Books on reading skills
10 Best Books to Improve Reading Comprehension - SAT, ACT, GRE, GMAT
Have you ever noticed that you fail to grasp any meaning out of it when you read a particular passage? How many times we sit down to read a passage and find ourselves reading and rereading a paragraph because none of it makes sense. I know it is an absurd occurrence because reading should equal comprehension, right? Although that is what most of us believe, however, reading something doesn’t ensure that you will understand the meaning behind it. Reading words as they appear and deriving meaning out of them are two separate things.
Due to the limitations in the way we are taught in school, most of us don’t develop the reading comprehension skills that are required to decipher meaning from text. This is made worse later on in life when we encounter difficult books in college and beyond. The good news is that it is never too late to brush up on your reading comprehension skills. In this article,
I will provide the ten best books to help you improve your comprehension abilities.
In this Article
- 1. The Reading Strategies Book: Your Everything Guide to Developing Skilled Readers
- 2. How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading
- 3. Visualization Skills for Reading Comprehension
- 4. Essential Reading Skills, Preparation for High School
- 5. The Art of Comprehension: Exploring Visual Texts to Foster Comprehension, Conversation, and Confidence
- 6. I Read It, but I Don’t Get It: Comprehension Strategies for Adolescent Readers.
- 7. The Reading Comprehension Blueprint: Helping Students Make Meaning from Text
- 8. Practice Makes Perfect Intermediate English Reading and Comprehension
- 9. Practice Makes Perfect Advanced English Reading and Comprehension
- 10. Reading Development and Difficulties: Bridging the Gap Between Research and Practice
This is by far the best of the lot. It is a perfect blend of strategies and practical advice to help you better understand written work.
You will find some 300 tried and tested methods in this book that cover everything from fluency to literary analysis.
Key Features:
- Develop goals for every reader
- Give students step-by-step strategies for skilled reading
- Guide readers with prompts aligned to the strategies
- Adjust instruction to meet individual needs with Jen’s Teaching Tips
- Craft demonstrations and explanations with her Lesson Language
- Learn more with Hat Tips to the work of influential teacher-authors.
Get it here.
“How to read a book” is an all-time classic. It was initially published in 1940, and this version was revised in the 1970s. The book does exactly what it says in the title; it teaches you how to read a book effectively. You will learn how to pace your reading and how different genres require different approaches.
Key Features:
- Learn how to pace your reading for maximum effectiveness.
- Covers a wide range of difficulties – elementary reading to speed reading.
- Learn how to “X-ray” a piece of text to derive meaning from it critically.
- Includes a host of different techniques that work for different genres.
Get it here.
This book is ideal for those who cannot visualize as they read. Visualization skills are vital for comprehension, and some of us do it naturally while others have to learn it. You will learn how to create mental pictures as you read a passage for a richer experience.
Key Features:
- Improve your inferencing and prediction abilities by visualizing written test.
- Step-by-step activities to quickly build the ability to visualize information while reading.
- Gradually increments difficulty.
- No-prep. No extra materials are required. Worksheets are designed for ‘six-minute sessions.’
Get it from here.
Don’t be thrown off by the title.
Although this book is catered towards high school students, any adult can effectively improve their reading comprehension. Lessons focus on how to read effectively using practical strategies.
Key Features:
- 36 complete lessons to support classroom teaching or as a self-study guide
- Filled with graphic organizers and helpful visual reminders to improve student s reading comprehension.
- Learn practical strategies for different genres of text.
- Covers – strategic reading, non-fiction texts, and fiction texts.
Get it here.
“The Art of Comprehension” will teach you how to read texts by using what the author calls “access lenses.” You will learn about the connection between visual and written texts and how to use your imagination to derive meaning.
Key Features:
- Discover inventive ways to prompt students to notice, think about, and synthesize visuals—using the same observation and comprehension skills they can bring to reading and writing.
- Learn about ways to unravel layers of meaning in picture books, chapter books, artwork, poetry, and informational text.
- Explore the book’s eclectic collection of art and illustration by acclaimed illustrator Peter H. Reynolds, 19th-century masters, and more.
- Learn about “access lenses” (such as faces, body language, sound/silence), which prompts students to become active explorers and meaning-makers.
Get it here.
The title says it all. It is indeed widespread that not all reading leads to understanding. This can be found in people of any age as it is not just restricted to children. This book will learn a myriad of strategies that will help you understand text better from different genres.
Key Features:
- Thoughtful explanation of current theories of comprehension instruction and how they might be adapted for use with adolescents.
