How to make reading comprehension fun
Second Grade Reading Comprehension Activities
Second graders are some of the most enthusiastic readers out there. They are transitioning from the basics into readers looking for meaning. As they build upon their comprehension skills, they are beginning to make connections to themselves and the world at large. These second grade reading comprehension activities will help your students dig deeper into texts on their own as well as with their peers.
1. Build a pyramid.
This idea was born out of one teacher’s students’ eternal love for constructing cup towers at any opportunity! The cups are coded with symbols to represent different story elements. After reading their leveled text, students share each story element while building their cup pyramid from the bottom up. They can then record the story elements on the matching graphic organizer.
Learn more: Teach Outside the Box
2. Clip together a reading strategy fan.
Modeling is the best way to guide students through reading comprehension strategies. But unless they’re actively participating in the process, they simply won’t retain enough of the strategy to make any meaningful difference in their own independent comprehension of text. That’s where these strategy fans come in. The link below shows how this teacher uses the cards in her class.
Learn more: Organized Classroom
3. Use a volcano graphic organizer.
Demonstrate how to draw a simple volcano shape, divided into three sections, and have students draw one in their reading journal. After reading the first few pages of the story, ask students to write first impressions at the base of the volcano. This is also a good place to make predictions about where they think the story is going. At about the halfway point, have students write what they think and how they think the story is changing. Once they have finished reading, they will write what they think the story is really trying to teach them and what they took away from the story at the top of the volcano.
Learn more: Student Treasures
4. Compare characters.
Encourage your students to think more deeply about the characters in a story. In the head of each figure, ask students to write a character’s name. Then have them write specific attributes about the character in the torso section. In the circle between the characters, have them write shared characteristics between the two figures.
Learn more: Florida Center for Reading Research
5. Construct a comprehension cootie catcher.
Once the bane of classroom teachers, cootie catchers have become a novel way to practice skills that kids can get excited about. This free download from the Classroom Game Nook includes three versions with questions about characters, setting, plot, and more.
Learn more: The Classroom Game Nook
6. Put on a retelling glove.
Retelling is a vital skill for young readers to work on to help them understand what they are reading. These gloves are a snappy accessory with labels that you can easily change.
For fiction retellings, you can include setting, characters, problem, events, and solution. For nonfiction retellings, you can include main idea and supporting details. At the bottom of the glove, you can focus on making connections.
Learn more: One Giggle at a Time
7. Create a Wanted poster.
This free lesson from Education.com is a fun writing and drawing activity that has students take what they know about the bad person in the story and turn the details into a colorful Wanted poster.
Learn more: Education.com
8. Roll and chat your way to understanding.
If you’re looking for fun second grade reading comprehension activities that work well for stations or small-group work, try Roll & Chat. Players take turns rolling dice and answering questions about their reading.
Learn more: Playful in Primary
9. Toss a story ball around.
Kids will love this version of toss using a beach ball customized with questions that can be used for any reading passage.
It’s a great activity for review or when you want to keep the learning going, but your kids need to get up and move.
Learn more: Coffee Cups and Crayons
10. Follow a yellow brick road.
This fun lesson is another way to work on retelling skills. Print out these free story-element cards. Then, lay them out to create a road. As students hop from one yellow “brick” to the next, they retell the story.
Learn more: Cara Carroll
11. Make a shutter book.
This lovely foldable book is a great way for students to show their understanding of story elements in a colorful way. This is a great guided reading project to go along with a read-aloud.
Learn more: Upper Elementary Snapshots
12. Make book talks a regular part of your literacy block.
Book talks are a great way for students to demonstrate their reading comprehension. But sometimes when students get up in front of others, they’re not quite sure what to talk about. Download these adorable topic cards to guide students as they tell their classmates about what they are reading.
Learn more: Teacher’s Takeout
13. Celebrate the joy of reading with Flashlight Fridays.
I can’t think of a better way to end the week than implementing Flashlight Fridays into your ELA block. The students absolutely love reading in the dark and out of their desks. Add to the fun by allowing them to bring in cozy blankets and their favorite squishy!
