Reading Comprehension Strategies for Kids
Strong readers use five specific strategies: predict, question, clarify, summarise, visualise. Teach each one explicitly and comprehension improves.
Reading comprehension isn't a single skill — it's a set of five strategies that strong readers deploy without thinking. The breakthrough insight for teaching is that these strategies can be named, explained, practised individually, and then combined. Children who are taught them explicitly comprehend better than children who are just told to 'read carefully'.
The five are: predict (what will happen next?), question (what does this word mean? why did the character do that?), clarify (reread the bit that didn't make sense), summarise (what just happened in one sentence?), and visualise (picture the scene in your head). Teach one a week for five weeks, with a different book each week.
The best teaching move is to model it out loud. Read a page, stop, and say 'I'm going to predict what happens next — I think the rabbit will run away because he's scared'. Then read on and check. Kids who watch an adult use strategies learn to use them themselves, which is the whole point.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What are comprehension strategies?+
Specific mental moves that skilled readers use: predicting, questioning, clarifying, summarising, visualising. Teaching each one explicitly is the most research-backed way to improve comprehension.
What age should kids learn comprehension strategies?+
Informally from Year 1 through storytime questions. Explicit strategy teaching usually starts in Year 2 to 3.
Which strategy is most important?+
Questioning is the foundation. A child who asks 'why did that happen?' while reading is engaging with the text rather than just decoding it.
How often should I do comprehension practice?+
Daily, in small doses. Ten minutes of read-aloud with questions is more effective than a weekly worksheet.