Comprehension
Comprehension is the ability to understand and make meaning from speech and text. Children who have strong comprehension are able to make judgments about what they have read. They can determine what is important in a text, what caused an event to happen, and whether a statement is fact or opinion. Because they can understand books deeply, they can get the other benefits that come from skilled reading… learning about the world, feeling a wide range of emotions, and better understanding of what it means to be human.
Comprehension is not a single skill that can be taught. Instead, readers connect what they read in a text to what they already know. As young readers add to their knowledge base, their comprehension improves as well. The rope graphic shows you all of the different areas of knowledge that younger readers need to build and apply as they read.
As caregivers, the best way to help your child build comprehension is to actively read with your child. Active reading is when you are reading to your child – or your child is reading to you – and you are asking questions, building vocabulary, and connecting the book to your child’s life and to other books your child has read. You should read aloud to your child in whatever language you are most comfortable. If that isn’t English, that is fine. And, you can also get other folks involved in reading to and with your child. Older siblings, babysitters, aunties and uncles, and grandparents are all good folks to enlist as active readers.
Source: Really Great Reading
How would I know if my child should practice comprehension?
Practicing comprehension is a lifelong practice, like brushing our teeth! We all continue to do it as we read and discuss texts. If children appear to struggle with comprehension, it is sometimes because their foundational skills (like phonological awareness, decoding, sight recognition, and fluency) are not yet solid enough, which means their mental energy is spent sounding out and calling words, not focusing on what the text means.
However, if these skills are solid, children might need extra practice if:
They focus on all of the little details instead of the most important big ideas.
They can’t give you the gist of what a book or passage is about.
They find it puzzling to explain why characters act as they do, or what causes events to unfold.
Activities
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In Choose a Book & Get Ready to Read, you can prepare to read aloud to your child in an active way, where your child is involved. Any book that peaks your child’s interest will work for reading aloud. But there are some things that make books really great for active reading. 1. Picture books with rich illustrations and great stories, like Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak, Last Stop on Market Street, by Matt de la Pena, and My Papi has a Motorcycle by Isabel Quintero. 2. Chapter books that speak to kids’ hearts and minds like the Ramona series by Beverly Cleary and the Ellray Jakes series by Sally Warner. 3. Nonfiction books with lots of illustrations and examples to talk about, like books by Gail Gibbons, Melissa Stewart, and Kate Messner.
As you sit down to read, look at the cover of the book and ask a question: 1. What do you think this book will be about? 2. Have you met this character before? 3. What do you know about this already? 4. Or, what questions do you have? Asking a few questions is a great way to start the conversation!
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Driven by: Caregiver
Time Required: Will vary by book
Sub-focus: Background knowledge, vocabulary, literacy knowledge
Source: Read Charlotte
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In Choose Books around a Theme, you can build children’s background knowledge and vocabulary by selecting books that all relate to a theme and reading deeply within that theme. The theme can apply to books you read aloud to your child and books they read aloud to you. Some resources for reading on selected topics, complied by the International Dyslexia Association, include:
Tech-enabled books are another option. Readworks Articles a Day is a digital program that you can customize so your child can read texts on a topic at varying levels of difficulty (all resources are free with registration). UniteForLiteracy offers texts that can be read on digital devices, organized by theme and available for free.
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Driven by: Caregiver and Child, with caregiver listening and coaching
Time Required: Will vary by book
Sub-focus: Background knowledge, vocabulary
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For the 2022-2023 school year, Flyleaf Decodable Books is offering free access to digital versions of decodable texts with beautiful illustrations, sorted by sound-spelling pattern. When teachers share the sound-spelling pattern that your child is practicing, you can access these texts to provide additional texts for them to read to themselves or to you. Click on the book cover to begin reading from any digital device. The book’s homework button will open a downloadable homework sheet that includes a brief question or activity focused on comprehension.
Driven by: Child, with caregiver listening and coaching
Time Required: Will vary by book
Sub-focus: Decoding, fluency, letter formation, comprehension
Source: Flyleaf Publishing
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If no one is available to read to your child, you can always set your child up to listen to an audible book. Sources of free audio recordings include: 1. Storynory, which includes the audiobook and the digital text of the book. 2. Lit2Go, which offers free audiobooks versions of books that aren’t protected by copyright laws any longer and the downloadable PDF of the text. The books are also organized by readability levels. 3. Some libraries also carry Playaways, which are books pre-loaded onto MP3 player available for checkout. Your library may also provide audiobooks as digital files through a service like OverDrive that you can check out and download to your personal device. 4. For children with a documented disability that prevents them from reading printed texts, you can join Bookshare, the largest online library of accessible reading materials. 5. Storyline Online streams videos featuring celebrated actors reading children’s books alongside creatively produced illustrations. Each book includes a curriculum developed by an elementary educator, aiming to strengthen comprehension and verbal and written skills for English-language learners.
For a fee, you can subscribe to services like Audible and Tales2Go.
To ensure the child is actively thinking about the book, you might: 1. Write out a few questions on index cards and have the child write, audiorecord, and/or draw responses. 2. At a later time, have a conversation with the child about the book and the responses they wrote, recorded, and/or drew. 3. For Storyline Online, set your child up with some of the questions or activities in the book’s curriculum.
