Subject

Online reading comprehension tutoring

For the child who reads the words correctly and cannot tell you what happened — explicit comprehension instruction, one-on-one and online.

Why can my child read the words but not understand the story?

Decoding and comprehension are separate skills. A student can decode accurately and still retain little, commonly for one of three reasons: reading is so effortful that little capacity remains for meaning, they have never been taught that reading involves actively building a picture, or they lack the background knowledge and vocabulary the text assumes.

This is one of the most common and most misread problems in elementary education. The child sounds fluent, so nobody suspects a reading problem — and then comprehension questions come back blank and everyone concludes the child was not paying attention. Usually they were. They just have no method.

What comprehension tutoring teaches

Visualizing

Strong readers tend to run a film as they read. Weaker comprehenders often do not realise that is what the words are for. Teaching a student to deliberately picture what a sentence describes, and to notice when the picture goes blank, is frequently one of the more productive things to work on.

Questioning and predicting

Reading actively rather than passively receiving. What might happen next? Why did she do that? What does the author want me to think here? A reader who is asking questions is a reader who will notice when the answers stop making sense.

Monitoring and repair

Noticing that understanding has broken down, and knowing what to do about it — reread, slow down, look back, check a word. Skilled readers do this constantly and unconsciously. Struggling readers frequently do not notice at all, which is why they can read three pages past the point of confusion.

Summarizing and retelling

Distinguishing what mattered from what merely happened. Retelling is also the fastest diagnostic available: a child who recounts every trivial detail in order has a main-idea problem, while one who says "it was about a dog" has a detail problem.

Inference

Understanding what a text implies but does not state. This is where comprehension demands accelerate sharply around third and fourth grade, and where many previously successful readers first appear to struggle.

Fiction and nonfiction are different problems

A child can be strong with stories and lost in a science chapter. Narrative has a predictable shape — character, problem, events, resolution — that most children absorb from years of being read to. Informational text has no such shape, and its structures must be taught: cause and effect, compare and contrast, sequence, problem and solution.

Since roughly third grade is where school shifts from learning to read to reading to learn, nonfiction comprehension becomes urgent right at the point where explicit reading instruction typically stops. Sessions work in both, deliberately.

When comprehension is really a fluency problem

Before teaching strategies, we look at reading rate. A student reading well below the expected pace for their grade may be spending most of their working memory on word recognition, and comprehension strategies tend to have limited effect until that changes. In those cases instruction usually targets fluency first, which can resolve the comprehension complaint without much comprehension instruction at all. More on reading fluency →

FAQ

Questions parents ask

How do I know if my child has a comprehension problem?

Ask them to retell what they just read, without looking back. A child who cannot produce a coherent retelling of a passage they read accurately has a comprehension issue rather than a decoding one. Pay attention to the shape of the retelling too — all trivial detail suggests a main-idea problem, while nothing but the gist suggests a detail problem.

Is comprehension something you can actually teach?

Yes. Comprehension strategies are explicit, teachable methods, not a talent. Many children who appear to lack comprehension ability have simply never been told what skilled readers do while reading.

My child understands when I read to them but not when they read alone. What does that mean?

It usually means decoding is consuming their capacity. Listening comprehension well above reading comprehension is a strong indicator that the bottleneck is at word level, and that fluency work should come before comprehension strategy work.

Does comprehension tutoring help with word problems in math?

Frequently, yes. A substantial amount of elementary math difficulty is reading difficulty in disguise — the child can perform the operation but cannot determine which operation the sentences are asking for.

Ready to talk about your child?

Tell us what's going on academically and we'll follow up to talk it through. Personalized online tutoring programs start at $280 per month.

Request a Complimentary Consultation