How to Improve Reading Comprehension in Early Readers

I hear it a lot from parents “Jane

is reading chapter books.” Yet I know the reality is something different. Jane reads

well.  She has great fluency.  She reads with expression, pauses at each comma, and raises

her voice when she sees a question mark at the end of a sentence.  However, Jane

has trouble recalling with detail the sequence of the story.

I remember when I was growing up we

read our Dick and Jane basal reader, answered a few questions and that was about the

extent of it.  Today, kids need to be able to talk in detail about the text.  They need

to make predictions, inferences, and draw conclusions. We are expecting our

students to “dig deeper” and pull meaning from what they read. Students are

expected to create written responses based on the content of what they read. Students are expected to

comprehend a story well in order to perform these higher level thinking skills. This can be a

difficult concept, especially for early readers.
I explain to my students that good

readers turn the story into a “movie in their mind” as they read. In order for

students to do this they need a lot of practice and modeling.

 Thestory Stuck by Oliver Jeffers is one of my favorite books to begin introducing

visualization.  When students can visualize and “make a movie in their mind” the story takes on

life. It helps students make connections, form characters in their mind, infer information, and pay closer

attention to detail.

 When Floyd’s kite gets stuck in a tree he throws hisshoe up to the tree to try and get it down. Needless to say, he isn’t very successful and by the end of the

story a LOT more than a kite is stuck in the tree.

 I read the story once through and we have a “turnand talk” about the sequence of the story.  Next, I re-read the story but this time….students lay

down, or put their heads down on their desks.  They get comfortable and close their eyes.  I

shut the lights off and re-read the story and instruct them to “make a movie in their mind as I read.”

 Next, students draw what items they rememberfrom the story that got stuck in the tree.  They label their drawings.  Here are some of their

results:

 This method can work for any story. Readsome. Stop.  Draw what you heard.  Repeat. I like using clipboards and having the

students sit with them on the rug while I read. They can make predictions, show the problem in

the story, make an inference, etc.  Whatever skill you are working, mental imagery is a great

tool.

 I have a visualization freebie in my store that youcan use to have your students follow this process. You can grab it in my store for free here.

 Poetry provides young students withexcellent examples of imagery and visualization. This book is absolutely fabulous for teaching

imagery:

Colors are featured throughout the book

with descriptive language about what each color looks like, feels like, smells like, etc.  I read a

page a day (one color) and have the students close their eyes as I read and then “tell me what they

saw.”  The responses are always awesome.  Some are very literal (OK. Good. Good

comprehension) and some are amazing in that there are things the kiddos truly pictured in their mind

that was not in the book. Their mental imagery was so effective it enabled them to make

connections to previous learned knowledge and schema. Wow! Next, we make our

own color poems.

For example:
Red reminds me of fire.
Red smells like apples and a furious fire.
Red tastes like lollipops and cherries in the

summer.

 Sticky notes are by farthe greatest invention ever (next to ice cream).  We love them, kids love them. They

rock!  When my district began a shift towards balanced literacy, I began having my

students use sticky notes to annotate text. However, I have a confession. I am a major

neat nick.  I couldn’t stand books being plastered with sticky notes.  So I made

some planning pages for my students to add sticky notes to in order for them to show their

understanding of text that they are reading.  It felt like the heavens

opened up.  For real!  Now my students record the title of the text they are working on, on

their planning page and pass it in and their connections, predictions, inferences, etc. are all in one

place.

We use sticky notes in my

classroom during guided reading groups, as mini-lessons, and during silent reading time. I try to

conference with students as they are working but if my guided reading group runs over a bit too long

and I don’t have time that day, the kiddos just leave their planning pages with their sticky notes intact in

a basket near my desk and we either conference about it later in the day or I look it over and file it as

evidence.  You can find Make it Stick! Using Sticky Notes to Make Meaningful Connections to text

in my store here.

How do you review reading

comprehension in your class?  I love hearing your thoughts and comments…

My name is Julie Pettersen and I am a first grade teacher in Massachusetts. I am

also a mom to 3 boys and a fur baby mama to my beagle, Bentley.  I am fortunate to have married

my best friend. I have been teaching for 18 years and I love it!

Minds in Bloom

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