Good on phonics, low on comprehension

[Anonymous]

My 7-year old first grader has been scoring well on phonics assessments for reading, but consistently low on comprehension assessments (FCPS). At the beginning of the year, I did not worry too much as she was moving from basic BOB books over the summer to really reading, and I figured her brain is more focused on simply figuring out the word. However, now she can read fairly well enough, but comprehension scores on unir assessments come back scored low.

I know I need to talk to her teacher for more input, just crowd sourcing anyone else who has experienced anything similar. She generally does not like to read, will not voluntarily do it much. She seems easily discouraged by words she doesn't know and gets bothered and wants to stop, she only wants to read things she knows already so feels more confident. We do also read to her every night, but will not try to read farther on her own for any new/unfamiliar book though we tell her she can when we finish reading and leave the room at bedtime.

I want to tread carefully because I don't want her to hate reading and she already seems to view it as a chore though she loves hearing stories and being read to.

[Anonymous]

Do you ask questions when reading aloud to her? “Why do you think character x feels that way? “Oooh, I wonder what is going to happen now? What do you think?”

Making assumptions and predictions is very important for comprehension. Can she tell you basic things after the read aloud such as who the main character are and what the overall gist was? I would just start working on these things at home:

Main characters, settings, main problem/plot, solution to problem and how the characters changed.

[Anonymous]

Keep reading to her. Harder things that she would read herself. Talk about the characters and the plot. Comprehension is hard to teach and learn. Consistency is key. Leave the chapter books and things she could read herself for her to do later. We have also had good luck with the rhyming USBORNE early reader series. Things like "Underpants for ants".
She needs to have confidence around reading. She's afraid to fail and especially fail in front of you.

[Anonymous]

Just reading to her is not going to be enough. Probably she needs more reading practice than school is able to provide. Early reading is best done 1:1, but that is not practical to do at most schools.

At that age I would read a little to DC at bedtime and I also had DC read to me (from a book at their reading level) daily. There was no pushback; it made sense to them when we said that "we read to you and you read to us". We would gently ask questions about what they had read to us. Worth a try.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My 7-year old first grader has been scoring well on phonics assessments for reading, but consistently low on comprehension assessments (FCPS). At the beginning of the year, I did not worry too much as she was moving from basic BOB books over the summer to really reading, and I figured her brain is more focused on simply figuring out the word. However, now she can read fairly well enough, but comprehension scores on unir assessments come back scored low.

I know I need to talk to her teacher for more input, just crowd sourcing anyone else who has experienced anything similar. She generally does not like to read, will not voluntarily do it much. She seems easily discouraged by words she doesn't know and gets bothered and wants to stop, she only wants to read things she knows already so feels more confident. We do also read to her every night, but will not try to read farther on her own for any new/unfamiliar book though we tell her she can when we finish reading and leave the room at bedtime.

I want to tread carefully because I don't want her to hate reading and she already seems to view it as a chore though she loves hearing stories and being read to.

Yup! This is quite common. Scoring high on reading aloud and phonics but lacking good comprehension, and it is easy to fix.

The fix is that YOU read stories to them and you let them HEAR the story. When they are reading using phonics, their brain is busy decoding the sounds.

It is not at all bad. It is just that there are two main kinds of readers. Phonics and sight readers. Sight readers are not decoding the spelling like phonics readers. They are sort of guessing the word by listening really hard (so their comprehension becomes better) and predicting what the story might be and so what the next word might be.

We all are phonics and sight readers. And eventually all good readers become simultaneously phonics and sight readers.

So the only good and effective remedy is - you read the stories and they listen to you. Read it in an interesting way like an audio book so that they become engrossed in the story and their comprehension becomes strong.

Easy-Peasy.

[Anonymous]

My now adult DS was a 'sight reader' at that age. His friend was an excellent 'phonics reader'. My son had comprehension and not great fluency in his read-alouds, while his friend had astonishing fluency but low comprehension.

While my kid had been taught phonics at his Montessori from age 3, and he could actually do the phonics bit and read aloud. He did not have the necessary speed for him that made the story come alive for him. So, it was boring for him.

Thankfully, there was a reading specialist in his public school and she told me to do two things -

1) Continue to read aloud really interesting adventure books with more sophisticated vocabulary and word imagery (Harry Potter, Artemis Fowl, Percy Jackson etc) every night for 1 or 2 hours, so that his comprehension and language skills continued to become stronger.

2) Read some easier easy texts with larger fonts (eg - Geronimo Stilton ) and put your finger under each word while reading and showing it to him. Since he was by inclination a sight reader, I had to introduce and familiarize him with more and more words.

It actually worked extremely well. However, I read to my son every night till he was in 3rd grade. After that, his speed, fluency, comprehension and vocabulary - all improved and he became a voracious reader.

[Anonymous]

Is she able to read fluently? It sounds like she may be so focused on decoding that she is treating the individual words as isolated puzzles to solve. If that’s the case then it would make sense that she’s having comprehension problems - she’s not reading a story, just a bunch of separate words. Once she’s sounded out the words in a phrase or sentence, have her go back and put them together, then as she progresses, so that she gets something coherent.

This can be really tiring, so keep reading practices short and take turns (buddy reading) to give her a chance to take a break and enjoy the story. Talk about the story as you go along. Make sure she doesn’t guess at the words. If necessary cover up the picture until she’s read the page. If she struggles with a word and wants to quit, make her sound out the word before you let her stop. She may decide to go a little further, but if not you don’t want her ending on defeat and leaving a stumbling block for her return.

Learning to read is a major accomplishment, it’s hard for most people to learn. The good news is that since she’s learning with phonics, once she masters the skill of reading and has a little practice, she’ll be able to read anything she could understand by hearing.

[Anonymous]

I agree with the YOU read out loud to her a lot. You can worry about her reading to you over the summer to keep her decoding up to par, but I would be getting captivating chapter books out and reading them to loud to her every night. Beverly Cleary, Harry Potter, Stuart Little, The Little Princess/Secret Garden are older books with a great vocabulary set that should challenge her while she listens.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I agree with the YOU read out loud to her a lot. You can worry about her reading to you over the summer to keep her decoding up to par, but I would be getting captivating chapter books out and reading them to loud to her every night. Beverly Cleary, Harry Potter, Stuart Little, The Little Princess/Secret Garden are older books with a great vocabulary set that should challenge her while she listens.

Some of those books are really boring to a lot of kids. I have two who don’t like reading. It’s important to find books that they enjoy and not random well known books. One of mine loves comedy so I looked for funny books. The other one liked the arts so I got those type of books.

She doesn’t need to be challenged. She needs to feel more comfortable reading.