Strategies to Strengthen Your Child's Reading Comprehension

Jun 20, 2011
Lynn Welch

Teach your child reading strategies to improve proficiency. - Digital Free Photos

Learning and using these comprehension strategies will help your child become a more proficient reader.

To give your middle school child more tools for effective reading, teach him to activate background knowledge, rephrase, reread, slow down, question, outline, and take notes. With these tools, your child should be able to tackle nonfiction reading assignments with more confidence and ease.

Activate Background Knowledge

For any nonfiction reading assignment, ask your child what she knows about the topic. For example, if your child checked out a book about Anne Frank, ask her what she already knows about Anne Frank. Have her record the information she knows or thinks she knows.

At this stage, the information does not have to be correct. As she reads, she should refer to her list. When her background knowledge is correct, have her place a check beside the corresponding correct information. When her background knowledge is incorrect, have her put an X beside it or draw a line through it.

Then she should record the correct information. Your child’s ability to recognize incorrect assumptions is very important. One big difference between effective readers and poor readers is that poor readers rarely or never self-correct errors in assumptions or predictions.

Rephrase

Another tool to aid reading comprehension is rephrasing. Rephrasing simply means your child will put into his own words what he has read. Rephrasing is an excellent tool. If your child can paraphrase or retell in his own words what the selection is about, then he understands it. If the article or chapter your child is reading is divided into sections, have him stop and rephrase each section. If the article or chapter does not contain section headings, have him stop and retell after each two or three paragraphs or after each page. For example, if your child is reading a science text and the topic is photosynthesis, have him explain in his own words what photosynthesis is.

Reread

Often people associate rereading with a lack of reading ability, but the opposite is true. Expert readers reread complicated information. As part of rereading, your child may need additional explanations of information. In the photosynthesis example, look up the word photosynthesis in a dictionary that contains etymologies and discuss the etymology of photosynthesis (photo means light; syn- "together" + tithenai "put, place"). Deconstructing a word and discussing its meaning should help your child understand the topic better. If your child rereads several times and still does not understand, then she may need to locate more information about the topic. Always consult reliable sources such as encyclopedias or credible Web sites. A visual representation of the concept such as an illustration should aid your child’s comprehension.

Slow Down

Another tool to use to improve comprehension is slowing down as you read. Have your child read aloud a few paragraphs. Does he stop at periods and pause at commas or ignore punctuation marks? Have your child read a paragraph or two aloud to determine if he is reading too fast. Explain that you read different types of literature at different speeds. He should not read the chapters in a science textbook at the same speed as chapters in a novel. He should not read a poem at the same speed as a short story. Expert readers adjust their reading speed to improve comprehension.

Question

If the text your child is reading contains headings, have your child jot down questions about each heading. If the section heading is a statement, show your child how to reword the heading so that it is a question that she might see on a test. For example, if “Photosynthesis” is a heading in a book about plants, reword the heading as a question she might see on a test such as “What does photosynthesis mean?” or “Explain the steps in photosynthesis.” If the book your child is reading does not contain headings, have her preview the article and write questions she expects to be able to answer after reading the selection. Previewing includes reading the title; studying the pictures and reading their captions; reading maps, graphs, and charts; noting information in a different color, in boldface, or in italics; and reading questions at the end of an article or chapter.

Outline

Another technique to strengthen comprehension is outlining. An outline will provide an overall word picture of the selection. Use Roman numerals (I, II, III, etc.) for major headings and (A, B, C, etc.) for major details. For minor details, use cardinal numbers (1, 2, 3, etc.). An outline for the purpose of improving comprehension is not the type of formal outline you had to write for an English term paper. The purpose of this outline is to improve comprehension, not to write a perfect outline. Your child can use the section headings as major headings, and information within the paragraphs will be listed as major or minor details.

Take Notes

While your child cannot write in a textbook, he can use post-it notes to take notes about the selection and place the post-it notes beside the corresponding sections. Taking notes employs several of the strategies discussed. To take notes, your child will have to paraphrase the information and probably reread. If your child says he does not know what to write, he does not understand the material and will need to use some of these comprehension strategies to understand the material. When he takes notes on post-it notes, he should include the topic and page number on which the information is located so that he can locate the information easily when reviewing or studying. Notes make good study aids and do not appear as daunting as a page of notes in a notebook. Children respond positively to color, so taking notes on brightly colored post-it notes will not seem as tedious as taking notes in a notebook.

Keep in mind that your child will not need to use all of these strategies every time she reads. But the more strategies your child has at her disposal, the more proficient reader she will become. Emphasize to her that these are strategies expert readers use, and let her see you use them when you read.