Reading Comprehension

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Why it works

Research shows that a reader's background knowledge and vocabulary are powerful determinants of comprehension; the same strategy helps far more when the reader knows something about the topic. Teaching a few comprehension strategies briefly, while systematically building knowledge and vocabulary through rich, connected content, is more effective than extended isolated strategy practice.

The research: Willingham and Hirsch on knowledge and comprehension; research on content-rich literacy.

The run-of-show

Choose your slot. The agenda, timings, and length update to match.

The core activity: plan for knowledge and comprehension together

Teachers leave having planned to build the knowledge and vocabulary a text requires, with strategy teaching kept brief.

Pick a unit or text.
Identify the background knowledge and vocabulary students need to understand it.
Plan to build that knowledge with connected, content-rich reading.
Teach one or two comprehension strategies briefly, in service of the text.

Knowledge is comprehension's hidden engineYou cannot comprehend what you know nothing about. Building knowledge and vocabulary systematically does more than any amount of isolated strategy drilling.

Facilitator notes

Build knowledge through coherent content.
Teach a few strategies briefly, and attend to vocabulary and syntax.
Diagnose whether a student's bottleneck is decoding or comprehension.

Do not drill strategies endlesslyComprehension strategies help a little and briefly. The bigger, lasting gains come from systematically building knowledge and vocabulary.

Adapt it

Elementary: content-rich read-alouds build knowledge before students can read it themselves.
Secondary: disciplinary knowledge and vocabulary, with content-area reading.
Multilingual learners: explicit vocabulary and background building.

Participant handout

One page for every teacher. Print it, or save it as a PDF.

K12 Academics · Professional Learning

Reading Comprehension: build knowledge, then read

Comprehension runs on knowledge: build the background and vocabulary a text needs, keep strategies brief.

The unit or text:
The knowledge and vocabulary needed:
How I build that knowledge:
The one or two strategies I teach briefly:
How I tell decoding from comprehension bottlenecks:

Make it stick

Knowledge first, strategies brief:

Build knowledge systematically.
Keep strategy teaching brief.
Bring a knowledge-rich unit that lifted comprehension to the next PLC.

Common questions

Aren't comprehension strategies the main thing to teach?

A few strategies, taught briefly, help. But endless strategy practice has diminishing returns. Knowledge and vocabulary are the bigger levers, so build those systematically.

How do I build background knowledge?

Through coherent, content-rich units (science, history, the arts) with connected texts, so knowledge and vocabulary accumulate rather than jumping topic to topic.

What about students who decode fine but do not understand?

Their bottleneck is usually language comprehension, vocabulary, knowledge, or syntax, not decoding, so that is where to focus.