Increase Reading Comprehension: Using Comic Strips to Improve Sequencing

Wait...what did I just read? Every chore, to-do list item and future activity seems to push its way into a student's mind and obstruct the reading comprehension process. For students with learning disabilities, it can be a daunting task to filter out distractions while reading. When asked comprehension questions based on a story, students are actually being asked to find the delicate balance between decoding words and understanding the information they have just read. This often results in including too much information, not enough information or incorrectly ordered details. When students are asked what a story is about, many responses follow a similar pattern like, "I just read the greatest story. First the character learned she was from another planet...wait no, before that she found a picture...but before that she went to a house. Actually no, there was another girl who helped the character find her dog." Answers like this one indicate a student is struggling with correctly comprehending what they have just read. The inability to correctly sequence information leads to incorrect answers on comprehension questions. All too often students struggle with re-telling events of a story in the correct order. Sequencing can be one of the hardest thing for students of all ages to do. When given a reading passage, certain events stick out while others fade into the background forever lost in a muddled heap of details. One of the greatest ways to help students keep track of events is to use a Main Idea Comic Strip. Much like creating a storyboard for a TV show or a movie, a main idea comic strip chunks information into smaller parts while keeping track of details that all too often fall through the mental comprehension cracks. Additionally, attaching an image to each detail will create a visual map of the story for your child to help guide them when re-telling a story. Using a Main Idea Comic Strip is a fun and creative way for students to keep track of information while learning how to extract out what is important.