Independent Reading Activities for Children

Independent reading activities can be used to develop reading comprehension in students. Teaching students to question is an important aspect helping children read. Proficient readers question what they read and ponder over the outcome, characters, information and concepts in the passage. This strategy also increases the reader’s interest in the text.

Teachers can show their students a text with pictures or a non-fiction story to help them get started. It would also help to explain how good readers ask questions while they read.  The process of questioning will encourage students to think beyond the text. Stick on notes can be used to help the students write down their questions and find the answers as they read. Model this technique before the students by thinking out loud and then provide time for a guided practice. This would help in making the reading concrete.

Teachers can, in this way, help readers interact with the text by realizing their inner conversations and focusing on the thoughts and questions. This would help the students understand the passage at a deeper level by thinking about their own questions, writing them down and pondering over the answers.

Some of the other ways to guide independent reading activities that teachers can use to help their students develop a dialogue with the text could be as follows.

• Write or underline the 5 most important words, after reading a paragraph.
• Write about what they learned, after reading an entire section.
• Outline the text.
• Draw pictures of the most important pieces.
• Talk about the gist of the text to a small group.
• Summarize the text.

Are there any other activities that you use to guide your students to read independently?

To learn more about reading strategies, take a look at Professional Learning Board’s course, Reading Across the Curriculum