Tips for reading and understanding

Hello friends, welcome to my blog "I love to educate", it was created for educational purposes. Provide support to teachers, students and parents in the teaching-learning process, facilitating the completion of school activities.

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Many people can read, but after reading they find it difficult to remember what they read about. There can be several reasons for this. It is possible for a person to put so much effort into expressing words (out loud or to himself) that they lose their meaning. In other cases, the topic is so uninteresting that it is difficult to focus on the information in the text.

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This can greatly complicate learning in school even for children without intellectual disabilities, especially in high school, when the requirements to read and understand large volumes of text are significantly increased and texts become more complicated.

Metacognition

Metacognition (thinking about how we think) is the basis for improving understanding while reading. In other words, to improve our understanding of the text, we must consciously pause as we read and analyze our opinions, perceptions, and thoughts related to what we read. For example:

Before reading

• Define the purpose of the reading. Think ahead of time about what to find in the text as you read.

• Look at the title of the text and try to understand what the text is about.

• Quickly review all text without reading it, pay attention to titles and subtitles, bold words and illustrations. Think about what this text is about.

• Try to remember what you already know about the subject, this story and the author.

While reading

• Ponder what you read after each paragraph or chapter.

• Think about whether you agree with ideas, characters or facts.

• If you do not understand the meaning of sentences or paragraphs, write what you do not understand.

• Write unknown words to discover their meaning after reading.

After reading

• Think about what you learned while reading.

• Think about how what you read relates to your own life.

• Formulate a brief account of what you read.

• Browse your notes and try to find answers to your questions by reading, surfing the internet, or talking to someone else.

Talk about what you read

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Discussing what you read with someone else provides another source of information instead of rereading the text. This is especially useful if you really don't like reading. During the conversation about what you read, you can ask questions you have, this will allow you to learn more about other people's point of view and will give you the opportunity to express what you read in words, which will help you remember and better understand the text.

Practice reading as often as possible

The best way to improve reading comprehension is to read as much as possible. The more you read, the better your comprehension skills will be. Students who like to read read a lot and often, and their reading skills improve.

Those who do not enjoy reading, give it little time, as a result, their skills are increasingly lagging behind their peers. That is why our first priority is to motivate children to read. If they like to read comics, sports articles, or magazines online, encourage them to do it as often as possible.

Don't try to impose on children what you think they should read. We want you to read as much as possible. And that's it. If you liked an author's book, find all of this author's books so they can choose something. If children are interested in a topic, find them by reading material according to their interest.

Motivation to read

The first task for a discouraged reader is to search for reading material that is directly related to their interest outside of reading. For example, if a child likes to watch a movie, they would like to read movie reviews on the Internet or in movie magazines.

You may think that this is not a "real" reading, but it is not at all. Many people believe that reading skills can only be developed with books. Actually, this is not entirely necessary, especially in our Internet age.

Also, if children often read about what interests them, this will help them become better general readers, especially while at the same time developing text comprehension skills.

Once the motivation for reading begins to take shape, you can begin to practice reading less interesting materials.

Also, if the strategies for improving comprehension have already been practiced in interesting texts, it will be easier to use them while reading boring topics.

"Reading a good book is an incessant dialogue, in which the book speaks, and the soul answers."

André Maurois