Academic Reading is an active experience. It requires the brain to be alert and ready to do something.
For some children reading is passive. Their brains are half-asleep. The child is not engaged with the text in front of them.
Reading Comprehension Requires Action
Academic reading requires children to use intellectual engagement with text. Since reading is thinking, children need to learn effective strategies that will help them comprehend text.
The demand for reading comprehension increases once children learn to read. This shift happens in 3rd grade. This next phase of reading is called reading to learn.
At this phase, children must rely more heavily on their reading comprehension skills than their decoding skills. Children are asked to recall specific questions about text and write short answer responses.
Many students are successful with answering the literal “right there” comprehension questions, but struggle when the questions require higher level thinking skills.
Acquiring information allows us to gain knowledge about the world and ourselves in relation to it. We build up our store of knowledge not so much for its own sake but in order to develop insight.”- Stephanie Harvey, author of Strategies That Work.
This is why students need “strategic” reading skills to allow them to dig deeper into the text and enhance their understanding.
Increase Reading Comprehension with Strategic Reading Skills
Any time you are working with your child on a new strategy, you want to model your own thinking while reading a text to your child. Give your child plenty of time to practice the strategy with you. Then you can monitor how the child is using it on their own.
Here are 3 effective ways to help your child become a strategic reader by making connections with the text.
- Connecting with text on a personal level- when students have experiences that are similar to the character they are reading about, they are able to identify with the character and are more likely to understand the characters motives, thoughts and feelings and actions.
- This reminds me of my life…
- Connecting past text with current text- when children read stories or nonfiction , they can bring that prior knowledge with them into the new text. The familiarity of a topic or character increases their knowledge of all new text. They are able to compare and contrast the topic or character which requires a higher level of thinking.
- This reminds of a book I have read…
- Connecting the world with current text– when children can realize they are part of current world issues, they can see how those same issues are being experienced by the characters they read or the non-fiction topics they study.
- This reminds me of something that is/ has gone on in the world…
Reading Comprehension Tools That Work
Though there are many strategies that help children increase their reading comprehension, making connections to text is one of the most powerful ways to engage your child while reading.
The key takeaway is for children to acquire a literacy tool belt that will allow them to engage with text in a meaningful way.
Click the link and download my Freebie– Strategic Reading- Making Connections
https://www.readinghelponline.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/pdf-making-connections.pdf
And, if you feel your child would benefit from online reading sessions, I can help.
