The ability to comprehend and remember reading material is extremely important for students to be successful. Improving reading comprehension can help a reader connect better with the information given on a page and apply to his existing knowledge.

Here are some useful tools to improve student’s reading comprehension skills:

• Pre-Reading Tasks: Before beginning to read the text, students must be asked to take a brief review of what the topic discusses. They must be encouraged to recollect as much information as they can about it along with any related topics that they may have read in the past. Reading comprehension is closely associated with prior knowledge. As students are likely to frame a reference for the content that they are about to read it is useful to remember previous reads. You should make notes of the information that they are able to gather.
• Learn New Vocabulary Words: As they go about reading the passage, make a list of unfamiliar or complex words. Allow them to refer to the dictionary to search for meanings of all these words. Writing down the definitions will also make them memorize better than by typing or simply reading.  
• Set A Purpose For Reading: Students must also have a clear idea about the actual purpose of reading the text. For this, they need to read the questions given at the end of the passage. It will allow them to focus on the answers of those questions as they read.
• Generate Questions: By asking questions relevant to the text, students tend to have a better understanding of the entire concept. Generate questions that require them to combine different segments of the passage in order to frame the answer. For instance, students can be asked what the main idea of the passage is, who the key characters are, what the theme is and what is likely to occur next.
• Story Retelling: Reading comprehension can also be improved by asking students to recite a rough draft of the story to partners. Through this, they can frame the passage in their own words and relate them to their knowledge. Restating also helps to improve their recall memory of the information.

For more tips on how to improve reading comprehension, you can contact See-N-Read Reading Tools at (630) 236 – 5592.