Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Z is for Zoo-We-Mama - Reading for Comprehension



Diary of a Wimpy Kid was a favorite series of Joey.  He laughed at the stories, but I think the typeset that the book was written with drew his attention in.  He also enjoyed reading the Big Nate series.

Well once he has read those books over and over I was trying to find a new series for him.  He has ventured into the world of graphic novels, and then one day he was open to reading books that "had too many words on the pages".  He started reading novels that were on topics he was interested in, like his video games....Star Wars, Halo, etc.

Well I know he had the ability to read at higher levels, but I still want him to read to understand.  I am now working with him to read books for comprehension.  How do we do that?  Questions about his reading.  I was pre-reading all his books, writing questions and then we had worked out a system of him emailing the answers to me (to keep from frustrating him about writing).

Well time has made it hard for me to write questions for all his books now.  So I have been trying to find pre-written questions to use for Joey.  And since it has been working for him, I needed to find the same setup for Brayden also.  Especially since Brayden is now reading books that are not just Easy Readers!!!

So I thought I would share a couple sites that I have found to be helpful for me.

1.  Book Adventure - This is a free site from Sylvan.  There are tests for 1000s of books at various levels.  This site is free.  The questions are multiple choice, which is great for Brayden who doesn't like to type or write.  We have used them for several years.

2.  Reading Comprehension - This is not a free site.  Each comprehension guide is around $5.00 each.  But I have found them to be well written and I print them quickly and easily for immediate use.  They have a large selection of books to choose from.  This has been a favorite site the past few months.  The questions are easy to understand for Joey also.

I also use Teachers Pay Teachers for guides.  I search the book titles that I am looking for.  Most are generally not free, but they are usually reasonably priced.  I have found many Boxcar Children titles on this site for Brayden.

I have also just done searches for the titles of the books the boys are interested in and include the words "comprehension questions" and found that there are very generous people out there that provide questions for free.   In fact, I was able to find questions for Brayden and Joey's next books for free.  I just need to type them up for him (since the print copy contains the answers also).

This is has really been helping Joey with picking up details while reading.  He knows that he will need to answer questions or have a conversation with me.  I keep his interest by picking books I think he'll like.  I am not forcing him to read classics that I know he'll hate.  Brayden is picking up on the skill quickly, even though he won't admit it.

Linking up with other Homeschool moms at Blogging through the Alphabet.



*****I did not receive any type of endorsements for freebies from either site to mention them.  I am only sharing these as the top 2 sites I am using right now.*****





5 comments:

  1. I will check out those sites as I can't keep up the the kids reading either...

    ReplyDelete
  2. i didn't know of book adventure before. thanks for introducing it to me. :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks for sharing your favorite resources. I have two kids who will benefit from me having comprehension questions readily available.

    ReplyDelete
  4. It's actually a great and helpful piece of information. I am satisfied that you just shared this useful information for us.
    Thanks for sharing.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Nice post and keep always update, i like your blog.

    ReplyDelete