- What Works section in each of the last seven chapters offers simple ideas you can immediately employ in your life.
- Teaching tips and ideas that benefit struggling readers as well as proficient and advanced readers.
- Appendixes with reproducible materials that you can use in your classroom, including coding sheets, double-entry diaries, and comprehension constructors.
Get it here.
This book is ideal for teachers and students alike. It goes deep into comprehension and uncovers meaning methods that can be employed to understand better written work.
Key Features:
- Get critical background knowledge by utilizing decades of research on reading comprehension.
- Teachers will get a complete framework for organizing instruction, aligned with Scarborough’s Reading Rope’s language comprehension strands.
- In-depth chapters are devoted to each facet of reading comprehension, including vocabulary, syntax, and sentence comprehension.
- Learn everything about text structures, background knowledge, and levels of understanding and inference.
Get it here.
This book uses exciting topics such as deep-sea treasure hunting, Pixar Studios’ computer-generated movie magic, the Flying Doctors of Australia, and more to help students learn reading comprehension. You will also find vocabulary resources in the book.
Key Features:
- Develop your reading comprehension skills at the intermediate level
- Build your English vocabulary
- Prepare for the comprehension sections of ESL tests.
- Master how to read for main ideas, summarize texts, make outlines, remember facts and figures, and more.
Get it here.
Unlike the previous book by the same author, this one focuses on advanced texts such as academic journals and news articles. You will learn how to interpret different texts and derive meaning from them.
Key Features:
- Build your academic and technical vocabulary
- Boost your comprehension skills to an advanced level
- Create reading strategies to use with any problematic text
- Develop critical thinking skills
Get it here.
If you want to understand reading comprehension problems from a research perspective, this is the perfect book. It will dive deep into the various studies conducted on comprehension and offer solutions to some of the biggest challenges.
Key Features:
- Learning the structure of language at the word level.
- Reading comprehension and reading comprehension difficulties
- Assessing reading in second language learners.
- Effective prevention and intervention for word-level reading difficulties.
- The neurobiological nature of developmental dyslexia.
Get it here.
Books for Teaching Reading Comprehension Strategies
Teaching reading comprehension is a must. Kids need to know that recognizing and saying the correct words is only PART of reading. Comprehension is the other side of the coin. Making meaning of the text is the ultimate goal of reading.
Reading Comprehension Articles
Over the last few years, we’ve posted quite a few comprehension articles and printables.
I’ve shared from my experience as a classroom teacher, reading tutor, and homeschooling mama. Here are some you may enjoy below.
- Reading Comprehension Strategies: Reading Equals Thinking
- Teaching Reading Comprehension Strategies {Fix-Up Strategies}
- Struggling Readers Need to Develop “Thoughtful” Literacy
- Reading Comprehension Strategies {10-week series}
- Before they Read: Connecting: Supporting Comprehension and Fluency Before Reading
- 5 Days of Teaching Text Structure to Readers {fiction and nonfiction}
*This post contains affiliate links.
Included in the list below are books for teaching reading comprehension that have been read and underlined and revisited multiple times by me OR that have been suggested to me by other colleagues and professional reading teachers. Most explain comprehension from a classroom perspective, giving classroom examples, but don’t let that fool you into thinking you can’t use the ideas as a tutor, parent, or homeschooler.
I certainly have!
Books for Teaching Reading Comprehension
Reading with Meaning by Debbie Miller is one of the first books I read on reading comprehension {I have the 1st edition}. If you are teaching young readers, say Pre-K through 2nd grade, you will find practical ways that you can teach reading comprehension plus definitions for each strategy that are perfect for younger kids. I love the book lists the end of each chapter, too.
7 Keys to Comprehension by Susan Zimmermann is a GREAT book that I highly recommend for parents. It goes through each strategy and explains it in easy-to-understand terms. It avoids the teacher-y terms that so many other books use. If you’re a new teacher {or even seasoned teacher} and need help for teaching comprehension, I also recommend this book for you!
Strategies that Work by Stephanie Harvey & Anne Goudvis was the second book I read about teaching reading comprehension.
Again, it comes from the classroom perspective, but it has some fantastic ideas for 3rd grade through middle school.
Summarizing, Paraphrasing, and Retelling by Emily Kissner is a FANTASTIC read for teachers, parents, and tutors of kids in the upper elementary grades and middle school. I devoured it from cover to cover when I was first learning about text structure. I have also had the privilege of having Emily Kissner write a guest post on This Reading Mama!
