Understanding What Is Read

Before a child can begin to understand what has been read, the words must be unlocked.  There are three systems for doing this: the use of meaning, syntax, and visual cues.  

Meaning - The child uses the story to make a good guess at the word, then cross-checks for syntactic and visual cues.

• If your child is failing to use meaning to help guide his/her reading, prompt with "What would make sense?"
• If your child uses meaning without cross-checking, ask "Does that sound right? Does that look right?"

Syntax - The child uses our language to make a good guess at the word, then cross-checks for meaning and visual cues.

• If your child is not using syntax prompt with "Can we say it like that? Does that sound right?"
• Model correct usage of English during conversation.
• If a book is written with a dialect, point it out and discuss it with your child. 

Visual - The child uses the letters that are written to make a good guess at the word and cross-checks for meaning and syntactical cues.

• Identify the vowel(s) and the most likely sound.
• Identify any letters that go together to form unusual sounds (sh, th, tch)
• Blend the word from the beginning.  
• If there is a problem, help your child by correcting the part that is incorrect. 

There are many levels of comprehension.  The most basic ones involve being able to talk about the setting, characters, problem, and solution.  This is an excellent and necessary way to start; however, we need to help our children draw more deeply from the text.  Predictions are guesses about what will happen next based on what has happened in the text up to that point. The children should be able to substantiate or justify their predictions based on actual textual happenings.  Inferences are guesses about what is happening "behind the scenes".  Usually these are in reference to why a character behaves in a certain manner or what has happened that the story doesn't explicitly say.  Again these guesses are based on textual happenings and should be justifiable.  Both predictions and inferences may change as we read more of the story and gather more information.  As they are reading, children need to be detectives looking for clues and making connections to previous parts of the story.

• Talk with your child while s/he is reading, not only asking the "right there" questions of who, what, and when...but the "thinking" questions of why, what if, and what next?
• Create a "story board" as you read.  Stop every paragraph or two and talk about what happened, then sketch in the story.  Retell it from the beginning as you go.