Reading Comprehension: Reading And Language Arts Terms Explained
Plain-language definitions of every reading comprehension term your child meets in school, each with kid-friendly explanations, worked examples, and common mistakes to watch for.
Activating prior knowledge
Activating prior knowledge is a reading strategy where a reader thinks about what they already know about a topic, text type, or vocabulary before and during reading, then uses that background knowledge to make sense of and remember what they read.
Author's point of view
An author's point of view is the way the author thinks and feels about a topic or situation, which shows up in how they choose words, details, and characters to tell a story or explain information.
Author's purpose
Author's purpose is the reason an author writes a text, such as to inform, to persuade, to entertain, or to explain an idea.
Cause and effect
Cause and effect is a way of showing how one event (the cause) makes something else happen (the effect), so readers can understand why things happen in a story or informational text.
Central idea
A central idea is the most important point an author makes about a topic or situation, usually expressed in one clear sentence that sums up what the text is mostly saying.
Central message
A central message is the big idea or lesson an author wants the reader to understand and remember after reading a story or text.
Close reading
Close reading is a careful, slow way of reading a text multiple times to notice details, figure out what it really means, and use strong evidence from the text to support your ideas.
Comprehension
Comprehension is the ability to understand, think about, and make meaning from what is read, heard, or viewed, using both the words in the text and what the reader already knows.
Context
Context is the words, sentences, and situation around something in a text that help a reader understand what it means.
Critical reading
Critical reading is the active process of questioning, analyzing, and evaluating a text so the reader understands not just what it says, but how and why it says it.
Drawing conclusions
Drawing conclusions is using clues from a text plus what you already know to figure out something the author does not say directly.
Explicit and implicit
Explicit and implicit are two ways information appears in a text: explicit information is stated clearly and directly, while implicit information is suggested or hinted at and must be figured out using clues and background knowledge.
Fact and opinion
Fact and opinion are two different kinds of statements: a fact can be checked and proven true or false, while an opinion shows what someone thinks or feels and cannot be proven in the same way.
Generalization
A generalization is a broad statement that sums up a group of people, things, or events, based on patterns or examples in a text, and that can be tested to see if it is mostly true.
Inference
An inference is a logical guess a reader makes by combining clues in a text with what they already know, in order to understand ideas the author does not say directly.
Key details
Key details are the most important pieces of information in a text that explain, support, or prove the main idea of what you are reading.
Lesson or moral
A lesson or moral is the important idea about life, behavior, or choices that a story teaches the reader, often shown through what characters do and what happens to them.
Main idea
A main idea is the most important point an author makes about a topic, the big idea that all or most of the other sentences in the text support.
Making connections
Making connections is a reading strategy where a reader links what is happening in a text to their own life, to other texts, or to real-world events in order to better understand and remember what they read.
Monitoring comprehension
Monitoring comprehension is when a reader pays attention to whether they understand what they are reading and then uses strategies to fix confusion, such as rereading or asking questions.
Paraphrase
A paraphrase is a restatement of someone else's ideas in new words and sentence structure that keep the original meaning but do not copy the exact wording.
Prediction
A prediction is a smart guess about what will happen next in a text, based on clues from the story or article and what the reader already knows.
Questioning
Questioning is a reading strategy where a reader asks and answers questions before, during, and after reading to better understand, remember, and think about a text.
Reading strategy
A reading strategy is a purposeful action or plan a reader uses before, during, and after reading to understand, remember, and respond to a text.
Retelling
Retelling is when a reader tells a story or passage again in their own words, including the most important characters, settings, and events in the correct order to show they understood what they read or heard.
Sequencing
Sequencing is putting the events or steps from a text in the order they happen, so a reader can clearly understand what came first, next, and last.
Summarizing
Summarizing is explaining the most important ideas from a text in a much shorter way, using your own words.
Summary
A summary is a short retelling of the most important ideas and events from a text, in your own words, without extra details or opinions.
Supporting details
Supporting details are the facts, examples, and explanations in a text that make the main idea clear, strong, and believable.
Text evidence
Text evidence is the words, sentences, or details from a passage that a reader uses to prove or support an answer, idea, or opinion about what they read.
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