How Do You Improve Reading Comprehension for Kids?
How to Increase Reading Comprehension Skills in Children
The ability to read effortlessly, fluently, and at the same time understand what is being read is critical for a child's success in school and later on in life. A child who cannot read is a child that cannot comprehend - after all, how do you comprehend something that you can't read? Furthermore, a child who can read fluently may not necessarily have a high level of reading comprehension. While decoding and word recognition skills are critical for reading comprehension, there is much more to increasing reading comprehension skills for kids beyond simply achieving a high level of reading fluency. We'll discuss all of these here.
There are several key contributing factors that affect a child's reading comprehension abilities. One of which as already mentioned above, is decoding skills. The other keys are vocabulary, world knowledge, and active reading comprehension strategies. Decoding and word recognition is the process of applying letter and letter sound knowledge to blend out and pronounce the words. For beginning readers, this process requires heavy mental concentration and effort where much of their mental capacity goes towards word recognition, and little is left for the process of reading comprehension. Therefore, the more reading fluency one can build, the more mental capacity if freed up to process what it is they are reading.
Aside from developing reading fluency, a child's vocabulary will also have an impact on their reading comprehension skills. The larger the vocabulary a child has, they great their level of reading comprehension will be. Research has shown that children who are taught to develop a larger vocabulary performs better on comprehension test than children without these vocabulary development instructions.
World knowledge is another aspect that can affect a child's reading comprehension skills. Studies done by Anderson & Pearson have shown that readers with greater prior knowledge about the topic of reading will have better understand compared to other children with less prior knowledge. This is why reading has such a positive upward spiral effect:
More reading leads to better reading fluency >> leads to greater vocabulary development >> leads to increased increase world knowledge >> leads to greater reading comprehension >> and leads back to increase in reading fluency.
It's a fantastic upward spiral!
Teaching Strategies for Reading Comprehension Skill Development
The other aspect that can have a dramatic effect on reading comprehension is the use of active comprehension strategies. This typically involves engaging the children in active discussion about the text they are reading; asking questions about the story; analyzing the plot, the problems, and the solutions; and summarizing and discussing the characters and ideas of the stories.
What we have discussed thus far are some very useful methods to helping kids improve their reading comprehension skills. In my view, I think that it would be even more beneficial to take a much more proactive approach by teaching children to read very early on, and help them develop reading comprehension skills early. The conventional thinking in this matter (for parents and teachers alike) is that children will learn to read once they enter the primary grades, and that comprehension abilities will develop in later grades.
This approach has deprived many children of a golden opportunity to learn and stimulate their intellectual development at an early age. Believe it or not, children as young as 2 and 3 years old can learn to read fluently, and develop excellent reading comprehension skills. When a child learns to read at an early age, they can develop exceptionally fast and fluent reading skills that most would not dare to think possible. As they become exceptional readers, they also develop superior reading comprehension skills as more of their brain capacity is put towards comprehending rather than decoding and word recognition, which has largely become an automatic process for them.
>> Click here to discover how to teach your child to read and help your child develop superior reading and reading comprehension skills
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