Retelling the Story - The Importance of Reading Comprehension

Before I go to sleep most nights, I lay in bed and read. Read is italicized because what I really do is take in about five to seven pages of a book and then I fall asleep. I've read the same five pages of The Read Aloud Handbook for the last three nights and have a vague idea of what the book is about; mainly based on the title. It's a good thing that there isn't anything riding on my ability to complete this book in the next five years.

However, as a former educator who loved working with early childhood and early elementary students on reading programs, I have already started steadily down the path of phonics and sight words with my own child. While I would be happy to delve into some of our reading lessons in another post, I do want to highlight the importance of reading comprehension. I can spend all my waking hours discussing long and short vowel sounds, buy Hooked on Phonics or every Bob Book ever made, but my son's lightening speed reading of Go Dog Go will mean nothing if he doesn't remember and understand the story he just read.

This goes for most early academic skills. If a child can't visualize, explain and show us what it means when Mary has two apples and Jill gives her two more, then how do we move on to more complex skills? This is why learning with manipulatives, story pieces and art projects are a vital part of early childhood education.

This is even more important to me as a parent of a son with receptive language struggles (impacting comprehension) and sensory issues. This month we have been exploring math, art and literacy with Mother Goose Time's camping themed curriculum box. We have gone fishing for number fish, read stories about what images animals might see at night in the forest, discussed road signs we might encounter on a trip, learned about following patterns using fanciful toadstool cutouts and finger painted pine cones on a postcard to send to a family member.

All of these tactile activities lead more productive learning time for my son. The paint meets his sensory seeking needs and the using a tool like a homemade fishing hook to catch fish and place them in the correct order, makes following multi-step directions more fun.

I think one of the most important elements of every Mother Goose Time box are the story cards. We read through the story that is provided and sometimes I encourage my son to sound out words. The second time we read the story, I ask my son to place the story cards on the board and find spots for all of the essential characters and items. I then encourage my son to retell the story and ask him questions like, "did it rain in the story?" "Was the character happy or scared?" I am hoping to encourage a dialogue that promotes comprehension. I am currently receiving this all encompassing curriculum in exchange for my experiences and opinion.

I highly encourage any educator of a preschool age student to utilize story image cards. Mother Goose Time does an exceptionally good job of incorporating them into the monthly box. I am also incredibly excited that some September these will be in magnetic form and so easy to use over and over again!