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Reading Strategies for Struggling Readers
Learning to read involves acquiring skills in five different areas.
- Phonological processing
- Phonics
- Fluency
- Vocabulary
- Reading Comprehension
Many children exhibit a natural love for reading. They seem to quickly and easily master the first 4 stages of the reading process. It's easy to get caught up in the excitement of seeing an elementary age child breeze through easy readers and become attracted to high school texts. Some parents, however, discover that their child's reading comprehension doesn't quite match their reading level.
Having the basic skills to read advanced level material doesn't mean that the child will always understand the text. If you discover your child is having problems with reading comprehension, you can use the following reading strategies to help them.
When introducing reading strategies, it's best to do it side-by-side with your child. The very first time, even if your child is 10-years old, you may even want to model the process yourself. Practice these strategies out loud with your child for at least two weeks. After that, encouraging your child to use these strategies on their own will help them develop skills so they can be their own reading coach.
Making Predictions
Read the title of the book or the chapter heading. Look at the pictures on the front cover. Ask your child what they think the story or nonfiction book may be about. Sometimes you may want to just say, "Good guess. Let's find out if you're right." Other times, you can encourage your child to make a second prediction. At the end of the story, talk about why one prediction was right and how words can have two meanings.
Activating Prior Knowledge
If your goal is to read about the human body, before your child opens the book, ask them what they already know about the topic. Tickling the brain to think about a topic gets a child ready to learn new information. For example, if a person's mind is already focused on the skeletal system, they can more quickly encode and store new facts about bones as they read them.
Look at Summary and Objective Points
Many nonfiction children's books include a box at the beginning of the chapter. The box briefly lists what the main points of the text will be. Make sure your child reads this box. For example, with that book about the human body your child may be expecting to read about bones. Instead the section may be about organs. When a reader is anticipating one topic, many times they will skim over important information as they look forward to getting to the part they want to read. Knowing what to look for in the text will help to cue a reader for key words and ideas.
Preview Vocabulary
Introduce new words that will be used in the book or a certain chapter before you start reading. When young readers come across new words, they sometimes will sound them out correctly but not know what they mean. Since the goal is to read a passage, not all children will actually stop to find out the meaning.
Look at Pictures and Charts
Before you begin reading nonfiction, flip through the chapter or book and look at the pictures, tables, and charts. Doing so continues to prime the brain and get it ready for the new information you will be learning. Knowing ahead of time what to anticipate in your reading helps to focus your attention on what you already know and what you are likely to learn.
Summarize Periodically
Textbooks are designed to be read in short passages. Take advantage of the built in breaks in the text by pausing and asking your child what she just read. If a section is especially long, find convenient paragraph breaks and summarize together. Identifying topic sentences, usually either the first or last sentence in a paragraph, is a good way to help summarize.
If you find your child is off-topic, ask them to explain what they're thinking about with the text. Redirect their attention back to the initial summary box at the beginning of the chapter so you can gently refocus their attention on the main points.
Use Context Clues
If you find a point where your child is not understanding something in the text, encourage them to look at the page for clues. Does a picture or caption on the page help explain a concept? Does the author use an embedded definition in the next sentence? Can you look a word up in the glossary?
Make Comparisons
After you read a new text, ask your child to compare what they just read with what they already knew about the topic. What new information did they just learn? Is the information consistent with what they already knew? If not, how can they verify which is the correct fact?
Map Your New Information
Note taking is an essential skill in life, whether your child plans to go to college or enter a trade. Note taking, however, does not always need to involve rewriting sentences. Young children, especially, benefit from learning how to map new ideas on paper.
Take a blank piece of paper and write the main topic in the center. Draw a straight line off that main idea and write down the first big idea that you and your child just read. Continue to brainstorm all the topics you read about, as well as what you already know. Watch how your idea map grows.
Answer Comprehension Questions
Always begin by focusing attention on literal comprehension questions. Ask basic questions about Who, What, When, and Where. These questions can always be answered by looking back at the text. Interpretive questions force a child to infer information not specifically stated in the text. They ask the questions Why, What if, and How. Applied questions don't always have a right or wrong answer to them. These questions have a reader extend information from the text to other situations and topics. They can also ask a reader to provide an opinion on the facts, by backing up their answer with a rationale. Applied questions are the hardest of all comprehension questions and not generally used with kids in 3rd grade or under.
Re-Reading the Text
The first time a child reads a new text, they focus a lot of attention on reading each word and getting to the end. If a text is at the upper end of a child's challenge level, they may not comprehend everything they read the first time. Think of it as a trial run. Wait a day and have your child re-read the same text. You may be surprised by how much more they get out of the text the second time around.
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