Reading Comprehension vs. Reading Fluency
Have you ever gotten a report card for one of your children that said in the comments, “He/She needs to work on comprehension.” In other words, they don’t know what they are reading. What exactly does that mean? Here are some, but not all, of the possibilities:
- Your child has a bad memory.
- Your child is distracted and doesn’t pay attention in class.
- Your child fidgets constantly and is driving the teacher insane.
- Your child doesn’t understand the textbook he/she is reading; therefore, they can’t answer any of the questions at the end of the chapter.
- Their tests scores show they don’t study for their tests.
All of these possibilities might be true, but in my experience of over 40 years in
education, not likely. It is more likely that your child might partially fit into one or more of the categories listed above, but there is an underlying problem that needs to be addressed first. How is their reading fluency. In other words, how well do they read? Do they correctly read all of the little words in the sentence? If they change on to in, back to black, house to horse, … I’m sure you get the picture. They could read an entire page in their book, and be clueless about what they read.
Here's an example:
When my daughter was in 6th Grade, she misread the name Naomi on one of her tests. It was a test on personal pronouns: she, her, etc. They had to fill in the blanks with the correct pronoun referring to Naomi. She couldn’t read the word Naomi at that time and filled all of the blanks with the correct pronoun for a he instead of a she. An aide corrected the test and of course she missed every question. Her teacher later apologized to me. She would have caught the problem and let my daughter know Naomi was a she so the right pronouns would have been used.
It wasn’t that my daughter didn’t know how to use the correct pronouns, she just misinterpreted what she read. She’s dyslexic, and in sixth grade, reading was still hard for her.
Comprehension was never the issue; it was fluency.
So, you might ask, “What is an easy way to figure out if your child’s struggles are related to fluency and not really comprehension?”
This is my simple test: Have your child read a passage from a textbook or storybook if they are younger. When they finish have them answer the questions at the end of the passage in the textbook, or makeup your own questions for a storybook. The questions should be objective, only one correct answer. If they have trouble answering the questions or miss most of them, then you should read the passage to them. Then have them try to answer the questions again.
If fluency is the real problem, like it was with my daughter and just about all the children I tutored later on, they will know the answers without any issues. They just struggled to read correctly because they were dyslexic, and mixing up the little words is a sign of dyslexia.
Side Note:
True and False Tests are NOT their friend, because if they misread one word, they can miss the simplest of questions.
Multiple Choice are
Best for a Dyslexic.
