Improve Your Child’s Reading Comprehension Skills with These 7 Tips

Does your child dread reading? Do they complain about it, saying that it’s “boring”? For many kids who struggle to stay motivated with reading, it’s because their reading comprehension skills are not as strong as they could be. After all, if you sat down and did the work to sound out and decipher a whole page of codes and got nothing out of it, you’d be pretty frustrated and bored with it, too!

Letters and words are like codes that can either unlock meaning or just seem like random chaos. Helping your child build reading comprehension skills brings more order (and fun) to their reading experiences!

If your child struggles with reading comprehension, here are some things to try:

#1: Practice Activating Prior Knowledge

This is a helpful practice to do both before you read and while you’re in the middle of a text. What does your child already know about the topic, timeline, place, situation, etc.? What can that prior knowledge tell them about what may happen? Were they surprised by anything unexpected?

This kind of activation brings some more personal investment into reading experiences. 

#2: Ask Lots of Reading Comprehension Questions! (And Let Your Kids Do It, Too)

Whether your child is reading out loud or independently, ask them questions! Get them thinking about what they have read. Start with basic things like character names and key points of action, then move into more critical-thinking questions about why certain things happened.

It’s a great skill for your kids to be able to ask some questions on their own, too! If you’re just starting out, some good starting questions can be:

• How did [this character] feel when that happened? Why do you think they felt like that?
• Have you ever experienced something like that? How did it make you feel?
• What do you think is going to happen next? Why?
• Do you think [this character] should have done anything differently? How would that have changed the story?

#3: Work on Visualizing the Text

Building a “movie” in your mind is one of the most enjoyable parts of reading! If your child struggles in this area, it may be because they are spending so much time and energy simply decoding the words that they are unable to have this comprehension experience.

But kids are imaginative by nature. When you take the time to help them build that mental picture, it will become more practical for them to do it on their own! You can do this by asking pointed sensory questions about what they see, hear, smell, etc. You can also get creative by drawing pictures or doing a crafty activity to bring the story to life!

(As a side note, if your child is reading below grade level and still struggling to decode new words when they should be reading fluently, addressing their reading struggles now is important. Click here to learn more.)

#4: Do Some Detective Work: What is it NOT Saying?

Teach your child to “read between the lines.” What did the author NOT tell us? Why? Become a detective that looks for clues about what may be coming next. This adds a level of investment and curiosity about stories that can help emerging readers grow their reading comprehension skills.

#5: Look for Evidence About Their Ideas

If your child comes to a book with a particular idea about what’s going to happen, ask them what makes them think that. Get them used to seeking textual evidence to support (or contradict) their opinions so they are really engaging with the text in a more powerful way!

#6: Encourage New Interests and Experiences

Every new experience adds to your child’s knowledge bank that they can draw on for future reading experiences. Exploring new interests, places, and experiences can help with reading comprehension because they will have more personal investment to draw on to help make the stories more personal!

#7: Build Cognitive Skills to Improve Reading Comprehension

The reality is that many kids seem to have a disconnect when it comes to reading comprehension. Maybe they can read fluently and beautifully, but when they get to the end they have zero idea what they just read. Or maybe they still struggle with decoding and fluency so their comprehension is a lower priority.

Around third grade, kids go from “learning to read” to “reading to learn.” This transition is HARD for so many kids. Suddenly, they have to read something AND remember it because that is the primary form of instruction for some subjects.

If your child is approaching (or past) this transition and still struggling with reading comprehension, their cognitive skills are likely to blame.

For example, if your child struggles with working memory, they have trouble holding onto information long enough to use it or store it away. If your child struggles with divided or sustained attention, they can’t focus long enough to get through a text and they struggle with the balance of decoding and deriving meaning at the same time. Or if your child struggles with low processing speed, they work so long on decoding that they’ve lost the meaning from where they started.

This is just the beginning. So many cognitive skills go into the practice of reading that there is a unique approach to take in every situation.

If you want to help your child better at reading comprehension, give us a call! We have an entire comprehension training program that targets these (and more) weak areas to help them succeed.