Reading comprehension involves a thorough understanding of a text through analysis, inference, evaluation, and synthesis skills. Some students may struggle with these skills, but there are different strategies you can implement to help them improve their comprehension of the text. Here are three reading comprehension strategies that really work.
- Ask questions: By asking the students questions about the text, you can encourage them to ask themselves the same questions and deepen their understanding of what they’re reading. Engaging with the text this way can allow them to gain a better connection to the text and improve their reading comprehension.
- Visualize the text: If the student is struggling with abstract ideas in the text, you can ask them to visualize what they’re reading to make the ideas more concrete. You might ask them to simply imagine the situation or characters in the text, or you can have them create charts, diagrams, or even pictorial representations of what they’re reading. This can improve their understanding of more complex parts of the text and, once again, improve their reading comprehension.
- Summarize and discuss: You can also ask the student to summarize and discuss what they’ve read to test their overall comprehension of the text and encourage them to look back through the text to think about what they’ve read. It can also help them put the text into words they can better understand and relate to.
Here at Academic Associates Learning Center, we can provide the support and learning programs any child needs to improve their reading comprehension and other academic skills. You can give us a call if you would like to learn more.