Which Type of Learning Coach Are You?
byAlyssa Austin
5 min to readHow do you know if your student really understands what they read? Parents often resort to a strategy such as reading out loud or decoding the words that make the sentence, but decoding isn’t enough.
This is where reading comprehension comes into play.
Reading comprehension is the process of taking in words and assigning meaning to them in a way that makes sense to the reader. Reading comprehension is a necessary life skill that students are introduced to very early on in their academic careers—as early as pre-school! Read on to learn more about the importance of reading comprehension, as well as some helpful reading comprehension strategies that you can share with your student to aid them in improving overall comprehension skills and developing effective reading strategies.
According to “7 Keys to Comprehension: How to Help Your Kids Read It and Get It!” by Susan Zimmermann and Chryse Hutchins, reading comprehension is “the ability to read text, process it, and understand its meaning. It relies on two interconnected abilities: word reading (being able to decode the symbols on the page) and language comprehension (being able to understand the meaning of the words and sentences).”
Essentially when we read, we process the words and their meaning by first taking them in at face value, and then relying on our internal mental map to create a personalized understanding of what the text is saying.
Reading is more than just a goal; reading and comprehending are essential for success in math, history, geography, science, and any other school subject. And it’s not just helpful in school. Everyday reading, whether of a recipe, an appliance manual, a road sign, or a newspaper, is dependent on not only reading the words, but also on understanding those words and phrases. A young person who can only decode the words misses the true meaning of any text and may never learn to love reading.
To encourage and improve comprehension, teachers and parents can actively coach their students on these seven reading comprehension strategies, which are also mentioned in “7 Keys to Comprehension: How to Help Your Kids Read It and Get It!”:
Here are some tips for introducing reading strategies to students in kindergarten through second grade:
Here are some tips for introducing reading strategies to students in grades 3–5:
Here are some tips for introducing reading strategies to students in middle school:
Here are some tips for introducing reading strategies to students in high school:
Reading comprehension strategies are simply tools that good readers use when they read. These strategies are vital to reading more than just the words on the page—they are the keys to understanding what those words, and the sentences they are part of, mean. Helping students master these reading skills will enable them to develop strong comprehension of their reading material and help them succeed both in school and in life!