How to improve reading skills for children

How To Improve Reading Comprehension For Kids

When students have trouble reading, it can affect their performance in many subjects. Poor reading skills and comprehension can lead to frustration, low self-confidence, and poor grades.

But difficulty with reading and with comprehension is something that can be improved with regular practise. By learning to read effectively, your child can build skills that will help improve his or her reading skills and comprehension.

What Is Reading Comprehension?

Reading comprehension is the ability to read a sentence and understand its meaning. It is the ability to look at written words and process the meaning or ideas behind them.

Reading comprehension isn’t just understanding a single word or its meaning—it is the ability to recognize words, sentences, and paragraphs and make sense of the overall meaning.

Many Students Dislike Reading

41% of parents say that their children do not enjoy reading. That’s a lot of kids! And when kids don’t like reading, they are less likely to put the time in to improve. This leads to a cycle of poor reading skills, lowered comprehension, more frustration—and even less love for reading.

So how can we help our children become better readers?

These 12 reading strategies for struggling readers that boost comprehension and reading motivation are the place to start! Check them out below:

12 Strategies To Help Struggling Readers Improve Reading Comprehension

Find books they’ll like

Sometimes, low reading comprehension comes down to the fact that a student just isn’t interested in what he or she is reading. In fact, 73% of students say they would read more if they could find books they liked. The secret to becoming a better reader is practise—something that is much easier when your child actually likes what he or she is reading.

Read aloud

Hearing the words out loud helps many students gain a better understanding of what they are reading than they are able to get while reading in their head. Encourage your child to read aloud if he or she is struggling with a certain part of a book or a particular word.

Skim the headings of the text

Quickly skimming the headings of a book gives students a high-level overview of what they are reading. Your child can use the headings to quickly understand what the reading is about and the main points before he or she actually starts reading.

Re-read sections that are confusing

Revisiting the parts that were confusing for your child (or or that might simply need a quick refresher) can help your child gain a more complete picture of what he or she is learning. This also helps ensure your child is able to understand upcoming material in the text.

Use a ruler or finger to follow along

If your child has trouble keeping his or her place while reading, use a ruler or finger to make following along easier. This trick can also help students who have dyslexia and struggle with separating lines of text and sentences while reading.

Write down words you don’t know

As your child makes his or her way through the reading material, have him or her write down unfamiliar words. Encourage your child to look these words up in a dictionary to learn what they mean. Then, find ways to use them in a sentence that your child makes up him or herself.

Discuss what your child has just read

When your child has finished reading, talk about what he or she just read together. Ask your child what he or she learned and his or her thoughts. For longer reading materials, like novels for book reports, make discussion questions you and your child can talk about together after each reading session.

Recap and summarize the main points

When talking about the material with your child, ask him or her to recap and summarize the main points. Explaining what your child learned in his or her own words helps ensure your child understands what was read. It also helps relate the material to what he or she already knows.

Write down questions about what you don’t understand

Have your child make notes about what he or she doesn’t understand while reading. When your child has a question, encourage him or her to pause and reflect on what he or she has read. If your child still has unanswered questions, have him or her take these to the teacher for extra help.

Use different formats

Some students just aren’t natural readers—they learn better when they see, hear, or write things. If your student struggles with reading, find a format that works better and incorporate that into reading sessions. This could include writing down the main points as he or she reads or visualizing the material by drawing what your child is reading (for older students, this could be a mind map).

Identify reading problems

If your child is struggling with reading on an ongoing basis, watch for red flags that he or she may have a reading difficulty. Dyslexia is relatively common, with up to 5 students in a classroom suffering from some form of this reading difficulty. If your child seems to struggle with reading without any improvement, it’s important to identify whether he or she has a reading problem so you can take steps to solve it.

Get a reading tutor

Improving your child’s reading skills and comprehension is something that you can do at home each day. For students who need an extra boost, a reading tutor can help improve these skills even more.

For more tips on how to help your child become a better reader, read our blog post on how to encourage good reading habits in kids.

If your child still needs help, the reading tutors at Oxford Learning can help! Find your nearest location and learn how we can help.