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Driven by: Child, with caregiver setting up questions in advance
Time Required: Will vary by book
Sub-focus: Comprehension
Source: Storynory, Lit2Go, Bookshare, Audible, Tales2Go, Storyline Online
1.SELECT BOOKS + PREPARE TO READ
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In Ask Questions, you can ask questions that will lead children to think, reason, and understand the books you read aloud. 1. Ask questions about what is happening in the story. For example: “What did the character do? What happened on that page? Wow, that was an important chapter, what happened? How did the character change from the start of the story? How did the character feel about that?” 2. Ask questions about what is coming up next. For example: “What do you think the character will do next? What do you think will happen in the next chapter?” 3. After you’ve asked a question, pause. Wait. Let your child think. 4. Listen to what they have to say and respond to their ideas. Have a conversation!
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Driven by: Caregiver
Time Required: Will vary by book
Sub-focus: Background knowledge, vocabulary, verbal reasoning, literacy knowledge
Source: Read Charlotte
As you sit down to read, look at the cover of the book and ask a question: 1. What do you think this book will be about? 2. Have you met this character before? 3. What do you know about this already? 4. Or, what questions do you have? Asking a few questions is a great way to start the conversation!
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Driven by: Caregiver
Time Required: Will vary by book
Sub-focus: Background knowledge, vocabulary, literacy knowledge
Source: Read Charlotte
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In I Have Another Question, you can ask open-ended questions that lead to conversations about the books you and your child are reading together. Open-ended questions to consider include:
Ones that help children think about predictions. Help your child compare what they thought was going to happen to what actually happened. “Think about your prediction. What turned out to be true? What was different? What do you think will happen next? Why?”
Ones that help children retell. Talk about what happened in the story. “What happened in the beginning? What happened in the middle? What happened in the end? Tell me more. What else happened?”
Ones that help your children connect. Help your child think of ways the story connects to their experience or other things they’ve read. “Did this remind you of anything in your life or anything else you’ve read? How so? This reminds me of _______. How does this text connect to that?”
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Driven by: Caregiver
Time Required: Will vary by book
Sub-focus: Background knowledge
Source: Springboard Collaborative
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In Connect to the Child’s World, you can help make reading relevant, relatable, and fun. To encourage children to connect: 1. Before you read, ask questions like “Have you read stories about this character before? Have you read about this topic before? What do you already know?” 2. While you read, ask questions like “What does this remind you of? What new information are you learning? What is this making you think about?” 3. After you read, ask questions like “What did you learn? What does this book make you wonder about? What do you think about the character’s experience?
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Driven by: Caregiver
Time Required: Will vary by book
Sub-focus: Background knowledge
Source: Read Charlotte
2. Ask Questions
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In Build Vocabulary, you can use active reading to find and teach rare words that we don’t use in everyday conversations. 1. Choose 2-3 advanced words in a picture book, or 1-2 advanced words per chapter in a chapter book. 2. Create a kid-friendly definition. 3. Use the story or pictures to talk about the word. 3. Help the child connect the word to their experience. 4. Try to use the word again after reading the book.
Driven by: Caregiver
Time Required: Will vary by book
Sub-focus: Vocabulary
Source: Read Charlotte
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In Build Vocabulary through Read Alouds, you can help build your children’s vocabulary by teaching the meaning of vocabulary words as you are reading books aloud and know your child doesn’t know a word that is important. You can do one (or more) of the following: 1. Provide a quick, kid-friendly definition and keep reading. 2. Give a quick synonym for the word. 3. Point to the picture to help your child understand what the word means. 4. Act out or demonstrate the meaning of the word. The link offers examples of how to implement these steps with real books.
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Driven by: Caregiver
Time Required: Will vary by book
Sub-focus: Vocabulary
Source: Anna Geiger @ The Measured Mom
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In Simple Discussions with New Vocabulary, you can help build your children’s vocabulary by asking them a question with a new vocabulary word that will bring about a thoughtful conversation. For example, if the new word is cautiously, you could say something like this: “If you are walking through a dark cave, you need to do it cautiously. What are other things that you should do cautiously?” or “Your attitude is the way you think or feel about something that affects your behavior. If you were sick and couldn’t do your homework, you would probably want your teacher to have an understanding attitude. If your brother kicked you and you went to tell your mom, what would you want her attitude to be? If you broke your leg, what kind of attitude would you want your doctor to have?”
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Driven by: Caregiver
Time Required: ~5 minutes
Sub-focus: Vocabulary
Source: Bringing Words to Life, by Beck, McKeown, and Kucan, via Anna Geiger @ The Measured Mom
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In Choose the Right Word, you can help build your children’s vocabulary by asking them to choose the vocabulary word that accurately fits a scenario. For example, “Which word best describes the movement of a butterfly? Flutter or scatter?“ or “If a parent yells at you for something that wasn’t your fault, is that gradual or harsh?”
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Driven by: Caregiver
Time Required: ~2-3 minutes
Sub-focus: Vocabulary
Source: Bringing Words to Life, by Beck, McKeown, and Kucan, via Anna Geiger @ The Measured Mom
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In Finish the Sentence, you can help build your children’s vocabulary by using a new vocabulary word in a sentence starter, and asking them to finish the sentence in a way that makes sense. For example: In order to keep the students safe, the principal wants to prevent …
I was nervous when I was about to approach … One example of a healthy habit is …
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Driven by: Caregiver
Time Required: ~2-3 minutes
Sub-focus: Vocabulary
Source: Bringing Words to Life, by Beck, McKeown, and Kucan, via Anna Geiger @ The Measured Mom
3. Build Vocabulary