v Resources to Aid your Child with Reading Comprehension

Learning to read requires several circuitous cognitive processes, which is why and so many children have difficulty with it.  For many students with developmental delays, comprehension is the biggest roadblock on the path to reading success.

Reading comprehension is not the same as sight reading.  Sight reading involves skills in decoding, phonics and phonemic sensation, which may be strengths for students with some disabilities, such as autism.  Reading comprehension involves a prepare of skills including visualization, metacognition (divers as "thinking near thinking"), drawing inferences and weaving together groundwork information with personal feel.

Some teachers withal believe that comprehension is an intuitive process that cannot be taught, merely absorbed.  But like many things in the earth of disabilities, that which is formidable is not necessarily insurmountable.

My Personal Experience

My son excels at decoding, whether it'south in phonics, math, chemical science or vocabulary in a foreign language.  He was an early reader, although his comprehension of language has always been significantly delayed. His teachers reported that he could read anything placed in front of him, only did not seem to understand it. These traits are very common in students with autism.   But for many years those same teachers couldn't find a way to teach him how to empathize.

After much trial and error, we finally went dorsum to square one and taught comprehension from the bottom upward, because my son was still missing the most bones elements of comprehension.  We were able to notice dissimilar types of materials to support this strategy and discovered that my son was extremely eager to acquire.  With many years of do and written report, he is at present in a general education English class, and he just finished reading Shakespeare'south Romeo and Juliet.  Nosotros even so piece of work on comprehension every mean solar day.

Here are v comprehension resources that take been most useful to my son.

1. 7 Keys to Comprehension by Susan Zimmermann

7 Keys To Comprehension

Recommended by my son's second class teacher, Zimmermann's writing is easy to read and based on years of research.  The author uses clear examples throughout the book, and she recommends children's books to read at domicile to back up early on literacy.  The vii keys of reading comprehension are:

  1. Sensory images
    visualizing what the words mean and connecting the words to real-life sights, sounds, smells, tastes and textures.
  2. Background knowledge
    Identifying what the child already knows on a topic, and using that knowledge to sympathize the story amend.
  3. Questioning Request and answering why, what, where, who and how.
  4. Drawing inferences
    Arriving at conclusions based on what is not directly stated.
  5. Determining importance
    Understanding the divergence between incidental information and significant plot points.
  6. Synthesizing
    Putting together several pieces to empathise the author'south vision.
  7. Prepare-up strategies

I remember thinking that I would be thrilled if my son could grasp fifty-fifty one of these concepts. There is no quick style through the process of comprehension, just this book does pave the way for the long journey.

2. Autism and Reading Comprehension by Joseph Porter

Autism and Reading Comprehension by Joseph Porter

Autism and Reading Comprehension is a complete reading comprehension curriculum for students with meaning delays in expressive and receptive linguistic communication.  My son began with the very outset lesson when he was in fourth grade and worked through the entire book for i year. The primary complaint near the curriculum is that information technology starts at a very low cognitive level.  Nonetheless, the author explains in the introduction why this is admittedly necessary: ideally, comprehension lessons should start at a level somewhat beneath the pupil'due south in order to develop a piece of work pattern and sense of competence.

The outset few lessons follow a design similar to this: "Color the cat bluish. What color is the cat?"  My son actually enjoyed the lessons and looked frontwards to them.  As the lessons slowly increased in complexity, my son was able to internalize the reading skills and utilise them to other reading textile.  The curriculum is designed to build upon the strengths inherent in autism, such as a preference for patterns and routine, to develop a new and wonderful skill.

3. Raz-Kids.com

Raz-Kids

Once my son had mastered some basic comprehension strategies, his instructor enrolled him at www.raz-kids.com to apply those strategies independently.  On the website, my son selected a volume at his reading level, read the volume while listening to it, recorded his own voice reading the book aloud, listened to his recording while reading the volume once more, and then answered a set up of comprehension questions.

By following this procedure, he would read all the books on one level before moving up to the next level of difficulty.  His instructor received regular progress reports showing how many books he had read on each level and his accurateness with the comprehension questions.  While my son fabricated rapid progress in this system, I also noticed behavior changes at home: he was able to notice details better and he liked the idea of working toward a goal.

A home subscription to the Raz-Kids website costs nigh $100 per twelvemonth, and free samples and gratuitous trial are also available.

4. SuperTeacherWorksheets.com

Super Teacher Worksheets

When he was in center school, my son realized that he truly enjoys learning – he just needed teachers who made things less confusing for him.  The format of the lessons at world wide web.SuperTeacherWorksheets.com did just that.  My son was able to explore and understand chapter books such as Tales of a Fourth Class Cipher, Mr. Popper's Penguins and Stone Play tricks, because they were broken downwardly into small sections with vocabulary and comprehension questions for each section.

He started off with much shorter reading passages on the website and worked his way upward to the chapter books past applying the same comprehension strategies every day, which had become routine for him.  A subscription to Super Teacher Worksheets costs $twenty per year, but some of the worksheets are available as complimentary samples.

5. Bookshare.org

Bookshare

Bookshare is an accessible online library for people with disabilities that is free to students in the Us. The books may be read on a device such as a phone or tablet, or on a figurer or other hardware.  Readers may listen to a volume while reading the text, and the text tin be highlighted to help readers follow along better.  The text can be optimized for low vision with larger font and high dissimilarity, or it may be read with digital Braille.

My son was registered at Bookshare by his special education teacher, and he has full access to the library from dwelling.  Because of all of these interventions, my son has been blest with a love of reading and learning – and I hope information technology stays with him ever.