To be a Successful Reader - Reading with Comprehension is a Must Learn Skill!

It is important for your children to develop the skill of reading with comprehension.

Comprehension is the understanding of what you read, that is making meaning from the text. In order to make meaning your children should understand what they read, be able to talk about it and reflect on it.

When reading with your children it is important that you talk and discuss the book before you start reading, during the reading process and after reading the book. The questions you ask your children about the book will help you determine your child's understanding.

When your children read they bring to the reading their own knowledge and experiences about the content or ideas in the story, their knowledge of books and their skills in letters, words, phonics and sentence structure. It is your responsibility to help and support them gain meaning from the reading.

Before reading with your child, look at the book and ask them to predict what they think the story will be about - look at the cover and the title. Ask a couple of questions about what they know about that topic - bringing in what they know about the topic and their experiences (this may help them when they read the story). Once predictions are made it is time to read.

During the reading, you may stop every now and then and make comments or ask a question. At a significant point in the story or book, ask your child to predict what might happen next.

Also during the reading, if your child has a problem with a word you can use these questions to help them out -:

Does it make sense?

Does it sound right?

Does it look right?

While not correcting them, you are helping them to gain strategies for correcting their own reading.

After reading the book, get your child to talk about what happened in the story. It is a good indicator of your child's understanding if they can retell the story back to you with as many of the details as possible, in other words, their ability to sequence the events in the story correctly.

As well as retelling you can discuss characters or discuss any issues or messages from the book. Sometimes this may be a good opportunity for you to have a discussion with your child.

One more point about reading with comprehension is the type of questioning you use. There are different ways of questioning that will help you see what understanding your child gained from that book. These questioning strategies include:

• questioning and talking about the meaning of the story/book - what it was about.
• questioning and talking about the type of book they were reading (fairytale, information book, etc) and how the book relates to life.
• questioning about the purpose of the story/book - why did the author write it?

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