Reading Activities

Reading Activities Create the Foundation for Reading Comprehension

Reading activities are designed to help a child work on a specific area of reading, such as comprehension or phonemic awareness. These activities zero in on focused tasks, and sometimes on individual learning styles, and help your child polish her skills. In many classrooms, teachers may use reading activities with the entire class or spend extra time on such activities with individual students.

To develop comprehension, the teacher may employ such reading activities as classroom discussion and informal assessment. The teacher will encourage students to talk about and answer questions on the reading assignment. He may stop in the course of reading to ask students to predict what will happen next. He may also give a short quiz, ask students to retell a story, or have them compare and contrast the characters.

Classroom reading activities often include the use of graphic organizers. These visual tools help students deepen understanding and process, organize, and retain information. One example is the Venn diagram. A Venn diagram uses overlapping circles to show differences and similarities between items. For information on graphic organizers, go to Educational Oasis.

Audio-visual reading activities help children get more out of their reading assignments. These may include watching a filmed version of a short story or listening to a book on CD or tape. Students may be asked to read aloud to each other or assigned parts in a story in order to create their own book on tape. Such activities increase confidence and fluency.

Many of these reading activities involve the whole class or a large group of students. However, other reading activities are more appropriate for one-on-one use. A student may need extra work on a specific skill. While other students are reading silently, a teacher may help a student work with phonics, for instance. He may ask a child to discuss a book she is reading.

You can use many of these reading activities at home. For example, you might talk at the dinner table about what everyone is reading, read aloud to one another, or help your child make an audio or video tape of her favorite story. Many computer programs, e.g., Microsoft® PowerPoint, enable you and your child to make and use graphic organizers at home.

For more reading activities you can do at home with your child, go to Teaching Ideas from the Downs Primary School in Great Britain or Family Education.