5 ways to build up comprehension skills
Comprehension skills are vital when mastering the skill of reading. They help a written text make sense, allow us to retain new information read and ultimately make the reading process enjoyable as there is a concrete outcome to it.
Here are 5 ways to help build those vital skills:
Summarise: ask your child to retell what they have just read by asking them to focus more on the main points - ie: summary. This helps them understand that you can read great volumes but should focus and retain only the important bits that were read.
Predict: encourage them to explore what might happen next or why they think a particular thing happened. This helps them interpret what they read by pairing new information with previously stored knowledge they have surrounding this topic. It also shows them that reading is associated with expanding general knowledge.
Investigate: ask them what certain words mean. If they don’t know, this is a good opportunity to introduce a dictionary or help explain different strategies they could use to help understand new words they haven’t seen before.
Questions: get your child to pose questions from that text. I use to encourage my student to think of questions they would want to ask the main character (if fictional) or questions they would ask the author of a text (if nonfiction). This process helps them develop those critical analytical skills that we need in life so that we don’t just believe everything we read.
Evaluate: ask your child to review how they found that text. Was it a good read that they would recommend to others? Was it informative and did they learn something from it? Alternatively, if they didn’t enjoy it, ask them to elaborate on why they felt that way.
Adopting these strategies in everyday life will help build these skills in a natural and enjoyable way. If we want them to develop that love for reading then we need to encourage these skills to be mastered in a fun-loving and comfortable way.
