Reading comprehension kids
Comprehension | Reading Rockets
Comprehension is the understanding and interpretation of what is read. To be able to accurately understand written material, children need to be able to (1) decode what they read; (2) make connections between what they read and what they already know; and (3) think deeply about what they have read.
One big part of comprehension is having a sufficient vocabulary, or knowing the meanings of enough words. Readers who have strong comprehension are able to draw conclusions about what they read – what is important, what is a fact, what caused an event to happen, which characters are funny. Thus comprehension involves combining reading with thinking and reasoning.
Target the Problem: Comprehension
What the problem looks like
A kid's perspective: What this feels like to me
Children will usually express their frustration and difficulties in a general way, with statements like "I hate reading!" or "This is stupid!". But if they could, this is how kids might describe how comprehension difficulties in particular affect their reading:
- It takes me so long to read something. It's hard to follow along with everything going on.
- I didn't really get what that book was about.
- Why did that character do that? I just don't get it!
- I'm not sure what the most important parts of the book were.
- I couldn't really create an image in my head of what was going on.
A parent's perspective: What I see at home
Here are some clues for parents that a child may have problems with comprehension:
- She's not able to summarize a passage or a book.
- He might be able to tell you what happened in a story, but can't explain why events went the way they did.
- She can't explain what a character's thoughts or feelings might have been.
- He doesn't link events in a book to similar events from another book or from real life.
A teacher's perspective: What I see in the classroom
Here are some clues for teachers that a student may have problems with comprehension:
- He seems to focus on the "wrong" aspect of a passage; for example, he concentrates so much on the details that the main idea is lost.
- She can tell the outcome of a story, but cannot explain why things turned out that way.
- He does not go behind what is presented in a book to think about what might happen next or why characters took the action they did.
- She brings up irrelevant information when trying to relate a passage to something in her own life.
- He seems to have a weak vocabulary.
- She cannot tell the clear, logical sequence of events in a story.
- He does not pick out the key facts from informational text.
- He cannot give you a "picture" of what's going on in a written passage; for example, what the characters look like or details of where the story takes place.
How to help
With the help of parents and teachers, kids can learn strategies to cope with comprehension problems that affect his or her reading. Below are some tips and specific things to do.
What kids can do to help themselves
- Use outlines, maps, and notes when you read.
- Make flash cards of key terms you might want to remember.
- Read stories or passages in short sections and make sure you know what happened before you continue reading.
- Ask yourself, "Does this make sense?" If it doesn't, reread the part that didn't make sense.
- Read with a buddy. Stop every page or so and take turns summarizing what you've read.
- Ask a parent or teacher to preview a book with you before you read it on your own.
- As you read, try to form mental pictures or images that match the story.
What parents can do to help at home
- Hold a conversation and discuss what your child has read. Ask your child probing questions about the book and connect the events to his or her own life. For example, say "I wonder why that girl did that?" or "How do you think he felt? Why?" and "So, what lesson can we learn here?".
- Help your child make connections between what he or she reads and similar experiences he has felt, saw in a movie, or read in another book.
- Help your child monitor his or her understanding. Teach her to continually ask herself whether she understands what she's reading.
- Help your child go back to the text to support his or her answers.
- Discuss the meanings of unknown words, both those he reads and those he hears.
- Read material in short sections, making sure your child understands each step of the way.
- Discuss what your child has learned from reading informational text such as a science or social studies book.
What teachers can do to help at school
- As students read, ask them open-ended questions such as "Why did things happen that way?" or "What is the author trying to do here?" and "Why is this somewhat confusing?".
- Teach students the structure of different types of reading material. For instance, narrative texts usually have a problem, a highpoint of action, and a resolution to the problem. Informational texts may describe, compare and contrast, or present a sequence of events.
- Discuss the meaning of words as you go through the text. Target a few words for deeper teaching, really probing what those words mean and how they can be used.
- Teach note-taking skills and summarizing strategies.
- Use graphic organizers that help students break information down and keep tack of what they read.
- Encourage students to use and revisit targeted vocabulary words.
- Teach students to monitor their own understanding. Show them how, for example, to ask themselves "What's unclear here?" or "What information am I missing?" and "What else should the author be telling me?".
- Teach children how to make predictions and how to summarize.
More information
Find out more about comprehension issues with these resources from Reading Rockets, The Access Center, and LD OnLine:
Other recommended links:
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Reading Worksheets | All Kids Network
Reading worksheets are the perfect tool to help your child develop a love for reading at an early age.
By giving your child the basic tools they need to read at an early age, you can increase their chances of becoming a great reader. This collection of free reading worksheets covers a variety of subjects like alphabet recognition, phonics, sight words, comprehension and more. Each reading worksheet in this collection is easy to print in either color or black and white to meet your needs.
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Teaching children with ASD to read.
Part 3: understanding the meaning of what you read Comments Off on Teaching reading to children with ASD. Part 3: reading comprehension disabled
A large number of children with ASD have difficulty learning to read and write. The most typical and characteristic for children with ASD are
- Difficulties in associating the meaning of a word or a read sentence with real objects or actions
In addition, children with ASD may experience
- Difficulty remembering letters
- Difficulties in combining letters into syllables
This is the third article on learning to read. Today we will look at
One of the most common problems in teaching children with ASD to read is understanding the meaning of what they read, and often not the global meaning (what the story is about), but the meaning of individual words and sentences.
A child can understand speech, be able to read, but not connect the words he read with the words he is familiar with, and, as a result, with objects and phenomena of the real world.
This feature can be partly explained by the repeatedly mentioned and studied difficulties with the generalization and generalization of skills in children with ASD (more). nine0005
If you encounter a problem of misunderstanding the text, you should go down to the level of understanding individual words and check whether the child understands that when reading the word “cat”, the resulting combination of sounds is exactly the same as when pronouncing the word by mother and means the same .
