How to Help Students With Reading Comprehension

Reading can be challenging for children when most of the academic material they encounter in school is new, unfamiliar, technical, and a lot more complex than their picture books. There are a variety of different issues when it comes to learning how to read. Kids who recognize and understand the meaning of words separately but have trouble linking them together into a meaningful coherence have reading comprehension problems. Learning how to help students with reading comprehension problems is the main goal of this article.

Comprehension refers to the ability to go beyond words. To adults, reading comprehension is a skill that’s typically taken for granted as it comes naturally, but to kids, it can be a real struggle. They have no trouble decoding the words but lack the skills needed to understand the deeper meaning of the text. In other words, they can’t really understand what the writer is trying to convey.

Helping students who struggle with reading comprehension is an essential task for teachers or homeschooling parents. This is because comprehension is not only a necessary condition for the overall academic achievement, but it also affects the person’s personal and professional life and reduces the quality of life. So much, that there’s a clear relationship between literacy skills and poverty (43% of adults with extremely low reading skills live at or below the poverty line), as well as criminal behavior (85% of all juveniles are functionally illiterate). 

Of course, correlation does not equal causation, meaning that inability to read doesn’t cause poverty and criminality, however, it does make the child vulnerable and at risk. 

As teachers and homeschooling parents, it’s our job to make sure all children acquire fundamental reading skills. Keep reading to find out how you can help students with reading comprehension difficulties. 

The Importance of Reading Comprehension

We’ve already touched upon the value of reading comprehension in the educational, professional, and personal aspects of one’s life. The examples in the introduction might be a little dramatic, but they wonderfully capture the importance of reading. Let’s explain this in greater detail. 

As we’ve said, by no means does the inability to comprehend written text directly cause deviance or poverty, but it puts the child in a disadvantageous position that represents a risk factor in our highly-demanding society. It is mostly due to the fact that a large part of our communication and knowledge (which help us advance collectively and individually) is based on our ability to understand written text. History is being preserved through written text, knowledge about the world is passed on transgenerationally through written text, job efficiency is based on processing written text, and the examples go on…

Beyond all these practical implications, comprehension is probably most important because it has the power to influence our thinking and stimulate reasoning skills and cognitive development in general. If the child has difficulties with reading comprehension they’ll be dependent on other people or audio literature (which is very limited, unfortunately) for their learning, which prevents the learning process from becoming fully independent. 

Recognizing Reading Comprehension Difficulties

The first step in helping students to overcome reading comprehension difficulties is to be able to identify these problems early on and exclude other potential conditions. Similar conditions include dyslexia, language processing disorders, and other cognitive deficits that might be symptoms of something more problematic. 

However, reading comprehension comprises a specific set of skills which are more or less severely impaired while others are intact.

Symptoms of reading comprehension difficulties

• Confusion about the meaning of words and sentences;
• Doesn’t look like they understand what everyone else is discussing about a book or reading material;
• Avoids reading and writing tasks;
• Can’t deduce or reach a conclusion while reading a passage;
• Can’t follow a sequence of ideas or patterns while reading;
• Neglects the details or has trouble distinguishing what’s a detail and what’s a significant information;
• Can’t re-tell a story with their own words; 
• Have poor vocabulary and don’t recognize many words;
• Family history of reading comprehension problems. (If the child exhibits some of the symptoms and has a family history of reading comprehension problems, it’s more likely that they have the same disability, too. Talk to the parents to make a better prediction). 

Considering how fundamental this skill is, never dismiss the possibility that a student who shows a lack of interest in reading and struggles to read fluently might have comprehension problems. Students are sensitive and self-aware, which makes it hard for them to admit this issue. Nonetheless, as a teacher or a homeschooling parent, adjust the instructions and implement some of the strategies for improving reading comprehension, then see how the child responds.

Development of Reading Comprehension

Reading comprehension is the essence in the development of children’s reading skills in general, which translates to the ability to obtain an education. For this reason, researchers have been analyzing the development of reading comprehension in an academic (school) environment for many years now. They’ve reached a conclusion that there are three major factors influencing the development of reading comprehension. 

• Vocabulary development and instruction.

Researchers have known for quite some time that vocabulary knowledge predicts comprehension performance, which means that educators can use this relationship to improve the reading comprehension in students. The larger the reader’s vocabulary, the easier it will be for them to make sense of the text. 

• Text comprehension instruction.

The reading comprehension strategies are defined as “intentional thinking” and engaging in an ”active interaction” with the text. This is achieved through teaching specific cognitive strategies, learning to reason strategically, and filling out the gaps. 

• Teacher preparation and comprehension strategies.

It’s no surprise that teachers who are prepared and have the right resources figure as a significant factor in the development of reading comprehension skills. They need to be knowledgeable in the content, as well as the strategies they employ, recognize which strategies are efficient for which students, adjust their model to meet students’ needs, and inspire them to work hard.  

6 Teaching Strategies for Reading Comprehension

In the line of everything that we’ve covered so far, we’ll describe six teaching strategies and techniques that will help you transform young minds into avid readers. 

