students to develop these skills through discussions, questions, and reflective writing. Reading comprehension requires building a “toolbox” of ways of understanding the meaning an author is trying to convey.
Critical comprehension tools:
Summarizing text in their own words
Predicting what will happen next
Asking questions while reading
Inferring something that is not overtly stated
Sequencing actions in the plot
Comparing and contrasting characters, settings, plot lines, etc.
Visualizing text in one’s mind, drawing on paper, acting out, etc.
Making a mental map of key elements such as character relationships, places/ geography referenced, etc.
Relating to the text - making connections to the text with your own life
Drawing from outside knowledge about historical periods, places, people, etc. to understand the meaning of the text.
Looking up the meanings of new words is a way to enhance comprehension and bring additional context into the understanding of text.
Parents can help their child develop reading comprehension skills both by using written text as well as listening to content or watching tv, plays, etc:
Making sure the text is at the appropriate lexile level: Ensure that the task is correctly leveled for your child otherwise any activity will devolve into sheer frustration.
Practice talking to the text while reading together: Ask authentic questions aloud, make predictions, etc while reading. Books with a mystery plot are great for practicing prediction, questioning, and inference.
Listen to a podcast or audiobook together: Pause to ask questions and practice building understanding along the way.
Shrink a summary: Have a child summarize a paragraph or a story and challenge them to “shrink” it down to 1-2 sentences, capturing the most important elements only focusing on who, what, when, where, why, how basics.
Focus first with a question: Before reading, challenge your child to help you answer a question about the story when you finish reading. “Can you help me figure out why the mouse left his house?” or for older readers “What do you think the girls primary emotion was during this part? Why did she feel that way?”
Pick books that kids will relate to the most: Find books that your child will easily find personal connections with and ask them questions like “Have you ever felt that way?” or “Is this boy’s school like yours or different? Why?” etc.
Imagine an alternate ending: Spark creativity by having your child write a sequel or an alternate ending to the story, demonstrating comprehension through original storytelling.
Character Interviews: Have your child imagine interviewing a character from the story, deepening their understanding of character perspectives. You can role play this and make it fun and swap roles.
Act out action scenes: Use a close reading of the text to act out fight scenes, or any action from text and discuss choices made or not made and why. Refer back to the text to check how accurate your reenactment was and give yourselves a grade for accuracy.
Read the news together: Developing a habit of reading the newspaper with your child can help them build long-term knowledge about different contexts and current events which they will draw from when they work to comprehend new texts.