reading comprehension

Help Your Child Read Nonfiction With These Comprehension Strategies

Encourage your children to select both fiction and nonfiction text to read this summer. Since nonfiction reading is generally harder for most children than reading fiction, we can help our kids be more successful by teaching them specific comprehension strategies. When I taught 4th and 5th grade, about 90% of kids tested at a nonfiction or expository […]

8 Reasons to Let Your Kids Read Graphic Novels

Guess what?! Comics and graphic novels count as credible reading materials and aren’t just for reluctant readers. The truth is children need both variety and choice to become good readers. Meaning, they need nonfiction, different genres of fiction, and different formats of books. Graphic novels give readers a variety in format. And of course, reluctant readers often […]

How Predictable Book Series Benefit Beginning Readers

“Mom, do you think the goblins stole the flag?” my daughter said one night as we read the (kazillionth) book in the Rainbow Magic Fairies series. (Or thereabouts.) If you haven’t read these books, let me explain something quickly– the goblins ALWAYS, in every book, are the bad guys. I tried to act surprised, “Hmm, I […]

What Learning Benefits Happens When Kids Listen to Lunii Storyteller?

Disclosure: I worked in partnership with Lunii to bring you this information. Lunii, My Fabulous Storyteller, is SO much fun for kids — it’s an interactive, screenless storytelling toy that narrates audio stories which kids have created themselves. Not only does this develop a child’s imagination, it builds their vocabulary and builds important pre-reading strategies as well. Use […]

Clever Reading and Writing Activities for Wordless Picture Books

Have you wondered what to do with wordless picture books with your children or students? Believe it or not, there are many reading and writing activities you can do to develop your child’s thinking, reading, writing, and emotional intelligence skills. As you read with your child, take turns narrating the story out loud. This is […]

How Reading Easy Books Benefits Your Child

This weekend, my daughter read three books. In about two hours. No, she’s not a speed reader, she just read books that were really, really easy for her. And, I totally endorsed it. In fact, I want you to try it with your kids as well. Reading too easy books is a great strategy to get your […]

Determining Importance in Nonfiction Text

With Common Core’s emphasis of reading nonfiction text, the comprehension strategy of determining importance is absolutely essential for readers. Determining importance means that the reader can distinguish the important information from text so they can decipher the main ideas and key details if reading expository (nonfiction) texts and the gist of the story when reading narrative (fiction) texts. This strategy needs […]

Problems with Reading, When To Worry

Sometimes our children experience problems with reading because there is a bigger learning or vision issue. Here are the red flags and signs to watch for to decide if you need further evaluation, and a bit about my own story. Denial Doesn’t Work (Darn It!) When JJ had her first seizure at age 3, the […]