Developing strong reading comprehension skills is crucial to your child’s future success. But many children struggle to master these important skills in the classroom. The good news is that there are plenty of ways for parents to help their children improve reading skills outside of the classroom. Here’s how parents can help with reading comprehension at home:

Start A Family Book Club

Ask everyone in the family to participate in an at-home book club. Every week, choose a new book for your family to read. Then, schedule a family meeting and ask everyone to share their thoughts on the book.

Talking about the book is a great way to determine if your child understood the text. If your child cannot explain what happened in the book or remember certain events, go back through the book together as a family. Take turns reading it aloud and help your child make sense of the content they did not understand the first time around.

Use Online Reading Comprehension Worksheets

There are a number of websites that allow parents to print reading comprehension worksheets for free. Each worksheet will include a short passage followed by questions about the passage.

Ask your child to complete these worksheets so they can practice their reading comprehension skills at home. The more they practice, the more they will improve their reading comprehension skills.

Create Graphic Organizers

If your child is a visual learner, creating a graphic organizer is a great way to improve their reading comprehension skills.

There are several ways to use graphic organizers to improve your child’s reading comprehension skills. For example, create Venn diagrams to compare and contrast characters in a story. Or create a storyboard that shows the sequence of events that took place in the story.

You can also create a flowchart that illustrates the cause-effect relationship between main events of a story.

Creating these graphic organizers can help your child understand the relationship between characters and events, the chronological order of events, and other concepts.

Play Audio Books

Some children are auditory learners, so they may benefit from listening to audio books. Instruct your child to follow along with the narrator while you play an audio book. Auditory learners may be able to extract more meaning from the text by listening and following along as opposed to reading independently.

Encourage All Types of Reading

Practice is the key to improving reading comprehension, so encourage your children to practice as much as possible. Don’t limit your children to books, either. Encourage them to read anything they may find interesting, which may include comic books, newspapers, and magazines.

Remember, all reading is beneficial, so there’s no reason to deny your child the pleasure of reading these alternative materials.

Focus On Your Child’s Favorite Topics

Studies show that reading multiple books on the same topic can actually help your child improve their reading comprehension skills more than reading multiple books on various topics.

Use this research to your advantage by finding books related to your child’s favorite topics. Does your child love baseball? If so, check out a handful of different baseball-themed books from the local library. Is your child interested in the solar system? Find five or six books on the planets.

Discuss the books with your child once you’re done reading. Ask your child to compare and contrast the books to check their comprehension and keep them engaged.

Compare Books and Movies

Many children’s books have been adapted into movies. Choose one of these books and read it with your child. Then, watch the movie version of the book together. After the movie is over, discuss the similarities and differences between the movie and the book. Ask your child which version they preferred and why.

Having this conversation is a great way to deepen your child’s understanding of the book and check their comprehension.

Download the Readability App

Let your child work on their reading comprehension skills anytime, anywhere with the Readability app, which is available for Apple and Android devices.

Readability’s Interactive Voice-Based Questions & Answers (IVQA) feature allows your child to communicate with the app just like they would with a reading tutor. The app will ask your child questions about the text and listen to their answers to keep them engaged and improve their reading comprehension skills.

You can even keep a close eye on your child’s progress using the parent dashboard, which will track your child’s pronunciation accuracy, comprehension, and time spent reading. Use the dashboard to watch as your child drastically improves their reading comprehension skills over time using this innovative app.

Download the app on your smartphone or tablet to start your free 7-day trial today.