Improving Reading Skills
Teaching Fluency and Comprehension Skills to Enhance Reading
Use these strategies to improve reading fluency and comprehension in children who are struggling in reading.
Whether your child’s teacher has informed you of a problem or you have noticed that your child’s grades slipping, improving your child’s reading comprehension and fluency will often help the problem.
Improving Fluency
The best way to help a child to read fluently is to simply have him read frequently. Spend at least 30 minutes every day reading with your children. What the 30 minutes looks like will vary based on the age and skill level of your children.
If you have a non-reader(a child who cannot read), you read a line, then have your child repeat the line to learn inflection and phrasing. Also, read to your child to demonstrate what a good reader sounds like.
If you have a young reader, read a page and then have your child read a page. If this is too difficult, switch every paragraph. Re-reading books over again is another great strategy that will help teach expression and reading in phrases. Make sure that he pauses at the end of sentences and puts the correct inflection in his voice for exclamation points and question marks.
If you have a young fluent reader, encourage reading a variety of books. Also allow your fluent reader to read to their younger siblings.
Improving Comprehension
There are three basic strategies that when used can help improve a child’s reading comprehension.
Before Reading Strategies
“Before reading” activities happen before reading a new book. Have your child predict what the book is about by looking at the front cover and doing a picture walk through the book. A picture walk is "walking" through the book, looking at pictures and talking about what is happening with out reading the words. Guide young children to use basic logic skills while looking at the pictures to form an idea of what the story will be about. This will help hone prediction skills and will give them a set of ideas about the story that they can use to help decode any unfamiliar words they come across while reading.
During Reading Strategies
“During reading” activities happen while reading the actual text. Think up questions that you can ask as you read. Questions can be as simple as “what did she say?” requiring simple recall or as difficult as “why did she say that?” requiring an inference. Make sure your children understand what is going on in the story and what they think will happen next before you turn the page. When you ask a difficult question, show your children how to find the answer by re-reading a part of the story.
After Reading Strategies
“After reading” activities occur after you have finished reading the story. See if your children can tell you what happened at the beginning, in the middle and in the end of the story. Have them identify the characters, the setting, the plot and the solution. Ask who, what, where, when, how and why questions. These questions should be appropriately tailored to each age group. Ask how the characters felt when something specific happened in the story, requiring your children to infer and connect to the text. Encourage them to look back in the story for answers they cannot remember and show them how to do so.
Reading is only half the battle when it comes to comprehension. Engaging your children in the story will pay off in greater comprehension of what they are reading. The more you practice for reading fluency and comprehension, the better readers your children will become.
