Reading comprehension forms the foundation of children’s literacy and reading skills, but many face challenges mastering this ability.
Not only are children still underperforming in reading test scores, but they are also facing unique challenges, like a world filled with distractions or materials that are too complex for them.
Here, we’re going to look at some ways you can help your child improve reading comprehension from a young age, including exercises during reading, using resources, and addressing tutoring reading comprehension support.
How Can Parents Actively Support Reading Comprehension at Home?
There are many tactics you can employ to actively support and improve your child’s reading comprehension skill at home.
Ask Questions While Reading
To gauge how well your child understands a story or piece of text, it’s important to ask questions as you go. This is helpful when you’re reading together, as you can pause after each page or key event and ask your child questions like “Who is the main character?” or “What do you think will happen next?” to encourage critical thinking. This also means your child must actively engage with the text in order to answer your questions.
Summarize and Retell
Another way to ensure your child is concentrating on their reading is to ask them to retell a story to you after they’ve read it. This act means they have to pay attention to what they’re reading to digest and summarize it for you. They can either tell you this aloud or, if they prefer, write a short summary. Reading aloud helps with pronunciation and oracy, while oracy also benefits from improving writing skills.
Read Aloud Together
There’s a good reason that teachers ask pupils to read excerpts of text aloud in the classroom — it’s because it’s a proven way to boost reading. By reading aloud together at home, you’re helping your child understand written content more deeply, from interpreting characters’ tone and emotions to dissecting the plot.
How Can Visual and Interactive Activities Improve Reading Skills?
You might find that your child is struggling with reading because they’re a visual learner. In this case, you can use visual early literacy activities to bring stories to life and improve their skills.
Visualize the Story
If your child is a budding artist, tap into that skill by getting them to draw moments from certain scenes or create storyboards. To effectively visualize a story, children must understand it. You can also draw out stories or help them map events to make this a bonding experience.
Make Reading Fun and Engaging
Sometimes, without additional sensory stimulation, reading can feel a bit boring. That’s why it’s important to incorporate engaging elements, like quizzes or mini-games. Interspersing short bursts of reading with quizzes on the story so far or dramatic re-enactments of the action can help keep kids excited and learning.
This is a key tactic of Brighterly’s reading tutors online, who use gamified learning and personalized curricula to keep children continually improving, all while having fun.
Use Structured Practice Tools
Alongside games, there is a range of dedicated learning resources available at your fingertips. Fun reading activities like word searches, flashcards, and worksheets help your child think outside of the box and give them new ways to reinforce their reading. You can also enlist tools like coloring crayons to support reading and ask kids to color-code words, make sight word art, or color in their visualizations — the sky is the limit!
Set Your Child Up For Reading Success
When your child has strong reading comprehension skills, they’ll find more challenging literacy learning, like structuring paragraphs or deciphering the main idea of a story, much easier. With these simple tips, you can help improve your child’s reading comprehension and ensure they never fall behind.
