Reading comprehension is the ability to understand text and connect it to your own knowledge and experience. We often think of reading comprehension as the product of reading: did the reader understand the text or not? When reading comprehension is achieved as a product, even with complex kinds of texts, we describe that level of reading as skilled reading.

But comprehension is a process as well; it happens while a person is reading, not just at the end. The other three components (alphabetics, vocabulary, and fluency) all impact the comprehension process considerably, but they are not sufficient in and of themselves.

Below are resources to support your comprehension instruction.

Teaching Resources:

• Instructional Video: Evidence-Based Reading Instruction - Comprehension Strategies (website; includes lesson plan and discussion questions)
• Comprehension Instruction in the ABE/ASE Classroom: What to Teach and How to Teach It (Word document download)
• Constructing Text Sets for a Unit (Word document download)

Navigate to the EBRI Main Page:

Evidence-based Reading Instruction (EBRI)