Reading Strategies for Comprehension

Comprehension equals understanding. To read is to understand. That's right! Real reading is to gain meaning from print. Of course, in order to get to the point where you can actually gain meaning, you have to learn the whole decoding of symbols. To aid with that process, kids learn to utilize all kinds of decoding strategies in the earlier grades, such as sounding out the word or looking for chunks and words hidden in bigger words.

Once decoding is underway, it's time for kids to start using strategies that help them improve their comprehension or better understand what they are decoding. It's important for parents and teachers to offer up reading strategies. In time, reading strategies such as making predictions, text to text connections, and questioning the text will just become a natural part of the reading process. Before that happens though, we have to offer many opportunities for kids to practice these strategies. It's sort of like riding a bike. You practice, practice, practice, and in the end, it becomes second nature. You don't even think about how you got on the bike or how you peddled down the street.

Teaching reading strategies should really be a daily focus in the classroom and even at home if you are working with your young child. It's one thing to say the words on the page, but it's another to comprehend them. The focus of teaching kids to become better readers should really be: the reader himself, the chosen text, the strategies used, and the end goal of understanding, otherwise known as reading comprehension. If you are a teacher or a home school parent and you are looking for a way to introduce or review the strategies of becoming a better reader, you might like this printable reading strategy packet: