(More) Free Reading Comprehension Activities That Work!

While these free reading comprehension exercises are great for all children, they are absolutely essential for your ELL students and students who come from an impoverished language background. Ready? Here we go!

Free Reading Comprehension Activities use Vocabulary!

Let's use the Greek mythology example. Get some index cards, let's say 20 - one card for each god or goddess. On the front of the card write the name of the god or goddess. On the back, put VERY limited and specific information about him or her (only what the students really need to know). Hand out these cards in class along with a paper that has all the names listed on it.

Tell the students they are each now a figure from Greek mythology (the one on their card) and they will need to visit their friends to find out who everyone is and important information about them. As students visit with each other, they write down the essential information each person tells them (from the back of their card) beside the correct name on their paper. It would look like this:

Zeus: god of heaven
Hera: goddess of marriage; Zeus' wife
Hermes: messenger of the gods

And so on. What a great way to get that kinesthetic modality involved, have kids working together and making difficult vocabulary accessible! Remember, it is always necessary to have students talking about learning in order to solidify it.

Could this be used with math? Absolutely. Make the cards names of geometric figures. What about science? The cards could have words related to the study of sound, the moon, plants…so many free reading comprehension activities work with any subject, and this one is no exception.

Need free reading comprehension activities for reading aloud? Go to Interactive Read Aloud.

Using Word Walls

A word wall is a fantastic tool to use for vocabulary activities and instruction, and we know that a deep understanding of key vocabulary terms is essential to comprehending text.

For this activity, the words should be posted where they are accessible and visible to all students. Subject specific terms are used to create the word wall. Some ideas are: geographic land forms, math concepts, weather words, literary genres, or animal habitats. The words are addressed often and used continually throughout the unit of study through activities such as:

Learn about why reading aloud to children is the most important of all the free reading comprehension activities!

Comprehension Activities: Make a Simple Salad!

Tear up pieces of green and white paper. The green paper is the lettuce, and the white is the onion. Ask the students what they should have more of in their salad, lettuce or onion? Of course, the answer is lettuce. Tell them the lettuce represents your thinking about what you are reading. The onion is when you are just reading the words of a text.

Show time: Call two students up to stand with you while you read aloud. Tell them that whenever you are just reading the text, one of them is to put some onion into a bowl. When you stop and think aloud about what you have read, the other student must put in some lettuce. This takes some practice, so you may want to work on it ahead of time.

Here is an example using The Magic Horns: A South African Cinderella Tale:

Once upon a time, long, long ago, there were many large and small kraals on the veldt in South Africa.(white paper)
^{"I wonder what a kraal is. I bet it is home or a village. But what is a veldt? It must be a type of landform."(green papers)}
In one of the kraals lived a mother and father and their little son/(white paper)
^{"Okay, a kraal is definitely a home or a village."(green paper)}
One day, the mother became very ill. Her skin become the color of dust, and despite everyone's efforts, she soon died.(white paper)
^{"Why would the author say her skin became the color of dust? That must mean she slowly died and looked very grey or yellowish."(green papers)}

The final outcome is a very visual way of showing students how good readers think about what they are reading. The salad bowl should have much more green than white in it. You could then have the students practice it with each other, and also use it at any time you are observing a student struggling with comprehending a text.

To learn about free reading comprehension strategies used in reading interventions, click here!

Get free reading comprehension activities here for poetry!

Self-Monitoring Comprehension Activities

Instead of doing the thumbs up and thumbs down to show if they understand, try giving the students all paint chips. Get the ones that come with three colors on them: light, medium and dark.

During guided reading time, have the students use the chip colors to show their understanding of the text. If they are very clear on what is happening in the text, they put a penny on the light color. If their thinking is a bit muddy (they aren't too sure what something means), the penny goes on the the medium color. If they are completely in the dark, the penny goes on the dark color. Now the students are really into metacognition - thinking about their own thinking and comprehension of the text.

This really is one of the best free reading comprehension activities, as paint chips are definitely free at your local home stores!

This is an excellent classroom management strategy as well!

G.I.S.T.

G.I.S.T. stands for "Generating Interactions between Schemata and Text." One of the more difficult things for students to do is to grasp the essentials, or main idea of a text. Getting the "gist" of something means that you get what the most important parts are. This is essential for ELL students as it gets rid of extraneous words and information that will impair their understanding of a text.

1. Take a 150-200 word passage and have the students read it silently or with a buddy.
2. Individually, have the students underline 10 words that they feel are important to the selection.
3. Write the words on the board (you do this - you won't use everybody's words - just 10 of them).
4. Students write a summary sentence using as many of the words as possible. This can be done in small groups.
5. Each group shares its sentence with the class.

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