Teach Mom Learn

Want to make story time even better? Build in some simple reading comprehension activities to keep your child engaged and help develop their skills!

Reading comprehension is super easy to teach your kids at home! These activities work best for children ages 4 and up, but you can start earlier too. Modeling the strategies below for younger children will lay a strong foundation for future reading skills.

Here are 6 easy ways to build reading comprehension strategies into every story time:

1. Make connections to the text

One easy way to build comprehension skills is to guide your child in connecting with the text. Children can make connections between the text and their own lives (text to self), the world around them (text to world), or other books (text to text).

You can start before you even begin reading. Analyze the title or summary of the book together and talk about anything your child can relate to. Use any illustrations as well.

As you read, engage with your child and encourage connections. Ask them how characters might be feeling and why. Bring up a time when you both experienced something similar to the character. Compare your weather to the weather depicted in the book.

Making connections helps your child be more invested in what they’re reading. It also helps them see patterns among stories and narrative structure.

2. Make a movie in your mind

When you’re reading a book, do you ever picture the characters in your mind? Do you hear their voices and imagine their mannerisms? Have you ever seen a movie adaptation and been disappointed that the characters are different from how you imagined?

What you’re doing in this moment is called concept imagery. You’re reading the text and making a movie in your mind so that it’s almost like you’re watching the events you’re reading unfold right in front of you.

Lindamood-Bell trademarked the term Visualizing and Verbalizing and built an entire reading program around it. I’ve actually used it in my classroom, and it’s a fantastic resource.

You can also use these strategies at home. When you and your child are reading a book without pictures, encourage your child to picture the events in the book.

Ask questions about the characters they see in their mind. Pause after vivid descriptions and guide your child as they imagine the page coming to life.

Push your child to go beyond what the text tells them. Ask questions about the characters with no answers in the text. Help them to create a full, rich image of this person in their mind. Think about mannerisms, voice, and other unique quirks.

Guide them as they picture the locations too. Have them think about how warm the sun feels, or the sound the waves make if they’re reading a book that takes place on the ocean.

You can also build in text-to-self connections as you do this. Maybe the mountain their characters are skiing on reminds your child of where you went skiing last year. Or the baseball diamond looks just like the one at your local high school.

It is also helpful to compare your images to theirs. That way, they recognize that even when people read the exact same words, their minds process things differently.

3. Ask, “How do you know?”

Being able to answer comprehension questions is great. But being able to explain how you know the answers is so much better!

For literal comprehension questions (the who, what, where, and when questions), encourage your child to refer back to the text to show you where they learned about specific details.

For inferential comprehension questions (the why and how questions), their answers will be more complex. Rather than sharing specific information from the page, they’re going to have to get to the root of their answers. This builds their ability to make inferences, a skill they’ll use throughout school and life.

While being able to back up answers is a great skill in English class, it’s also incredibly useful for pretty much everything else in life. It teaches your child to have informed opinions and be able to explain the reasons behind their ideas.

It’s also great for writing skills! From elementary school to high school, writing requires students to back up their claims with concrete evidence. By teaching these skills at home, you’re giving your child a huge leg up!

4. Make predictions as you read

Making predictions is helpful in keeping your child engaged with in their book. It’s especially great when you’re trying to keep track of the clues in a mystery story.

As you read, ask your child what they think will happen next. Discuss the reasons behind their predictions. Talk about whether the predictions they make are reasonable or not.

Then, when you finish the book, have your child analyze which predictions came true and which didn’t. You can even have them share whether they like their prediction or the actual text better, like their own little mini book review.

5. Build story maps

This strategy works great for longer books that will take you time to read. Using story maps or other graphic organizers, like these story maps featured on Reading Rockets, will help your child retain important information about the book.

Personally, I love making a visual map or a comic strip-type diagram. You and your child can work together to draw major scenes. This strategy works nicely with concept imagery because it gives your child the opportunity to describe or draw the characters and scenes the way they’ve imagined!

6. Use props

Your child’s toys are a great way to boost their comprehension. They can use their favorites to act out important scenes.

Since they won’t remember the text verbatim, it’s also a great opportunity for your child to work on their summarizing and paraphrasing skills. They’ll retell the story in their own words and in their own way, and you’ll be able to see what was most important to them.

You can also use the toys to add background to the scenes. For example, if you’re reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, the story is largely told from Harry’s perspective. But what is Hermione thinking? Have your child act out Hermione’s thoughts and expand their understanding of the book and perspective-taking!

For more tips on teaching reading at home, check out these strategies to help you raise a reader!

What are your favorite strategies for teaching your child reading comprehension skills? Please share in the comments below!