Fourth Grade Reading Comprehension Games and Activities

How to Get Your Fourth Grader Excited about Reading

While some kids love to read, others may find it difficult and frustrating. In order to encourage your son or daughter to become an active learner and more engaged with reading, you can incorporate games and activities into your practice at home. You may want to find out if your child's teacher has any suggestions for areas of improvement and which texts have already been covered in class. Use these activities or create some of your own as your child progresses.

Three Reading Comprehension Activities

Know and Wonder

Getting the whole family involved with reading time and group discussion can show your child how important reading is for everyone. This exercise is focused on reading comprehension through conversation, and the object of this activity is to have fun while asking and answering questions with your son or daughter.

To start, you, your child and any other family members who are available will read separate copies of the same text. It could be a story, children's book, newspaper article, journal entry, poem or other literary piece. Upon completion, everyone writes down their responses to the following sentences: 'After reading this piece, I know...' and 'After reading this piece, I wonder...?' After you have answered the questions, you and your family will come together for a fun discussion, comparing and contrasting the different ways each of you perceived the piece. If you can, try answering each other's written question. This is a great starting point for literary conversations and helping your child better understand different types of text.

Read and Rewrite

In fourth grade, students should have a basic understanding of different types of writing, including prose, poetry and drama. This exercise will provide your son or daughter with both reading comprehension and writing practice because he or she will rewrite a text to fit a different style. You'll start by providing your child with a fairly simple text, probably a poem or narrative story. Once he or she has read through and understands the piece, have him or her rewrite the text into a different style. For example, if you have your child read a poem, he or she will translate that into a narrative story, or if you provide your child a narrative, he or she will turn it into a poem.

Reading Response

An alternative to the typical reading comprehension passages and questions is a reading response, which requires more thought and elaboration from your child. This activity will still begin with a short reading passage, but instead of answering multiple-choice and matching questions about the story, your son or daughter will respond to questions that require a deeper understanding. You might ask, 'Why was the main character upset? What were the character's feelings, and why?' Instead of choosing between answers like, 'His sister was mean' or 'His dog ran away,' your child must think more about the character's thoughts, feelings, decisions and actions and actually write the responses in his or her own words. Several free reading passages are available online by grade level.