What is Reading Comprehension?

Comprehension is the active process of constructing meaning from written language. Comprehension “monitoring” is an important part of comprehension. Students who practice comprehension monitoring know when they understand what they are reading and they know what to do when they do not understand what they read.

Free ebook library available at Oxford Owl. Also, you can find resources to help teach your child in all five components of reading.

Comprehension Practice

Here is a list of activities you can explore at home to build your child's comprehension.

*Summarize by using the five finger technique titled Somebody, Wanted, But, So, Then. See the example above.

*Cut out the paragraphs in a short newspaper, magazine, or copy of a text. Mix up the paragraphs. Have your child read each paragraph and then put the text back together in the correct order. Hint: label the back of each section with a number, so your child can see if he/she placed the text in the correct order.

*Cook! Have your child read through the ingredients and directions on a recipe while making a meal together. Gather all the ingredients and read the recipe directions. Talk about what might happen if your followed the directions out of order.

*Find books that capture your child’s interest and are appropriate for your child's reading ability. Help your child choose both fiction and non-fiction material. Read and re-read favorite stories and talk about them together.

*Ask your child to stop and summarize (the big ideas) of what your child is reading in his/her own words.

*Teach RCRC (read, cover, remember, check) strategy for monitoring understanding. Have your child read a paragraph, cover it up with her hand, try to remember the ideas, then check the text to see if he/she was correct.

*Talk about the different uses of language. For example: “I know that he must be scared because it says that his heart gave a great leap.”

*Ask your child to restate difficult sentences or passages in his/her own words.

*Ask your child to go back to the text and “prove it”. Help your child understand it is important to be able to back up the answer.

Here is an example:

-Ask:

“Why do you say that?”

“Where in the story does it tell us that?”

*Model how you make inferences (“reading between the lines”) while you are reading. You might say, “The author doesn’t come right out and say this, yet I think that the girl is very proud of her performance in the school play. She keeps wearing her costume around the house, and she lies in bed for hours going over her lines and imagining her grandma getting the video in the mail.”

*Ask your child to make predictions about what he/she is reading.

-Ask:

“Based on what you know so far, what do you think will happen next?”

"Why do you think that?”

Revisit the predictions. “Were you right”

"Did you change your mind?"

" What made you change your mind?”

*Model your own thinking as you read to your child. For example: “In this part I think we will find out why the man went back to the campground.” Or, “Now I see why George is afraid to help his sister. He doesn’t like high places. I wonder what he will do?

*Describe how you visualize as you read a passage. For instance: “I have a picture of this scene in my mind. The car is on a dark, probably narrow road; there are no other cars around. It feels lonely to me.”

*Help your child make connections to his/her own experiences. “This is like when we went to the airport and had the flat tire. Remember how worried we were we would miss our plane!”

*Help your child understand the connections between other stories he/she has read or characters he/she has come across in his/her reading.

*Model for your child what you do when you get to a part that is confusing. For example: “This doesn’t make sense to me. I’d better re-read to see if I can figure out what’s happening here.”

*Try using “think spots”. Use a colored pencil to mark a dot where you want your child to stop and think about what he/she has read. Mark a dot after a paragraph, after a particular scene, or after a few pages. Tell your child to stop and tell you big ideas. If he/she can’t recall, then ask him/her what he/she can do to help himself/herself understand. Suggest re-reading as a helpful strategy - one all good readers use.

*Teach the “clink - clunk” strategy. After reading a certain selection teach your child to ask, “Does my reading “click” (make sense) or “clunk” (doesn’t make sense)? If it “clicked” then keep on reading. But, if it “clunked” then go back and re-read or ask for help.

*Help your child learn how to use the dictionary or glossary to help with difficult vocabulary.

*Provide hands-on experiences to help build background knowledge your child may need to understand a certain concept. You could read simpler books on the same subject about the Civil War in social studies, you could visit the library and check out short, simpler picture books on the subject so your child has a basic understanding. This background information will provide a framework to help your child better understand the more difficult reading material encountered in class.

*Talk about and model how readers approach a text in different ways depending upon their purpose for reading. For instance, we read a science book differently than we read a novel.

*Look at a textbook or reference book together and talk about how the book is organized. Look for the table of contents, index, and glossary. Discuss how you would use them.

*After reading fiction, ask your child the “Big Five”.

• Who is this story mostly about?

• Where does this story take place?

• When does this story take place?

• What is the problem in the story?

• How is the problem solved?

Asking these questions repeatedly helps your child understand the structure of a story and helps to guide his/her reading.

*Try a graphic organizer to help represent the big ideas visually. Pictures, diagrams, webs, and charts are some ways to categorize information into concepts and details to help students organize, memorize, and learn new information. You could use a graphic organizer to help your child keep track of story events and to help him/her with writing about his/her reading.