How Students Can Improve Reading Comprehension

Students will encounter a wide range of obstacles over the course of their academic careers. As students progress through academia, many learn to overcome new challenges by looking back on past experiences when they faced obstacles and ultimately prevailed. 
Younger students do not necessarily have that history of overcoming academic challenges to help them when faced with fresh obstacles. When reading for school, young students may not have identified an approach that can help them more easily comprehend texts. When such situations arise, parents and educators can encourage students to employ various strategies designed to strengthen reading comprehension.
• Encourage young students to monitor their comprehension. The national public media literacy initiative Reading Rockets notes that comprehension monitoring teaches students to recognize what they understand when reading a text and what they do not understand. Monitoring comprehension encourages students to be active readers who check what they do and do not understand while they’re reading. Young students can be taught to ask themselves, “Do I understand this?” when reading a text. Students also can summarize each paragraph as they finish it to further monitor their comprehension.
• Employ metacognitive strategies. Reading Rockets defines metacognition as “thinking about thinking.” While young students may hear the word “metacognition” and run for the hills, the process is far simpler than its name might suggest. Prior to reading, students can be encouraged to identify why they’re reading. A brief preview of the text, such as the synopsis on the back of a book or the inside jacket of the cover, can help students clarify what the book is about. As children begin reading, they can monitor their own understanding of the text relative to the preview they read. Thinking ahead about a text and how they can process it can help students understand it better than they might if they just start reading without giving the text and what to look for any prior thought.
• Teach students to ask themselves questions while they’re reading. Reading Rockets notes questions encourage students to combine information from different segments of the text. While reading, students can ask how a newly introduced character might relate to text or a storyline introduced earlier in the story. Or students can ask questions about characters previously introduced who they do not recall. Going back and searching through previous chapters or text to answer questions can make it easier to comprehend the text.
• Summarize the text upon completion. Reading Rockets notes that summarizing requires students to determine the important aspects of a text and to explain that importance in their own words. Summarizing also helps students identify the main ideas, connect themes throughout the text and eliminate unnecessary information. All of that helps students remember what they read, which is the foundation of strong reading comprehension.
Reading comprehension can be challenging for young students. But various strategies can help kids develop strong reading comprehension skills.