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While reading instruction for young learners often focuses on decoding skills, as children get older and read more independently, there should be increased focus on reading comprehension. Key ways to increase a child’s reading comprehension include:

• Keep reading aloud to your child (even as they grow older);
• Encourage independent readers to read aloud; and
• Use metacognitive strategies.

Keep Reading Aloud to Your Child (Even As They Grow Older)

While many parents are aware of the importance of reading aloud to beginning readers, research shows that the rates of parents reading aloud peaks when children are around ages 5-6, typically when children become independent readers.

Reading aloud (to even older children) provides many benefits:

• Expands their vocabulary, increases their exposure to new book genres and authors – Children are able to comprehend at higher levels than their own reading level. Reading aloud allows parents to introduce texts, books and concepts to their children that they cannot access on their own.
  • Generally, a child’s reading level does not catch up to their comprehension level until eighth grade, according to Jim Trelease, author of the Read Aloud Handbook.
• Improves listening skills and increases comprehension – The ability to listen is a learned skill and reading aloud gives life to what language sounds like. When a child actively listens to how a grown-up reads language (e.g., the use of inflections, pausing, articulation, etc.), comprehension is advanced and the child has a deeper sense for what fluent reading looks like.
• Serves as a natural entry point for sophisticated conversations (that might not otherwise happen) – For example, exposing children to, and exploring feelings and ideas around, social issues is an impactful benefit of reading aloud.
• Improves long-term reading success – Reading aloud is a shared experience and that bonding – connection – stays with a child long into adulthood. It is that interactive partnership that cultivates a love for and habit of reading – from choosing books, to turning pages, to asking questions of one another, to dialing up dramatic reading voices. Decades of research has proven that reading aloud to a child daily, even to older children, is one of the most important predictors of reading and academic success.

Encourage Independent (Older) Readers to Read Aloud

Another practice of successful readers is time spent reading aloud. Reading aloud is critical for building oral fluency. While many parents spend time listening to their beginning readers read aloud, this becomes less common as children become more proficient readers.

Fluency is the ability to read smoothly as a result of being able to quickly recognize and understand the words you are reading. It is the ability to read with accuracy, proper speed and prosody. (Prosody is reading with intonation, rhythm and emphasis on certain words and sentences when reading aloud, which together make for reading with expression.)

• Fluent readers spend minimal time decoding words, so they can attune to a book’s meaning, focusing on comprehension.
• A child who demonstrates oral fluency is able to read aloud without stumbling or hesitating, and with prosody and accurate pronunciation of most words.
• Having an expansive vocabulary helps with oral fluency. Books typically contain more complex and unique words than other mediums such as television or even general conversation.

Use Metacognitive Strategies for Advanced Reading Comprehension

When children become successful fluent readers, they are able to use metacognitive strategies as they read. This means they can imagine, question and interpret while they read, and can think about themselves and how they connect to the text. Using metacognition while reading is the highest level of reading comprehension.

One easy framework to teach children to engage their metacognition uses the concept of connections: text-to-text, text-to-self, and text-to-world.

Learn how to practically implement each of these strategies into your everyday.