Reading Comprehension for Kids: Practice Materials for Children

How to Select Reading Comprehension Activities for At-Home Practice

While frequent reading is an effective way to help children improve their reading speed and comprehension skills, it may become boring to some. Fun reading activities can show your son or daughter that there is more to reading than just analyzing required texts in class. In order to encourage your child to read at home, use the following practice exercises or create your own.

Three Reading Comprehension Exercises

Visualization to Illustration

The ability to draw mental pictures from a story can help students comprehend texts and learn their vocabulary words. While the act of reading is an effective way for your child to improve his reading skills, try this activity to help him focus on comprehension.

Instead of having your child read a story, sit down and read it out loud to him without showing the pictures. As you read, ask him to draw images of different characters that are introduced and scenes that are described. At the end, compare the original illustrations with his drawings to help him understand how different people comprehend text in different ways. This exercise also teaches active listening.

Reading Comprehension Questions

Although it is likely that your daughter has completed numerous reading comprehension questions in class, selecting passages that appeal to her interests may be more beneficial. One option is to create your own short story and questions that personally relate to your child, or you can choose from a variety of free worksheets available online.

Some websites, such as abcteach, offer free printouts of nonfiction and fiction readings with comprehension questions (www.abcteach.com). The worksheets may feature multiple-choice, short answer and fill-in-the-blank comprehension questions as well as answer keys. You can find readings on a variety of topics for all elementary grades.

Script and Play

A hands-on activity that can help your child better comprehend a story is writing a script based on a book he recently read and then putting on a play. In order to write the script, your child will have to use critical thinking skills. By acting it out, he will be able to better understand what happened in the story. To make this activity more fun, have your child invite over some friends. They can wear old clothes or costumes and use props around the house.