reading Comprehension Ideas

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I am working on reading level and comprehension
My child is way behind reading
Reading level went up a little when I made my 9 year old read chapter books to me.
I give rewards, free apps, staying late on Friday night, books, mini parties.
I want to know if anyone has any other ideas on reading and vocabulary.
My typical child great on reading but better at home that school so is working out of a comprehension workbook for a prize.


ipad apps bore child and child guesses comprehension problems. I could reward my kid for doing them which I might do.

software
Reading Blaster seems interesting but its xp and old don't know if it would work on my laptop
Had ticket to read. It was almost a fit but not quite. Has anyone tried it.

Do they have a favorite movie - preferably a cartoon that you have on DVD? Turn off the sound and turn on the subtitles.

If they like anime get movies in japanese and turn on the english subtitles.

Books on tape are another option.

I hope this helps.

My son's reading comprehension at that age went up significantly if he was allowed to chew gum while reading. That may sound strange, but my sister who is an OT says there is a real reason for it. It's a sensory processing issue. He went from only remembering tangential parts of what he read, like a cat crossing the road when it had nothing to do with the plot or theme, to being able to almost tell me word for word what he read.

At 12, he will still sometimes turn the voiceover function on when using his kindle. He still reads, but it helps him track the lines properly. He has visual processing issues that make his eyes either skip lines or read the same line twice, but for some reason, the voiceover helps him.

I guess what I am saying is there may be underlying reasons that your kid is having difficulty. Gum and the voiceover feature (I forget what it's really called) were two relatively easy fixes for my son...may or may not be relevant for your child.

Good luck!

We are struggling with reading comprehension too. My son is great at decoding, but often misses things in the text the same way that he will miss social cues. Like, if asked: "Why do you think the character..." type questions, he will often misinterpret the character's intention. Like say they were mad instead of sad, etc. He can retell a story o.k., but is not great at deriving meaning unless it is really obvious. One thing I do is make a point of reading together with him and ask him questions as we go along. Also, my neighbor (who is an awesome teacher) says that it is really important to still read to your children- even if they are very fluent readers. He says reading to your children really boosts reading comprehension.

Dmarcotte
What a great idea

Fitzi
My child will skip words trying to speed up reading. There is mispronunciation even if my child gets the meaning. I used to use voice over software to help me edit text.


InThisTogether
My child loves to chew gum
My child has an underlying reason there is autism ans an undiagnosed LD. Could be intellectual disability could be something else, but I feel my child is much brighter than test scores. I love coming up with ideas to help my children.

This is more or less how people read. People sort of recognise the words by seeing the general shape (first and last letters), not by reading the entire word, and people also skip and guess words. They can see it when they use cameras on the eyes of people who are reading, that they can see where on the screen they look.

How about comic books? That way your child already gets half of what is happening because of the pictures, so it might be easier to figure out what is in the text balloons? Might be more enjoyable for a child too. I think I liked Asterix and Obelix at that age, and Suske en Wiske (Spike and Suzy in Britain, or Willy and Wanda in the US).

And about mispronunciation: that is one of the hardest things in English also for people who learn it as a second language. English spelling and pronunciation are very far apart. You cannot know from the letters how to pronounce a word. Most languages have more phonetic spelling. Through, trough, though and tough, makes no sense to me. You can only read those words aloud of you already know how they sound. They're, their and there are also hard for foreigners (and for native speakers as well). My native language is Dutch and this was one of the hardest parts of learning English.

We have done comic books we love the bad kitty series. We also have a big stack of educational comics. I used comic books this year to pull my child out of the world of just picture books.
I love picture books. I used to write them, but board books were read to avoid harder reading including harder picture books.
The issue with comics at this point my kid will just look at the pictures and guess the text. I pick a lot of books now with one or two full page illustrations.
With ebooks words will be skipped to play games.
I had pronunciation problems as well as a child.
Child hates long chapters and long books. I have been getting child to read longer books by saying they were worth more for prizes.
Child will get upset at long chapters and longer books.
I have been keeping books longer or harder by saying just read a chapter go back later. I try to encourage finishing chapters due to attention problems.
My kid will sometimes read more if the book is short or interesting.

