[CarolinaPatriot]

I’m a homeschool mom of 4 kids. Comprehension was hard at that age for 2 of mine. They needed a slower approach than my other 2 children, which was fine. They are older now and are able to comprehend just as well as the other 2. Anyway, I’ll tell you what I did. Take from it what works for you and throw out what doesn’t. When I read a book to my kids, or have them read to me, I would always have them narrate (I still do this, even for my high schooler). Basically, we would stop after reading a page or 2 and ask them what has happened or tell me something interesting about the book so far or something like that. They would proceed to tell me what all happened. If they couldn’t tell me much at all or couldn’t tell me the major points, I would go slower. We would read only a paragraph and see if they understood. If not, we would read just a couple of sentences and have them tell me something, anything. Eventually after doing a couple of sentences at a time (yes, it took a long time to get through a chapter in a book), we would increase to one paragraph, then 2 and eventually we could read 3 or so pages and they could narrate well and therefore comprehend what was going on.

A second thing I would do is have children draw pictures of what was happening while I was reading. Then they would go through the pictures and tell me what was happening in the picture. I would write down what they said next to each picture and they loved to go back and read what they said the day before. This was good to get them to remember what was going on the day before and therefore comprehend what was going on in the book on the following day.

It took a lot of work and a lot of patience, but it was worth it for sure

Good luck!

• This reply was modified 1 year, 7 months ago by  CarolinaPatriot.