Learn more: Flashlight Fridays
14. Implement Kagan Cooperative Learning Strategies.
When it comes to cooperative learning and active engagement, Dr. Spencer and Laurie Kagan are the ultimate masters. My personal favorite Kagan strategy is called “Stand Up, Hand Up, Pair Up.” Using this strategy, students are out of their seats and mix around the room. When they are signaled to stop, they find their nearest peer, partner up, and discuss whatever topic you choose.
Learn more: Kagan Publishing
15. Toss around reading comprehension cubes.
These are great conversation starters that will encourage your students to discuss different aspects of a story with their classmates.
Use them in centers, small groups, or as a whole-group activity.
Buy it: Reading Comprehension Cubes at Amazon
16. Make a story-retelling paper bag book.
These cute booklets are easy to make and focus on important story elements. Your students will have so much fun making them, while honing in on those important ELA skills.
Learn more: Comprehension Connection
17. Create a lap-book-style book report.
Lap books are another creative way to put thoughts to paper in writing, while still fostering those artistic vibes. Use this as a whole-group assignment after a read-aloud, or have students make one after reading a book independently.
Learn more: Cara’s Creative Playground
18. Complete a story element map.
Students can handwrite their ideas or draw pictures describing each story element with this handy story map template. Kick things up a notch by making a double-sided copy to allow students to both write and draw their ideas!
Learn more: Katie Byrd
19.
Play a storytelling-themed board game.Players draw random story elements and use them to tell a tall-tale type of story. With five different ways to play, it is easy to reach all types of learners and learning styles with this adaptable and fun game.
Buy it: Tall Tales Storytelling Board Game on Amazon
20. Hold a Book Character Day.
Book Character Day is one of those second grade reading comprehension activities that kids will remember forever! It gives them a chance to show how much they really know about one of their favorite characters. Encourage them to dress as their character and carry props that are part of their story. Maybe they’d even like to act like and talk in the voice of their character. Be sure to set aside time for each student to tell their classmates about the character they chose and why.
Learn more: Shann Eva’s Blog
If you like these second grade reading comprehension activities, check out our favorite second grade books.
Plus, get all the latest teaching tips and tricks by signing up for our newsletters!
11 Free Reading Comprehension Activities For Students
There can be a hundred teachers in a room and ninety-nine of them will have different ideas on how to help with reading comprehension. Some of them might argue that rigorous testing is the best methodology, whilst others will argue that regular pop quizzing is the best way to go. Truth be told, there is no "one" exact way to ensure that your students understand what they are reading. Instead, it's best to adopt a variety of different solutions.
Here is a list of the top 11 reading comprehension activities. You can use them to introduce new reading comprehension techniques, or simply to check your students’ understanding so far. They are all fun, innovative ways to approach reading comprehension and demonstrate your students' skills.
1. Roll & Chat Dice
This fun activity includes lots of comprehension questions to check your kids have effective reading comprehension skills.
You can adapt and change this for any student, ensuring that they are reading at grade.
Learn more: Teachers Pay Teachers
2. WANTED Poster
You can use this activity not only to ensure that your students have basic story understanding but also to demonstrate they know character traits. It can also be applied to a wide variety of texts, too. Try including some questions about characters and story detail for even more teaching of comprehension.
Learn more: Education.com
3. Story Cheeseburger
This is unfortunately not as delicious as it sounds! You can use this activity to check simple reading comprehension of story structure, as well as a more advanced understanding of story aspects. Try displaying this colorful reading comprehension activity to brighten up your classroom, too!
Learn more: Unique Teaching Resources
4.
Reading Comprehension Worksheets This website has plenty of reading comprehension worksheets that you can print out and use for a reading passage. You can use them to teach reading strategy as part of a typical reading lesson or to have some book talk.
Learn more: K5 Learning
5. Make a Timeline
You can use this research-based teaching strategy for any non-fiction story to help demonstrate reading to knowledge skills. Ask relevant student questions about the topic of study to help expand on their knowledge and sequence events.
Learn more: Education.com
6. Yellow Brick Road Retelling
This is an excellent reading project to get your kids involved in active reading, instead of just being passive. You can use it to talk about many elements of the story and a narrative text. You can differentiate it according to your students' reading skills, from simple story elements like the story title to more developed ideas like meaning during reading.
