Comprehension remediation

Are you a teacher, tutor, or parent worried about a child's reading comprehension?

I put together this video-chat because I wanted to be crystal clear on the FIRST STEPS when working on comprehension with a reader. No, I am not talking about activating background knowledge, pre-reading, summarizing, visualization, etc. etc.

What I share with you is backed by science and was reiterated by a research review done by the United States' Child Development and Behavior Branch 20 years ago. Unfortunately, more often than not, it's still not being practiced and our teachers still aren't being taught how important these findings and this evidence-based practice truly is for our kids' reading success.

My mission is to take all the time and $$$ I've put into education/training, hundreds and hundreds of hours in the classroom and clinical, insane amounts of reading and research, and POUR it into each of YOU! Because what hit me a few years ago is that a classroom teacher, or a parent in the thick of it, can not spend thousands of dollars and hours getting the right answers. But you need them. You need to back what you're doing by science for the sake of the child sitting across from you.

So, let's dig in. If you are jumping into all the comprehension strategies that you've been taught, did you FIRST make sure the reader has grade level reading vocabulary, has appropriate reading fluency, has mastered phonics and phonemic awareness? Assuming they have these skills gets you a first class ticket into your own head-banging train, and it will deflate the child and their self-esteem quicker than a whoopee cushion.

I forgot to add this piece of advice into my video: if you have checked on the other components to reading, and reading comprehension is still your main concern, then pay attention to how the child does with following multi-step verbal directions. If this is also causing difficulty, guide the child toward a speech therapist. As an SLP (speech-language pathologist), we have training and evaluations available to us that can test for and narrow down weaknesses in receptive language so those can be remediated, as needed. A basic or comprehensive academic evaluation could also be appropriate because a language evaluation should be included in these evaluations.