Reading Comprehension in 7th Grade and 8th Grade and The Reluctant Reader
Updated: Apr 2
In my teaching experience, kids who read more books for pleasure always scored higher on tests and understood more of what they read when it really counted. This was true even for kids that did not always finish their daily reading comprehension worksheets or practices.
Anytime someone practices a skill, they get better at it. In the case of reading, the wonderful part is that practicing it can be interesting and lots of fun at the same time.
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What about kids who are reluctant readers? With my long experience, I’m well aware that for some kids, “choice” means “I choose not to read at all.” However, teachers have more power than they may think. Junior high English classes (and home schoolers) can read books together, with the teacher and some students reading aloud, stopping sometimes to discuss what they read. Teachers can also assign kids to read a book on their own. This means giving them a high-interest book, giving them time to read in class, and then holding them accountable for reading that book.
“Holding them accountable” usually means giving a quiz. Ironically, simple facts-based quizzes are often more accurate in showing if a student read the book than “higher-order” assessments are, simply because they are harder to fudge or cheat on. When it comes down to it, many of these reluctant readers are also reluctant to actually fail their class. If they have to read, they will. Many of them soon lose their reluctance and begin reading more because they like it.
In the cold-war Soviet Union, the sad joke among insiders was that “our workers pretend to work, and we pretend to pay them.” In too many modern-day English classes, the reality has become “they pretend to read and we pretend to test them.” It’s time to get back to real reading in English classes. This will greatly improve reading comprehension problems.
At Beyond Words Learning, we have many suggestions for novels that are appropriate for middle schoolers, with quizzes and other activities.
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