When your child begins learning to read in kindergarten, you’ll want to focus on phonemic awareness and phonics to boost decoding.
But what about comprehension? The good news is that good decoding improves your child’s comprehension. When they aren’t stumbling over words, they can maintain the flow of their reading and understand the big picture. But there’s more you can do to boost comprehension, including leveraging the art of storytelling.
Storytelling is more than just reading words on a page aloud. It’s about bringing those words to life, encouraging your child to visualize, predict, connect, and remember. When you enthusiastically tell or read a story, your child becomes emotionally invested in the plot and characters. This connection enhances their ability to understand—and apply their understanding to their life experiences and the world around them.
We asked our elementary school teachers to share ideas about how storytelling improves comprehension and how parents can incorporate it into their everyday routine. Read on to learn more.Â
Storytelling Sparks Engagement and Curiosity
One of the biggest challenges in early reading is keeping your child engaged. If a story feels dull or confusing, they can easily tune out. But you make reading irresistible when you transform a book into a vivid experience through voices, gestures, and emotion.
Think about the last time you read a story aloud. Did your child sit slightly closer when you used a silly voice or act surprised during a plot twist? Did they jump when you used a louder voice to express shock or turn their ear when you whispered? These moments don’t just entertain; they help your child follow the storyline and remember the details.
When your child is interested, they’re more likely to ask questions like, “Why did the character do that?” or “What’s going to happen next?” These questions indicate that they’re not just decoding words but actively thinking, which is the heart of early reading comprehension.
Stories Help Your Child Make Personal Connections
Children learn best when they relate new information to what they already know. Storytelling provides endless opportunities for your child to make those personal connections.
For example, if you’re reading a story about a character who moves to a new school, ask your child how they felt when starting school. What would they do if a new child started at their school tomorrow? Talking about those feelings deepens their emotional understanding of the story and helps them see reading as something meaningful and relevant to their lives.
These connections build empathy and context, both crucial for strong reading comprehension. They help your child understand what happens in a story and why it matters.
Narrative Structure Builds Logical Thinking
Every well-told story has a beginning, middle, and end. This simple structure teaches your child to follow sequences, identify main ideas, and anticipate outcomes, all of which are excellent learning strategies for reading comprehension.
When you encourage your child to retell a story in their own words, you give them practice organizing information. You can ask questions like, “What happened first?” “What was the problem?” and “How was it solved?” Retelling reinforces memory and helps your child focus on key events and details.
Over time, your child will begin to recognize story patterns: how characters grow, how to resolve conflicts, and how emotions change from scene to scene. These patterns become mental models that improve their understanding of new texts, help them predict plots, and make them more analytical readers.
Oral Storytelling Encourages Active Listening
When you tell a story out loud, whether from a book or your imagination, you encourage your child to be an active listener. They aren’t just absorbing what you are saying; they’re picturing events, tracking characters, and interpreting meaning while you speak.
Listening to stories teaches your child to pay attention to tone, pacing, and inflection—all of which carry important clues about what’s happening in the story. For instance, a sudden whisper might indicate suspense, while a cheerful tone suggests something positive is coming.
You can make this more interactive by pausing to ask, “What do you think will happen next?” or “Why do you think that character is upset?” These prompts train your child to listen with intention and think critically about what they hear.
Storytelling Expands Vocabulary in Context
One of the greatest benefits of storytelling is that it introduces your child to new words naturally and meaningfully. Instead of learning new words in isolation, your child learns them in context, wrapped inside sentences, emotions, and actions.
For example, a story that describes a character as “reluctant” gives your child more than just a definition. Through the character’s behavior, tone of voice, and situation, your child understands what “reluctant” means and when to use it. This type of vocabulary learning sticks because it’s tied to emotion and imagery.
As your child’s vocabulary grows, so does their ability to understand more complex ideas in future readings. They develop as readers and learn to follow nuanced plots, infer meaning, and appreciate subtle shifts in tone.
Storytelling Strengthens Memory and Recall
Reading comprehension isn’t just about understanding what’s happening while your child reads. They also need to remember it afterward. Storytelling activates parts of the brain that enhance memory and recall, helping your child retain details long after turning the last page.
You can encourage this by asking your child to summarize the story, act it out with toys, or even draw scenes from the plot. These activities can feel like play rather than a lesson. Yet, they reinforce your child’s understanding by prompting them to retrieve and process what they’ve heard.
How to Integrate Storytelling Into Your Routine
You don’t need to be a master performer to make storytelling part of your child’s reading journey. All it takes is a willingness to read aloud with energy and ask thoughtful questions.
Choose stories that interest your child and invite them to participate by predicting what comes next or acting out a character’s reaction. Use different voices for each character and vary your pacing to reflect what’s happening in the plot.
If you’re comfortable, try telling personal stories from your own life. Your real-life stories help your child see the world through narratives and deepen their appreciation for reading.
Help Your Child Understand Beyond the Words on the Page
Storytelling is a powerful, accessible way to improve your child’s reading comprehension. It turns books into adventures, characters into friends, and reading into a shared experience that promotes empathy and understanding.
By using storytelling to support early reading skills, you’re building the foundations for lifelong literacy. Through thoughtful questions, expressive reading, and meaningful connections, you help your child understand the words on the page and the stories behind them.
Have more questions about boosting your student’s comprehension? Contact our private elementary school in Atlanta.