Learn more: Just Cara Carroll
7. Anticipation Guide
This is a perfect pre-reading activity to get your students to understand the reading process in more detail. They will need to make some predictions about the story and share their opinions on some of the ideas that the book presents. You can also return to this guide after reading to demonstrate how their reading comprehension has developed.
Learn more: Reading Rockets
8. Question Ball
You can get really creative with this activity by getting the whole class involved to answer some comprehension topic questions. You can even use it to revise key quotations or as part of a reading selection. Definitely one for student engagement!
Learn more: Coffee Cups and Crayons
9. Lego Retelling
This one is more suitable for a picture book with younger learners, but it can also be used by upper-grade students, too. Your kids will have to use the individual Lego pieces to build key scenes from a text, then explain what they have built.
They can write down what they have said, too, to show that they have really understood the text well.
Learn more: The Educators Pin On It
10. Story Telling Bracelet
Another more hands-on activity, the teaching procedure of this involves assigning each color of the bracelet to a particular part of the text. For example, yellow, green, and blue all represent plot events. This is particularly useful to create a sequence of events and make story connections.
Learn more: Growing Book By Book
11. Reading Cheat Sheets
Need to help your students understand critical reading skills? Use these cheat sheets to provide them with expert details and things to keep in mind while they read a text. This includes key skills like looking at the cover, thinking about the content-area text, and other discussion questions to consider during the reading-thinking process.
Learn more: Teachers Pay Teachers
These are just a few of the best ways to make reading more accessible for your learners. The majority of these activities can be expanded upon to meet the specific needs of your readers, whether that be sequencing events or providing a detailed analysis of character.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are comprehension activities?
Comprehension activities are activities or games that can be used to help your students to demonstrate what they know about a text. This usually covers but is not limited to, setting, plot, and character. Comprehension activities can be expanded to include other ideas too, like the meaning of the text, and can go beyond the details included within the text, such as in terms of contextual information surrounding the creation of the book.
What is the best way to teach comprehension?
Unfortunately, there is no definitive "best" way to teach comprehension to your kids, as each student is different and will respond to different activities.
However, one thing that will definitely work is to make comprehension an enjoyable process. Try using the activities above to help with this and avoid simply completing tests or quizzes, as these will not make your student engaged.
How can I improve my comprehension?
Try to go beyond simple ideas of comprehension. Your basic comprehension of a text should include the key events (or plot), the setting (where and when the story happens), and characters (the people or things that the text is about). You should try to expand beyond this by thinking about the meaning of the text. What message was the writer trying to put across? Reading comprehension goes beyond the words on the page - you need to think about the writer's craft, too.
What are the 3 main types of reading strategies?
The key reading strategies that you will likely encounter are scanning, skimming, and detailed reading. Scanning involves looking for specific information in a text, such as a keyword or detail.
Skimming is slightly more in-depth as it is about understanding the main idea of a text by reading small chunks of the passage. Detailed reading is the slowest reading process but is the one that can help you get the most information from a text. Using this last strategy, your kids will understand approximately 80% of the text. Even so, each of these strategies is vital for teaching your students how to read effectively for information.
How to improve your ability to understand the text you read?
06.02.14
Strategies for autists, parents and teachers to overcome difficulties with reading
Source: Autism after 16
Many people can read, but after reading it is difficult for them to remember, about what they read. There may be several reasons for this. It is possible that a person puts so much effort into voicing words (out loud or to himself) that they lose their meaning. In other cases, the topic is so uninteresting that it is difficult to focus on the information in the text.
Many children and adults with autism spectrum disorders have severe reading comprehension difficulties, even if they have no problems with reading as such. This can make it very difficult to study at school even for children without intellectual disabilities, especially in high school, when the requirements for reading and understanding large amounts of text increase significantly, and texts become more complex. The following are strategies for improving text comprehension that adults with autism spectrum disorders and parents and educators of children with ASD can use.
Metacognition - thinking about how we think - is the basis for improving understanding while reading. In other words, to improve text comprehension, we must consciously stop while reading and analyze our opinions, perceptions, and thoughts related to what we have read. For example:
Before reading
- Determine the purpose for the upcoming reading. Think in advance about what you should find in the text while reading.
Look at the title of the text and try to figure out what the text might be about.
Skim through the entire text without reading carefully, paying attention to headings and subheadings, bold words and illustrations. Think about what this text might be about.
- Try to remember what you already know about the topic, the author, or this story.
While reading
- Reflect on what you have read after each paragraph or chapter.
Consider whether you agree with ideas, characters, or facts.
- If you do not understand the meaning of some sentences or paragraphs, write down what you do not understand.
- Write down unfamiliar words to find out their meaning after reading.
After reading
- Think about what you learned while reading.
— Write your own questions for the author.
Think about how what you read relates to your own life.
- Formulate a summary of what you have read.
- Review your notes and try to find answers to your questions through repeated reading, searching the Internet, or talking to another person.
Talk about what you read
Discussing what you read with another person provides another source of information instead of rereading the text. This is especially useful if you don't really enjoy reading. While talking about what you read, you will be able to ask questions that you have, this will allow you to learn more about the point of view of other people and will provide you with the opportunity to put into words what you have read, which will help you remember and understand the text better.
Practice reading as often as possible
The best way to improve reading comprehension is to read as much as possible. It doesn't matter what the person is reading. The more you read, the better your comprehension skills will be. Here the “Matthew effect” takes place, when “he who has will be given and will be multiplied, and what he has will be taken away from the one who does not have.
” Students who enjoy reading read a lot and often, and their reading skills improve. Those who do not enjoy reading devote little time to it, as a result, their skills lag more and more behind their peers. That is why our first priority is to motivate children to read. If they enjoy reading comics, sports articles, or online magazines, then encourage them to do so as often as possible.
Take the children to the library as often as possible and let them look at any books they want. Do not try to force on children what you think they should read. We want them to read—as much as possible. And that's all. If they liked a book by a certain author, then find all the books by that author so they can pick something. If the children are interested in a topic, then find them reading material according to their interest.
Reading Motivation
The first task for the unmotivated reader is to find reading material that is directly related to what interests him outside of reading.
For example, if a child enjoys watching movies, they may enjoy reading movie reviews online or in movie magazines. You may think that this is not a "real" reading, but it is not at all the case. Many people believe that the only way to develop reading skills is with books. In fact, this is not necessary at all, especially in our age of the Internet.
Also, if children read often about things they are interested in, this will help them become better readers in general, especially if they practice reading comprehension skills in parallel. After the motivation to read begins to form, you can begin to practice reading less interesting materials. That said, if the strategies to improve comprehension have already been practiced on interesting texts, it will be easier to use them while reading on boring topics.
Strategies to improve reading comprehension
Start with the strategies that seem most attractive and try them one at a time. Don't try to master every single strategy, sometimes less is more.
In other words, it's best to master a few strategies to perfection, rather than practicing all the strategies without exception, which can make it unclear what to use right now. Strategies to improve reading comprehension include:
- Conversational reading: Ask questions, argue, clarify, summarize, and predict as you read.
- Stickers: Use stickers to write words you don't understand, or write exclamation marks on them to mark sentences you like, and question marks to mark phrases or paragraphs you don't understand.
- Reading in pairs: Reading aloud with another person one paragraph at a time. Discuss what you have read with each other after each paragraph.
- Thinking out loud: As you read aloud in pairs, voice out any thoughts, questions, or misunderstandings that come to mind. For example, if a character or event reminded you of something, stop and talk about that personal association.
This technique helps to remember what has been read in the future.
- Re-reading: Read the text again, trying to find answers to the questions that have arisen.
- Text connections: As you read, determine how this text relates to you, to other texts, and to the world in general. In connection with yourself, you need to think about how the read relates to you personally. In World Links, you can link text to what you already know. Finally, in text links, you can link what you've read to what you've read about before.
- The Three Bears Principle: When choosing a book from a library or bookstore, think about whether it is too simple or too complex. Too simple means that the reader will easily understand all the words or have already read this book many times. Too complex means that there are more than five unfamiliar words on one page or the meaning of the first page is not clear. If the book is just right, then this is a new book, where the reader may not know some of the words on the page, but in general understands what is at stake.
