10 Effective Ways of Improving Reading Comprehension in Your Learners via Wabisabi Learning

10 Effective Ways of Improving Reading Comprehension in Your Learners

Wabisabi Learning: 2.12.2020

If you were to ask, most teachers would agree improving reading comprehension is about teaching students how to think while reading. Granted, reading comprehension likely isn’t one of the courses that you’re teaching. That said, perhaps it should be a sub-course within all the courses that you do teach. In fact, students who can heighten these skills with your help might be better prepared for college than those who earn As in content courses.

If you’re a Social Studies teacher, you can teach your learners important historical facts. As an English teacher, you can teach them about the world’s great authors and the books they wrote. Even in Science, you can explore the world’s most important scientific theories with them and why they’re relevant.

Ultimately, though, to teach your learners to analyze historical events, English literature, and scientific and math concepts, you must teach them how to read better.

If successful, they will be far better prepared for courses in content areas they are unfamiliar with like those they will take in college. For example, a student with excellent reading comprehension skills but no background in Economics might be better prepared for a college Economics course than a student with average reading comprehension skills who have aced high school Economics courses.

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How to Begin Improving Reading Comprehension

How do you start improving reading comprehension with your math, science, history, or English learners?

The first thing is that you should not do what so many teachers do, which is to tell your students to read about a topic they are unfamiliar with.

“Read Chapter 1 over the weekend” or “read pages 50 through 60 tonight” is not an effective way to begin teaching about a topic. What did you do when your teachers gave you that kind of instruction? Did you just read every word in the assignment? Try to memorize what you thought were key facts? Did you look at the textbook’s practice tests and try to answer the questions related to the assignment? Chances are you didn't, and yet this is exactly (and unrealistically) what we expect of our own learners.

The truth is your learners need practical guidance before they read.

In that spirit, here is a step-by-step guide that can help your students improve their reading comprehension significantly.

1. Discuss Reading Comprehension

Writing a one-page handout detailing your ideas about reading comprehension and why it’s important can be helpful. You can include your ideas about subjects such as taking notes, setting goals, and asking questions.

2. Practice What You Preach

Telling students that improving reading comprehension is crucial and then giving them tests that emphasize rote memorization is backward reasoning. Instead, give them essay tests and ask them to write reports.

3. Discuss Each Assignment

Prior to each reading assignment, you should tell students what you want them to learn from the text. Ask them a few questions and tell them you want to discuss the answers in the next class. They should also write down your questions and use them in group discussions of their own.

Perhaps the most important tip you can give learners about how to read is that their reading comprehension is most likely to improve when they stop reading. Students should be thinking while they’re reading rather than reading continuously.

4. Urge Thinking Before Reading

Students should read your questions and/or the book’s questions before they begin reading.  READ MORE ➤➤

Automatic Readability Checker

Based on (7) readability formulas:

Grade Level: 10

Reading Level: standard / average.

Reader's Age: 14-15 yrs. old

(Ninth to Tenth graders)