Unlocking Reading Comprehension
For parents and tutors, "comprehension" can seem broad. We break it down into specific strategies and activities that are easy to implement, providing clarity and direction for guiding students understanding of what they read.
Comprehension Begins with Fluent Reading
Begin with reading fluently. Smooth decoding, effective phrasing, and rapid reading are indicators of reading automatically and without effort.
Reading fluently frees up cognitive resources, increasing comprehension.
We focus on developing fluency first. When reading is automatic, the 'brain's resources' for understanding are not competing with 'lifting words from the page.' In other words: Reduce the brain drain, and improve the comprehension!
Build Narrative Understanding
We select books for our kids by considering their reading level (Lexile, grade level, etc.] However, books and stories also have levels of understanding. Like buildings, stories can be small and simple or large and complicated.
1. When children are young, they need small, simple books that cover a single topic in a random or unstructured manner.
2. Begin reading stories with a time sequence.
- Talk about how silly it might be to change the sequence. Talk about why we do things in specific sequences.
- (Why do we brush our teeth AFTER we eat instead of BEFORE we eat?)
Play with pictures that tell a story in a time sequence. Have them put the pictures in order and make up stories to go with the pictures. Photos of a vacation or birthday party are perfect for this activity. - Then write their story for them. Have them copy the story. Finally, have them write their own stories.
- Talk about words that mean past, present, and future: yesterday, today, tomorrow, last month, this month, next month.
- Write sentences about events in your family based on when they occurred.
3. As they mature, they begin to understand books that have a chronological order, and later, their comprehension of stories includes cause-and-effect sequences. Still, characters do not intentionally plan or act to achieve a specific outcome.
4. Later comprehension of stories where the character purposefully does something and as a result something else happens, but the character does not have underlying reasons or emotions related to their actions.
5. At the next story level, a character has a problem and makes a plan to achieve an outcome (effect) they want. The character has intent and plans, but the concepts of right and wrong have not been introduced yet.
Next, we introduce children to stories with a moral or 'life lesson.' Around middle school, children begin to understand stories with more than one plot, incorporate flashbacks, and exhibit obvious character traits that are associated with their behaviors.
6. Before children understand the complex ideas of morals and themes, they need a foundational understanding of the sequence of stories — time order, problems and solutions, causes and effects, beginning-middle-end, and so forth.
Like building word decoding from CVC words to CCVC and CVCC one-syllable words, and finally to multiple-syllable words, comprehension develops from short, simple sentences and stories to complex and longer sentences and stories.