Poor Reading Comprehensiom scores - 3rd grade

[UnlikelyHomeschoolingMama]

I just got my DDs test scores back. Math, social studies and everything was great. Her weakest was by FAR reading comp. She decodes two years above grade level. How do i get her to comorehend better? We are doing sonlight next year and I got readers at 4th grade level. Just read read read?

 

Thanks!!

[OneStepAtATime]

What test and how is it structured?  Did she have time to actually finish that section?  Do you see the actual responses or only the numbers?

[winterbaby]

Oral narration. Make sure she can recount the main points back to you. If she is really struggling go back a level or two. Start with short selections.

[luuknam]

Agreed with OneStep - this could just be an inaccuracy from the test - maybe she didn't finish the section or bubbled things wrong on the answer sheet, or maybe she took that section at a time she wasn't feeling 100% (tired, hungry, etc, etc, etc). So, if possible, you'd want to know more about what happened with/during the test. Aside from that, you'd want her to answer some comprehension questions and see where she makes mistakes and why. I have no idea if Sonlight readers come with comprehension questions or not. There are oodles of fairly inexpensive workbooks you can buy that do come with questions.

 

You'd want to figure out if she has comprehension issues with all kinds of texts, or if it's mostly a specific kind of text - like, my oldest has a lot more comprehension problems with fiction, because he's autistic and doesn't do well with making inferences and figuring out what characters are feeling etc, whereas his comprehension for non-fiction is okay. Whereas someone else might struggle more with non-fiction because they don't know much about science or history or w/e, and reading those texts is hard if you don't have the most basic background knowledge (and if she's, say, a 2nd grader who's decoding at a 4th grade level, then a big factor might be that as a younger kid she does not have as much general background knowledge as a 4th grader, or she's spending a lot of effort to be decoding 2 grade levels above her grade level so she doesn't have much space left to focus on comprehension). So, you basically want her to read a text, and then see why she answers certain ways, especially the questions she gets wrong.

[ElizabethB]

My daughter when she was young thought the passages in tests like this were so stupid she didn't bother to work hard to get the right answer, I noticed that she did well only on passages that were interesting to her at that age.  I would test her myself and see if there is an actual problem with comprehension or related to the test.  Other people's ideas could also hold true--bubbling problems, bad day, etc.

 

(Next year after I figured out the problem, I told her to read the questions first and work hard to answer them correctly even if the passages and questions were not interesting or well written.)

 

The McGuffey readers have comprehension questions starting in the 4th readers and are free to print from Gutenberg press if you need some ready made questions.  If there is an actual comprehension problem I have ideas, too, but it may be test specific and not a problem.

Edited May 12, 2017 by ElizabethB

[nixpix5]

Some comprehension questions are inferrential in nature. Those can be tricky for 3rd graders. Sometimes what happens is kiddos do great on questions where you can make a choice that is based on a fact from the reading but struggle more when the questions are "what would be a good title for this selection" or "what would you say this story is mainly about" and they will give choices that could all be right but one is more right. Make sure when you do narration that you are also asking for these types of things as well as questions that can be answered specifically. At the end of the day if you feel she is grasping what she reads and is beginning to write about it and so forth, I wouldn't overly worry.

[gstharr]

Some comprehension questions are inferrential in nature. Those can be tricky for 3rd graders. Sometimes what happens is kiddos do great on questions where you can make a choice that is based on a fact from the reading but struggle more when the questions are "what would be a good title for this selection" or "what would you say this story is mainly about" and they will give choices that could all be right but one is more right. Make sure when you do narration that you are also asking for these types of things as well as questions that can be answered specifically. At the end of the day if you feel she is grasping what she reads and is beginning to write about it and so forth, I wouldn't overly worry.

  Agreed, Reading comp testing is an acquired skill.  Can't expect a kid to understand the nuances of the comp  questions w/o practice.  Get past versions of  the test you took for same grade, and a grade or two higher... Work together on answering the questions. Talk out loud. go question by question.  Let her pick out an answer, ask why, then guide her to why another answer is better.  Teach the difference between an inference and conclusion (this is tough because the incorrect conclusion answer has correct facts, but is not an inference) .  Teach that fill in the blank is not a vocabulary question, but a reading in context question (the perfect word might not be the best answer) .  I started with the 6th grader when he was in 3rd, after a poor test score.  took about a year of working with him before he got it (a practice test passage or two per week).  Now, he is highest percentiles.

 

Even much older kids don't get read comp testing.  I used this method to help a kid with upper level isee.  A great increase in percentile with just a few hours dissecting test questions together.