Hello Christian Friends & Homeschoolers! How are you doing today? I’m fine.

   Life has its ups and downs, doesn’t it? Well, today is a great day for me. Do you know what can make today even a better day for your child? Help your child develop his comprehension skills.

This is a sad story with a good ending. I remember having a high school student with only a 3rd grade reading level in my economics class.Isn’t that awful? I felt so bad for this student. I did not know the whole story of how he was promoted to the 10th grade with only a 3rd grade reading level. Anyhow, I developed a reading program for this student while he was in my economics class. It did work.

Back to our homeschooling program. There are many strategies floating around to help your child build his comprehension skills. Since your child needs to learn something about many different subjects, I am going to suggest the technique of summarization for each and every subject your child is learning. For example, I am going to provide you with sample text from a New Testament children’s book. Instruct your child to read each of the following three sentences from the selected passage. Instruct your child to summarize each sentence in his own words.

Sample of New Testament children’s book passage:  “Jesus and his family were in Jerusalem for the Passover. Jesus was not with his family as they went home. Joseph and Mary went back to Jerusalem to find Jesus”.

Sample of your child’s summarization of three sentences in New Testament children’s book: “Joseph, Mary and Jesus went to Jerusalem. Jesus was not with them as they went home. Joseph and Mary went back to find Jesus”.

Summarization is an easy strategy for you to use in your homeschooling program. In my classes, I would periodically instruct my students to summarize each paragraph of a page in a book they were reading that day. This was a good check of their comprehension on what they were learning. If they could not complete this task, then I knew they needed further instruction and intervention.

Try it. I know you can successfully use this technique in your homeschooling program with your child. It works in all subjects–reading, social studies, math–you name it. Good Luck! You can do it. Your child will succeed in your homeschooling program.