When a child's reading comprehension is not good, it can lead to frustration and lower self-confidence. It can also cause your academic performance to drop. But this difficulty can be overcome with regular practice. By teaching your son or daughter to improve their reading comprehension, you will improve one of the most important skills of any student.
By teaching them to read effectively, your son or daughter can develop skills that will improve reading comprehension, confidence, and grades. Also it will generate greater satisfaction when reading and studying. However, to teach them this skill, it is necessary to know what reading comprehension is exactly.
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. But it is not only this. The reading comprehension it is the ability to make sense of a general meaning of words, sentences and paragraphs.
With this in mind, it is easy to see how important it is to know how to read correctly. Although we may not realize it, we spend our lives reading and a good understanding makes things easier for us. But until reading comprehension is improved, it takes time and dedication.
How to improve my child's reading comprehension?
Most children say they don't like to read and therefore they do not spend time improving their reading comprehension. Teaching them the importance of this skill is essential for them to feel motivated to learn to read more fluently and effectively.
To begin the process of improving this skill, we must take into account the resources we have at home. For this reason we are going to see a series of strategies to help you easily improve this skill so beneficial for your life.
Strategies for Teaching Your Child Reading Comprehension
Approach them to themes that they like
A large majority of students state that they would read more if they found books that interested them. This is very significant because it is the most important thing for anyone to improve their reading comprehension. For this reason, if you know the topics that interest your son or your daughter, it will be much easier to offer them a book that they like.
Obviously if you like the book you are holding, it will be more difficult for you to abandon it because you will want to know more. And, in addition, you will come to him at leisure, something important to encourage a love of reading. Do not forget that we are curious by nature.
Read out loud
Hearing the words aloud helps many children gain a better understanding of what they are reading. This is because are more focused on having to read and pronounce what they are reading. If they are young, they will also improve their pronunciation if they have any diction difficulty with a specific sound or word. Encouraging your child to read aloud will undoubtedly bring him many benefits.
Read the index or titles of the book
By viewing the table of contents for a book, or the titles that a topic contains, students get an overview of what they are going to read. This puts them on the subject they are going to read about. The titles of the books, whether text or reading, provide information on what to read.
Therefore, with this information the children are able to enter better into the context of the book. With a good context prior to reading, comprehension will be much better because your brain will be focused on that particular topic.
Reread what is not clear
One is not always enough reading to understand a text perfectly. This is something that can happen to anyone. Therefore, if the child thinks that something they have read is not clear, they should be encouraged to reread that part. Many boys and girls they may be ashamed to think that because they have not understood something they are not smart enough. But this is not so. There are many reasons why a text cannot be clear on a first reading, and there is no need to feel ashamed to read something twice, or whatever, until it is well understood.
Reread these more confusing parts helps the child to have a more complete picture of the book as a whole. As your reading comprehension improves, this strategy will become less and less necessary.
Use a ruler or finger to follow the reading
Some boys and girls have trouble separating lines of text, either by dyslexia or other problem. Whatever the reason, use a ruler or other type of indicator that highlights the line being read help focus better in the words he reads.
Find out the meaning of unknown words
Looking up unfamiliar words in a text in a dictionary will help you expand your vocabulary. A) Yes, the broader your vocabulary, the more fluent you will read in the future.
Once the reading time is over, you can ask your son or daughter about what they have learned during your reading. You can also ask about their progress, that is, if there were a lot of unfamiliar words, or parts that they found confusing.
You can ask him too about your opinion to plan future readings. In this way, you will feel like a participant, choosing what you want to read will do so for pleasure and not by imposition. The most important thing is that you enjoy reading and that you see it more as a game or something interesting than as an obligation or imposition.