Reading Strategies

Is your child struggling with a certain aspect of reading.  Try one of the following strategies to help improve his or her reading abilities:


Comprehension

If your child is struggling with reading comprehension, he or she might benefit from using a graphic organizer.  Graphic organizers are a great way to visualize what is being read.

Here are some examples of graphic organizers:

• Venn-Diagrams Used to compare or contrast information from two sources. For example, comparing two characters in a book.
  
• Storyboard/Chain of Events Used to order or sequence events within a text. For example, listing the steps for cooking dinner.
  
• Story Map Used to chart the story structure. These can be organized into fiction and nonfiction text structures. For example, in a fiction text you would define the characters, setting, events, problem, and resolution; however in a nonfiction story, most likely only the main idea and details related to the main idea would be identified.
  
• Cause/Effect Used to illustrate the cause and effects told within a text. For example, not eating dinner will lead to being hungry.
  
• Click here for more free graphic organizers.

Oral Reading 

Instead of reading to your child, have your child read to you.  Have your child read from a variety of texts: Novels, newspapers, social media posts, cereal boxes, recipes, instruction manuals, bills, etc.  The more chances a child gets to read aloud will help that child feel more comfortable each time he or she reads.  The child will also be more willing to take risks reading aloud if he or she is only reading aloud for you.
  

Predicting

Have your child practice making predictions.  When watching a television show, during commercials, have your child make a prediction about what might happen next (and why it might happen).  Before reading a new book, have your child look at the cover of the book to make a prediction about what the book might be about.  While reading to your child, make sure to pause frequently in order for your child to make predictions about the text.  Most importantly, give your child time to reflect on his or her predictions.  Were the predictions correct?  


Questioning

Asking questions will help clarify and deepen understanding of the text that is being read.

Before reading a text, encourage your child to ask the following questions:

What clues does the title give about the text?
Why am I reading the text?
What do I already know about the text?
What do I want to know about the text?

During the reading of a text, encourage your child to ask the following questions:

Is there anything I do not understand?
What do I not understand?
What connections can I make with the text?

After the reading of a text, encourage your child to ask the following questions:

What predictions were confirmed?
How were the main ideas presented in the text?
How did the author present the information?


Summarizing

Summarizing is a crucial skill to help students learn how to take a text and reduce it to the main points for a more concise understanding.  Summarizing helps determine important ideas and important details to support those important ideas.

Read a short piece of text to your child and to help them summarize the text have them answer the following questions:

What is the main idea?
What are the important details to support the main idea?
What information is unnecessary and not related to the main idea?