Reading with Comprehension

What is reading comprehension? Why is it important? Reading with comprehension is a huge part of reading instruction, but reading comprehension difficulties are real and can stunt student learning. It’s important for teachers to understand the foundations of this skill and how students learn it best.

What is reading comprehension and how can you build it in your struggling readers?

What is Reading Comprehension

Reading Comprehension Definition:

• Reading with comprehension is basically understanding and thinking about what you read. It is intentionally making sense of the words on the page and interacting with those ideas–remember them, note them, challenge them, question them, connect them, etc.

Comprehension is the fourth skill in the Big 5 Reading areas set up by the National Reading Panel. You can read here about the other 4 areas and why you need them all in your reading instruction.

Reading with comprehension is an essential skill for students to build.

Why Reading Comprehension is Important

Comprehension is SO important! It is the reason why we read and the heart of literacy. I have so many ideas for building comprehension you can read about here–> 8 Strategies for Reading Comprehension (it has lots of pictures to demonstrate the strategies).

Reading and comprehension go hand in hand. Understanding what we read is the PURPOSE of reading. All of this work to get students to be able to read words, is only so that they can understand the message that those words are telling them. If you are not reading with comprehension, the whole point of reading is lost. 

Comprehension is also a great indicator of success in all other academic areas. In pretty much every subject, students are required to read for information, instructions, and learning. Especially in the upper grades and even onto college, comprehension is ESSENTIAL to success. If a student is able to read with comprehension in the early years, they can hone that skill and be ready for success as the texts and content get even more challenging.

The last (and possibly most important!) reason why reading comprehension is important is that it is what spurs on the love of reading. How can students fall in love with stories and books if they don’t know what they are reading? The most effective way to get a student to read is to get the student to want to read. Help them enjoy reading, get excited about the facts they learn, and dive into the stories they read. My number one goal for all of my students is for them to enjoy reading. Now, they can be proud of the words they are reading when they master phonics and they can feel good about sounding like a reader when they master fluency. However, in order to truly love and get lost in reading, they need to read with comprehension.

Reading Comprehension and Fluency

Just a quick note here on the relationship between reading comprehension and fluency. Here is a post explaining exactly what fluency is and why students need it. We have mentioned before how fluency has a huge impact on comprehension. It’s important to remember as well, that comprehension can also have an impact on fluency. When students understand what they are reading, they can use context to help them figure out tricky words.

This implies that we shouldn’t just focus on one or the other first, but that encouraging both comprehension and fluency can help the skills build on each other. Here is a blog post with tons of great reading with fluency strategies that will transform your struggling readers into fluent readers.

These reading comprehension skills can help students become better readers.

Reading Comprehension Skills

Comprehension is complex and involves a lot of different skills. Here is a basic list of common comprehension skills and the usual order that students are able to master them in. For a more visual, at-a-glance version of these skills, here is a FREE reading skills step ladder you can download!

*Note: It is not recommended to solely focus on one skill at a time. Try to use a variety of different skills with the books and stories you use in your instruction.

• Answering Questions about Details

  • Students can answer specific questions about the story.

• Predicting

  • At a cliff hanger or just before a resolution is made, and students can predict what they think will happen next.

• Story elements (characters, setting, sequence of events)

  • Students can identify the characters, setting, and the order of events in a story.

• Summarize

  • Students can summarize a story by briefly re-telling the main events.

• Main Idea/theme

  • Students can identify the main idea or theme of the text, and choose the most important details that support that main idea.

• Making connections (to text, self, world)

  • Students can read a story and relate parts of it to other books, things in their own life, or things in the world.

• Inference, Conclusions, Generalizations

  • Students can use clues from the text to make assumptions that are not explicitly stated in the text.

Activities and ideas for how to improve reading comprehension. You can find this Snowflake Bentley reading response packet here.

Reading Comprehension Activities and Examples

So those are the skills involved in comprehension, but what do they look like in action? Here are a few examples of ways to promote reading comprehension practice in the classroom. You can also find tons more fun ideas in my Ultimate List of Reading Intervention Activities or try out my Listening Comprehension Intervention Binder for some low-prep comprehension help.

• Answering questions during and after reading

  • While sharing a read aloud, teachers can briefly stop at significant parts and ask questions about basic details in the story and see if students can recall those details.
  • Students can answer written comprehension questions after they read a passage.
  • *Here are some recommendations of my favorite books for read alouds and independent reading on just the right level for each student.

• Retelling stories

  • After a read aloud, the teacher and students work together to recount the major events in the story.
  • After reading a story, students can pair up for “story time” and re-tell each other the story they read.
  • During guided reading while students are independently reading, the teacher can stop a student and ask them to tell what they are reading about.

• Having conversations about a text and sharing opinions

  • After a read aloud, the teacher conducts a group discussion about the story, giving plenty of opportunities for students to lead the conversation and discuss with each other.
  • During independent reading time, the teacher walks around the room and has conversations with students about the story they are reading. They ask what is going on in the story, what they like or don’t like about it, and what they think or hope will happen.

• Writing about a text

  • After a read aloud or independent text, students write a response about the book. It can have a prompt to inspire them, or just be an open journal response where the student can write whatever they want.
  • Students complete book reports and projects reflecting what they’ve learned or enjoyed from a book.
  • The picture above shows an example of a reading response from my Snowflake Bentley Unit students can complete for comprehension practice.

Understanding what is reading comprehension is one of the first steps in knowing how to improve reading comprehension. Hopefully you’ve gained some practical, concrete ideas of what it is and how to promote it in the classroom. When you encourage reading with comprehension, you are giving students the power to learn from and love reading.

If you need help figuring out which students are struggling in comprehension and how to help them, try downloading this FREE Reading Intervention Cheat Sheet that will make your interventions so much more targeted and less stressful!

These reading intervention strategies and ideas will help your struggling readers!

Happy teaching and reading!