In this post, I share 6 tips for how to improve reading comprehension in your K–2 classroom. I offer details about my nonfiction decodable books with comprehension questions and leave you with FREE nonfiction decodable books that include explicit teacher lesson plans and comprehension questions for students!
We know that phonics instruction is essential. But phonics alone doesn’t make a skilled reader because reading is about more than just decoding.
Reading is also about making meaning.
That’s where comprehension instruction comes in. We must intentionally support students in developing strong comprehension skills alongside their word reading skills.
Today I’m eager to share 6 tips to help you improve reading comprehension in your K-2 classroom. I’ll share details about my nonfiction decodable books with comprehension questions and leave you with 3 FREE nonfiction decodable books that include explicit teacher lesson plans and comprehension questions for students!
Tips For How to Improve Reading Comprehension
1. Provide Direct, Explicit Instruction in Comprehension
Comprehension doesn’t happen by accident. Like all literacy skills, it’s built through clear, intentional instruction. As teachers, we must break down the skills students need to make meaning of what they read.
Rather than relying on abstract strategies like “make a connection” or “ask a question,” focus on teaching concrete skills such as:
- Understanding key vocabulary
- Identifying main ideas and details
- Sequencing events
- Making inferences based on evidence in the text
- Recalling facts from nonfiction passages
2. Build Background Knowledge
Sometimes, the biggest barrier to comprehension isn’t decoding. Instead, it’s understanding the context. Help students make sense of what they’re reading by introducing new vocabulary, unfamiliar settings, or relevant facts that will support their comprehension. A short discussion before reading a text can go a long way in helping students make meaning.
3. Use Decodable Texts that Match Students’ Instructional Level
If a student is spending all their energy sounding out words, they won’t have enough mental energy left to focus on comprehension. That’s why it’s important to ensure our beginning readers start with decodable texts. Decodable readers are texts that are controlled based on the phonics skills you have taught your students up to that point in your scope and sequence. There is often a heavy focus on the target phonics skills for a specific week of instruction. For example, if you are teaching long a spelled ai and ay, your students might read a passage called Lunch Time.
The majority of the words in a decodable text can be sounded out based on the sound-spelling relationships students have been taught. Decodable texts also include some high-frequency words students have learned.
4. Encourage Rereading
Research shows that repeated exposure to the same text helps students become more efficient, fluent, and engaged readers. Rereading helps with fluency, but it also allows students to deepen their understanding. Once students decode words more automatically, they can shift their mental energy towards understanding the text.
Want to learn more about Repeated Reading? Check out this blog post where I offer information on the benefits of Repeated Readings and offer a 5-step routine for repeated reading.
5. Provide Time to Talk
Give students regular opportunities to discuss what they’ve read. This can be done either with you or with their classmates. Talking about the text helps solidify understanding and strengthens memory.
6. Give Students to Opportunities to Write about Their Reading
Discussion is great but writing forced students to take their comprehension even deeper. When students write about what they’ve read, they must process, reflect, and solidify their understanding.
Build Reading Comprehension Using Non-Fiction Decodable Books
Today I am excited to share details about my SoR-aligned Non-Fiction Decodable Books. These decodable texts have everything you need to support word reading and improve reading comprehension, all in one resource!
Each nonfiction book is a phonics-based controlled text that contains target phonics skill words, previously taught phonics skill words, irregular high-frequency words, and select high-interest story words. The texts are short and engaging. They are designed to be read and reread which we know builds comprehension.
Every book includes explicit lesson plans, as well as activities to use before, during, and after reading to strengthen students’ phonics skills and help deepen their comprehension.
We know that building background knowledge is essential for helping students comprehend. Students always have lots of questions about non-fiction topics! Knowing this, we included a cheat sheet of information on each topic, because we don’t expect you to have all the answers to their questions about all these different topics!
You’ll also get 200+ story word cards with color photographs to build your students’ background knowledge before reading the text. These components of the resource help ensure that before students begin to read, they’ve built much of the context they need to comprehend what’s on the page.
To help you differentiate and meet the needs of all of your students, the resource includes audio recordings for each passage. This allows students to listen to the story read aloud when they are working independently and build their listening comprehension and understanding of the text.
Finally, we know writing requires our students to take their comprehension even deeper, so every text in our nonfiction decodable series includes written comprehension questions that prompt students to retell what they have read.
Are you ready to begin using non-fiction decodable texts in your classroom? To help get you started, I’m happy to share these FREE nonfiction decodable books. This freebie includes 3 sample books with color photographs, as well as explicit lesson plans for each passage and activities for before, during, and after reading to strengthen phonics skills and reading comprehension!
I hope the information and resources I’ve shared today help you feel bring more effective comprehension instruction to your classroom. When we give students the tools they need to make meaning of what they read we are setting them up to become confident, skilled readers for life!
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