- Dividing the text into parts: Read only a few paragraphs or sentences at a time. Think about what you read using reading strategies before continuing.
- Visualization: While reading, always try to visualize how the characters and the scenes described look like.
- Blogs: Check if there is any blog or forum on the Internet where this topic or book is discussed online, read what other people think about it and try to write your own opinion.
- Journaling: As you read, write down your thoughts in a special journal.
- Graphic organization: Make a chart showing your understanding before, during and after reading.
Progressive Implementation Model
If you are a parent or educator, you can use the Progressive Implementation Model to help a student with autism develop strategies for reading comprehension. First, demonstrate to the student how you yourself read using this strategy.
Then use this strategy together, under your guidance. Then ask the student to apply this strategy again (in a different situation) on their own.
Make sure you discuss reading with the student and whether the strategy is helping or not. You may need to model this strategy for the student many times, or practice it many times together until it becomes a natural part of the reading process and the student can apply it completely on his own.
Availability of books to read
If reading skills are too low, use books on topics that are interesting to the student, but with very low reading requirements. As a rule, they have a lot of illustrations and little text. It can be children's encyclopedias and reference books. They keep the reader motivated, their topics are age-appropriate, and the reading isn't too difficult.
You should also pay attention to the following books:
- Books with many photographs and illustrations, which will greatly facilitate understanding.
- Books with fairly large letters.
- Books with a small amount of text on one page so that the amount of text on the page does not cause stress.
- Books that have titles, subtitles, clear definitions of words in the glossary. These books are the easiest to understand.
Relationship between reading and writing
You may be wondering why it is so common to write things down while working on reading comprehension. The reason is that this is another way to better understand and assimilate the material read. For example, if someone finds it difficult to speak verbally about what they have read, then keeping a diary, blogging, or graphing can help analyze what they read and update the information in memory, but without verbal dialogue.
Closing Thoughts
The goal of all reading is to understand the text, so it is hoped that these strategies and ideas will enable you to improve your reading skills or help your child or student reach that goal.
Remember that reading is a very complex individual process, and its development must be reflected in an individual educational program.
Autism in adults, Parenting children with autism, Education and training
6 key skills for reading comprehension
For some people, the process of reading is like a walk in the park on a warm summer day, an activity full of pleasure, which is no problem to master. labor. In fact, reading is a complex process that involves many different skills. Together, these skills lead to the ultimate goal of learning to read: comprehensive reading comprehension.
Text comprehension can be difficult for children for many reasons, but regardless of them, knowing what underdeveloped skills this is due to, you will be able to provide your child with the best help.
Let's take a look at the six reading comprehension skills and how you can help your child develop them.
1. Decoding
Decoding is an extremely important step in the reading process.
Children use this skill to sound out words they have heard before but not seen written. The ability to decode is the foundation of all other reading skills.
Decoding relies on one of the first language skills to develop, phonemic awareness (this skill is part of a broader set of skills called phonological awareness). Phonemic awareness allows children to hear and distinguish individual sounds in words (also known as phonemes). It also allows them to "play" with sounds in syllables and words.
Decoding also relies on the ability to match individual sounds and letters. For example, to read the word "sun", the child must know that the letter "s" sounds like "s". Understanding the relationship between letters and sounds is an important step towards "voicing" words.
How to help: Many children learn phonological awareness naturally by reading books, listening to songs and poems. But for some children it is not so easy. In fact, one of the earliest signs of reading difficulty is trouble with rhyming, counting syllables, or identifying the first sound in a word.
The best way to help your child improve these skills is to guide them with precise instructions and lots of practice. Children need to be taught how to correctly identify sounds and work with them. You can also develop phonological perception by playing with words, reading poems aloud to your child, or using special computer techniques aimed at developing phonemic perception and decoding.
2. Reading fluently
To read fluently, children must recognize words immediately, including words that do not read as they are written. By developing reading fluency, the child increases not only reading speed, but also reading comprehension.
Decoding and reading each word can be a lot of work. Word recognition is the ability to recognize a word instantly just by looking at it, without having to read it out loud. When children can read quickly and with almost no errors, they are said to be able to read "fluently".