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9 Strategies to Improve a Child’s Reading Skills

Reading is a critically important skill. Children who read early and often will find themselves able to comprehend and process text better than those who aren’t consistently reading. Unfortunately, a vast majority of children don’t read as frequently or as well as they should. But it doesn’t mean they can’t become better readers; it just takes some effort for both the child and parent.

A child does not learn to read overnight; it is a process that takes years of practice and commitment for success. However, parents can make a positive difference in a child’s reading skills by actively participating in their education and knowing the most effective strategies for improving reading skills. This article discusses nine different methods you can use with children to help them improve their reading skills.

Set a Reading Schedule

Children need to be taught the value of practicing the things they need to learn. For reading, this includes practicing with reading material on their own. Children will need to spend time each day reading alone to continue improving. As they grow older, this amount of time will increase. Start simple by having your child read for 10-15 minutes at a time. Then gradually increase the amount of time that your child is asked to read each day.

Teach Your Child to Read Aloud

Reading isn’t just something that you do on your own; it’s also done with others. When children are learning how to read, reading aloud is one of the most effective ways to learn the different sounds represented by letters. Starting early with this practice will help them maintain their reading skills as they get older.

Give Your Child Choices in What They Read

There are many different types of reading material available to children today. Magazines, Montessori-friendly books, and newspapers are examples of literature children can read to improve their reading skills. You can also provide them books in different genres like animal books for kids. These are reliable books to read when teaching a child the basics of reading, since they feature short stories which are best for a child’s short attention span.

Help Your Child Understand What They’re Reading

Children who understand what they are seeing or reading will enjoy it more and retain the information better. You can help by asking them questions about what they’ve read. It will help to reinforce the information and make them better readers as well as smarter thinkers. For instance, when you read your child a book about dinosaurs, take some time to pause and ask questions like: ‘What do you think will happen next?’ or “What do you think happened to the dinosaurs?” It will help with their ability to process information in a logical way.

Provide Your Child with Visual Aids

Another way to improve reading skills is to provide visual aids such as pictures and illustrations. It will make it easier for children to understand what they’re reading and better retain the information. There are also many books containing illustrations with the main purpose of teaching children the different types of words. By using these books, it’s possible to increase a child’s interest in reading and therefore their desire to become better readers.

Read To Your Child at Bedtime

It is one of the best ways to help your child learn to read. Find books appropriate for your child’s age and readiness level, but make sure that the book is interesting for your child to read by themselves when they are in bed at night. When this becomes a habit, it will help their reading skills when they are older. Click here for tips on reading aloud.

Use Other Ways to Practice Reading Aside from Books

Reading isn’t just about sitting down and trying to decipher words from a book. There are many other methods to help improve a child’s reading skills. For instance, you can have your child read aloud while driving or have them read signs when you are out running errands. If your child likes to help you prepare for dinner, let them choose a recipe from your favorite cookbook and have them read the steps to you. Just make reading fun for your kids.

Take Your Child to the Library

A library is a great place for a child to find books he can read to improve his reading skills. In the library, children can find books appropriate for their age level and interests. They can check out these books so they have them available to read at home. It will help increase the amount of time your children spend reading each week, positively affecting their reading skills.

Always Remember that Every Kid is Different

Some children have a knack for reading and will pick up the skill quickly, while others don’t have it as easy. For those children who have a difficult time learning to read, it’s best not to try to force them to learn a skill that they aren’t interested in first. Instead, you will need to make sure that you modify your techniques to suit your child’s needs and abilities. The more time and effort you spend helping them learn the process, the sooner they will learn to read and become a better reader. But if your children already love reading and have started strong, encourage them by letting them know you’re proud of their progress.

The tips above are a few of many strategies that you can use at home to help improve a child’s reading skills. Following these tips can give a child a head start on reading and help them maintain their interest in it.

Author Bio: I’m Andrea Gibbs, born, raised, and still living in New York. I’m a work-at-home mom with a background in business development, strategy, and social media marketing. I’m a blog contributor at Montessori Academy to motivate and educate other parents about how they can get their children ahead of the game in school

How to increase the speed of a child's reading

Various techniques for quickly working with text are increasingly of interest to modern parents. Speed reading allows a child to get acquainted with a whole page of text in a matter of seconds, which is very useful both in childhood, while he is in school, and in adulthood. But how to increase the speed and quality of reading and ensure that the student understands and remembers what he read?

