This student's reading comprehension is impacted because your child is struggling to read at grade level text. Your child's brain is spending all of its energy into decoding words, that it's unable to focus on the meaning of the word. This is a child will need to learn their phonics, reading strategies for how to blend and segment multi-syllabic words, and practice through repeated reading until reading automaticity is met.  Speak with your classroom teacher about roughly what level your child's current reading level is at, because we want to start with a text that challenges him/her, but isn't so challenging that it prevents them from understanding what they are reading. We want to encourage reading for meaning while building fluency.

Check out my decoding page or my sight words page for more reading strategies.

A student who reads with automaticity, but has low reading comprehension needs to practice reading for meaning. Often times, students are reading, but not visualizing or playing a movie in their head. They need to first practice summarizing and asking questions such as who, what, where, when, and why or retelling from beginning, middle to end. It often helps to have them draw and describe what they recall. The stronger the mental image, the better their comprehension. Encourage the thought process that great readers reread when they don't understand and we know when we don't understand when the movie in our heads start to get fuzzy.

Lastly, your child may also be struggling to maintain a mental image when their vocabulary is low.

As we progress through the grade levels, not only does the complexity of the text increases, but so do the reading skills. In upper grades, students are required to think more deeply and move away from surface level questions called thin questions. These are your typical questions where the answer can be found immediately by scanning the text.

Your child now needs to look beyond the surface level questions and start supporting his/her responses with text-evidence. Below are strategies to help with common areas that students struggle.