People who can read fluently read fluently and rhythmically. They use the context to understand the meaning and change the intonation in their voice depending on what they are reading about. The ability to read fluently is critical to a good understanding of the text.
How to help: Word recognition can be a big hurdle for beginning readers. Usually a person needs to see a word from 4 to 14 times in order to learn to automatically recognize it. But, for example, children diagnosed with dyslexia may need to see the word up to 40 times.
Many children have difficulty reading fluently. To improve word recognition and other reading skills, children need help and a lot of practice. The best way to strengthen these skills is to practice reading books. It is important to choose books that are appropriate for the child's reading level.
3. Vocabulary
To understand what you read, you need to understand at least most of the words in the text.
A rich vocabulary is a key component of text comprehension. Students can learn new words during class, but they usually learn the meaning of words through everyday situations and while reading.
How to help: The more new words children learn, the more their vocabulary grows. You can help your child develop vocabulary by talking to him often about different topics, introducing him to new words and concepts. Word games and funny jokes are also fun ways for children to reinforce these skills.
Daily reading together also helps build vocabulary. When reading aloud to your child, stop when you encounter new words and explain their meaning. But it is also important that the child reads independently. Even if there is no one to explain the meaning of a new word, the child can guess its meaning from the context, and also learn with the help of a dictionary.
Teachers can also help by choosing interesting words to study and learning them all together in class.
To practice vocabulary, the teacher can engage students in dialogue during the lesson, or play word games to make learning new words fun.
4. Sentence construction and cohesion
Understanding how sentences are built can seem like a skill necessary for writing. The same can be said about the connection of ideas within and between sentences, which is called cohesion. But these skills are also important for reading comprehension.
Knowing how ideas connect at the sentence level helps children make sense of passages and entire texts. This also leads to what is called coherence, or the ability to relate ideas to other ideas in a common work.
How to help: Explain the basics of sentence construction to your child. Work with him to connect two or more thoughts, both in writing and orally.
5. Expanding horizons and argumentation
Many children associate what they have read with previous experiences, so it is important to broaden your child's horizons so that they have some idea of the world around them before they start reading.
It is also important to teach the child to “read between the lines” and find meaning where it is not literally written.
How to help: Your child can broaden their horizons through reading, socializing, watching movies and TV shows, and exploring art. Also many things come with years of personal experience.
Open up opportunities for your child to gain new useful knowledge in different areas and discuss with him what you have learned from the experience, both together and separately. Help your child make connections between new and old knowledge and ask questions that require extended answers and thoughtful explanations.
You can also read these tips on how to use cartoons to help your child learn to judge for themselves.
6. Working memory and attention
These two skills are part of a group of skills also known as executive functions. They are different, but closely related.
When children read, attention allows them to absorb information from the text.
Working memory helps them retain this information and use it to make sense and gain knowledge from what they read.
The ability to self-control while reading is also related to executive functions. The child must be able to recognize when he does not understand something, stop, go back and reread, so that there is no doubt about the understanding of what he read.
How to help: There are many ways to help your child improve working memory, and it doesn't have to look like a lesson. There are many games and daily activities that can help develop working memory in a way that your child won't even notice!
To improve your child's attention span, look for reading materials that interest and/or motivate your child. For example, some children love graphic novels. Teach your child to stop and reread the text when something is not clear to him. And show him how you “think out loud” when you read to make sure it makes sense.
More ways to help with reading comprehension
When children have difficulty learning the skills listed above, they may find it difficult to fully understand what they read.
Find out what might be causing your child's reading difficulties. Remember, if a child has difficulty reading, it does not mean that he is not smart. But some children need extra support to successfully develop reading skills. The sooner you contact a specialist or start applying a special corrective technique, the less stress and lag in learning and development your child will receive. Pay attention to the computer technique Fast ForWord, aimed at developing the skills of phonemic perception, decoding, memory, concentration and other executive functions.
Terminals
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Decoding, reading fluency and vocabulary are key skills needed for reading comprehension.
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Understanding how ideas connect within and between sentences helps children understand the entire text.
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Reading aloud and discussing experiences can help a child develop reading skills.
Quickly and permanently develop reading skills: decoding, reading comprehension, extracting meaning from context, reading fluency, etc.
