Helping a child connect with a book is one of the most important things we can do as we are teaching him/her to read. This focus is often overlooked in our plight to teach children to read by decoding alone. The more we read aloud to children and engage them in conversations about the book, the better they will remember details about the story.

I created these printable Reading Comprehension Recording Sheets for Day #2 of our 30 Days of Reading Fun for Beginning Readers series. One of the printables includes a section for writing and the other is only for drawing pictures. I printed the picture-only printable and my daughter insisted that I write a caption for her photo. And in case you can’t tell due to my daughter’s interesting coloring job, she chose that the book made her feel happy. :)

It’s important to note that although your beginning reader might not actually be reading the book to him/herself. Reading and listening comprehension are both extremely important and go hand-in-hand. In fact, a recent study from the Journal of Neuroscience indicates that the way our brains comprehend text whether reading it ourselves or listening to the same text read aloud (via a parent or an audiobook) is nearly identical.

Little Sister (age 5) asked me to read the book Clifford’s Birthday Party by Norman Bridwell. Her favorite part of the book was when Clifford was giving a gift certificate to the doggy salon. All of the dog’s owners were dreaming up the different hairstyles they thought Clifford should try. Her picture does a great job of representing this part of the story!