Reading Comprehension Basics
Teach primary-age children to understand written texts โ prediction, visualisation, re-reading strategies, and checking comprehension.
Reading comprehension and reading fluency are distinct skills, and primary school conflates them constantly. A child can read every word in a passage aloud without difficulty and still be unable to answer a question about what they just read โ because decoding (turning letters into sounds) and comprehension (extracting meaning) use different cognitive processes and need to be practised separately. This course targets comprehension specifically. The core techniques โ predicting what will happen before reading, pausing to visualise scenes, re-reading a sentence that did not make sense rather than pushing through it, and asking yourself what the main point was before turning the page โ are not complicated. They are simply not taught explicitly in most classrooms, where the assumption is that comprehension follows automatically once fluency is established. It does not, not reliably. Practising these strategies with a child for 10 minutes after school produces measurable gains within a few weeks and the habits transfer to every subject that involves reading.
Recommended YouTube videos
- Search YouTube: “reading comprehension strategies primary school”
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