The ultimate goal for literacy is to comprehend well what one is reading. Reading comprehension enables a child to predict outcomes, evaluate characters, deduce, and make connections to real-world events. A child’s comprehension skills can begin to develop before becoming an independent reader. One way to do this is by reading to a child and discussing the story’s main idea, characters, and setting. Explicit teaching, modeling, and guided practice of comprehension skills are also crucial. This is especially true for students whose reading comprehension skills lag behind their peers.
As your child moves up through the grades, their class work relies increasingly on supplemental reading materials for content areas in addition to explicit teaching and lecturing. Good reading comprehension skills is what it is all about. Yet, teaching reading comprehension strategies continues to receive little attention in the majority of classrooms. This is despite the past thirty plus years of research that has provided proven strategies for students to improve their skills. Brooklyn Letters implements these strategies to advance reading comprehension skills for children and adolescents, at all levels.
Research reveals that activities that strengthen reading comprehension include:
