Help with reading comprehension

[Anonymous]

My 5th grade 11 year old DD loves to read. She reads all the time on her own. But, her reading comprehension skills are not great and she is starting to see her grades/test results in this area suffer. What’s the best way to help with this. Teacher has recommended reading (and then discussing non-fiction) with her. Any good non-fiction recommendations? DD says she doesn’t like nonfiction, so I’m not sure how much she’ll go along with that. I have suggested to her that we read the same fiction book and then discuss - any tips for probing her comprehension? She also needs to work on her writing, so I was going to have her write essays or something. Any other ideas? Since she loves to read so much, I don’t want to make this unpleasant for her, but she does need some practice in slowing down and absorbing a text. She also needs to improve her grammar and spelling. I know these are different skills, but if we can address those areas through a unified activity, that would be great.

[Anonymous]

If you are in MCPS, in middle school, they offer Read 180, which deals with reading comprehension. We enrolled my son in that class and sent him to Huntington Learning Center. Between the two, his skills improved enough to make it through high school and not require remedial classes before community college. We did a refresher at Huntington before the Acuplacer, which is required for admission to MC.

Caveat - everyone here hates Huntington so you are likely to hear many negatives from people who never sent their kids.