Goal: Comprehension
By Dana Gomez, Reading & Literacy Specialist
Almost every teacher knows the sinking feeling of watching a student read aloud beautifully—only to ask, “Wait… what did you just read about?” and hear silence. As a reading specialist and literacy coach, I’ve seen this play out across grade levels and content areas. The truth is, decoding is only part of the picture. Reading comprehension—the ability to make meaning from text—is the entire point of learning to read.
And yet, comprehension is often treated like an outcome rather than a skill. We give students a passage and ask questions, but we don’t always teach how to understand, think about, and interact with what they read. That’s where things can start to break down.
Let’s unpack what comprehension really involves, why it’s complex, and what teachers can do to support it—especially for the diverse learners we serve here in the Central Valley.
What Is Reading Comprehension?
Reading comprehension is the process of constructing meaning from text. It’s not just about answering literal questions—it’s about thinking critically, connecting ideas, visualizing, predicting, and reflecting.
Comprehension requires the integration of many skills:
Vocabulary knowledge – Knowing the meanings of words and phrases
Background knowledge – Understanding the context and concepts in the text
Language comprehension – Processing sentence structure and discourse
Monitoring understanding – Noticing when something doesn’t make sense and using strategies to fix it
Using text structures – Recognizing how a text is organized (cause/effect, compare/contrast, etc.)
Making inferences – Reading between the lines and drawing conclusions
Synthesizing information – Combining ideas to form a deeper understanding
These skills don’t develop in isolation—they grow with explicit instruction, guided practice, and, most importantly, lots of reading and talking about texts.
Why Does Comprehension Instruction Matter?
For many students, especially English learners and those with limited access to books at home, comprehension doesn’t happen by chance. It must be taught. According to the Simple View of Reading (Gough & Tunmer, 1986), reading comprehension is the product of both decoding and language comprehension. If either is weak, overall reading success is compromised.
While the Simple View of Reading helped clarify the importance of decoding and language comprehension, many researchers and educators have found it too limited to fully capture what skilled reading entails. The Active View of Reading (Duke & Cartwright, 2021) expands on this by adding a third, equally essential element: active self-regulation. This includes cognitive processes like attention, working memory, motivation, and metacognition—the ability to monitor one’s understanding and adjust strategies while reading. According to this model, skilled reading happens when students can decode, understand language, and actively manage their thinking. For teachers, this means we must move beyond just teaching students to sound out words or answer questions—we must also help them become aware of their thinking, persist through confusion, and make purposeful choices as they read. In real classrooms, this might look like students pausing to ask themselves, “Does this make sense?” or revisiting part of a text when they realize they’ve lost the thread. The Active View of Reading reminds us that comprehension is not passive—it’s dynamic, effortful, and teachable.
In the Central Valley, where our classrooms are rich with linguistic and cultural diversity, comprehension instruction has to go beyond just checking for understanding. It must include building background knowledge, connecting to students’ lived experiences, and giving them the tools to engage meaningfully with what they read.
What Comprehension Instruction Should Look Like
Effective comprehension instruction is:
Explicit – We teach strategies like summarizing, questioning, and visualizing out loud, modeling our thinking step-by-step.
Interactive – Students talk about texts, ask questions, clarify ideas, and build meaning through conversation.
Text-rich – Students engage with a variety of genres and text types at appropriate levels of challenge.
Integrated – Comprehension work connects to vocabulary, writing, and oral language—not as separate tasks, but as a cohesive literacy experience.
Some high-impact comprehension strategies include:
Think-alouds – Model how you make sense of a confusing sentence or make a prediction while reading aloud.
Reciprocal teaching – Teach students to take on roles as summarizer, questioner, clarifier, and predictor.
Graphic organizers – Help students visualize text structure and relationships between ideas.
Question generation – Move beyond "right there" questions to deeper, inferential ones.
Paired discussions – Let students practice talking about texts with partners using prompts or sentence frames.
Comprehension is not assessed by asking a few questions after reading; it’s built during reading, through purposeful engagement with the text.
Final Thoughts
Comprehension is not a natural byproduct of reading fluency. It requires targeted instruction, repeated practice, and a belief that every student—regardless of language background or reading level—can grow as a thinker and meaning-maker.
It’s easy to get caught up in standards, test prep, and text complexity, but the heart of reading instruction is this: Are students making sense of what they read? Are they enjoying it? Are they thinking deeply about it? If the answer is no, it’s time to slow down and focus on building those muscles.
If you’d like support planning comprehension routines, selecting high-leverage strategies, or matching texts to student needs, I’m here to help.
Let’s make space for students not just to read—but to understand, connect, and care about what they’re reading.
