Teachers struggle with how to teach reading comprehension. Implicit instruction teachers hope that reading a lot actually teaches comprehension through some form of reading osmosis. Explicit instruction teachers teach skills that can be quantified, but ignore meaning-making as the true purpose of reading.

Staunch teachers of implicit instruction want to believe that reading comprehension is something that is caught and not taught. They want to believe this “feel good” saying because it relieves guilt and legitimizes pedagogical laziness. These same teachers spend enormous amounts of time reading aloud and enjoying literature with their students. From time to time, these “sages on their stage” may drop pearls of literary wisdom to their rapt audiences. Of course, students enjoy this implicit, spoon-fed “instruction” because it saves them from having to read a challenging text on their own.

Die-hard teachers of explicit instruction believe that every instructional moment should be planned as part of the teachers’ instructional objectives. If reading skill cannot be measured and put on a progress chart, then it is simply not worth teaching. Unfortunately, these teachers focus on the snacks of reading and not the main course. The starters of discrete reading skills are easily diagnosed and often easy to teach. The core course of reading comprehension is difficult to diagnose, even more difficult to teach, and simply cannot be quantified in traditional registration matrices.

Having detailed the extremes, here are reading comprehension strategies that will help teachers strike a balance between implicit and explicit instruction and develop their students into capable independent readers.

1. The explicit advocates of direct instruction are right: snacks are necessary to enjoy food. But snacks are not food; reading comprehension is food. So, in the most efficient way possible, teach the necessary reading skills and help students unlearn their bad reading habits.

How? Get to know your readers. Each comes to your class with different skill sets and deficits. They each need mastery of phonemic awareness, phonics, syllability, sight words, and grade-level fluency to master the automaticity of reading that will enable them to pay attention to meaning making.

Effective whole-class diagnostic assessments that won’t take up all of your instructional time and differentiated instruction of reading skills are crucial to establishing the main course. However, students need to understand the purpose behind snacks. Teachers accomplish this by helping all students “catch up” in their reading skill deficit areas, while at the same time “keeping up” with instruction and practice of challenging reading comprehension strategies. Read about the value and purpose of reading assessments that will inform your instruction. Learn about the importance and role of phonemic awareness, phonics, syllability, sight words, and fluency in shaping reading comprehension for your readers.

2. Use shared reading to model the synthesized process of reading. Shared reading means that the teacher reads stories, articles, poetry, songs, etc. aloud to students to model the entire reading process. Students need to see and hear modeled reading that integrates all reading skills with a focus on meaning making. Without this “whole apart” model, reading skills instruction in isolation will fail to develop readers who read well on their own. The teacher shares reading strategies as she reads that help her understand, interpret, and enjoy the text. She models self-questioning and problem-solving strategies. She learns to do a mind read aloud and teaches self-questioning strategies.

3. Use guided reading to teach discrete reading comprehension strategies. Guided reading means that the teacher reads or plays a CD and stops to help students practice a preselected reading comprehension strategy. At stops, students share with the whole group, share in pairs, or write responses to comprehension strategies. Students do not read aloud as they are generally poor role models. Learn to teach the following reading comprehension strategies: Summarize, Connect, Rethink, Interpret, and Predict.

4. Teach independent reading by having students practice guided reading strategies on their own. Teach students to make personal connections with the text. This does not mean that students relate aspects of reading to their own experience. Instead, readers draw on their prior knowledge and experiences to understand and interpret the reading. The focus is on the author-reader relationship. Learn how to teach students to visualize text to increase reading comprehension.

Assign reading homework with parent-required discussion, even at the middle school level. We need to have students practice reading for at least two hours a week with 5% recognition of unknown words responsibly. SSR in the classroom will not accomplish this, even with response diaries. Immediate discussion at the summary and analysis levels increases understanding. Parents may very well supervise this independent activity. Learn how to develop a successful independent reading component.

5. Teach the connection of reading and writing. Reinforce the reading/writing connection by showing how expository and narrative texts are organized and how each should be read according to its own characteristics. Extensive experience in many genres of reading will help develop comprehension and writing skills. Learn the reading and writing strategies that “kill two birds with one stone” and learn how to teach an effective reading and study method for expository text.

6. Teach vocabulary explicitly and in context. Vocabulary acquisition is essential for reading comprehension. Teachers should expose students to challenging text, teach context clues, teach common parts of Greek and Latin words, teach vocabulary strategies such as semantic spectrums, and practice “word games” to increase vocabulary mastery.

7. Teach content. Teaching content is teaching reading comprehension. Good readers bring content, background knowledge, and experience to their side of the author-reader relationship. Content-poor readers are unable to make relevant personal, literary, or academic connections to the text, and comprehension suffers. Previous teaching of the history background is essential to develop understanding. For example, why not show the movie first, once in a while, before reading the novel? Take a group of struggling readers apart and teach them key concepts to build a scaffolding of meaning.

Remedial readers often practice reading skills ad nauseam, but become more deficient in content. For example, a seventh grade student who is removed from an English language arts class for reading remediation will likely miss the content of reading two novels, learn grade-level grammar and vocabulary, miss units on public speaking and poetry… get the idea. Not to mention, the possibility of missing social studies or science instruction if placed in a remedial reading class… Both content and reading strategies are critical to reading development.

Do you need a reading recovery program that allows the teacher to differentiate instruction? A balanced approach between implicit and explicit instruction? Development of reading comprehension with both the appetizers and the main course? Take a look at strategies for teaching reading.