Reading comprehension is the ultimate goal of learning to read. While many new readers might struggle with this skill, there are ways to help improve such as reading comprehension apps.

One of the most important skills in reading is reading comprehension. Most kids that are beginning to read will likely just be identifying words in the text. They may not be fully understanding what the sentences actually mean. However, there are effective strategies and tools that can get your new reader to not only be able to identify words but actually fully understand what they are reading. 

What are the best reading comprehension apps to help new readers improve?

The best reading comprehension apps address a variety of issues that contribute to poor reading comprehension.

1. Readability – Readability helps new readers learn to read in a fun and interactive way by working as a private tutor for your child. It combines A.I. technology and speech-recognition to help your child fully understand a text and not just memorize words on a page.
2. Inspiration Maps – Mind mapping is a great way to help with improving reading comprehension because it is a strategy that helps get information in and out of your brain. Inspiration Maps is an app that helps your child create mind maps and is a great tool for them to learn how to organize information in their mind.
3. Rewordify – One of the main reasons a new reader might be struggling with reading comprehension is because they might be struggling with the vocabulary in the reading material. Rewordify takes a piece of text and simplifies it to be much more understandable.
4. Reading Comprehension – Reading Comprehension has a series of apps designed for various reading levels. They provide graded reader books that also have questions to help readers see how much they understood the story.
5. RainbowSentences – The first step in understanding a story is to understand sentences. RainbowSentences helps your child learn to understand sentences by color-coding sentence parts. This app makes building sentences into colorful fun.
6. Question Builder – Asking questions about a text is a good way to check reading comprehension. Question Builder helps young new readers learn to answer abstract questions using photos and stories.

How do you teach reading comprehension?

There are several strategies teachers often use that you can use at home to improve your child’s reading comprehension skills. Using the apps mentioned above, you can combine those tools with these strategies to improve your child’s reading comprehension.

• Preview – Previewing a text involves using prior knowledge that your child already has to help them understand what the text is about.
• Predicting – When new readers predict what might happen in the text, they are also activating their prior knowledge to help understand what they are reading.
• Main ideas and summarizing – Having your child identify the main ideas and summarizing a text in their own words helps them think about what are the most important ideas and what is the author trying to say.
• Questioning – Asking questions and answering questions about the reading material can also help new readers think about what they understood from what they read. This strategy also helps them to further develop their critical thinking.
• Making Inferences – While making inferences about a text might take some time for new readers, once they are able to “read between the lines” reading comprehension becomes much easier.
• Visualizing – Visualizing a text can help with recalling information. Always take some time to look at any pictures or photos that might be in your child’s reading material. You can also have your child draw something about what they read.

Poor reading comprehension can have many negative effects when it comes to critical thinking skills and academic success. Reading comprehension is important for academic success and future life skills. However, according to the U.S. Department of Education, only about 36% of fourth-graders and 34% of eighth-graders have successful reading comprehension by the end of the school year.

Using strategies and tools such as Readability can get your child to read and fully understand what they are reading. Reading comprehension is a crucial first step in learning how to think critically and helps increase their brain development.