Comprehension Connections: Bridges to Strategic Reading by Tanny McGregor is not one that I have personally read, but I have heard such great things about it. The thing that impressed me the most is how he takes the strategies and breaks them down into what he calls a “launching sequence.” Starting with using concrete experiences, he teaches students using concrete examples that kids can connect with. He moves through a series of lessons until kids are using that strategy with text.
I would imagine this launching sequence would be great for any student, but especially struggling students or those with special needs.
The Art of Teaching Reading by Lucy Calkins is a long read. And it isn’t completely all about reading comprehension. But it is a GOOD read. This is one that I read while I was still a classroom. It challenged and transformed some of my reading teaching methods. I would recommend this book to anyone, but it would probably be most helpful to classroom teachers and reading tutors. And just in case you’re wondering, I also read Lucy Calkin’s The Art of Teaching Writing and it was equally as good, if not better.
Improving Comprehension with Think-Aloud Strategies by Jeffery D. Wilhelm is another book I’d recommend to parents and classroom teachers alike. A think-aloud is when you take a piece of text {that you’ve planned ahead} and you model a comprehension strategy or two with the passage.
Think-alouds help our thinking become “visible” so kids can hear the thoughts in our head and know how to use a certain strategy. Love this book!
Bringing Words to Life by Isabel Beck is not necessarily a book about comprehension strategies, BUT if you think about it, vocabulary is HIGHLY related to reading comprehension! And Beck’s book is the best I’ve read on teaching vocabulary. It is OFTEN referred to in other books. I’ve even referred to it for teaching vocabulary with my own kids.
Classroom Strategies for Interactive Learning by Doug Buehl is a newer one that I was introduced to this year. And just because it says, “classroom strategies”, don’t dismiss this one as a tool for at home instruction or tutoring! In it, you’ll find ready-to-go graphic organizers and strategies for comprehending fiction and nonfiction. I would recommend this one for upper elementary and middle school kids.
The Forest and the Trees by Emily Kissner is another great read for older students {4th grade and above}. Her focus is helping reader identify the important details authors include in texts that will help them comprehend better. She has found that many readers often pay attention to unimportant details and this interferes with comprehension.
And if you’ll allow me to add…
How to Choose “Just Right” Books by Becky Spence {that’s me} is a book I wrote in response to the many emails from parents. It is not completely about comprehension, but does explain the comprehension strategies. It even has a handy list of questions we can ask kids to dig deeper into their comprehension of text. You can purchase the PDF here.
If you’re looking for books to help you model comprehension strategies, find them here!
Follow This Reading Mama’s board Comprehension Strategies on Pinterest.
~Becky
7 books to develop reading skills
Child development
7 books to develop reading skills
August 10, 2018 8 428 views
Irina Karneeva, child psychologist
Learning to read is a big job for every kid. Just as important and just as difficult a skill as learning to walk. The process of reading in itself is not simple and consists not only of technique, but also of the ability to perceive meaning and plot. And this also needs to be learned.
When reading, we use a combination of several senses at once: vision (we see what we are reading), hearing (we mentally pronounce and hear what we read), touch (we feel a book in our hands, follow the plot, lead with our eyes finger sliding across the page). And each of these components is a full-fledged participant in the reading process and a skill that needs to be developed in a child from a very young age.
In this article, we have collected 7 books, each of which will help your child learn to read step by step and make the complex learning process itself incredibly interesting.
This is a toy book, so it is good for little ones. Each page, made of thick cardboard, contains a piece of the puzzle. An adult reads a poem aloud, and a child puts together a puzzle, finding the right picture. Perfectly develops visual-motor (visomotor) coordination, which is one of the complex cognitive abilities, especially important for the normal development of the child and, in the future, for successful schooling.
It is perfect not only for the first acquaintance of the baby with the book, but also will become an assistant in the next stages of the development of reading skills. This is a kind of classic reader of fairy tales for the little ones, the first cognitive information about the world around. All the main characters are animals, and the stories are based on how the baby's day goes.
And this book will also help you remember numbers and letters, as well as learn to distinguish them in the text.
This book will help your child see what a story is. A series of comics about baby Bobby and his dog Bill is perfect for developing the perception of stories through illustrations and by ear if adults read it to a child.
The child will be able to read the comic on their own at later stages. And funny illustrations are a great reason to come up with your own story for each spread with pictures, or even a new story for the whole book.
