10 Strategies to Boost Reading Comprehension

"They don't understand what they are reading!" laments the teacher.

"This book is too hard," complains a student, "I'm confused!"

Statements like these are commonly heard in grades 7-12, and they highlight a reading comprehension problem that will connect to a student's academic success. Such reading comprehension challenges are not limited to low-level readers. There are several reasons even the best reader in class may have problems understanding readings assigned by a teacher. Keep reading for strategies to boost reading comprehension for your students or children.

A primary reason for confusion is often course textbooks, each chapter packed with as much information as possible for middle and high schoolers. This density of information may justify the cost of textbooks, but this density may be at the expense of student reading comprehension.

Additionally, the high-level, content-specific vocabulary (science, social studies, etc.) in textbooks results in an increase in a textbook's complexity. A textbook's organization with sub-headings, bolded terms, definitions, charts, graphs coupled with sentence structure also increase complexity. Most textbooks are rated using a Lexile range, a measure of a text's vocabulary and sentences. The average Lexile level of textbooks, 1070L-1220L, does not consider the more wide range of student reading Lexile levels ranging from third grade (415L to 760L) to 12th grade (1130L to 1440L).

The same can be said for the wide range of reading for students in English classes, contributing to low reading comprehension. Students are assigned reading from the literary canon including works by Shakespeare, Hawthorne, and Steinbeck. Students read literature that differs in format (drama, epic, essay, etc.). Students read literature that differs in writing style, from 17th Century drama to the Modern American novella.

This difference between student reading levels and text complexity suggests increased attention should be given to teaching and modeling reading comprehension strategies in all content areas. Some students may not have the background knowledge or maturity to understand material written for an older audience. In addition, it is not unusual to have a student with a high Lexile readability measure encounter problems with reading comprehension because of his or her lack of background or prior knowledge, even with a low Lexile text.

Many students struggle trying to determine key ideas from the details; other students have a hard time understanding the purpose of paragraphs or chapters in textbooks. Helping students increase their reading comprehension can be a key to educational success or failure. There is always room for improving comprehension, no matter how skilled a reader a student may be.

The importance of reading comprehension cannot be understated. Reading comprehension is one of five elements identified as central to the instruction of reading according to the National Reading Panel. Reading comprehension, the report noted, is the result of many mental activities by a reader in order to understand the meaning communicated by a text. These strategies for reading comprehension improvement include:

Predicting the meaning of a text;
Determining the purpose of a text;
Activation of prior knowledge in order to...
Connect prior experiences to the text;
Identify word and sentence meanings in order to decode text;
Summarize text in order to create new meanings;
Visualize the characters, settings, situations in text;
Question the text;
Decide what is not understood in text;
Use strategies to improve understanding of text;
Reflect on the meaning of text;
Apply understanding of the text as needed.

Reading comprehension is thought to be an interactive, strategic, and adaptable process for individual readers.

Here are 10 effective tips and strategies for reading comprehension that teachers can share with students. These are strategies for all students. If the students have dyslexia or other special learning requirements, they may need additional strategies.

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Generate Questions

A good strategy to teach all readers is to pause and generate questions about reading material instead of rushing through a passage or chapter. These can be questions about what has happened or what they think might happen in the future. Doing this can help them focus on the main ideas and increase the student's engagement with the reading material.

After reading, students can go back and write questions that could be included in a quiz or test on the material, requiring them to look at the information in a different manner. By asking questions in this way, students can help the teacher correct misconceptions. This method also provides immediate feedback.

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Read Aloud and Monitor

While some might think of a teacher reading aloud in a secondary classroom as an elementary practice, there is evidence that reading aloud also benefits middle and high school students. Most importantly, by reading aloud teachers can model good reading behavior.

Reading aloud to students should also include stops to check for understanding. Teachers can demonstrate their own think-aloud or interactive elements and focus intentionally on the meaning “within the text,” “about the text,” and “beyond the text” (Fountas & Pinnell, 2006). These interactive elements can push students for deeper thought around a big idea. Discussions after reading aloud can support conversations in class that help students make critical connections.

