"Read Like You Talk" Reading Comprehension Lessons
© 2000 MINDPLAY - Tucson, Arizona

Free Reading Comprehension Lessons

Reading comprehension is more than just being able to read the words that appear on a page. Once that ability is mastered, learners must also be able to form mental pictures in their mind on what they are reading. Comprehension requires the reader to go beyond the actual words on the page and see the idea and pictures the writer is trying to present.

In the Mindplay Lifelong Learning Center, we developed a series of lessons that helped our students boost their reading comprehension ability. They teach the learner that words are symbols for real objects or ideas and that by changing or adding words, the idea or picture changes. The lessons are based on an analysis of how people talk, so we named the process "Read Like You Talk."

We are sharing our lesson plans to empower any person to teach a learner how to better understand what the learner reads.

The lessons are designed for two people working together - a learner and a parent, teacher, friend or tutor. People from age seven to adult can greatly improve their reading comprehension with these lessons. The lessons can be used on screen or can be printed from this site.

However, for this method to work properly, a learner must be familiar with how sounds come together to form words (phonemic awareness and phonics) and be able to read multi-syllable words easily - skills taught with Mindplay's My Reading Coach. It is also important to understand some basic parts of speech, including nouns, verbs, adjectives, words, phrases, sentences and paragraphs, before learning to Read Like You Talk.

The lessons are brief and easy to use. They will open the door a fuller, richer, more meaningful world for learners of all ages. To begin, go to Lesson 1