Reading comprehension activities are a great way to practice comprehension skills at home.
Developing reading comprehension skills are an important part of becoming a competent reader. Unfortunately, many children struggle with reading comprehension. Therefore, focusing on developing these skills from a young age is essential.
To help you practice reading comprehension with your child, we’ll discuss several comprehension strategies and ten fun reading comprehension activities. These activities will help your child develop the reading comprehension skills they need to become a skilled reader!
Ready to learn how to improve reading comprehension for kids? Let’s go!
What is reading and comprehension, and why is it important?
Reading comprehension is the ability to understand the text you are reading.
Reading text and understanding its meaning may seem automatic to capable readers. However, we often forget how difficult it can be to process this information. For instance, for a child to read and comprehend a story, they must first decode the text (i.e., apply their knowledge of letter-sound relationships to pronounce written words). Once they have translated letters into words, they must recognize that these words convey meaning. Then, they must apply vocabulary and background knowledge to understand the meaning behind each word. Finally, all the words (and their meanings) must be combined to create a meaningful story. As you can see, this is a complex process and involves a considerable amount of mental capacity!
As children practice these individual reading skills, the meaning of a story is often lost. In other words, although a child reads the words in a book, they may not understand what is happening in the story. This is why it is important to practice reading comprehension skills with your child using fun reading comprehension activities.
Why Some Kids Struggle with Reading Comprehension
As discussed above, reading a text and understanding its meaning is very complex and requires multiple skills. Thus, if a child struggles with any single reading skill, they will undoubtedly struggle with reading comprehension. For example, if a child has difficulty decoding letters into words or has limited vocabulary or world knowledge, they will struggle with comprehension. That’s because these skills are necessary to understand the meaning behind a story.
This is why reading aloud is one of the best ways to help a child with reading difficulties. Reading aloud (or having your child listen to audiobooks) allows them to focus on comprehension rather than the skills needed to decode text.
Don’t always have time to read aloud to your child? Then, check out these top audiobooks for kids.
Now that you know what reading comprehension entails and why some kids struggle with it, let's look at how to improve reading comprehension for kids. The best place to start is by exploring key strategies and fun reading comprehension activities.
What are the 5 reading comprehension strategies?
There are several tactics that experienced readers use to make sense of what they are reading. These are known as reading comprehension strategies. By teaching your child these strategies, you can help them develop the skills needed to become a proficient reader.
The 5 reading comprehension strategies that parents should practice with their kids include:
1. Making Connections
Skilled readers often draw upon their experience and background knowledge to help them understand the text they are reading. Readers can make three common associations - connecting the text to their personal experiences, linking the text to a similar story, and connecting the text to the outside world. By helping your child relate a story to external experiences or situations, you can help them practice this valuable reading comprehension strategy.
2. Making Predictions
Predicting what a story is about and situations that may occur can also support reading comprehension. To help your child develop this comprehension strategy, examine the book cover and pictures in the story before you start reading. Then, discuss possible scenarios and story outcomes. By doing so, you will help your child gather relevant vocabulary and outside knowledge that they can use to understand the story better.
3. Self-Monitoring for Understanding
As a reader, it is essential to build metacognitive skills. In the context of reading, metacognitive skills refer to the ability to check in on your understanding of a text as you read it. To help your child develop this essential strategy, verbally reflect on characters, settings, themes, and events as you read.
4. Visualizing
Another reading comprehension strategy that advanced readers commonly use is visualization. By visualizing a story as it unfolds, your child can immerse themselves in a book to better understand what is happening. Explore our reading comprehension activities below to discover fun ways to practice this skill at home.
5. Questioning
By asking questions about a story, readers can better understand what it’s about. To practice this comprehension strategy, prompt your child to ask questions as they (or you) read. Keep in mind that it is important to ensure these questions are relevant and that they focus on building a deeper understanding of the story (rather than being surface-level questions). For example, good questions often start with words/phrases like “why” or “how come.”
Want to know how you can support your child’s reading comprehension skills? Reading comprehension activities are the best way! So, let’s look at some reading comprehension exercises you can try at home.
10 Fun Reading Comprehension Activities To Do At Home
Below, you’ll find ten practical and fun reading comprehension activities to help you support your child’s reading development.
