Lately I find that children can read fluently, yet when you ask them a question they have no idea what they read.
This is why we must teach kids to read with understanding. This will maybe also make them read a lot more.
My personal opinion is they watch stories on television passively. Have you ever asked your child what the story was about. No we never do so they don’t learn to concentrate and don’t remember the whole story.
They play games on tablets that they are really good at, but they still don’t have to read. They develop good hand eye coordination which is good but reading is just as important if not more.
How do we teach children to read with comprehension?
Read with them, listen and then stop them to see if they really know what they read about. If they do not try and explain to them that they must make a picture in their head while reading. If this does not work let them re-read the piece and try it with the picture in their head. This can take a lot of time but nothing is more important than reading and understanding.
Something else you can do is stop the child and ask him/her what they think is going to happen next? Be reasonable it must be something obvious so that if they understood it will not be difficult to tell you. Once they can do that, you can see that the child understood what they were reading. Now it is important to ask the child later on if he still remembers what he read. It is the only way you can be sure that they now really understand what they read.
Keep in mind that the real reason for doing all this is that your child will start to love reading. If a child does not read with understanding it can become boring and they might never learn how to really read.
So be patient and keep on with this. Another way of testing their understanding is by giving them a few written questions to answer about what they have read. Teach children how to break down a word if they don’t understand the meaning, of course a dictionary will be a good idea.
Please don’t forget to teach them how to use a dictionary as they will not just know. Start where they started with the alphabet song and show them that a dictionary works according to the alphabet.
Children should realise if they cannot read with comprehension even a computer will not help because everything involves reading. Computers can help them with their spelling but not writing, and if you cannot read with understanding your computer will not write for you.
Some books to start with following.
image source
This must be started from a very young age it will be so much easier than when they are older. When they are older the work becomes more difficult and they will really struggle if they don’t read with understanding.
Please let us teach our children to love reading again.
