Reading comprehension

[Twinklestar1981]

Hi there. Just looking for a bit of advice . My dd is in year 2 and we had parents evening last week . I was told despite my dd being on a high level reading band her comprehension has declined and they have recently been having exercises on comprehension and she scored very badly ( sats practice tests I expect ) ..
Just wondering how I can help her improve ? She can read a page and just forget everything she has read

Work on questioning throughout the book, so as shes reading ask her questions about each pag e and encourage her to.ask you questions too to make it more fun so she's testing you.

Thank you . I will try this . Just strange that comprehension has declined . Do you think this can be due to tiredness as I know more is expected of them now as is sats year...,

I was like this as a child especially if I was reading aloud or if I was under pressure to read (eg. Timed or had to read at a time I wasn't in the mood).

Thanks. The teacher did say sometimes she can recall what has been read and sometimes not. It wasn't mentioned to be before, I guess it's become apparent as sats coming up and they are clearly getting the kids to practice. Teacher said they were surprised how poor she she did as they didn't expect it.. Just a bit worried something else is going on...

Is she a fluent reader when she reads out loud? reading out loud makes the silent sound in your head seem clearer, helps you to remember.
Reading out loud practices putting words in the right order in a sentence.
It's hard work for them, I had to pay my 3 boys (12,10,6) but I believe it
improved their grades (from Es - Bs GCSE)

To begin with give her the question before she reads the text. This gives her a focus for her reading. Get her to read the passage and then put her finger on the evidence to prove her answer.
Start with simple retrieval questions where the answer is in one paragraph. Then build up to her needing to read more than one paragraph to find the answer.
From there begin to teach her to read between the lines. To infer from the text. E.g find the words that tell me how x is feeling and help her to recognise that the character was crying and so must have been sad/upsetting.

Once she has mastered this move onto letting her read and then giving the questions, still getting her to put her finger on the evidence for the answer.

Giving lots of practice in reading and answering sats style questions will be useful.

twicklestar what do u think?

Thank you all for all your very helpful responses. I have made a note of everything.
Sevens - I think for the reading comprehension practice tests they have to read in their head so maybe that's quite tricky...
Winky - I will definitely try the questioning each page. She is a fluent reading ( white band)

No idea about colour banding, but she may be a fluent decoder rather than reader. She has probably moved on to more difficult texts because she can decode what the words say, but her understanding of what they mean is not at the same level.
Try giving her easier things to read and ask her lots of questions to check how much she is understanding.

All pizza - thank you. I think I will do that, they do seem quite hard . She is asking the meaning of lots of words so we don't get very far some nights 😊

I find it helpful to encourage students to make a movie in their head as they read. Some of us do that automatically but others need to be thought. So instead of just reading on she needs to practice picturing it in her head. Then when someone asks her a question she can rewind the movie to that part.
Otherwise students pick up on irrelevant details and miss the major points.

Perhaps you should work with her on decoding. What are her reading skills like? Teach her to basically read between the lines. In other words you are teaching her inference. For example you ask her to circle all the words that indicate that the character is terrified or excited about something.
After this is mastered you could move on to other reading skills such as reading and summarising her answer. Lots of questions on reading and responding to questions carefully will help. Use questions to check her understanding.
Have her learning style checked too. It’s conceivable that she might be a auditory rather than a visual learner.

Can you try asking questions before you actually do the reading? So for example you look at the book see some pictures, try to guess what the story is about. Then read the story to see if you're right.

If she’s struggling to recall what has happened in the story she just needs an easier book. It’s pretty common and not something to be overly concerned about. Maybe alternate between different levels of books,she will soon improve. Don’t battle on with the white books if she is not retaining what she reads. Her confidence will quickly build and with this her skills in comprehension. Also read to her and discuss the text as you go ‘So how do you think Ann feels?’ ‘What makes you think that?’ Etc.

Comprehension is really about recall it's about understanding. She may not recall what she has read after reading through something once but she needs to be taught to look back over the text to find the answers to questions. She needs to learn to skim and scan a small piece of text for particular things. She also needs to learn about the different question types: retrieval, prediction, inference sequencing etc.