Most parents are not necessarily trained to teach reading. So, if your child is struggling to understand their reading materials, you might think “what can I do when my child needs help with reading comprehension?”

Reading comprehension is an extremely important skill of the main reading skills that your child needs to be a successful reader. When your child is starting to read there are five main reading skills they must learn: phonics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, fluency, and reading comprehension. Without reading comprehension, your child is simply just recognizing words but not actually understanding what the words or sentences actually mean.

What can I do when my child needs help with reading comprehension? 

If you find that your child is struggling with their reading comprehension, you might want to consider what are some things you can do at home to help them improve. Here are some strategies you can use at home to help boost their reading comprehension skills:

1. Have them read aloud – Reading aloud can help them go at a steadier pace and helps them to concentrate on their reading more. When they read aloud, they have to focus on one word at a time. This also helps with reading comprehension because they are also hearing the words they are reading.
2. Talk to them about what they are reading – Family discussions can center around what your child is reading. This can help them become invested in their reading materials and help them recall information and main ideas.
3. Provide books at the right level – The biggest challenge for kids struggling with reading comprehension is often that they find the books they are reading either too hard or even too easy. Make sure to provide not just books that are at your child’s reading level but also books that are both one level below and one level above. This can help them choose to stay at a level that is comfortable for them or choose one that is more challenging.
4. Reread books for practice – In order to gain any meaning from a text, your child needs to be able to read smoothly. This means that they need to increase their fluency. You can practice this skill at home by having your child reread books to help them practice recognizing words quickly.
5. Set reading goals – To make their ultimate goal of reading comprehension successful, it could be helpful to set concrete reading goals. You can keep a chart with how many books they hope to finish reading at the end of every month. This can help motivate and encourage them to read more and to read often.
6. Use reading apps to make reading fun – When your child is struggling with reading, it can often make them not enjoy it. Instead of forcing them to read books every day, you can make it more fun by incorporating technology like using apps designed to help them improve their reading skills.

What are the best reading comprehension apps? 

Using technology in your at-home reading instruction can help your child find reading more enjoyable. Kids are more likely to learn better when they are having fun. Here are our favorite reading comprehension apps:

• Readability – This app is a great overall app that can help with every aspect of learning to read. Your child is essentially given their own private tutor with this app. The app uses A.I. technology and speech-recognition to help identify errors your child might be making while they are reading aloud and gives them instant feedback for improvement. You can also have the app read the story to your child, so they can both read and follow along.
• MindMeister – Reading comprehension has a lot to do with recalling information and organizing your thoughts about the reading. This mind mapping app can help your child check if they fully understood what they are reading.
• Rainbow Sentences – The first step in reading comprehension is being able to understand sentences. Rainbow Sentences breaks down sentences to color-code them so your child is able to identify each part easily.
• Kindergarten Reading – Kindergarten Reading is a great interactive reading app that provides stories then quizzes your child about them using multiple-choice questions. This directly targets their reading comprehension capabilities.

Why is reading comprehension important?

Reading comprehension is an important skill that will help advance your child’s academic, professional, and personal life. It is not just a necessary academic skill to learn, but an important life skill to master.

Studies have shown that poor reading comprehension skills correlate with poor academic performance overall. The reason for this is that so much of school work is dependent on reading in every subject that your child might be learning. From math to literature to physics, your child will always be reading when they are learning. This is the primary way that information is shared and learned. If your child’s reading comprehension is poor, so will their performance in school.

Since reading comprehension is such an important skill to have, you want to make sure you are doing everything you can when your child needs help with reading comprehension. Utilizing apps such as Readability can help them learn reading comprehension in a fun and interactive way. Try it for free, and verify for yourself how much your kid will improve in reading comprehension!