What comprehension actually is
Comprehension is building meaning from a text: following what happens, holding on to details, inferring what is not said outright, and connecting it to what you already know. A child can read every word on a page and still understand almost none of it, which is why comprehension needs teaching in its own right, not just more reading.
It rests on three things: fluent decoding so attention is free for meaning, enough vocabulary and background knowledge to make sense of the topic, and active strategies for working out meaning. You build all three at once.
The core strategies, in order
- Predict: before reading, look at the title and pictures and guess what it is about. This primes background knowledge.
- Question: teach children to ask and answer who, what, where, when, why and how as they read.
- Visualise: have them picture the scene, it turns words into memory.
- Infer: practise reading between the lines, what does the text imply that it does not say?
- Summarise: retell the main idea in one or two sentences. If they can summarise it, they understood it.
- Monitor: teach them to notice when a sentence stopped making sense, and to reread.
What to focus on by grade
| Stage | Focus |
|---|---|
| Pre-K to Kindergarten | Retell a story in order; answer simple who and what questions aloud. |
| Grades 1 to 2 | Main idea, sequencing, simple inference; short passages with picture support. |
| Grades 3 to 4 | Inference, cause and effect, main idea vs detail; non-fiction and fiction. |
| Grades 5 to 6 | Theme, author's purpose, comparing texts, summarising longer passages. |
The question types to practise
Comprehension questions fall into levels, and children need practice across all of them, not just the easy ones.
- Right there: the answer is stated directly in the text.
- Think and search: the answer is in the text but spread across sentences.
- Author and you: combine the text with your own knowledge to infer.
- On your own: use the text as a springboard for opinion or connection.
A simple weekly routine
- Monday: read a short passage together, model one strategy aloud (say, predicting).
- Tuesday: reread, answer right-there and think-and-search questions.
- Wednesday: focus on inference, ask author-and-you questions.
- Thursday: summarise the passage in one or two sentences.
- Friday: a fresh passage on a similar topic, child works independently.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Only asking literal questions, so children never practise inference.
- Choosing passages that are too hard to decode, which swamps comprehension.
- Round-robin reading aloud, which stresses decoding over understanding.
- Skipping the retell, it is the fastest check of whether they understood.