Reading Comprehension Resources at Home
A friend recently asked me for suggestions to help her child with reading comprehension. She wanted to work with her daughter over the summer to prepare for fourth-grade non-fiction reading in the fall.
As a Reading Specialist (M.Ed.), I’ve spent years helping students strengthen their reading skills, so I was excited to compile a list of practical, at-home resources for her. I thought I’d share them with you, too.
This is a LIST OF IDEAS…so pick and choose. Do NOT try to do everything on here. That’s not the point of this list! See what sounds like a good fit for your kid and try something. Then pivot if you need to. Or, let this be a spring-board to get your creative juices flowing…
The links and pictures are for grade-specific books, but most, if not all, of the resources I mention have multiple grade levels available.
Heads up: This post contains affiliate links. That just means, if you use one of my links to a product, I may earn a commission on that purchase, but it won’t cost you any extra money. Read more
Many of the resources that I’m listing below are just samples of more from each publisher. And, though it is not part of reading “comprehension,” many also have wonderful fluency and phonics books as well. (I’ll plan to add posts for those topics in future.)
The Reading Detective
Overview
The “Reading Detective” series by The Critical Thinking Company is unique in in the way they require the students to back up their answers with evidence. Every sentence is numbered, and along with each answer, the student must give the number of the sentence that supports their choice. Previews are available on the website.
Grade Levels Available include: 3-4, 5-6, 7-8, 6-12
Where to Buy It?
Physical Copy / Ebook - CriticalThinking.com. Be sure to check their sales page for coupons and shipping discounts.
Physical Copy only - Amazon
Additional Thoughts
I am strongly considering buying this to use with my own kids. I appreciate that they require students to refer back to the passage and cite the specific sentence that supports their answer or conclusion. This would be super helpful for kids who need help thinking through the process of defending their answers. Reviews from Critical Thinking Co’s website rave about its usefulness for test prep as well.
IXL
I have heard about IXL.com from other homeschoolers. It claims to have a “comprehensive curriculum” - and more importantly I see they have a reading comprehension section. At this time, it costs approximately $10/month, and they personalize the learning plan for your kid as well as provide diagnostics.
While I have not tried this website personally, one of the ways I’ve heard of other homeschoolers using it is to provide the parents with an assessment of their kids’ relative “level” in each subject. In this way, they only pay for a month or so until they have gotten the data that they need to help them plan future learning.
As far as whether it would be great for teaching the concepts, I am not sure. They seem to offer some lessons. It seems the main benefit lies in getting the information about what your kid needs to work on and what their strengths are in any given year.
Evan-Moor Books and ebooks
Overview
Evan-Moor has tons of reproducible teacher resources. Some of their reading comprehension books focus specifically on “non-fiction” or other topics like “determining the main idea.” But others, like the one shown here, cover reading comprehension in general.
Where to Buy It?
Physical Copies and Ebooks: Evan-Moor.com - here’s a link to the reading comprehension resources. They often run sales (esp. on their ebooks)!
Physical Copies: Many are available on Amazon. Here’s a link to Evan-Moor’s Amazon page in case you’d rather browse through all their resources there.
Additional Thoughts
I have owned many books from Evan-Moor publishing through the years and their resources are high-quality and one of my go-to publishers for workbooks and similar resources.
Most of their books are intended for classrooms and are “reproducible,” meaning you can print multiple copies for your kids. I love this feature, so I might spend a few extra dollars on the front-end compared to a single-use workbook but then I can reuse the resource for years to come with my own kids or my tutoring students.
Scholastic Teaching Resources
Overview
Most of us (in the U.S. at least) know Scholastic from the newsprint-style catalogues that teachers send home for parents to order cheap paperbacks and then earn the teachers books for their classroom libraries.
However, in addition to this, Scholastic has an entire collection of teaching resources that they publish. More specifically, they publish a wide range of Reading resources for teachers.
Where to Buy Them?
Physical Books and ebooks: Scholastic’s website
Physical copies: Many of their books are available on Amazon
See below for specific books with Amazon links.
Scholastic Comprehension Books
Comprehension Skills: 40 Short Passages for Close Reading
This series has very short passages (as in a couple paragraphs) with a few questions to help kids read “closely” and answer specific questions. I haven’t used the book, but it’s rated well, and I have and like other books by her.
Informational Passages for Text Marking and Close Reading
Like the Reading Detective book mentioned above, these books require the student to explain where they found information in each article. In this series students mark the text and then write sentences to show where they got the answer.
Scholastic Success with Reading Comprehension Grade 3
This series includes specific reading strategies for each passage/lesson. In the Table of Contents at the beginning it puts the reading concept in parenthesis after the passage’s title. Examples of these strategies are: drawing conclusions, identifying cause & effect and sequencing.
I have a lot of Scholastic resources for reading comprehension. When I was teaching, I’d stock up on the ebooks when they put them on sale.
Scholastic has a ton of stuff that is very specific to certain reading skills but I was trying to find books that provided general comprehension or an overview of skills rather than just focusing on one specific skill.
Scholastic Success with Reading Tests
If your child is required to take any type of standardized testing, you might want to use a resource like this one. It has them read short passages and answer multiple-choice style questions.
Again, this is available in various grade levels.
Additional Thoughts
If you want to buy any of these, I’d find them on Scholastic and then compare the prices and shipping costs with Amazon.
Just for your reference, if you see the words “Hi Lo” or “Leveled” on these reproducible books, it just means that they offer multiple reading level passages (2 or 3) for each topic. That way, if a classroom teacher has kids in a wide range of reading levels they can adjust the actual page each kid is given while keeping the whole class on the same topic. This might be useful for an individual kid if you wanted to let them first read the lower-level passage and then move up from there. Or, if you’re not sure exactly what grade level they are, you could get one of these books on their actual grade level and then use it to determine their reading level.
If you are looking for a full curriculum to teach your child to read that also includes comprehension questions and activities sprinkled throughout, check out All About Reading.
This is the curriculum we use in our homeschool, and I’ve written numerous articles about it. You can check those out here.
