“Alright, what was the boy searching for in the story?” “Hmm…” blank look. You think to yourself, He just finished reading that. That was one of the main points of the story! Or in another scenario, your middle schooler just finished reading her history chapter for school. When attempting to answer the comprehension questions, she has to skim through each section searching for the answer. When this doesn’t jog her memory, she decides to re-read the entire chapter.
Sound familiar?
When reading comprehension is impaired, we suspect issues in one or more of the following areas:
- Attention/Focus:
- Obviously, if a child is not attending to what he is reading, it will be difficult for him to comprehend the material. If the child is constantly getting up, moving around, taking long bathroom breaks, etc., it will be difficult for him to grasp what he is reading.
- Visual Processing (tracking difficulties, binocularity, diplopia, etc.):
- If the eyes aren’t working well together, jumping around, skipping lines, not converging, it will be difficult for a child to concentrate on the information he is reading. We are often unaware that a child is having this issue. When visual processing is not smooth, reading is labored, and reading comprehension is often compromised.
- Auditory Processing:
- An Auditory Processing issue manifests itself in many ways, including the scrambling of information that is heard or read. This, of course, affects reading comprehension. Another indication of a problem in this area is if a child is unable to read to himself (silently) by the age of 8. If he is still subvocalizing, it may be because he is attempting to give himself another way to grasp the material.
- Poor Memory Strategies:
- Often a child is not using his powerful visual memory when reading. He is likely using the visual memory when listening to his teacher/parent read aloud or when listening to audiobooks. We want to teach him how to use this important skill to visualize what he is reading so he can hold on to the information better.
In our upcoming newsletter, we will walk you through two strategies to increase reading comprehension by utilizing the powerful visual memory. To subscribe, scroll down on the homepage of CONNECT Education’s Website.