Understanding what you read is the whole point. Comprehension strategies give kids tools to make sense of any text.
72 articles
Practice comprehension with your child — free placement finds their levelSkills your child will master
Teaches explicit strategies (predict, question, summarize, infer) through think-alouds and guided practice, then releases kids to use them independently.
A comprehensive reference of reading and writing milestones from Pre-K through 8th grade. Use this as a quick-reference guide to understand where your child should be and what comes next at every stage.
Reading development follows a general progression, but every child moves through it on their own timeline. Here is what to expect at each stage, from pre-reading skills through independent chapter books, and when to be concerned.
Seventh graders need to move beyond basic understanding to analyze themes, evaluate author's craft, and read critically across genres. This guide gives homeschool parents concrete strategies for teaching analytical reading to 12-13 year olds.
Eighth graders must evaluate narrator reliability, synthesize multiple sources, and build evidence-based arguments from texts. This guide shows homeschool parents how to teach these advanced analytical reading skills to 13-14 year olds preparing for high school.
Distinguishing facts from opinions is a foundational critical thinking skill that children need for reading comprehension, media literacy, and evaluating arguments. Here is how to teach your child to tell the difference and why it matters more than ever.
A parent-friendly explanation of main idea, how to find the central point of a passage and the difference between main idea and topic.
Finding the main idea sounds simple, but most children struggle because they confuse the topic with the main idea. Here is how to teach the difference and build the skill that unlocks all reading comprehension.
A clear explanation of author's purpose, the three main reasons authors write and how to help children identify purpose in what they read.
Every text exists for a reason, to inform, persuade, or entertain. Teaching your child to identify author's purpose transforms them from a passive reader into a critical thinker. Here is how to build that skill.
A clear explanation of inferences, how readers use clues in the text plus their own knowledge to figure out what the author does not say directly.
Making inferences means reading between the lines, and it is one of the hardest comprehension skills for children to develop. Here is how to teach your child to combine what the text says with what they already know to draw conclusions.
A parent-friendly explanation of text structure, the five main ways authors organize nonfiction writing and why recognizing structure improves comprehension.
Nonfiction texts follow predictable patterns, cause and effect, problem and solution, chronological order, compare and contrast, and description. Teaching your child to recognize these structures transforms how they read and remember informational text.
When a child struggles with reading, parents and children alike often jump to a label: bad reader. But struggling with reading is not an identity. It is a description of a skill gap that can be identified and closed. Here is why the distinction matters and what to do about it.
When a child says they hate reading, they are usually saying something else entirely. They might be struggling with decoding, bored by the material, or carrying shame from past failures. Here is how to figure out what is really going on and what to do about it.
When your child pushes back on reading, it is rarely about laziness. Here is how to figure out what is really going on, and practical strategies to rebuild their willingness to pick up a book.
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