There’s no magic formula to becoming a good reader—the key is to read, read, read! The more your teen reads, the more their reading comprehension will improve. There are also a number of strategies you can use to help them sharpen their skills.
To see how well your child understands a text, ask if they can do the following:
- Make connections between different parts of the text
- Identify what type of text it is (e.g., literary or expository)
- Picture what’s happening in the text
- Distinguish between the primary and secondary ideas
- Summarize the text
- Etc.
If your child can’t make connections within a text, remember recent passages, or visualize the story in their mind, they likely don’t understand what they’re reading. There are a number of reading strategies that may help. Below are some of the most common:
- Think aloud while reading
- Split the text into sections
- Answer the five W’s: Who? What? Where? When? Why?
- Highlight important information
- Identify and describe the characters
- Look up new words in the dictionary
- Identify discourse markers to deduce the relationship between ideas
- Summarize the text
- Etc.
We read for all kinds of reasons (to learn, have fun, explore a new genre, understand instructions, etc.). Each type of text should be read using a different strategy. For example, if your teen is reading an informative text, they won’t be identifying and describing characters. Instead, they should focus on answering the following questions: Who? What? Where? When? How? Why?
There are many other effective strategies for improving high school reading comprehension. Here’s a practical five-step approach:
- Turn the text’s headings into questions.
- Stop to reflect after each section.
- Summarize each section.
- Answer the questions formulated in step 1.
- Check your answers.
At the end of the text, your child should have fulfilled their initial reading objectives. A true indication of whether they’ve grasped a text is if they’re able to think critically about it. To help them form an opinion, try asking the following questions:
- What did you like about the text?
- Why do you think other people should read this book?
- What emotions did you feel as you were reading?
- Have you read any other books by the same author?
- Did the text meet your expectations?
Writing : The Alloprof Parents’ team