Why is it important to help your child develop comprehension skills? When students have trouble reading, it can affect their performance in many subjects. Poor reading skills and comprehension can lead to frustration, low self-confidence, and poor grades. Therefore, helping your child develop their reading comprehension is crucial. One study even demonstrates that how well 7-year-olds read predicts their income 35 years later!

To become successful, motivated readers, children need to both read the words on the page and understand what they mean.  Phonics knowledge will help them read the words on the page. However, they also need to develop their comprehension to ensure that they understand what they are reading.

Here are 3 practical recommendations for helping your child develop their comprehension skills at home.

1. Talk to your child (a lot)

Personal everyday experiences provides opportunities to gain a lot of knowledge. It influences children’s ability to understand and engage with what they read.  Having more experiences to draw from helps children relate with what they read and understand new words. The most basic everyday tasks can provide opportunities to broaden your child’s background knowledge and support their understanding of new vocabulary. The more you talk with your child, the richer and wider their vocabulary will become.

2. Sharing books (read with and read to your child)

Sharing books with your child is a great way to develop their comprehension skills.  Talk about the book as you read. Encourage your child to relate what happens in the story to their own experiences. 

• Ask them to predict what might happen next in the story.
• Ask them to suggest how the characters might be feeling at certain points throughout the story. 
• As you read, check that your child is clear about any unfamiliar words. Look at the words around it, other words in the sentence or using a dictionary will help clarify the meaning of the words.
• After reading the book or a chapter, encourage them to sum up what they have read. This will help you check if they’ve really understood what they have been reading.  If they miss something try not to focus on that immediately and give lots of encouragement.

3. Play games with your child

The sticky note challenge is a great game to play with your child when they finish reading a book.  Write five questions about what they’ve read on some sticky notes and place them at relevant points throughout the book.  Every time your child gets to a sticky note ask them to answer the question. 

Children love guessing games. “Guess Who” is a great game to adapt to work with the book you’ve just read with your child. 

• Write the names of characters from the book on two pieces of paper.
• Fold them up and place them into a bowl. 
• Pick a name from the bowl, make sure that your child doesn’t see the name of the character. 
• Your child has to ask questions about the character, and you can only give yes or no answers.  Prompt them to ask questions about the characteristics as well as what they look like.
• Take turns guessing the characters by switch roles.

How do you help your child develop comprehension skills? To summarise, the best way to help your child develop comprehension skills is through talking, listening and reading as regularly and widely as possible. Children who are able to read the words on a page and understand their meaning will read more fluently and most importantly enjoy what they read.