How to Improve Your Child's Reading Comprehension at Home

Reading comprehension is one of the most important skills in the primary curriculum — and one that many children find surprisingly tricky. A child who reads fluently may still struggle to answer questions about what they have read. The ability to decode text and the ability to understand it are different skills.

The good news is that comprehension can be developed with the right practice. Here are the most effective strategies for supporting your child at home.

Understand the Question Types

UK primary reading comprehension questions generally fall into a few distinct types. Knowing these can help children approach questions more strategically:

• Retrieval: The answer is stated directly in the text. “Find and copy a word that means…” or “According to the text, what did [character] do?”
• Inference: The answer is not stated but can be worked out from clues in the text. “Why do you think the character felt nervous?”
• Vocabulary: Understanding word meaning in context. “What does the word ‘wary’ tell us about how the character felt?”
• Language and effect: Why the author chose particular words or phrases. “How does the author create a sense of tension?”
• Summary and structure: Identifying main ideas, themes, or how a text is organised

Many children lose marks not because they don't understand the text, but because they don't know what a question is asking. Practising each question type separately can make a big difference.

Retrieval: Train Children to Go Back to the Text

For retrieval questions, children often try to answer from memory rather than going back to find the answer. This leads to imprecise or incorrect answers.

Teach your child to:

• Read the question first, then scan the text for the relevant section
• Use key words from the question to locate the right part of the text
• Copy words or phrases exactly where the question asks for it (“Find and copy…”)

Inference: Read Between the Lines

Inference is where many children struggle most. The answer is not written down — it has to be worked out from clues. A useful prompt to use at home:

“What makes you think that? What in the text gives you that idea?”

When reading stories together, pause occasionally and ask: “How do you think the character is feeling right now? How do you know?” This builds the habit of looking for evidence — which is exactly what comprehension questions require.

Vocabulary: Build Word Knowledge Gradually

A rich vocabulary makes comprehension significantly easier. Children with wider vocabularies tend to understand more of what they read, make better inferences, and write more precisely.

• When your child encounters an unfamiliar word, pause and discuss what it might mean from context before looking it up
• Use vocabulary from books in everyday conversation — “You seem rather reluctant today”
• Explore word families: if a child knows ‘terrify’, they can often work out ‘terrified’, ‘terrifying’, ‘terror’

Read Widely — Including Non-Fiction

The KS2 SATs reading paper includes both fiction and non-fiction texts. Children who only read fiction can find non-fiction comprehension questions more challenging — the structure, vocabulary, and purpose are very different.

Encourage a mix of reading: novels, magazines, news websites for children, information books, biographies, and poetry. The broader the diet, the more flexible a reader your child becomes.