Four Tips to Boost Reading Comprehension for Students

Four Tips to Boost Reading Comprehension for Students

1.  Read with a purpose. Goal-oriented reading affects what learning processes will take place and how effective those processes will be. Whenever we assign reading activities, especially for children, they need to be assigned with a purpose. For example, reading to locate information, to summarize, to tell a friend, or to learn how to put together a toy are great ways to facilitate effective learning. If you have a purpose, it influences how things come together and interconnect in your memory.

2.  Choose the right texts. It’s important to separate the texts we use for children learning to read and the texts we use for children reading to learn. When selecting a text for a child who is learning to read, we need to match his or her reading level so it’s not too difficult and not too easy. Reading to learn, on the other hand, means we should also worry about whether the information to be learned is also age appropriate.

3.  Think out loud. Verbalizing your thoughts is a methodology we use in our Lab to understand the processes of reading. It helps reading itself and influences learning in a positive way. Take the lead on this by showing your child or student how you think through specific texts, one sentence at a time. Illustrating this process will help those students who have yet to figure out how reading unfolds explicitly.

4.  Ask “why questions.” Reading is a constructive process. We interconnect information and ultimately form a mental picture about the text in our minds. Choose a pre-specified point, such as after every paragraph, to dig deeper and ask your students or children “why questions.” This helps students make connections when those are needed and facilitates their comprehension and learning.

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