Comprehension for Beginning Readers

Teaching students to comprehend during/after reading doesn't always have to be a quiz or written responses. The idea of comprehension is simply to process what they are reading and understand it. Even the earliest of readers can start to show comprehension skills, even it's just with drawings. The importance of teaching comprehension is so students understand what they just read, and they aren't just reading word without putting meaning behind them. 

Even at the beginning of Kindergarten, we start working on comprehension skills. For my higher academic students, we use this Decode & Draw worksheet bundle which have students read the simple word and then draw a picture to match. My goal is to see if students are able to know what that word means they just read. These worksheets are differentiated with 2 versions: words or simple sentences. 

These Cut & Comprehend worksheets are similar and differentiated as well, but students have to cut & paste the words to match the picture.  I told the students that if they couldn't read the word, then they could look at the beginning sound to give them a clue. I made both of these bundles with 2 versions for every month of the year. I can throw these in centers and students will know what to do with this activity all year long! 

Really Good Stuff sells these beach balls that are a fun way to work on comprehension after a read aloud. Throw the ball to a student, have them pick a question and respond to the answer. It's a fun way to engage students, as well as see who was not only listening to your read aloud, but also was processing what you were reading.

Once we start getting our book baskets and attempting to do picture walks and read words, I use these Interactive Reading Responses. Since not all students are on the same level, I can differentiate the pages each students gets and whether they draw or write out their answers. I worked with this student 1 on 1 to discuss the book "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom". He understood the idea of sequencing, but isn't quite ready to write sentences or words yet. I told him he could illustrate what happened in the book and tell me about it when he was finished. Can you tell the letters are falling out of the bent tree...so cute!

The story starter pages in this bundle come with dotted lines and regular lines, depending on what your students need. In the past at my listening center, students would just write and draw about their favorite part. These responses get the students to think more about the book and find ways to connect to what they read. 

 

Here are a few more examples of the interactive pages. Having these fun response sheets available will make your students pay more attention to these skills during their story.

There are over over 20 pages of reading responses to help your students work on comprehending what they read. You can find this bundle in my TPT store here.