Speed reading for children

Since childhood, a modern person is surrounded by such volumes of information that it was difficult to imagine even 100-200 years ago. The Internet alone is an endless repository of knowledge, where you can find the answer to almost any question in e-books, articles and topics on various forums. It is the abundance of textual information that has appeared in recent decades that is pushing parents to teach their children the technique of speed reading. nine0003

In the Internet or bookstores you can find many different speed reading manuals from famous authors - Shamil Akhmadullin, Sergey Zotov, Oleg Andreev. Teaching fast reading using these manuals can really bring visible results, but the desired effect can be achieved if classes using these methods are conducted by experienced teachers. In many ways, the low efficiency of self-study is due to the fact that parents do not pay due attention to the basic skills of the baby, which he must possess even before he begins to learn to read quickly. nine0003

Parents are not always able to evaluate the quality of their child's work with the text, as they evaluate it by any one property: reading speed, ability to read whole words, ability to understand, remember and retell what is read. But in order to understand whether the child is ready to learn to read quickly, you need to consider in detail each of the listed qualities. Let's talk about what a child should be able to start learning speed reading.

How to improve your reading speed

Speed reading technique can be mastered even by a first-grader, if he has basic basic skills, including:

reading speed of 60 words per minute. Usually, kids reach this level of proficiency in working with text by about 1-2 grades of school.
absence of speech defects. At preschool age, babies often do not pronounce some complex sounds, so it is not recommended to learn speed reading too early.
the ability to clearly express their thoughts. Possession of oral speech directly affects the quality of acquaintance with the text - on reproduction and understanding of what is read. nine0022
the ability to retell the read text, viewed cartoon. This ability indicates that the student is closely following the narrative and remembers the events described in it. And this means that when he begins to study speed reading, he will not have problems understanding the text.

Not only the basic skills of a student matter - in order to successfully learn speed reading, he must be interested in literature and love books. If a student categorically does not like to read, then he will not show the proper motivation to study this technique, which means that the expected effect from the classes will not be achieved. Therefore, parents should pay special attention to educating the child's love of literature. nine0003

If the child wants to learn to read fast on his own and has the required level of skills, then he can start learning speed reading. Let's talk about how you can increase your reading speed with the help of various exercises.

Exercises to increase reading speed

There are many author's methods that differ from each other. But most of them include the following exercises to increase the speed and improve the quality of reading:

deal with Schulte tables. They have many different options, but are more often presented in the form of tables measuring 5 by 5 cells, each of which contains a non-repeating number from 1 to 25. The person performing the exercise needs to sequentially find with his eyes each of the numbers, starting from one and then ascending. This task perfectly trains peripheral vision.
line read. To complete this exercise, you need to close each line you read with a bookmark or ruler, continuing to read the next one. So the student can get rid of regression - from the habit of returning to the part already read. nine0022
read aloud through the word. Perfectly trains attention and fluent perception of the text. If you often read the text through the word, you will be able to improve the quality of understanding of the material when reading quickly.
read randomly moving text across the screen. Allows you to expand the angle of view, improve concentration and increase the speed of the brain's reaction to the next part of the task.
read at the speed of the timer. It is important to try not only to quickly read the text, but also to try to remember and understand what you read well. nine0022
read to a rhythmic sound. Teaches to suppress internal articulation and read more carefully, without being distracted by extraneous stimuli. It is better if the rhythm is created by the child himself, tapping his finger or pencil on the surface of the table - then the effectiveness of this exercise will be higher.

The listed exercises are only a small part of the tasks that you need to perform to improve your writing skills. But are they enough to significantly affect the speed and quality of perception of textual information? nine0003

Time-honored effective techniques

Speed reading exercises and activities really help improve your writing skills. But we must remember that even the most useful of them will not cope with this task if you do not alternate them with other tasks. It is important to make training consistent, subject to a specific program, in order to gradually improve the child's ability to read and consolidate the knowledge gained.

