It may feel like your child has worked through every comprehension passage under the sun but you may still be seeing very little improvement. If that’s the case, it may be that there’s an underlying issue preventing your child from progressing.
After working with many hundreds of students on their comprehension, I’ve found that comprehension usually stem from a handful of the same issues, which I’ve outlined below.
Once you’ve identified which area(s) your child is weakest in, you’re halfway there. Next, just use our quick tips to help your child to improve.
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Once children move on from picture books and start reading independently, many parents stop listening to their child’s reading. Their school will generally do the same. As a result, children’s reading can plateau and they can start skipping over or guessing new words they encounter when reading independently.
The first step towards strong comprehension is making sure your child is actually reading each and every word in the text, and doing so accurately.
As a rule, try to listen to your child’s reading once or twice a week throughout primary school to check not only the accuracy of their reading but their pronunciation, too.
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Once children have jumped the hurdle of reading accurately, you need to check that they understand the words they’re reading. This means making sure they have a stellar vocabulary. Without this, it’ll be like they’re reading with half the words deleted from the text.
If you embark on a journey to improve your child’s vocabulary, please don’t start by simply forcing your child to read. Not only does this have the potential to turn your child off reading for good, but it has also shown to be hugely ineffective.
Instead of using reading to build vocabulary, prioritise activities and discussion to secure the fastest improvement.
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Some children forget parts of a comprehension passage and are more than happy to fill in the gaps with their own imagination. This soon becomes evident when you read their answers and realise they have nothing to do with the text!
Challenge your child’s assumptions regularly by asking them to back up their statements with evidence from the text. Doing this builds crucial skills for both long comprehension questions and multiple-choice.
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Children with a good general knowledge are able to imagine the world they’re reading about and can draw sensible conclusions based on the evidence in the passage. Without this, stories become very abstract concepts that can leave children mystified.
To build your child’s general knowledge, discuss the world around you and expose them to different worlds through a variety of channels, including film and T.V.
Seeing different worlds and eras recreated on screen will help your child to better imagine the worlds they’re reading about.
If your child comes across anything they don’t understand when reading, look up images wherever possible – they’ll stay in your child’s memory far longer than the written word.
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Some children struggle to draw inferences in texts because they can’t put themselves in the character’s shoes.
Help your child to understand characters by asking how that character might feel and linking this to how your child might feel if they were in the same situation. Once your child has learnt to identify with the characters, they will be better equipped to draw logical conclusions.
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Comprehension can be a bit of a minefield and you may find that some or all of the above are impacting your child’s comprehension. Some of these steps – like practising reading and building vocabulary – are easier to improve upon than others, so start there when trouble-shooting.
When working with your child and reading their answers, keep the above pointers in mind to see if you can get to the bottom of any issues.
Remember: there are very few quick fixes in comprehension but regular work on the areas above will pay off in the end.
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Wordier gives children the vocabulary tools they need to understand difficult comprehension passages, whether they’re from classic literature or the 21st century.
To build vocabulary in a thorough and systematic way, check out our weekly vocab courses.
