Picture Books for Reading Comprehension

Reading comprehension can be a touch skill to teach, but with picture books, things come alive! Teaching with picture books has been one of my favorite things about firs grade! I love to pull out a great book, read it for pleasure, then get back into the juicy stuff I need to actually teach with my kids.

Here are some of my favorite read aloud books that assist in teaching comprehension skills.

Figurative Language

An incredibly tough skill, but here’s a SUPER fun book to help teach similes!

It is important for students and understand figurative language (especially our ELs). This book uses real life pictures to spark similes about her family.

Inferencing

Who doesn’t love MO WILLEMS? Kids go ga-ga for him and his silly elephant and piggie. Here’s a great one for inferences.

Piggie pretends he’s a frog! Use evidence from the text and from the pictures to figure out if he’s a frog or a pig 🙂

Central Message

The Empty Pot is a fantastic read. It’s about a king who needs a successor.

He asks every kid in the kingdom to plant a special seed, then he will pick the kid with the most beautiful flower to be his success. There’s only one problem: Ping’s plant doesn’t grow. What will he do?

Problem & Solution/Cause & Effect

Another FABULOUS author David Shannon gives us a great read for problem and solution/cause & effect.

Someone gets a bad case of the stripes! What caused it??

Retelling

In the lower grades, k-2, there is a strong push for retelling. Students need to be able to retell a story in the right sequence in their own words.

Frog & Toad is a great series that is easy to read, fun, and GREAT for retelling! Using puppets or this AMAZING APP (Sock Puppets), students can act as Frog or Toad to retell their silly tales.

Beginning Middle End

Another huge standard in K-2 is knowing beginning, middle, and end of a story.

Corduroy is a great read aloud that has a fluid sequence of events to help with BME. It’s such a classic!

Character

Kevin Henkes is incredible about providing great character development.

If you don’t know Chrysanthemum then you must not be a teacher 😉 I’ll admit, I just bought my first copy of it this year, so I can say I’m officially a first grade teacher. This is a great story that develops the character of Chrysanthemum from beginning to end.

Setting

As usual, Patricia Polacco creates a beautiful story with beautiful illustrations.

I love reading this book! It is so gorgeous. This has a great steady setting that can help for basic teaching of what setting is and how it helps develop a story.

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