Are you looking for tips to improve kindergarten reading comprehension? Reading skills are so important for these early learners. They need to learn letter recognition, phonemic awareness, decoding, blending, sight word recognition and reading comprehension.
Students should be exposed to many multi-sensory activities to improve kindergarten reading comprehension. This could include many hands-on centers and activities to develop these important reading skills.  Â
1. Direct Phonemic Awareness Instruction
First, kindergartners need direct phonics instruction teaching the relationship between letters and sounds. Students need to learn how to:
- Connecting letters to their individual sounds
- Blend sounds together to make words: /c/ /a/ /t/ says cat
- Recognize words that start or end with the same sound
- Segment words into individual sounds: bed is /b/ /e/ /d/
These skills can be taught and practiced with teacher instruction individually, in small groups or in a large group setting.  Games and activities can also be used to improve student phonemic awareness skills.Â
2. Expose Students to Good Literature & Model Good Reading Habits
Secondly, to improve kindergarten comprehension students need to listen to good literature and learn good reading habits. This can be done in several way that can include the following:
- Books that have repetitive text
- Topics that interest students
- Build student vocabulary
- Reading rate & fluency modeled
- Model correct inflection
- Explain and Model comprehension strategies
3. Play Reading Games or Centers
Next, there are numerous games and centers to use with kindergarten students to improve their reading and comprehension skills. These could include the following:
- Sound/Symbol Relationship Games
- Build CVC Words
- Make Short Vowel Word Families
- Sight Word Bingo or Word Games
- Reading Fluency Words & Sentence Games
- Role Play Stories
4. Teach Reading Comprehension Strategies
 Kindergartners also need to be taught reading comprehension strategies. This can be done while someone is reading to them or when they become readers themselves. The following strategies should be considered:
- Questioning: before, during & after reading
- Making Connections to own experiences
- Look for Picture Clues
- Visualizing
- Rereading
- Story Retelling
- 4 W’s: Who, what, where, & why
5. Written Comprehension Practice or Assessments
Finally, to improve kindergarten reading comprehension students need practice or be assessed in a written form. This can be
- Write the retelling of story either using pictures or words
- Story parts (characters, setting, events, problem, solution)
- Identify main idea and supporting details
- Informal Written Assessments: Word Meaning, Sentence Comprehension and Passage Comprehension
In summary, there are many tips to improve kindergarten reading comprehension. Whether it be through direct instruction, use of games and centers or written comprehension activities you can improve your student’s comprehension skills.Â
Find some more reading activities and assessments in my store, The Teaching Scene by Maureen.
To read more kindergarten topics check out my blog, “Seven Kindergarten Informal Reading Assessments”