It is also worth noting that learning to speed read is a lengthy process that can take from several months to one or two years, depending on the initial level of the student's skills. Parents do not always manage to regularly engage with their child throughout this time and select a variety of exercises for him in order to diversify his abilities. Because of this, self-training often does not bring the desired result. Therefore, parents are interested in various speed reading courses, thanks to which the student will be able to learn how to read quickly and memorize what they read well. nine0003

The Liberica program is a time-tested method of teaching speed reading with proven effectiveness. In such classes, the child will be able to gradually master all the necessary topics, consolidate their knowledge and learn to read up to a thousand words per minute. The student will retain such a high level of skills forever, which means that such abilities will be useful to him not only in childhood, but also in adulthood.

5 ways to increase your reading speed in 15 minutes a day, even if the student did not pick up a book in the summer

Child development

5 Ways to Increase Your Reading Speed in 15 Minutes a Day, Even If You Didn't Pick Up a Book in the Summer

October 17, 2022 275 352 views

Olesya Akhmedzhanova

The ability to read is one of the main requirements for a first grader today. In elementary school, children are waiting for a cut in reading technique: with its help, the teacher checks how quickly the student delves into the text and whether he can perceive it without errors. Together with the teacher Polina Bulatova, we chose ways that will help improve the reading speed in elementary school in just 10-15 minutes a day. nine0003

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Tongue twisters

The use of tongue twisters is obvious: the child literally learns to “speak soon”. And by increasing the speed of speech, he begins to read and even think faster.

The coolest thing is that tongue twisters can be memorized anywhere: on the way to school, to music, dancing and karate, or in the morning, during breakfast.

Examples of tongue twisters

Here are some tongue twisters that you can learn with children.

Catfish with whiskers are in Senya and Sanya in the passage. A wasp does not have a mustache, not a mustache, but a mustache. nine0022
Senka is carrying Sanka and Sonya on a sled. Sledge lope, Senka off his feet, Sonya on the forehead, all in a snowdrift.
Well done ate thirty-three pies with pie, and all with cottage cheese.
Thirty-three ships tacked, tacked, but did not catch.
Karl stole a coral from Clara, Clara stole a clarinet from Karl. Queen Clara severely punished Charles for stealing the coral.
Carl was putting the bow on the chest. Clara was stealing onions from the chest.
You can't over-speak all tongue twisters, you can't over-speak. nine0022

Even more examples can be found on special websites or in the Speech Talker application, where there are tongue twisters, poems, exercises, syllabaries and even breathing exercises.

Breathing

Sometimes the reason for slow reading is incorrect breathing. For example, a child says a phrase while inhaling.

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Try these breathing exercises.

Have the child take a deep breath and say as many words as they can as they exhale. nine0022
If the first exercise is easy, use lists of words. The technique is the same: the child takes a breath, and as he exhales, he reads a text or a list of words.

Schulte tables

Reading speed largely depends on how quickly the eye moves from line to line. Some children fail to read the text sequentially: they “jump” over the line, skip words, constantly return to the beginning of the sentence. Schulte tables will help fix this problem. nine0003

This is usually a 5x5 square table with numbers from 1 to 25 in its cells. Sometimes there are more columns and rows. The essence is simple: you need to quickly and consistently find the numbers in the table.

This is how the child expands the angle of vision, trains attention and learns to perceive information faster.

“There are many sites on the Internet with Schulte tables,” says speed reading teacher Polina Bulatova. “But it’s more convenient to download the application to your mobile phone (AppStore, GooglePlay) and train the skill when the time comes: in line with the doctor, at the passport office or in the store.” nine0003

Whole words

What if the student is still reading by syllables? We need to help him move on to reading whole words. The way out is simple, but very effective: place stresses in words.

If he pays attention to stress, he will not be able to read by syllables.

Try it yourself: with an accent, you won't be able to say "koto-fairy", but you will say "cat".

Stick stickers or cards with accented words at home. On a table, a refrigerator, a mirror, a kettle, a book with your favorite character. Where the child will definitely see the inscription. Start with simple words of two syllables, and then move on to complex ones of four or five. nine0003

Word ladders

Another easy way to improve your reading speed is word ladders. A short flight of stairs is when the length of a phrase gradually increases. For example:

cats
cats watching
cats look out the window
cats look out the window at clouds

Ladder also helps to train breathing. The most tangible difficulty is that you need to invent ladders yourself.