Hi, I'm Kelsey, and this is Mia. In this video,
we're going to prepare you to sharpen your reading comprehension skills before you get
started on our reading comprehension exercises. Are you ready? Let's go!
Being a good reader means creating meaning from the words you read.
That's what reading comprehension is all about. To have good reading comprehension,
you need to be able to do several things. First, you need to understand the vocabulary being used.
That means knowing word meanings, like the definitions you'd find in a dictionary,
and it also means knowing what words mean in context, which is a little trickier. I might
know that driving is something you do in a car, but the author might also say something like those
fleas are driving my dog crazy. You understand that in that context, the word driving has
nothing to do with a car. It means those fleas are causing the dog to be really aggravated.
To have good reading comprehension, you also need to pay attention to important details and see how
some of those details support or provide evidence for the big ideas in a passage. For example,
if an author is trying to convince you that exercise is important,
they might support that with details about how exercise leads to better health, better sleep,
and better moods. All of those details support the big idea that exercise is good for you. Another
skill you need for good comprehension is to pick up on clues in what's written to help you make
inferences about what's not written in a passage. Let me give you an example. If an author writes,
Gia checked the weather report and then grabbed her raincoat, rain boots, and umbrella, you can
use those clues about the raincoat and umbrella to make an inference that the weather report
probably predicts rain, even though the author didn't tell you what the weather report said.
Making inferences is like being a detective and figuring out things that aren't necessarily
stated in a passage. And finally, if you want to develop good reading comprehension,
you need to understand the main idea and be able to summarize what you read.
For example, the main idea of the Three Little Pigs is that the planning and hard work of the
pig who built the brick house paid off when a wolf came along. Of course, to summarize
the story would be to use your own words to tell what happened in the beginning, middle,
and end. And sometimes reading comprehension involves understanding an author's purpose in
writing something. Did they write it to inform the reader about a topic? To persuade the reader
to think a certain way? Or did they write with the purpose of simply entertaining the reader?
You are about to become a reading comprehension superstar. With every passage you read in this
course, you'll be answering questions that deal with understanding vocabulary, important details,
making inferences, understanding the main idea, and sometimes understanding the author's purpose.
Your parent or teacher will set a schedule for you to work on these comprehension exercises.
You'll be given a passage to read, and after you read, you'll answer four questions. Here
are some tips for getting the most out of your reading. First, read the passage carefully. Be
sure you're thinking about what you're reading and not about something else. Next, as you read,
try to imagine what you're reading about by making pictures in your mind, or imagining that you can
hear the sounds, smell the smells, and feel the textures. And finally, think beyond the words
you're reading. Put clues together and figure things out that might not be written on the page.
Ask yourself questions and make predictions about what's going to happen next.
These are tips that all good readers know and practice. And here are some tips to
help you after you've read the passage, when you are answering questions about it.
First, read the questions carefully. Make sure you know what they're asking you. Next, be sure to
read all of the answer choices before you select one. And finally, go back and reread the passage
if you need to. This isn't a memory test. It's fine to go back and look at the passage again.
The goal is to work those reading comprehension muscles, so that they'll get really strong.
Let's review. You're going to be reading one passage at a time, and you'll answer
four questions about the passage. Your goal is to become a strong reader by practicing your reading
comprehension. All the passages in unit one are at about the same level of difficulty. So you'll
get plenty of practice. You are now ready to begin with your first passage. Just remember all
those tips for reading and answering questions, and of course, remember to always be clever!