Here are some reading comprehension exercises in order of increasing difficulty:
- Read and match/show
Various objects stand in front of the child. The child must read the word and choose an object with the appropriate name. nine0005
For example: there is a toy locomotive, a car, a ball, a pen. The teacher puts the word "locomotive" the child reads, finds among the objects and puts a toy-locomotive on a piece of paper with the word.
In the future, it is worth doing a separate work on the understanding of verbs and lengthening of the readable phrase .
Video example
You give the child 2 pictures that differ in the action shown. You need to read and choose the right picture. The action is best portrayed whenever possible. Video example (here we are not very good at depicting the action). nine0005
Afterward, it is important to make sure that every word you read is important for the correct execution of the action. For example, have four pictures, two of which are dogs, two are cats.
| digs | sniffing | |
| dog | Dog digs | Dog sniffing |
| cat | Cat digs | Cat sniffing |
Ideally, the picture should show the same cats and the same dogs. It is difficult with animals, but taking pictures and making videos with family members (mom, dad, brother, sister) for some simple actions (washing dishes, jumping, sleeping) is not so difficult. Photos can be printed or presented in random order on a tablet (for example, using the Anki program).
You need to choose a suitable photo for the inscription. Or video. Or to the video - a suitable caption. nine0005
Example: “a bear rides a steam locomotive” – the child's task is to choose a bear from toys, choose a steam locomotive and show the action. Or “The bear goes to the locomotive” is another verb. And a child who is just learning to read can again sit down and roll the bear without realizing the combination “goes to”.
Video example
- Find the treasure
You write to the child that "chocolate (or any other desired item) is on the cupboard", he should read the text, and then go and get what he wants in the indicated place. nine0005
- Take action
Write papers with tasks such as “pat”, “stomp”, “get up”, “sit down”, “throw the ball”, etc.
This task can be included in a series of "read and match" tasks. For example, you need to correlate objects with their written names, but sometimes on a piece of paper it will not be the name of the object, but the command-action that needs to be done.
According to scientific research, every time we hear or read a word denoting an action by any part of the body or associated with this part of the body, the corresponding zones of representation of these parts in the premotor cortex are activated (T.A. Stroganova, Butorina A.V. ., Nikolaeva A.Yu., Shtyrov, Yu.Yu., 2015). For example, we read “run” or “leg”, and in our brain the areas of representation of the leg (the dorsomedial cluster of the motor cortex) became more active. That is why, when reading or memorizing new words, it is important to perform, play the read (heard) action, transfer the read to the real, not “picture” world. This approach will help to the greatest extent to form connections in the brain, speed up and make more accurate processing of the information read. nine0005
Happy reading!
Author Drogunova A.V.
How to teach a child to understand what they read
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“Your child reads quickly, but does not understand and cannot retell what exactly he has read” - such phrases are not uncommon at elementary school meetings.
Parents are surprised: “The child is reading, how can he not understand what he read?”
It is important to recognize as early as possible that the child does not understand what they read, while the volume of texts and tasks is not large. This is easy to do by asking questions about the text, for example, about a read fairy tale. Without answers to questions, the child himself may not pay attention to the fact that he does not understand the meaning of what he has read.
2.
Automatic reading - the child chatters the text without delving into its meaning. Unfortunately, very often adults primarily pay attention to the speed of reading, and not to its quality. While the child is learning to read, do not chase speed - it is better to read more slowly, but thoughtfully. nine0113 3. Small vocabulary. A child can read a word, but not know its meaning and lose the meaning of the entire sentence or even text. Explain to the child that he can ask adults for incomprehensible or unfamiliar words. There are other factors that affect reading comprehension, but these are the main ones.
Games for the development of meaningful reading:
1. Puzzles of words, phrases and sentences. An adult writes a word on paper and cuts it into pieces, inviting the child to put together a “puzzle”, over time, the task becomes more complicated to sentences. nine0113 2. The word is lost: the adult reads the text and skips the words, the task of the child is to guess which words were “lost”.
3. Vocabulary expansion games: we invite the child to list as many words as possible for a hidden letter. This game is great because you can play it on the way to kindergarten or school or anywhere, because. it does not require any materials and preparation.
4. Children's Scrabble: word building game in children's format, expands the child's vocabulary
5. Scrabble: from simple words to complex ones. Playing with an adult, the child not only expands vocabulary, but also improves spelling.
6. Theater based on a fairy tale read: an adult will need props, you can use ordinary toys or buy a ready-made puppet set for a certain fairy tale. The task of the child is to read the fairy tale and try to reproduce it together with the adult with the help of dolls.
What to do if the child does not understand what they read?
nine0002 To begin with, the parent must clearly understand that the child is having a hard time, he does not create problems on purpose, he needs help, and adult dissatisfaction will only worsen the situation.
1. Make sure your child knows all the letters of the alphabet with confidence. Not according to the alphabet or cubes, but according to the text, where there are no pictures that can tell.
2. Do not push the child, no matter how slowly he reads. On the contrary, you can stop the child and ask him clarifying questions, especially about words and phrases that caused difficulty reading. nine0113 3. After reading the text, be sure to discuss what you read, ask questions to make sure that the child understands what he read.
4. When memorizing verses, also check whether the child understands their meaning. Explain unfamiliar words if necessary.
5. Let the child read as they like: underlining the line of text with a ruler, sheet or finger. The problem that parents do not attach importance to: the line. A child can simply get lost and confused in the abundance of text, so it is important to underline the readable line. nine0113 6. Offer your child books with large text, short phrases, and an interesting plot.
