Reading comprehension is the most important academic fundamental, with immeasurable benefits. Some reading comprehension benefits are well-documented: improved reasoning skills, insightful writing, faster reading, and better performance in many subjects. These benefits alone should inspire parents to focus on their children’s reading comprehension. But they don’t.
We hope the overlooked benefits below will inspire more people to go all-in on reading comprehension.
Overlooked Reading Comprehension Benefits
Strong readers get ahead in school with less stress, and they get a better high school education. Here’s why:
Strong readers interpret narratives in English and retain more information in history and science.
Strong readers enroll in more AP courses, the only way to guarantee a better public school education.
Strong readers excel in AP Language Arts classes, enhancing their GPAs. earning college credits, and getting a better education.
Strong readers share classes with other advanced students, most of whom are great influences on each other. Don’t underestimate this.
Parenting Tips? This is what happens when you read an ADHDer’s post:
Here is one of the three most important tips for parents with young children: The behavior you model has more impact on your children than your “parenting.” Instead of my repeating that statement, you should feel free to read it again.
You might respond with a “no, duh,” but are you really a “conscious” role model?
This has been the biggest lesson that I have learned with my four daughters and the 20,000 families who have come to Lafayette Academy.
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree: 80% of the time, difficult parents have difficult children and friendly parents have friendly children … and it’s more than genetics! Can you honestly reflect on the behavior that you model and not find anything that could be improved?
Want to Boost Your Children’s Reading Comprehension?
Lafayette Academy’s Strategic Reading program (in person and online) helps K-8 students become conscious and active readers. Click here to learn more about Strategic Reading, a program with lasting reading comprehension benefits. Strategic Reading combines sophisticated technology with experienced teachers to help students accelerate their reading levels.
Reading Comprehension skills provide lifelong benefits.
Just how long those enhanced abilities last depends on the amount of reading kids do between ages 5 and 10, the crucial formative years for reading. Over time, kids who can quickly and accurately read new information retain their cognitive benefits from early reading. In other words, children who learn to read well at an early age continue to reap the rewards throughout adolescence and beyond. In fact, studies have found that faster readers in both childhood and adulthood tend to be more successful in school and work than adults who were slower readers in childhood.
For some reason, our SEO scores go up when we write longer posts. I don’t get it because everyone is busy and most people appreciate it when writers get to the point. I guess the computers at Google aren’t “most people” and we need to do what we can to get their attention.
Fortunately, the computers aren’t high school grammar teachers either so I can write really long run-on sentences and not get marked down.
This is starting to drive me crazy because every time I edit this page, I go under the minimum word count and have to write more. I am spending way way way too much time on this post.
Reading comprehension benefits.
About The Inside Story Blog
Occasionally, you will read something funny in The Inside Story, and I hope you will chuckle. But, and this is a BIG BUT, please do not confuse my (sometimes) feeble attempts at humor with genuinely great advice or insights. We really do know a lot about parenting and academia at Lafayette Academy and we hope you will recognize the “grab you by the shoulders” moments when we’re dispensing life-changing (no exaggeration) tips. When I remember, I try to write in an engaging way, so readers don’t get bored and miss out on some very helpful advice.
