Asia Reading comprehension (Begrijpend lezen) is the ability to read a text and understand its meaning. If you find it important to help your child with this skill, check this post for useful hints.
Just in case you’re looking for an executive summary, scroll all the way to the bottom of this post.
At school
At school, children practice two important skills: technical reading and comprehension. Technical reading is about recognizing and pronouncing words in a text, while comprehension is about understanding what we read. That’s what makes reading pleasurable!
When children become fluent readers, usually around group 3 or 4, they also start developing reading comprehension skills at school. Your child may expect an exercise containing a short text to read and a list of questions to answer. There may be a mixture of different question types:
- In some, your child needs to choose an answer, e.g., one of four possible options,
- In others, your child needs to write their own answer.
Reading comprehension is a key component of the curriculum and it’s assessed throughout the primary education of a child. From what we have seen so far, the “popular” Cito tests contain only the first group of questions: when your child chooses the correct answer.
How to practice begrijpend lezen at home
There are plenty of books and websites that offer reading comprehension exercises in Dutch (and correct answers!). This section lists our favorite1 resources. Hopefully, you’ll find it handy.
- Junior Einstein
- Citotrainer Nederland
- De Bijlesmeester
- Juf Milou
- Nieuwsbegrip
Spoiler: this section ends with a golden tip, aka executive summary…
Junior Einstein
The Junior Einstein platform offers both online exercises and paper books. The texts are at varied difficulty levels, and are similar in structure to the real Cito tests.
Here you can order paper books: kadoki webshop.
Citotrainer Nederland
The Citotrainer Nederland website offers worksheets (e.g., worksheets for group 4) and has a webshop where you can find lots of exercise books.
We have worked with their Cito prep book for group 4. I personally find the Begrijpend lezen exercises a bit similar to the “Junior Einstein” ones, and I value both. This book covers a whole range of subjects your child learns in group 4, in both the first and the second part of the year (i.e., M4 and E4). It includes reading comprehension, spelling, vocabulary, and also math exercises.
We don’t have experience with other Citotrainer Nederland offerings (yet…).
De Bijlesmeester
De Bijlesmeester is another online platform that offers exercises. In their webshop you can buy a whole collection of various materials.
To get an idea about the type of their exercises, this website offers free samples. Go to “Oefenmateriaal” in the top menu, and then click on “GRATIS Oefenbladen“. If you scroll down there to a selected group, and provide your name and email address, you will receive an email with a link to a free PDF with example exercises. Below comes a screenshot from my email:
The “Taal” PDF contains reading comprehension, spelling and grammar exercises. It’s a good way to see if these books satisfy your needs.
Juf Milou
Juf Milou is an educational platform with free worksheets. Among other resources, it contains a whole collection of reading comprehension exercises. For example, for group 4. Click on a worksheet to download it. Notice that the last page of every PDF contains answers. The drop-down menu in the top of the page lets you select the group.
Nieuwsbegrip
In another post, we’ll discuss our all-time favorite Nieuwsbegrip. It’s not only a great way to practice reading comprehension, but it has also genuinely interesting texts and shares a fair deal of recent news. Certainly, all at the level that matches your child’s reading skills. Stay tuned!
Golden tip
The market has a lot to offer, and it’s certainly not possible to try out all the options.
If you are not sure where to start, I’d suggest the Citotrainer Nederland platform and their Cito preparatory book (e.g., for group 4). It’s reasonably priced, and with a single book your child can practice all school subjects, which gives a good overview of their skills.
If you want to immediately devote even more attention to Begrijpend lezen, my second choice would be the Junior Einstein platform. Their paper books are really well done and pleasant to work with, just the prices are steeper.
Both these recommended platforms offer previews, so it’s easy to confirm if our favorites fit your needs! If you have trouble navigating these websites in Dutch, please leave a comment below. I’ll be happy to offer additional explanations.
Happy reading!
1 Disclaimer: we share information about resources we have seen/heard of and we find worth recommending. We are not associated with their publishers.
