As kids forge ahead in building their reading comprehension abilities, they must learn how to find context clues and make inferences from the text. You can help your child master these key concepts by offering your support during reading time and taking advantage of the learning resources available to you. With individualized lessons and support, your child can start to utilize context clues and interference to improve their reading comprehension.
Importance of Context Clues and Inferences
Finding context clues helps to build vocabulary and improve your child’s understanding of the story and its underlying meaning. Your child will need to learn how to look at clues within the sentence and surrounding text to identify the meaning of a word or idea. A close look at the word in question, including the root word and affix, can also help reveal its definition and meaning in the text.
When your child learns how to make inferences from the text, a deeper respect for the author’s message tends to emerge. Inferencing involves the use of details in the text to draw a conclusion about the characters or the story. Although this skill comes naturally in daily life, children need to practice inferencing while reading to elevate their reading comprehension.
Ways to Assist in Finding Context Clues
With the seemingly endless number of word combinations utilized in text, finding context clues to identify unknown words takes a lot of practice to master. The study of word parts, such as prefixes and suffixes, can help improve success in using context clues to identify meanings. Beyond that, your child will need to learn how to look for synonyms, contrasting ideas and other hints the author may have placed in the text to give clues about word meaning.
Methods in Teaching to Make Inferences
When your child makes inferences while reading, they use the same skills of making inferences in the real world. Remind your child that he or she makes inferences constantly based on the scene before them. A slammed door, for example, might tell your child that someone is mad or the wind is blowing, depending on the underlying clues. Practicing making inferences while reading is really the best way of showing your child that this skill can come as naturally while reading as it does in real life situations.
The Support You Get from Genie Academy
Once your child masters using context clues and inferences, you will likely notice a dramatic increase in his or her reading comprehension abilities. To acquire support in teaching your child these reading techniques, partner with the team at Genie Academy. Through our after-school enrichment programs, we are here to help you give your child the support needed to improve reading comprehension and build a lifelong love of learning.
