Model proper reading techniques so your child hears how oral reading should sound. Read with inflection and emotion. Read a paragraph and then ask your child to read the next paragraph, or you read the narration and have your child read the speaking parts. This allows you to discover if your child comprehends the action and emotion in the story and can translate it into proper emotional clues in the reading. If your child reads in a monotone or with improper emotion, ask the child what emotions the character might be feeling.
After you read a story with your child, ask the child key questions about the story, such as what the character did, where actions took place and why the character made specific choices. Have the child retell the story in his own words or predict what might occur later in the story. If the child answers incorrectly, have him reread parts of the story with the answers and answer the question again.
Comprehension skills require that the child understand all or most of the words in the reading passage. Help the child decode unfamiliar words by using context clues in the passage or in the story illustrations. For example, if the child doesn’t know what a hedgehog is, ask the child to look in the picture for an animal that might be a hedgehog, or reread the description and look for an animal that resembles that verbal picture. When that doesn’t work, help your child look up the answer on the Internet, in a dictionary or in an encyclopedia.
Read sections of a story and then act it out to measure comprehension. Allow the student to read a character’s word as you play other parts in the story. Alternatively, have your child direct the play and use puppets or family members as actors. Encourage your child to express what individual characters feel toward one another or about a specific set of circumstances.