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How to encourage comprehension in reading?


Strawberry Queen
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Okay,

 

My dd7 reads short chapter books. She likes to read and can tell parts of the story, but misses major events. How do you encourage/teach her to read *and* comprehend what she is reading. She does some narrations after her reading, but not very consistently. (mea culpa) She does narrations for history and science, but I'm reading those aloud to her.

 

Should I ask her to narrate each chapter she reads? Make up questions for her to answer? I'm just not exactly what approach I should take. BTW I'm pretty sure these books aren't too hard for her.

 

TIA

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Share reading helps here, I have dd7 read and then I read the end and we talk about the chapter. It's technically narration but it's just us sharing the experience of reading the book. Dd7 also likes the TOG comprehension worksheets and we're using Comprehension Quickies which is a paragraph about 4-5 sentences long and there are questions underneath, my dd is to answer the questions in complete sentences (a skill I need her to work on).

 

Hope this helps,

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If you Google Reading comprehension questions or something similiar you can find a number of websites where you can print out reading journal pages and other worksheets w/ questions, or you can pre-read the selection and make up your own questions/activities. Have your student read the questions prior to doing her day's reading the first book or two, so she starts to get the idea of "big picture" questions. Then have her complete the questions/activities either in a writing or orally.

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I also think some of this comes with age. Some kids are great at the big picture while others are more in tune with the finer points of the story. Seven is also young for remembering everything that they have read or even what is read to them. I agree, talk about what has just been read. Ask her to re-tell the chapter in her own words, or even just a small part of the chapter. Let her re-read it if she is unsure.

 

hth's:)

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I wouldn't have her narrate every chapter, for fear of making her dread reading. What about asking her what her favourite part/chapter was, or what she thinks is the most important part of the story, and having her narrate from that? You can use her answers (or lack of) to come up with your own questions, and keep using her answers to weave together a narration. Demonstrate verbally how to take two or three answers and put them into one sentence. SWB wrote a great article on narrations, that can be found in the articles section of the WTM site.

 

With practice over the years, kids will get better at remembering more details from their reading.

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Thanks for the input. I think I might do a mixture of all of the above strategies:) I don't want her to dread reading, as Colleen said, so I'll try and keep it low key. I had her do a VP comprehension guide in the fall, and she had to work at answering the questions. I would do another one but it just took her soo long to complete. It really made our day drag on.

 

So, for this week I'm going to have her narrate each day, and have her write down part of her narrations. It might be that she can't isolate one incident out of quite a few to talk about. BTW she did a really nice narration on the fly today, so I probably just have to be patient and wait for her to gain more skill in this area.

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