any ideas on comprehension exercises?

Well, for the *next* holidays, order something high-quality that will help her over several levels.

I spend a lot of time with my students simply discussing the book we are reading. We read a page or two and then talk about it. This is the most important part of comprehension, just getting involved in the story. At first many kids are a bit shy, but after a while they realize this is for fun, not punitive, and they blossom out, not only answering questions but asking many of their own. If you don’t know haow to answer a question, you and the student look it up together in the dictionary or encyclopedia — little questions right away, larger issues make a note and explore after your reading practice session. Discuss every word your child is unfamiliar with; if you draw a blank on ten vocabulary words on a page (even if you can pronounce them) then you probably are missing most of the meaning of the story. Also discuss motivations – the “why” questions — and factual — the “how” — and inference — “what does he mean by that?” “Does he really mean that?” — and foreshadowing — “what do you think will happen next?”

Any *good* children’s novel is a great source for discussion. For example, the Boxcar Children series, which starts out at a Grade 3 reading level officially but I have found Grade 2 level students can slog through it, gaining skills on the way. In the first two books we get into discussions of the Depression and poverty, changing standards in child care, inflation and what prices in books would mean today, changing vocabulary over time (stockings versus socks), health and water quality, food and nutrition, Native American settlements, archaeology, water safety, and a number of other topics.
There was a strange fashion for a while to not do such discussions, looking on them as a “waste” of time. Really, how counterproductive! Time spent learning is not wasted! First you need to know the meaning of the words you are reading. All students need to build up a base of general knowledge, and kids who are pushed at high-speed through “efficient” programs generally come out with huge gaps and in the real world sense are very poorly educated. Of course there is a hapy medium; some kids will deliberately prolong discusions and ask more and more off-the-wall questions so they don’t have to go on reading, and in that case you cut the discussion off — five minutes reading, five minutes talking, back to reading and I’ll answer/look up the rest later.

This oral discussion is the base, something necessary for all levels. Then, when you get the books or CD’s, thay help with the *written* aspect, which is the next step up. Do the oral first, and the written will make a lot more sense.

thanks victoria :D

You might want to check out StudyDog. It is a great program that you can download for free from the internet. It has several reading comprehension sections within each level. You can download each level and work on them from home - no shipping involved.

The program is very engaging for children. It is also very sequential and has excellent instruction for the lessons especially LD kids.

You can google Studydog and it will take you there.

Hope that helps.

had a look at the studydog site - looks great but its too easy for her.. she is in grade five and refuses to read anything to easy.. i need to find some exercises that are aimed at her level but masked as being ‘harder’..

thanks for the site - i have emailed the link to a few friends of mine who have children that will really benefit..

I think the most important underlying skill needed for effective comprehension is the ability to visualize or make pictures in your mind of the story you are trying to comprehend.

Lindamood bell has a very effective program for developing this specific skill called visualizing and verbalizing.

Another thing that I thought was great but you may have to do some digging to find it is a CD called Vision builder. This CD has a number of stories of varying difficulty that are read on the computer at timed speeds and then a series of questions are asked to ascertain actual comprehension. I think it helped my son on the state tests although he has a natural comprehension strength.

One other thing I would do is to get books on tape above the actual reading level of the child and have her listen to them as much as possible. While you do this encourage the visualization by asking questions like, What did you picture in your mind when you heard that passage?

Hope this helps!

You can go on Google and find Lindamood-Bell’s website. From there you can order the book for Visualizing and Verbalizing. It’s a visualizing method that can be used for any age (even many adults could probably benefit). I’ve heard it’s one of the easier programs (compared to their others) to do at home with your child.

Short answer: I’ve got a *lot* of comprehension stuff on my site (www.resourceroom.net) - click on “reading comprehension” - I think the article on “phrasing” might be useful to you.

Long answer :)
I’ve got somewhat mixed feelings about “visualizing” since I don’t do it (and neither do many, many readers who *don’t* have problems reading). I suspect that if you’re a visual thinker, and you don’t visualize what you’re reading, then you’re not processing it so you have to learn to make that connection (and an awful lot of folks with reading difficulties are visual thinkers). If you’re *not* a visual processor, making those connections can still be a good thing but I believe different things actually go on in your mind, and it certainly doesn’t address many difficulties in comprehension. Sort of like learning to decode, it enables many people to get the reading into the brain, where often they know what to do with it then… but sometimes they don’t (especially girls, who can appear much more verbally astute and have great gaping holes in their understanding… like my kiddo who somehow missed the significance of that wife being up in the attic in a certain classic tale…).
Many elements of comprehension can be learned through oral discussion; you can even structure it further than discussing those “big picture” elements of stories. Victoria is right - many “simple” books have good contexts for deeper meanings. However, ya do hafta deal with the ego, and if the kiddo is sure it’s too simple… well, it’s too simple. (You might, however, challenge her to question her definition of “Simple” since great wisdom through simple ideas has been expressed through the ages by deep & profound people, like, Zen, man :-)) “The Whipping Boy” would be a good example of a short book that has many layers for exploring all kinds of abstractions… it’s far more layered IMHO than, say, James Bond or the Da Vinci Code & the like :-=)

the resource room is a fantastic site - filled with lots of exercises!!
thanks!!