1. Build Your Own Character
Help your child find materials around the house or outside in nature and recreate characters from a book you’ve read. This activity will help your child reflect on their understanding of the characters in the story.
This fun reading comprehension activity promotes the following reading comprehension strategy:
- Self-monitoring for understanding
2. Act It Out
After reading a book with your child, take turns acting out the main events in the story. Retelling events like this is fun and will help your child check in on their understanding of the story.
This activity supports the following reading comprehension strategy:
- Self-monitoring for understanding
3. Mind Movie/Draw It
As you read a story aloud to your child, have them close their eyes and paint a picture in their mind. Then, have your child capture this mind movie on paper with felts, crayons, or paint.
This fun reading comprehension activity will help your child practice the following reading comprehension strategy:
- Visualization
4. Sharing Your Connections
Take turns with your child sharing connections to a story. For instance, sharing personal connections or connections between the story and other books or events in the real world. Having your child connect the story to external experiences will help them better understand what they are reading. In addition, sharing your own connections provides a helpful example for your child to follow.
This comprehension activity promotes the following reading comprehension strategy:
- Making connections
5. Comprehension Cube
Build a cube out of paper or cardboard and write a question on each side. Take turns rolling the cube and answering the question that shows up on top. Some examples of good questions include:
- What did the story make you think about?
- Was there a time when you felt the same way as the main character?
- What is one thing that stood out to you in the story?
- What is a question you had about the story?
This is one of our favorite reading comprehension activities. It will help your child reflect on and communicate their understanding of the story.
Using this activity, you can help your child practice the following reading comprehension strategies:
- Making connections
- Self-monitoring for understanding
- Questioning
6. Extend the Story
After reading a story, have your child add to it (independently or with your help). For example, create a verbal extension of the story or create a sequel with pictures and words. This will help your child revisit the story's events and consider what might happen next.
This fun reading comprehension activity helps practice the following comprehension strategies:
- Making predictions
- Self-monitoring for understanding
- Visualizing
- Questioning
7. “I Predict..” (Two Reading Comprehension Activities in One)
This exercise involves two reading comprehension activities - one before the story begins and the other while reading.
Before reading a story, examine the front cover. Ask your child what they think the story might be about. Then, take a picture walk. This involves flipping (or scrolling) through the pages, looking at the pictures, and sharing predictions about the story.
While reading, take the time to pause and discuss what you think might happen next based on the events that have already unfolded.
This reading comprehension activity helps with the following comprehension strategies:
- Making predictions
- Self-monitoring for understanding
8. Create a Book Trailer
After reading a story, record your child sharing why they would recommend the book. Then, have them select a few of their favorite pages to discuss. Finally, if they want, have them share the trailer with friends and family!
This fun activity promotes the following reading comprehension strategy:
- Self-monitoring for understanding
9. Story Puzzle
With your child, brainstorm and write down the things that happened in the story - in any order. Be sure to write each event on a separate piece of paper. Once you’re finished, have your child put the events in order.
This reading comprehension activity will help your child practice the following reading comprehension strategy:
- Self-monitoring for understanding
10. K-W-L (Know, Wonder, Learned)
Before reading a book, have your child share something they already know about the story and something they wonder about. For extra fun, record your child sharing their thoughts so they can look back at the video! Be sure to share what you know and wonder as well.
After you’ve read the story, share something you learned with each other.
This comprehension activity facilitates the following reading comprehension strategies:
- Making connections
- Self-monitoring for understanding
- Questioning
Ready to give these reading comprehension exercises a try? Keep in mind that not all children’s books are created equal! When trying these activities at home, it’s important to choose a good book that will keep your child engaged.
What makes a good children’s book? Check out this article to learn how to choose the best book for your child - What Makes a Good Children’s Book.
Try These At-Home Reading Comprehension Activities with the Help of Booka
To get started with the fun reading comprehension activities above, you’ll need access to a library of kids’ books. Booka can help!
Our extensive collection of children’s books offers easy and convenient access to hundreds of stories. With books on diverse and interesting topics, Booka is the perfect tool to help you try the reading comprehension exercises above.
Download Booka today to get started!