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The delight of reading awaits your child! <\/p>\r\n\r\n
What Is Reading Comprehension?<\/h2>\r\n\r\n
Reading comprehension<\/span> is the ability to fully understand what is being read.<\/p>\r\n\r\n A person with great reading comprehension can visualize, question, and interpret what they are reading, and they can think about their own feelings and opinions while reading text. The comprehension process is mostly unconscious\u2014it happens without our active involvement or awareness.<\/p>\r\n\r\n There are some prerequisites for good reading comprehension. If any of these skills are lacking, comprehension will be lacking as well:<\/p>\r\n\r\n But even when these foundational skills are present, reading comprehension is not necessarily automatic. Some important strategies may still be required.<\/p>\r\n\r\n Good readers use many different strategies. Some strategies are used at a conscious level, while others are employed unconsciously. Depending on the purpose for reading and the difficulty of the text, effective strategies may include those listed in the chart below.<\/p>\r\n\r\n (You can download a printable Reading Comprehension Strategies Poster<\/a> to hang on your fridge or classroom wall.)<\/p>\r\n\r\n But as helpful as these strategies can be, there are a few things you should keep in mind.<\/p>\r\n\r\n While it is important to teach comprehension strategies to your student, it\u2019s also important to realize that these strategies are tools and not\u00a0the main goal. It\u2019s imperative that you avoid focusing too much<\/em> on individual comprehension strategies.<\/p>\r\n\r\n In order to make sense of what you read, you need to have background knowledge. Before a child can understand the short story \u201cPirate Food<\/a>,\u201d for example, it is important that she have some familiarity with different foods and pirate dialects<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n\r\n Reading aloud to your child<\/a> is one of the best ways to help develop background knowledge. Reading a wide variety of books<\/a> helps build a storehouse of knowledge of places, events, emotions, vocabulary, and language structure. Other methods of building background knowledge include travel, hands-on activities, workshops, and discussions. Your child will later draw upon this information when she is reading independently.<\/p>\r\n\r\n Exposure to a wide variety of books and experiences help your child distinguish reality from fantasy, recognize cause-and-effect, understand character motivation, and make predictions about what she is reading.<\/p>\r\n\r\n In the All About Reading<\/cite>\u00a0program, we work on reading comprehension from the very first story your child reads, which is in Level 1, Lesson 3. The story contains only words that have already been taught, using just eight letters (M, S, P, A, N, T, B, and J). Would you like to see how we do it?<\/p>\r\n\r\n Download the lesson and story from Level 1, Lesson 3<\/a>, and then follow along as we demonstrate this first reading lesson in action.<\/p>\r\n\r\n As you watch the video below, notice that even though there are only 20 words in this first story, Linda is already helping her student work on comprehension through the following:<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n
What Reading Comprehension Strategies Are Helpful?<\/h2>\r\n\r\n
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<\/a>\r\n\r\n\r\n3 Things NOT<\/span> to Do When Teaching Comprehension<\/h2>\r\n\r\n
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Background Information Is Crucial for Reading Comprehension<\/h2>\r\n\r\n
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\r\n<\/a>\r\nHow Does All About Reading<\/cite> Teach Comprehension?<\/h2>\r\n\r\n
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