5)+Comprehension

When children learn how to read words they can then move to the next stage of comprehending the text they have just read. ‘Reading comprehension is the act of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning from the text’ (Hill, 2006 p.190). Therefore children are learning that what they read tells a story. Children learn how to read by decoding words and when this strategy can take up so much time children forget the meaning of what they have read in the text. The key for success in children’s comprehension is to use activities to help them understand the text and to read ‘between the lines’ (Honig, 2000 p.106). It helps the children to create meaning from the text and enables them to relate and expand form their own knowledge. Comprehension activities support children to learn as they interactively involve the children to think and imagine possibilities that may occur in the book (Hill, 2006). For example showing them the cover of a story and discussing what pictures are present on the cover. Then continue with asking, ‘What do you think will happen in this story?’ By involving them before even beginning to read the book beckons the children to find out what really will happen at the end of the story. They are now eager to listen. After the story involving them in activities related to the book such as social issues, cultural backgrounds helps them to remember the book and the underlying issues of why events took place (Hill, 2006). By developing children’s comprehension they can now articulate their skills when reading independently. The following link provides an interactive model of text reading. It depicts the child’s sources of knowledge and how it is comprehended into reading the text. [|Word Recognition Fig1.1](Metsala & Ehri, 1998, p.g, fig1.1)