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How to Help Your Child Develop Comprehension Skills

Madeline Waters • January 20, 2025

Comprehension is the ultimate goal of reading. As literate adults ourselves, we know it's not enough to simply read the words on the page—we have to truly understand and engage with the text. Helping your child develop strong comprehension skills will set them up for success in school and beyond. Here are some strategies you can use at home to support your child’s reading comprehension development:


  • Embrace Storytelling: When reading aloud, bring the text to life by changing your voice for different characters or ideas, using appropriate expressions, and varying your phrasing to match the content. For example, give emphasis to important points with a firm tone, or use a questioning tone when asking something. Use gestures to demonstrate actions or concepts in the text. These techniques not only make the content more engaging but also guide your child through the text with extra support, making it easier for them to understand.


  • Model Metacognition: Show your child how to think about their thinking by verbalizing your thought process while reading. The think-aloud strategy involves pausing while reading to express out loud what you're thinking. This can include making predictions, asking questions, visualizing, or summarizing parts of the text. This helps children understand how to approach reading comprehension by seeing the thought process in action. Watch this video for an example of how to do this.


  • Initiate Conversation: Engage your child in discussions about what they have read. Ask them to summarize the text and share their opinions. If you're reading together, use book-club style questions to deepen the discussion. These conversations help reinforce comprehension and critical thinking skills.


  • Review Different Question Types: To help your child develop a deeper understanding of what they read, it’s important to teach them how to approach different types of questions. Each question type requires a different skill and strategy to answer effectively. You can find questions online, use AI to generate questions, or create your own using basic formats.


  • Main Idea: Explain that the main idea is what the text is mostly about, not just a fact. Ask, “Is this what the whole text is mostly about, or just one fact?” Practice by having your child summarize the story or present several summary statements and have your child choose the one that best captures the main idea.


  • Literal: Explain that literal questions have answers right there in the text. Teach your child to underline the exact sentence that contains the answer. Practice by asking your child questions that require them to find specific details directly from the text.


  • Vocabulary: Use context clues by looking at the sentences before, during, and after the word. Ask, “What do these surrounding sentences tell us about this word?” Practice by selecting challenging words from the text and asking your child to infer their meanings based on the context.


  • Inference: Explain that inferences are logical guesses based on clues in the text. Encourage your child to look for hints or clues the author left behind to draw conclusions. Practice by posing questions that require your child to read between the lines and make educated guesses based on the information provided.


  • Short Answer: Teach your child to restate the question in the answer. Identify key words from the question and incorporate them into the answer. Practice by asking open-ended questions that prompt your child to provide more detailed responses and explanations.


  • Use Graphic Organizers:  Use tools like flowcharts, story maps, Venn diagrams, and K-W-L charts (Know, Want to Know, Learned) to help your child organize their thoughts and understand the structure of the text. Graphic organizers visually display information to help children see relationships between ideas and concepts.


  • Find Everyday Opportunities: Find opportunities for your child to practice reading comprehension in everyday situations. Let your child read recipes and help you prepare a meal, which involves following instructions and understanding measurements. Have your child read the weather report and find the high for the day. Ask your child to read the instructions for a new game and explain the rules to everyone.


  • Subscribe to One Minute Reader: The One Minute Reader program supports reading comprehension and allows children to develop skills independently through a structured approach that combines short reading activities with immediate feedback.


By incorporating these strategies and tips into your reading routine, you can help your child become a more confident and skilled reader.

Highlighted Posts

By Anne Hauth September 23, 2025
Reading fluency is a crucial skill that bridges the gap between decoding words and understanding their meaning. One effective strategy to build fluency is repeated reading —a technique where a student reads the same text multiple times until they achieve a level of fluency that feels natural and confident. What Is Repeated Reading? Repeated reading involves selecting a short passage at an appropriate reading level--ideally at or slightly above the student's instructional level. The student reads this passage several times, focusing on improving speed, accuracy, and expression with each reading. This practice allows for mastery of the text, leading to fluent and confident reading. Fluent reading should sound like conversational speaking--natural and expressive. Why Does It Work? Research shows* that repeated reading can lead to significant improvements in reading performance. The benefits include: Improved Word Recognition : By encountering the same words repeatedly, students become more familiar with them, leading to quicker and more accurate recognition. When these words become automatic, the students no longer need to put effort into decoding them. Increased Reading Fluency : Reading the same passage multiple times allows students to build fluency--each time reading it more smoothly and with greater expression. Enhanced Comprehension : As fluency improves, students can focus more on understanding the text, leading to better comprehension. This improvement in comprehension extends to unpracticed passages as well. Increased Confidence : Repeated reading is a form of mastery learning. Many beginning or struggling readers don't often get the opportunity to hear themselves sounding like fluent readers. After reading a passage multiple times, they've mastered it--and they sound great! This is a huge confidence boost that motivates them to keep reading. Repeated Reading at Home Incorporating the repeated reading strategy into your child's home reading routine doesn't have to be complicated or boring. In fact, many kids already do it! You've probably noticed that they often want to read the same book over and over. Don't discourage this--as long as they haven't totally memorized the entire text, they're building skills each time they read it. To work on repeated reading with your child at home, here's a simple strategy: Use an Appropriate Passage : Have your child choose a new short text that is slightly challenging but still within their level. Listen to Your Child Read : Have your child read the passage aloud to you. Note any words that are difficult for them to decode. Read Aloud Together : Read the passage aloud with your child, modeling fluent reading. Do this one to three times. Identify the difficult words together, and provide definitions. Independent Practice : Encourage your child to read the passage independently a few more times, focusing on improving their expression with each reading. Celebrate Progress : Affirm how much your child improved from the first reading to the final reading. Acknowledge their hard work and progress to build confidence and motivation. Additional Tips Keep Sessions Short : Aim for 10- to 15-minute sessions at first, to maintain focus and prevent frustration. Consider Using a Timer : If your child is open to the idea, set a timer each time they read the passage. Note their improvement in time, and celebrate their fluency growth. Make the timing element a fun challenge, but emphasize that this exercise isn't about speed reading--it's about building fluency. Repeated reading is a powerful strategy that can significantly enhance your child's reading ability. If you're looking for an easy-to-use program that incorporates this research-proven strategy, check out One Minute Reader . This program uses repeated reading and gamified learning to help kids at various reading levels build fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and confidence. * Dowhower, S. L. (1987). Effects of repeated reading on second-grade transitional readers’ fluency and comprehension. Reading Research Quarterly , 22(4), 389–405. Kuhn, M. R., & Stahl, S. A. (2003). Fluency: A review of developmental and remedial practices. Journal of Educational Psychology , 95(1), 3–21. LaBerge, D., & Samuels, S. J. (1974). Toward a theory of automatic information processing in reading. Cognitive Psychology , 6(2), 292–323.
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By Anne Hauth September 23, 2025
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A young girl is sitting at a desk holding a sign that says help.
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