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Promote Cooperative Talk

Having students stop periodically to turn and talk in order to discuss what has just been read can reveal any issues with reading comprehension. Listening to students can inform instruction and help a teacher to can reinforce what is being taught.

This is a useful strategy that can be used after a read-aloud when all students have a shared experience in listening to text.

This kind of cooperative learning, where students learn reading strategies reciprocally, is one of the most powerful instructional tools.

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Attention to Text Structure

An excellent strategy that soon becomes second nature is to have struggling students read through all the headings and subheadings in any chapter that they have been assigned. They can also look at the pictures and any graphs or charts to gain an overview of what they will be learning as they read each chapter.

The same attention to text structure can be applied in reading literary works that use a story structure. Students can use the elements in a story's structure (setting, character, plot, etc.) as a means of helping them recall story content.

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Take Notes or Annotate Texts

Students should read with paper and pen in hand to jot down text they predict or understand, questions, or a vocabulary list of highlighted words in the chapter along with any unfamiliar terms they need to define. Taking notes is helpful in preparing students for class discussions.

Annotations in a text, writing in the margins, or highlighting are powerful ways to record understanding. This strategy for reading comprehension is ideal for handouts.

Using sticky notes can allow students to record information from a text without damaging the text. Sticky notes can also be removed and organized later for responses to a text.

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Use Context Clues

Students need to use the hints that an author provides in a text, looking at context clues, a word or phrase directly before or after a word they may not know.

Context clues may be in the form of:

Roots and affixes: origin of the word;
Contrast: recognizing how a word is compared or contrasted with another word in the sentence;
Logic: considering the rest of the sentence to understand an unknown word;
Definition: using a provided explanation that follows the word;
Example or Illustration: literal or visual representation of the word;
Grammar: determining how the word functions in a sentence to better understand its meaning.

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Use Graphic Organizers

Some students find that graphic organizers like webs and concept maps can greatly enhance reading comprehension. These allow students to identify areas of focus and main ideas in a reading. By filling in this information, students can deepen their understanding of the author's meaning.

Teachers should allow 7th- through 12th-grade students to decide which graphic organizer would be most helpful to them in understanding a text. Giving students the opportunity to generate representations of the material is part of the reading comprehension process.

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Practice PQ4R

This consists of six steps: Preview, Question, Read, Reflect, Recite, and Review.

Preview: Students scan the material to get an overview. The question means that students should ask themselves questions as they read.

The four R's have students read the material, reflect on what has just been read, recite major points, and return to the material and see if you can answer questions previously asked.

This strategy for reading comprehension works well when coupled with notes and annotations, and is similar to the SQ3R strategy.

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Summarization

As they read, students should be encouraged to stop periodically stop their reading and summarize what they have read. In creating a summary, students have to integrate the most important ideas and generalize from the text. They need to distill the important ideas from the unimportant or irrelevant elements.

This practice of integrating and generalizing in the creation of summaries make long passages more understandable.

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Monitor Understanding

Some students prefer to annotate while others are more comfortable summarizing, but all students must learn how to be aware of how they read. They need to know how fluently and accurate they are reading a text, understand how to determine their understanding of the materials.

Students should decide which strategies are most helpful in creating meaning, and practice those strategies for reading comprehension, adjusting when necessary.

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Kelly, Melissa. "10 Strategies to Boost Reading Comprehension." ThoughtCo, Aug. 5, 2024, thoughtco.com/reading-comprehension-strategies-7952. Kelly, Melissa. (2024, August 5). 10 Strategies to Boost Reading Comprehension. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/reading-comprehension-strategies-7952 Kelly, Melissa. "10 Strategies to Boost Reading Comprehension." ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/reading-comprehension-strategies-7952 (accessed March 21, 2025).