Exercises to improve reading comprehension for a 13-14 year old

Could you have him read out loud? It would be harder for him to skip ahead that way. Or have him cover the material with a blank piece of paper and uncover only one sentence at a time. After he's done that for awhile, he could use his finger to track which sentence he's on instead of the paper. It sounds like he's developed a strategy for getting through reading passages as fast as possible (because he's bored with the assignment or doesn't like reading) and it's become ingrained.

Nthing reading aloud. And it's not a "babyish" thing, if you get any pushback along those lines -- it's how this English major learned in college to achieve real reading comprehension for Shakespeare, Milton, etc. It's pretty natural to do a little skimming and feel like we get "close enough" to knowing what we just read, but our brains need to be forced sometimes to slooowww down and pay attention to All The Words in the moment. It's a lot slower, but it's also more interesting and thought-provoking...which admittedly can be a tough sell when you just wanna get your homework done so that you can play.

Writing might help, giving him a narrower visual field to read at a time might help (cut a window out of a piece of paper, or have him trace along with his finger.) Giving him two sentences at a time and asking him to describe the information in his own words may help. Talking about the structure of a paragraph may help. Talking about how to make a good argument might help. You describe what he seems to be doing, but have you asked him his process? 13/14 should be old enough to have the vocabulary to describe some of what's going on internally.

Google reciprocal teaching.... Basically you can stop him at points and have him choose words to clarify meaning, stop and ask questions about what was just read, summarize what he just read and predict what will happen next. There are lots of activities to help the process, like having him divide a paper into fours and chunk the reading into 4 sections and draw symbols of the most important points in a paragraph and then award "points" you can do the same activity and share.... Those kinds of things. Make quizzes for each other... Make up mini dictionaries for each piece of reading... Storyboards. Reciprocal teaching is awesome!

I like the suggestions so far, but thought it might also help at some point to do what we do with my daughter (who admittedly isn't quite 10-years-old). She tends to skip ahead, too, so in addition to a piece of paper to focus on a line at a time, she also fills out bubble story maps after the story is read, or to create her own stories. The idea is to put the core idea in the center and supporting ideas and details in a bubbles radiating out from the center idea, and further breaking down sub-ideas is needed. There are other ways to map stories, but they all come down to the same basic principle: identification, and for your purposes, slowing your reader down. And on re-reading castspajammies post, I think they are getting at the same idea. Google story map, or bubble story map to get the visual idea.

I also had a student like this, and he hated reading basic stories or text in school books out loud. If you find this to be true with your student, you might find him more amiable to reading short plays or poems out loud since they are supposed to be read out loud. It worked with my student. nthing having him write his own sentences too, which also worked (somewhat) with my student because he then realized how words worked together to form a sentence.

http://www.thehomeschoolmagazine-digital.com/thehomeschoolmagazine/201212?pg=35&pm=2&u1=texterity&linkImageSrc=/thehomeschoolmagazine/201212/data/imgpages/tn/0035_tkhftv.gif/#pg35 is one of the best articles I've read on helping kids form pictures in their mind as they read. It outlines exactly the steps you take when you're working together. For an older student, you might just use a more age-appropriate text.

How about writing his own paragraphs? That could make him more aware of the form and where he is likely to find the information that he is looking for. Re-writing the paragraphs he already has might work too.

I worked at Lindamood Bell for a summer. As overpriced as they are, their programs were really effective and I saw children across the entire developmental spectrum make amazing strides in just a few short weeks. Their http://lindamoodbell.com/program/visualizing-and-verbalizing-program track is what you should research -- it's about going beyond just reading aloud and being really specific and descriptive with the imagery (breaking the story into sequences or "blocks"), and then asking the student to construct his or her own word summary (using the "blocks" to anchor pivotal concepts and events). There are some sessions recordings on Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3w6Gvk9umA). Model your sessions after them! First, break up a paragraph into logical groupings (1-2 sentences, or as you see fit). Then, after this process starts to stick and the student builds up his/her visualization and comprehension muscle, advance into breaking text into longer chunks. The text doesn't necessarily need to be a narrative fiction -- this process can work with all kinds of dynamic content. Hope this helps!