I'm wondering about how to tutor friends mathy daughter in reading comprehension skills...late elementary age.

I was thinking that having automatisity in understanding the vocabulary is part of the skill. I was also thinking that learning some song lyrics and then figuring them out might be fun and helpful. It seems that being aware of story arc might help. Perhaps kids need a mental library of common plots and common themes and common types of writing.

Then there is the challenge of consentrating strongly for long enough. The challenge of having enough working memory to keep various aspects of the story in mind . Learning techniques to get info into long tern memory quickly and easily.

Then there is the talent for knowing what to pay extra attention to...can that be taught?

So id love any suggestions of other subskills that are needed and and suggestions for fun ways to teeach or access the subskills or useful books on the subject.

Thanks in advance
Grinity

Assuming that vision is intact and decoding is rapid, fluent and not creating a drain on cognitive resources, having vocabulary adequate to the text and familiarity with relevant background information has a huge impact on reading comprehension. Familiarity with the formal structure of the text can also be helpful if relevant background knowledge is less than optimal. So just teaching about different types of writing and how they are organized and working on building vocabulary can really do a lot to improve comprehension.

One thing they seem to do a lot in school guided reading groups is stop periodically to ask "what's going to happen next?". (I remember because it was given as the reason why DS shouldn't read more than the pages assigned, last year when this was happening!) I'm speculating, but maybe this is something we do subconsciously when reading, giving rise to the feeling of surprise when something unexpected happens (which is often when greater attention is needed), and maybe one cause of difficulty in reading comprehension might be not doing it. If this sounds plausible, it might be worth checking whether she does this to an extent that seems normal to you, and encouraging it if not?

That's lovely. Thanks. I hadn't realized that part about creating an expectation and then creating emphasis through suprise.

I was taugjt that poetry worked that way on a micro scale, as in


Ta DA ta DA ta Da TADa.

So the meaning of TADA is highlighted. I wonder if prose uses this as well along with story arc and theme missleads.

G

Also ColinsMum, in the US we play a game with the babies called
"This little piggy"
is it familiar to you?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Little_Piggy

anyway, this is a good example I think of your speculation - the first 4 lines build up the expectation that there will be a little raise in tension (Markeeeeeeet, on a rising note) followed by the next line releasing the tension (we always said HOME in a low, definite tone of voice)

Once one gets to the 5th pig there is a feeling of surprise because the 'rule' gets broken, and since the child has played before, there is also the anticipation of the suprise, which adds to the excitement even more.

My DH was always a great ham about the 5th pig, (and this little piggy....this little piggy.....this little piggy......tHIS little pigggy.....THIS little piggy went wee wee wee all the way home)

And DS clearly showed lots of anticipation which egged on DH to wilder and wilder performances.

So kids who are less sensitive to this sort of anticipation wouldn't egg their parents on to keep up the performance, and then they grow up not bothering to but much effort into such a silly activity with their kids....and so on.

I'm also remembering the TV show 'Blues Clues' which was popular in the US while my son was little, which explicitly encouraged kids to look for clues to figure out what that little dog was 'trying to say.' I very much enjoyed that show, finding it touching that 'Steve' would try so very hard to figure out what a semiverbal person was saying (like me with my DS at that point)

Smiles,
Grinity

Thanks Aculady...do you find an ordinary optomitrist screening adaquate for assuring yourself that vision is intact?
How do you assess if decoding is automatic enough?
We did a lot of unconsious building of backround info because that's whatb my mom did when I was little....we are going to xxxx which is known for its xxxxxx. We used to tease her that she was a frustrated tour guide but well we were all a captive audience and those are difficult to pass up.

I taught a lot of kids when I was a kid, so I know how the teachers used to do it. You know those reading books they have with the short stories and the questions at the end? Right now I'm using one of those on my son. I went through and underlined the answer sentences to the questions at the end. I read the story and say, listen for these three sentences... "Goldie lived in Josie's small apartment..". Josie got a goldfish... Goldie went to live on a farm. When you hear these sentences raise your hand and yell, "I hear it!".

Eventually he'll go and start writing the answers. Question #1-#4., pick an answer from the underlined sentences and copy the whole sentence. Mmm-hmmm. Then he'll have to start pre-reading the questions before reading the passage so he can underline his own relevant sentences, then copying both the question and the answer in the form of a complete sentence. And you just let the book and excercizes do their job. We're on a different time schedule and I don't remember if the school took one or two years to do this. It's not a tip or trick. It's work. At the same time you're doing Grammer and composition which is practice writing good sentences and composing good paragraphs which include a clear topic sentence and the rest of the paragraph stays on topic.

Edit: during the listening for the sentence stage that's when you gotta use a lot of voice, "ahem...Goldie LIVED in Josie's APARTMENT. (dramatic pause for the "I hear it."). And reading for comprehension is not like oral reading skills where it's all about giving the passage personality. Yes, it's a little weird, just like reading for phonological awareness is a little weird.

So La Tex, Did you start off with your child answering verbally after you read the story?

I like the part about reading 'for comprehension.'

I never really felt comfortable with those little stories/questions at the back. They never felt like they addressed the spirit of the story to me. sigh. It never felt like 'real' reading even if I read silently to myself.

I was just looking at http://reading.ecb.org/
The section on 'inferring' seemed more satisfying because it showed that different inferences were good at answering different questions.

((shrugs))
G

http://www.amazon.com/Strategies-Th...tanding/dp/157110481X/ref=dp_ob_title_bk

The first two chapters are free & insightful, although this "free sample" cost me plenty because I ended up buying a subscription of weekly reader magazine and while I was there they had a limited time deal on a stack of children's books that I bought.

Ordinary optometrist screenings don't take tracking and convergence into account, and they don't take visual processing into account, so you can have a great report from the optometrist and still have problems getting visual information off the page without a great deal of effort.

Some signs of visual difficulties during reading include: fatigue from reading; rubbing eyes; headaches; losing place on the page; skipping parts of words or combining words that are near each other on the page when reading; using a finger or pencil to follow along on the page while rading; covering a portion of the page; a strong preference for certain head postions or light conditions while reading, moving the head or changing the position of the book frequently while reading; seeeing colors, "halos", or bands of light on the page; seeing the letters moving on the page, seeing blurred or double; squinting or blinking frequently while reading.

With some of these, oral reading is the easiest way to assess if it is an issue: skipping words, substituting words, losing place on the page, and combining words from different parts of the text are errors the reader may be completely unaware of, but which a listener who is looking at a copy of the same text can easily pick up. With many of the others, (colors, moving letters or words, halos, blurred or double vision), you would almot certainly have to ask directly if the person reading is experiencing them, because if that is the way their vision has always been, they may have no idea that everyone doesn't see things that way.


Decoding is automatic enough to not be a drain on cognitive resources if it is automatic enough to be unconcious and reliably error-free. If the reader is aware of the act of decoding the text while reading, or has to correct mis-readings frequently, that is usually a sign that some aspect of the lower-level reading skills (either visual or phonological) is using up resources that would ideally be used instead to construct meaning.

Thanks Aculady...very very helpfu!