A wonderful poem that is easy to learn by heart. The child will be able to reproduce the text from memory, looking at the illustrations, and the small format of the book is convenient for the baby's hands. The illustrations in the book are great for developing the imagination: you can create countless stories with your parents.
Tatyana Russita's series of sets for the first independent reading was created especially for the youngest readers who have just learned how to add syllables, but it is still incredibly difficult for them to read.
In each set, which differ from the other in complexity - the number of letters in words - 8 small books. The set includes stickers with the important word "Read" that turn the reading process into an exciting game and give you a reason to be proud of yourself. Read a book - put a sticker on it! And read, read on!
A comic that is fun to read with children. 14 short stories are perfect as a bedtime story. Each story in the book can be turned into your own by developing the imagination and writing the adventures of the prince and princess from the comic book pictures.
And it's also a whole quest: look at the pictures and find more and more details.
A series of comics about the girl Hilda and her adventures in Trollberg will be interesting not only for children, but also for adults.
This is an exciting family reading and the case when books become a hobby for both parents and children. For independent reading, the series is suitable for children who have already learned to read in short phrases and sentences.
Even more books that will help grow a real reader, you can find on the page of our educational marathon "Children Read".
Follow our marathon on @mifcomics and @mifdetstvo, participate in live streams with experts and grow new reading fans!
Top 5 books on rational reading
Reading is an interconnected sequence of actions that involves the perception, comprehension, processing, storage of information.
In order for reading to be fruitful, it is necessary to have certain reading skills or culture.
. The most important condition for rational work with a book is the ability to:
- clearly formulate goals,
- choose motivation for effective reading,
- choose the best way to read.
How to learn to comply with all these conditions, how to organize work with a book, choosing the best way to read, you will find in the following review.
Rational reading skills are most in demand by those who study - schoolchildren, students, advanced professionals and those who teach.
The book contains many life hacks - original ideas and technical recommendations that contribute to rational reading.
Pay attention to:
- how books can be photographed.
- how to take notes and use bookmarks;
- how to make clippings/excerpts and organize the working directory;
- how to outline;
- how to structure information about the book in the form of a plan and / or theses.
Of course, many things will seem outdated, but we must remember that the new is always the well-forgotten old.
The book was published back in 1940, after which it was repeatedly reprinted; written by an American professor of philosophy.
The author rightly distinguishes two types of reading “for cognition”:
- for the sake of obtaining information;
- for the sake of understanding.
Actually, Adler's book is more about how to read "for understanding" (and it's better to read not textbooks and reference books, but primary sources).
It is important to understand that the way of reading directly depends on the purpose - and it is absolutely different in cases of self-education and reading the classics.
Pay attention to the commandments of the reader.
Do not read all books in the same way. The way of reading should be consistent with the purpose of reading.
When reading for education:
- Remember that reading is one of the most important, necessary, serious work, not “by the way”, not “doing nothing”.
- Read at least one of the books you read with study.
- Do not spare any time or effort for this reading: it will be paid with interest. Put all your energy into reading.
- Relentlessly fight laziness of thought and imagination: these are the worst enemies.
- Make sure that every passage in the book is perfectly and distinctly understood.
- Don't skip anything without a very good reason.
- Do not leave a book unread without the most serious reasons.
- Do not call others for help unless absolutely necessary, strain all your strength to do without someone else's help. Self-employment is first and foremost.
- Where necessary - make the imagination work "with might and main".
- If you want to read well with study, read with a pen in your hand; make a summary, notes, extracts.
- Learn to use the table of contents. Read not only “from left to right”, but all the time “from right to left” - go back to what you read.
- First try to understand well, and then criticize.
- Read someone else's criticism of the book after the book.
- After reading the book, understand its essence and write it down in short words.
About choosing books for self-education:
- Read at least a little, but thoroughly.
- Read the necessary, at least uninteresting.
- Read the best you can get.
- Read not too easy, not too difficult.
- Be guided by some kind of reading plan (according to programs or expert advice).
This is a detailed guide on how to collect, organize and remember information by creating mind maps. Of course, the book is not dedicated to the process of reading itself, but to the process of extracting the necessary information from the text and taking notes in the mind map format.
The whole book contains detailed instructions and subtleties on creating mind maps, but chapters No. 14 (annotation - the presentation of other people's thoughts from books, speeches, etc.), No. 15 (mnemonic techniques in mind maps) are especially useful ), No. 21 (mind maps for study and writing), No. 22 (for preparing for exams and writing test papers), No. 23 (mind maps for teaching).
In addition to the history of reading, this book also contains specific tips and exercises for developing reading skills.