Exclude Other Learning Difficulties 

We’ve already mentioned this when talking about the ways to recognize reading comprehension problems. And, now that you know how to do that, make sure you pay attention to whether the students show difficulties in other areas of the learning process. This is important as sometimes these problems can be symptoms of an underlying disorder. If that’s the case, the student must receive proper care and medical attention to make sure the underlying problem doesn’t progress. Early intervention is key for a successful outcome of therapies and gaining functional control over their own life.

The most common learning disorders associated with poor reading skills are the following:

• Dyslexia – difficulty reading due to decoding problems. 
• ADHD – disorder characterized with above-normal levels of hyperactive and impulsive behaviors, which can lead to difficulties in reading, finishing sentences, etc. 
• Language processing disorder (LPD) – learning disorder that affects spoken language as well. 
• Visual Processing Disorder – manifests similarly to reading comprehension difficulties, but the problems are in the visual system. They may be physiological (eye problems) or perceptual (neurological problems). 

Don’t forget that stress, emotional trauma, and other mental health issues, or abrupt changes in the student’s life can also trigger stress induced learning problems. Communicate with parents to find out more about the student’s life. 

Repetition and Multiple Exposure to Vocabulary Items

Since vocabulary gains promote reading comprehension, it is only natural to implement vocabulary exercises and increase the repetition rate so children consolide new words before assigning the unit’s reading materials. 

Also, a good strategy is to divide the material in smaller parts and analyse them together, identifying new words and defining them in a formal way, as well as with practical examples of how that word can be used in different contexts. 

Prompt the students to think of examples on their own and find substitutes for the problematic words in a specific text. 

Task Reconstruction

What we mean by task reconstruction is to practice with students breaking down a sentence to its functional parts, marking each word, and letting the children figure out the word’s function. 

First, analyze the basic sentence structure. Identify the subject, the direct or indirect object, the predicate, and so on. Ask kids “If ___ is the subject, and the subject is the person/place/thing who performs the action, what does ___ do here?”

Once the student analyzes the sentence, word by word, ask them “Why has this been said?” or “Why would someone tell us this?” The child should try to identify the main function of the sentence i.e what’s the writer’s purpose? 

There are four main functional types of sentences grouped in two broader classes. Communicative sentence (declarative or interrogative) and informative (exclamatory or imperative). First, let the child figure out whether the purpose is communicative or informative and the functional type. 

Finally, the last element is for the child to try and reconstruct the now fully analyzed sentence to say the same thing but with different words. 

Here’s an example of how that would look like: 

• He’s heavier than I am. 
• He weighs more than I do.

Using Rich Contextual Resources

In the last example we showed you how to teach students to reshape the sentence and use different words when forming the sentence without changing its meaning. The other side of the coin is to use one word in a different context, changing its meaning.  

Studying homonyms is an excellent example of how you can show kids that the context can define the meaning of the word. 

For instance: 

• I have an ant bite on my arm.
• It’s important to arm yourself with a solid education.

In education, we often see words being used in a different way in specific subject areas. While in biology the root is defined as an organ of the plant, in math, root is a numerical operation. These kinds of examples are relatable and very beneficial, as students will encounter them frequently in their educational journey. 

Take a look at our Reading Comprehension worksheet pack and the many diverse worksheet and lesson plans in our Reading Skills section. There you can find resources for vocabulary and reading materials in many different contexts and thematic units. 

Teach Thinking Strategies

Thinking strategies, also known as cognitive strategies, encompass a specific set of methods for solving problems, planning, organizing, reasoning, etc. 

These strategies can guide students in overcoming their reading comprehension difficulties by relying on their strengths. Common examples of cognitive strategies include mind maps, mnemonic techniques, using clues in reading comprehension, visualization, linking words through association, using contextual clues, etc.

Teach Story Maps and Other Graphic Organizers

When it comes to reading comprehension, a practical and highly effective technique is to teach kids to make story maps and graphic organizers.

Story maps is a technique suitable for breaking down, organizing, and making sense of a narrative text or a fictional story. Students can use printables or make their own unique diagram consisting of the story’s main elements. These usually include, the setting, the characters, the plot in three parts (the problem, important events, and the resolution), and the theme. 

On the other hand, graphic organizers are tools for visualizing educational literature i.e expository text. It works by starting from the topic as the most broad element (for example, largest capitals in the world) and then writing the main concepts of the topics (the names of the capitals) in separate fields. They can be organized hierarchically or by some other common feature (the continent on which they reside). The student then can make connections between them (line connections) in different colors or patterns to represent different relationships (population rate, area, climate, etc.) 

Graphic organizers can also be used for visualizing data, steps of a process, or order of things.    

Before You Leave

Reading skills are the foundation on which the learning process resides. They’re also the most influential predictor for academic achievement and career opportunities further in life. We’re sure that by now teachers and homeschooling parents are more than aware of the importance of teaching reading comprehension strategies that will help students advance and become fluent readers. 

We’ve relied on current research to examine the development of comprehension and bring to you the most effective teaching practices that deliver results. If you have children who struggle with reading comprehension in your classroom, don’t hesitate to implement our pieces of advice!

You can also try out our worksheet bundles features on our main website. They’re easy to follow, interactive, adjustable to different grade levels, and absolutely fun! Check us out to find something for your specific needs.

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