Parents can Help Their Children Improve Reading Comprehension

How can a parent improve a child's reading comprehension?

Clip Art from Phillip Martin

1. Provide books and other reading material.

2. Value reading time .

3. Read together with children of all ages.

4. Show that reading is about getting meaning.

1. Providing books and other reading material does not have to cost a lot or take a lot of time.

Ideas:

Go to the library and ask a librarian for help choosing books.

Order a magazine.

Check out an online news site for kids. Watch videos and read articles together. DOGO News

Go to used stores to find books for you and your kids at a huge discount!

Have books at home that your kids want to reread. Reading books more than once is good for early readers.

Read books for free online.

One of my favorite sites with free online books for kids is We Give Books.

Trade books with friends and family.

Listen to some audio books together in the car on road trips.

2. Value reading time for yourself and your children.

Ideas:

Find a good book for yourself. Have your kids see you reading.

Read some news stories aloud to your children or share the highlights.

Provide a quiet place and time in a busy schedule for reading.

Turn off the TV and computer and make time to be entertained by a book instead. 

3. Read together with children of all ages.

Ideas:

Check out a page from my business website with advice by age for reading with children.

Skip a weekend movie and read an exciting chapter book instead.

Find a good book your entire family will enjoy and try to read it often until it's finished. I go through spurts of reading aloud to my family. When we have a book we like, we get together and read as much as possible. Then we take a break, and everyone reads their own books.

Listen to your child read to you or read to your child. I try to visit each of my three children when they are reading their chapter books in bed in the evening. I sometimes listen to them, or I read a chapter or so aloud to them from whatever book they are reading.

4. Show that reading is about getting meaning.

This is very important to me. I did not read for meaning as a child. Something was missing. I could read the words fine, but couldn't remember what I read.  I wasn't a good reader and usually got to the end of a page without knowing what I read and would have to start over trying hard to concentrate. I didn't read for enjoyment until my late twenties. I couldn't connect or pay attention while reading. I avoided most assigned reading all through school. Attending college and my desire to be a teacher forced me to learn to connect to what I read.

Ideas:

Have conversations while reading books together. Make pictures in your heads. Talk about the meanings of confusing words. Words and their subtle meanings add the most to pictures in your heads and your understanding of what is happening in a story.

7 Keys to Reading Comprehension is my favorite book for parents and teachers to find ways to help readers of all ages read for meaning and understanding.

Parents can Help Their Children Improve Reading Comprehension

Phonograms and Flashcards

Phonograms are letters that make up sounds. Phonograms can be one letter, or they can be a combination of letters. This post contains words with phonograms you may want to start teaching your beginning reader from the free printable high frequency flashcards I shared in a previous post.

Here are some words from the flashcards grouped by phonogram:
ay - play, way, away
ar - are
or - for
ow - how now, down
ow - yellow
ou - out, house
oo - too
ng - thing

You may want to add other high frequency words . Just add a few at a time to learn. Cut cards the same size as the ones you printed and write the new words with a black marker. I suggest keeping words with the same phonics rules or phonograms right next to each other in the flashcard pile while practicing. This will help your beginning reader make patterns and connections.

Here's a resource I found online you may find helpful when teaching phonograms.
PhonogramPage

You may want to make flashcards with phonograms for your beginning reader.

Are you using these flashcards? Let me know how it's going in a comment.

Phonograms and Flashcards

Teach the CV Phonics Rule with NO, GO, WE, and ME

Recently I shared word flashcards to print and cut with phonics rules on the back. The words no, go, we, and me follow the CV phonics rule. This rule tells a reader to usually make a long sound at the end of a short word if it ends in a vowel. This set of flashcards has a few exceptions to this rule. The words are TO, DO, and WHO. They all have the same sound and can be taught together. You can call these rule breakers.

Check out this post for ideas to teach and practice the words no and go.

Make sure your child is confident in the long o, long e, hard g, n, w, and m letter sounds.

Put the flashcards NO, GO, ME, and WE in a ziplock bag for practice. As you teach new words you can add them to this bag for practice and review. Practice these words at least every other day. (Dads, moms, grandparents, and older siblings can all help a child practice and review flashcards.) After a child knows these four words, I suggest making your own flashcards for the words SO and HE to show more words that follow similar phonics patterns.

The first step is to show a child to make the letter sounds and blend the sounds together to make the sounds into a word. Here's a video of me showing how to blend the sounds in the words NO, GO, and SO using magnetic letters.


Magnetic letters have the added bonus of mixing the letters up and asking a child to put them back together.

You can share read the book Hop on Pop by Dr. Suess to allow a child to practice the words WE, ME, HE, and NO. You will read the book to a child. Pause and point under WE, HE, ME, and NO at the beginning of sentences and when they are written in bold type at the top of the page. Make sure your child knows which words he or she is expected to read. Some children want to take over all the reading in a shared reading and get frustrated.

Here are the pages from Hop on Pop you can share read.

 

Teach the CV Phonics Rule with NO, GO, WE, and ME

Teach a Child to Read the Words NO and GO

Previously I posted high frequency word flashcards to print and cut. NO and GO are good words to start teaching. Make each letter sound. Then blend the sounds together. The n sound in no can be stretched. Make the n sound together until a child is ready to make the o sound. (nnnnnn-ooo) The g sound in go is a quick stop sound. You'll have to make the o sound quickly to make it sound like a word. You may want to use magnetic letters, show the flash cards, or write the words. Talk about how each word ends in the same sound. Explain that words with a vowel at the end usually make a long vowel sound. If you are using magnetic letters, mix up the four letters and see if your child can put the words back together.

Now that your child is familiar with the words NO and GO you can share read some books and let your child read these words.

Where's Spot is a fun lift the flaps book. An adult can point under the words in the story and read but stop and let the child read the when the word NO is pointed under.

Go, Dog, Go! is a book children want to read again and again. It was a favorite in my house. An adult can share read this book, pause at the word GO, and let the child know to read the word GO when it is pointed under.

Showing a child to point under words when reading is something that can be done while reading books with simple text to a child. I don't think pointing should be done every time but modeling it every now and then may be helpful. Beginning readers are encouraged to point under words while reading.

Teach a Child to Read the Words NO and GO