Some people have found success with http://www.tickettoread.com/

Reading needs to start early. For children on the spectrum, I no longer consider 18 months as early. I have been surprised to see a boy spelling a 9-letter word, being under 2 years of age. These kids are visual, we have to remember that. Yes, we are not talking about years of age, but months of age! (This is not for parents to show off, but simply because the brains of these children develop best through visual activities. Visual skills will help their speech and social skills. You turn the lives of these children upside down, and they will become underdeveloped/low-functioning. We need to develop them through their natural channel. They are special. If you raise them in a neurotypical way, you will end up destroying their lives.)

Two other things that have helped for children around the age of your child (9):
(1) Get highlighter pens of two different colors. Ask your child to alternate highlighting every a few words (the boundaries DON'T need to be grammatical units.) This will help them to slow down and avoid skipping words. This also helps them to discern grammatical units by themselves.
(2) Get those notebooks with space for drawings. Ask your child to "translate" sentences into pictures. And re-tell the story from pictures. Then read again. Do this for every paragraph or few paragraphs.

We started early
with starfal, flash cards and making my own ebooks on the computer about my kids
The ebooks were helpful video games were discovered

We have used ticket to read with http://www.tickettoread.com/
I have been thinking of getting it again
Last time we didn't have a success with because my child coned the code out of younger sibling. sibling is now at a higher reading level than age so that might not be an issue.
My child will still be upset that there will be no access to kindergarten section.
My child Likes easy stuff. I try to explain the more we work at something the easier it gets.
Ticket to read still might be a good option.

My personal experience is that I cannot read books without doodling. My wife has read the entire Harry Potter collection. Every time I picked up Harry Potter, I was probably able to do one page or two.

My point is: it's not just input, but output also matters. I'd be bored if I can't doodle as I read along a story. Nowadays I read mostly technical articles, but I still doodle along as I read. It's just natural to me. I can't read without taking notes or making picture representation of my understanding. Does your son produce any visual output as he reads?

(I guess because I did not read early on as a child, I now need to rely on an external manual-visual feedback loop to supplement/reinforce my imagination. Otherwise I get bored.)

regards,

eikonabridge
I love doodling and drawing my typical child would rather doodle than do work.
My spectrum child draws once in a while when really motivated.

PS thank you for all these ideas
I am going to start doing some of them

First, I'll second Dmarcotte's idea - you might start by gradually reducing the sound, so your child has a point of reference (we did this by accident, but it helped a lot.)

If your child is skipping words, is it possible there is an eye tracking issue? Have you found your child reading the same line more than once, or skipping a line? Have you had eye tracking tested (it's one of the tests they do for dyslexia, I think.)

Have you tried the ADHD method of putting a blank piece of paper under the line they are reading?

momsparky
I did the paper thing at start and reduced it over a couple of weeks.
I remembered a school teacher suggesting that for me as a child.
It didn't really work for me because I had no real problem with word skipping, but realized it could help my kid.
I think my child skips words to get done faster because reading chapter books is harder than board books and easier readers.

Have you tried getting you child to role play or act out parts of the story?

My son has dysgraphia, so we do a lot of oral reports. I have him act out the story or parts of it before I ask him to summarize and follow it up with questions. The acting role playing makes it more interesting and I believe it helps with comprehension. I am also hoping it will help long term with ToM.

Is there an actual benefit to him for skipping words? Do you make him go read it again if he has skipped so many words that he doesn't understand? The reason I say this is that we have often applied incorrect assumptions to the things our son does - it's easy to do when you have a highly intelligent child who for some reason just won't do something. Most often we have found that there was a real problem that DS didn't understand or couldn't articulate.

If the page thing keeps him from skipping words, I would use it and not phase it out, just maybe get something easier to manage like an index card. Skipping words can be a valuable tool for you: it seems to be your barometer for whether or not an intervention works if he stops doing it in certain circumstances.

Another thing we did with DS was transition him to chapter books slowly - the How To Train Your Dragon and the Wimpy Kid series are a good transition between picture books and chapter books. He also loves Manga Shakespeare - very complex language, but the pictures make it fun for him.

DS was willing to read adult chapter books on his special interests - we allowed him to read the novelizations of movies we wouldn't allow him to see - it let him blend in socially, plus he was really motivated. Also, nonfiction - something that many Aspies are more motivated to read than stories.