The goal of reading is comprehension, which is a fancy way of saying you want to understand the information that you just read. Reading Decoding and Reading Comprehension work hand in hand but involve different skill sets. So many of us parents have been told, time and time again, that all we need to do is read to our children to make them into great readers.  My local school sends home several letters at the beginning of the school year encouraging parents to read a book a night to their children. The benefit seems obvious, as this will translate into hundreds of books over the school year.  Implied is a belief that this simple act will unlock all the marvels of the universe and turn our little darlings into scholars.

Well, the truth is, it’s not that simple.  They forgot to share the dos and don’ts of how to improve reading comprehension.  It’s more than simply reading the book out loud. There’s vocabulary, background knowledge, think-alouds, just to name a few specifics involved in improving reading comprehension. So let’s dive in and discuss what you can do at home to improve your child’s reading comprehension.  Don’t worry, it’s not complicated.

1. Vocabulary

When a child reads, they must first decode the word and then map it in their brain to come up with the meaning. They ask questions to help them understand what a word means.  They are like little detectives and use all their senses to understand meaning. We have all experienced a child asking “why?” Why is this important? Because comprehension will be negatively impacted when a child doesn’t understand more than 2% of the words.  So even the best decoders will not have strong reading comprehension if they are not familiar with the words that they have decoded.

This brings us to the first thing you need to do when you read to your children: explain the meaning of words.  It’s from these rich discussions that children build their vocabulary.  In fact, children learn the bulk of their vocabulary orally, through words they hear, up until middle school. You can discuss the words before you start reading a book, or wait until you have finished reading.  Sometimes you can pause during the reading if a word is crucial to the meaning. Watch your child’s face for clues that they are becoming confused. If you have read a book multiple times, switch roles and ask your child to explain the meaning of a word to you. My youngest daughter LOVED the Fancy Nancy books, and we read them continuously.  Many words needed further explanation, which was a fabulous way to build her vocabulary.  While reading one book, I had to take time to explain that a tutu is worn by a ballerina when giving a performance, which prompted a discussion about the art of ballet which originated in the 1500s by members of the French Royal Court, which prompted a discussion about the Nutcracker and Swan Lake, which led to questions about when she could attend a performance.  What started out as a brief explanation of a tutu quickly morphed into background knowledge which leads me to the third tactic to incorporate into a read-aloud.

2. Background Knowledge

The term refers to how much you know about a subject.  There is a famous research study (the baseball experiment) which revealed that poor readers who knew a lot about a subject were able to answer more questions correctly compared with strong readers who didn’t have prior knowledge about the subject.  The knowledge about a subject is referred to as background knowledge, and it’s essential to improving reading comprehension.  Basically, before you read a book with your child, it’s helpful to put it in context.

If you are reading The Last Mapmaker, you might want to start by explaining what a map is.  Sounds ridiculous, but in a world of GPS, children have never used (much less seen) a map.  North, South, East, and West take on new meaning when combined with finding your location on a map and then using the information to reach a destination. Navigating the high seas using the constellations needs to be explained, or the nuances of a story may be lost.  I remember reading a story to a student that took place in California in the early 1800s.  It didn’t make sense until I explained that California and most of the Southwestern United States used to be part of Mexico.  Before a student reads Hemingway’s Old Man at the Bridge a discussion about the Spanish Civil War, the sides that were fighting each other, and a map of Spain highlighting the Ebro River is necessary background knowledge to fully comprehend the 3-page story.  Last year, I was helping high school students understand the dystopian novel Animal Farm.  I quickly realized they were unfamiliar with the Russian Revolution of 1917, with Stalinism, or Capitalism as economic systems.  Without this information, the book was simply a short story about a bunch of animals on a farm.

3. Think-aloud

We talk about modeling good behavior for children so they can learn how to behave by example.  Well, we need to do the same modeling to help children build a more sophisticated thought process. Sharing your thoughts out loud models the thought process for children. The mental gymnastics that we go through hundreds of times a day aren’t developed in children.  In fact, it takes until a person is in their mid-twenties for executive functioning to fully develop. By talking out loud about how you decide something, this models higher-level thinking for your audience. For example, children need to learn how to interpret words with multiple meanings to identify the probable meaning and accurately understand what they read. The Amelia Bedelia books are a great way to model thinking.  The comical antics by the main character provide an opportunity to discuss idioms and how a literal meaning isn’t always appropriate.  Instead, you can talk about the figurative meaning of common expressions. When Amelia is asked to draw the curtains, this is a fabulous opportunity to share the figurative meaning of the phrase, instead of the literal one, in which Amelia undertakes an artistic endeavor to visually represent the curtains. This back and forth between the different meanings is called cognitive flexibility, and explaining why some meanings are inhibited or rejected is part of the thinking process. So there really is a benefit to talking out loud in front of children, and we encourage you to do it when reading to children.  

Written by Tracy Young, SfL Clinician, MBA, CALTA