Reading Comprehension

[OrionGrad]

DS1 is 6yo and he loves reading small chapter books, but I don’t feel like he’s really comprehending what he’s reading. I know he’s reading the words, but if I ask him what the chapter was about he has a hard time telling me. Is there anything in particular I should be doing to help him with comprehension, or will it just improve naturally over time?

[scrub-jay]

Audiobooks!! It takes the stress of learning-to-read out of the equation and let’s him just enjoy the story. Audiobooks (and read-alouds) made my kids realize that books weren’t just words on paper, but also had really a fun story that will suck you in. As you know, my dd9 is an avid reader, but it was audiobooks that initially sucked her in. It’s pretty easy to get free audiobooks digitally from public libraries if you’re ever interested.

[TulipsAndSunscreen]

If you were homeschooling, I might say have him practice narration on shorter texts (start with picture books!) but I don’t know if that’s too much on top of his whole school day. You may want to mention it to his teacher.

But if you want to try narration, here’s some tips: I’ve learned that anything complex in literature (comprehension, literary analysis, story analysis, etc) can be done on very simple children’s books to start and then you work up. So on this case, I’d pick an unfamiliar picture book from the library and read it aloud and then take turns re-telling and adding detail (make it a game). Then work up to him telling a whole picture book on his own and finally to more chapter type books.

But I think sometimes kids have trouble with determining what a single chapter is about because the plot is through the entire book and not just the most recent chapter so it might even be that the question is confusing him.


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[OrionGrad]

Thank you! I’m going to try both of those ideas. I’d thought about going back to some super simple books and having him read aloud and then tell me about it. Basically going back to basics. I didn’t know there was an actual term for that. We’ll give audiobooks a try too.

I feel a little silly talking to his teacher about it because we’re only on the second week of school and he’s already pretty far ahead of his peers in reading, but I’ll start my weekly class volunteering gig in a few weeks so I might bring it up then.