Candle Creek Publishing

You might be thinking…wait a minute…how will students improve in reading comprehension skills if we don’t teach it? Yes, of course. So, don’t we have to directly teach those skills? Not according to the science of reading.

Yet, you might still see articles that talk about “reading comprehension skills” but they might only be referring to the ability to understand what is read.¹ It’s an unfortunate word choice, since we are all now trying to move fully into the new science of reading processes. These days, “comprehension skills” can be a confusing reference.

Isolating Reading Comprehension Skills

What I am warning you about is the old list of so-called reading comprehension skills, taught in isolation from deep-content, that look like this:

• cause-and-effect,
• finding the main idea,
• recognizing supporting details,
• using picture cues,
• making connections,
• comparing and constrasting,
• understanding sequence.

These so-called “skills” have been proven by cognitive psychology to have no correspondence with actual thinking processes.² Yet the recognition and practice of these activities can be necessary at times. It’s just that it’s critical NOT to teach them in isolation—as if talking about “cause-and-effect” with made-up examples would do any good.

How to Improve Students’ Reading Comprehension

According to the massive amounts of scientific proof that the Science of Reading (SOR) is marshaling and that states are now passing laws to enforce—the only way to profitably teach these types of skills is within the context of teaching deep-content curriculum.

And by content, SOR is talking about deep learning in the sciences, the humanities, and the fine arts. As Wexler points out (The Knowledge Gap), often student questions arise naturally along the lines of the old “skills” as they discuss the content they are learning. Within such a framework, teachers find that students will wonder what “caused” the Nile to flood, or they might wonder what “effect” pushing large stones up ramps had on the common Egyptian laborer.

Moreover, this learning of deep content must begin as early in the child’s school experience as possible. We mean—yup, kindergarten. You might worry about how children this young could actually read information about American history, for example.

Well, SOR points out that at this early age, children’s hearing comprehension actually exceeds their reading abilities. Parents know this…watch what you say around a little one, or they’ll repeat it!

Reading Aloud to Young Students

So read-alouds work for the very young student. They can learn plenty of content—widening their world knowledge and thus creating a critical mental matrix for their reading decoding practice.

Teaching science and history content to young children gives them “reasons to talk and interesting things to talk about,” according to the National Institute for Literacy.³ Children and students “are more likely to have extended conversations if they are talking about topics that stimulate their thinking.”⁴ As teachers know, this is true not only for kindergarteners but for students at every stage of learning.

Furthermore, according to Wexler in a recent Forbes article⁵ teachers should be knowledge-building at every grade through high school. That means, that even in early elementary, teachers should read aloud texts that are too difficult for children, in order to share knowledge and vocabulary that children can add to their growing matrix of knowledge—to aid reading comprehension as the decoding ability is acquired.

In middle school, this knowledge-building should continue–with “coherent, content-focused curriculum.” So, the bottom line is:

• Stop teaching reading comprehension skills–the old list that we used to teach in isolation
• and start teaching meaty knowledge–real content to chew on–intriguing information to digest
• Then, watch knowledge grow, and children will begin to understand what they read.

It’s called the “knowledge gap” and can only be filled with “knowledge building.” Let’s get on it.

1. https://irisreading.com/what-are-the-benefits-of-reading-comprehension/ ↩︎
2. Elleman, Amy M. and Eric L. Oslund. “Reading Comprehension Research: Implications for Practice and Policy.” https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2372732218816339. page 6, 2nd column. ↩︎
3. National Institute for Literacy. “Learning to Talk and Listen: An oral language resource for early childhood caregiver.” https://lincs.ed.gov/publications/pdf/LearningtoTalkandListen.pdf. page 7 ↩︎
4. Ibid., page 8 ↩︎
5. Wexler, Natalie. “The Science of Reading Isn’t Just ‘Phonics,’ But What Else Is It?” Forbes, October 10, 2023. .https://www.forbes.com/sites/nataliewexler/2023/10/10/the-science-of-reading-isnt-just-phonics-but-what-else-is-it/?sh=46b7b6b6763a ↩︎

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