Ask your child to make a Venn diagram by drawing two large overlapping circles, with room enough in the overlapping section to write a few sentences. Have your child label one circle with the name of a memorable character from literature, and the other circle with a different character. Help your child put characteristics of each character in their respective circles, unless the characterization describes both characters, in which case it should be placed in the overlapping section.
Play mood charades with your child by writing a different mood on each of twenty slips of paper, and then dividing the family into two teams. One person from each team takes turns selecting a slip of paper without looking at it first, and then acting out the mood without speaking so that his or her team can guess what the mood is. This activity encourages critical thinking about feelings, which comes in handy when working on reading comprehension and understanding characters' motives.
Ask your child to reflect on a book he or she has just read by selecting six important parts of it, and drawing each in detail on a piece of paper. Ask your child to write a summary of the book on a separate piece of paper.
Ensure that your child is understanding the language at a middle school level. According to the educational psychology researcher Michael Pressley, "students cannot understand texts if they cannot read the words." Work on decoding activities to encourage your child's ability to understand the words.
Enhance your child's vocabulary through explicit instruction and implicit acquisition. The better a child's vocabulary, the better his or her reading comprehension is. Encourage your child to read frequently, as this is a strong predictor of advanced vocabulary skills, and give your child middle school level vocabulary lists.
Assist your child in the important middle school skill of active reading; this involves a number of strategies to be involved while reading a text. The strategies include but are not limited to: asking questions as your child reads -- or having your child ask questions, summarizing, examining characterization and breaking a story down into its parts and literary devices.