7 Tips to Improve Reading Comprehension

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Does your child love to read but struggles to comprehend what they have read? Check out these 7 tips to improve reading comprehension from an unschool mom.

It is never too early to start thinking about reading comprehension. Being mindful of how you interact with books will set the stage for children who are confident and engaged readers.

My children have always loved to read and we have read to them from day one.

It is important to set the groundwork for learning in everyday situations. As unschoolers, we focus on life learning and child led learning. This means that we do not sit down and do a formal school lesson of any kind. We learn as we interact with each other, our environment, and resources available to us.

Setting the groundwork for reading comprehension can happen at any time, you just need to be aware of the learning opportunities that are ever present.

These 7 tips for improving reading comprehension come from an unschooling perspective. They are not focused on sitting down and filling our worksheets to prove they know what they are reading but, instead, focuses on discussion and interaction to develop reading comprehension in an organic fashion.

Encourage Your Children To Slow Down

Some children can get so immersed into a story that they miss a lot.

There is not need to put a time limit on reading or rush them. Allowing your children to slow down and read at a pace that enables them to fully retain the information is key.

It is not a race.

Encourage Your Child to Re-Read Things

Encourage your child to slow down, and re-read what they need to. If a sentence does not quite make sense to them, have them re-read it. Perhaps they might even have to re-read the entire paragraph.

My children will often re-read entire books that they enjoy and are able to retain even more information on the second or third reading.

Discuss The Vocabulary

Quite often we encounter new words while we are reading.

I love to encourage my children to pause and look up new words. Whether they ask me, use a dictionary or google the meaning, taking time to look up the words they don’t understand allows them to better understand the content.

Ask Specific Questions

When you are reading for the pleasure of reading, sometimes you do not pay attention to the finer points.

If you do not know to pay attention to the setting or plot development, you might not take note of these things.

By discussing books and asking specific questions, you are giving your child information about what kinds of things they should be paying attention to while they are reading.

Encourage Your Children to Predict the Ending

While talking about what your child is reading, talk about what might happen further on in the book.

Create a discussion and make it fun.

When they go back to reading it, they

Encourage Your Children to Explore Different Kinds of Books

Fiction books can be difficult to summaries if you are not used to doing so. Your child might try and retell the entire story because they do not know how to narrow it down to the key points.

If this is your child, try non-fiction!

Non-fiction books can be great resources for encouraging reading comprehension because retelling specific facts is a lot easier than summarizing a long story with lots of detail.

Talk To Your Children

The best way to improve the reading comprehension of your child is to talk to them.

Engage with them and talk to them with genuine interest in them.

Do you have any other tips for improving reading comprehension? Please let us know in the comments!

I would also appreciate if you shared this far and wide! Let’s get this information into the hands of as many parents and teachers as possible so we can help all the children who need help with their reading comprehension.