Children’s reading comprehension is one of the issues of most concern to parents. 

Developing and improving children’s reading comprehension is a complex process involving a variety of factors. It is best to consult professionals to intervene in this situation; however, parents can also help children to improve through guidelines and games at home.

One of the most frequent problems is that children read a text and when questioned, fail to remember anything. To avoid this, reading accuracy must be improved. One way to solve this is through repeated readings, which consists of reading the same text, story, or history several times; this in order to become familiar with the words, which at the same time will improve reading speed. This activity can be repetitive and unmotivating, so it is important to be creative.

How to improve reading comprehension?

One way to help children is to work on their memory to retain long-term information. Board games are an excellent resource to improve memory, for example, the classic memory games. In this game, the children must match the pairs after having seen them briefly. Another well-known game is Simon Says, where children must remember visual and auditory patterns that gradually increase in complexity. 

Another reading comprehension problem is that children are able to understand stories but not expository texts. This is because children do not handle comprehension strategies, which can be taught and learned but cannot be transmitted through explanations but through practice.

Reading comprehension strategy

For example, before reading, some questions can be asked, such as, why read the text? What does the child think the text is going to be about? During reading, you can ask questions, such as, is the child understanding all the words? What are the ideas in each paragraph? After reading, questions are asked, such as, has the child grasped the general idea of the text? Is he/she able to find the main and secondary ideas? Can he/she answer questions about the text? Can he/she summarize the text?

These are small actions that parents can do at home to improve children’s reading comprehension.

Finally, the Universidad Internacional Iberoamericana (International Iberoamerican University) (UNIB) offers the Master in Education with a Specialty in Teacher Training.

Source: Working at home on the most common reading comprehension problems in children