Just Like Phonics, Comprehension Requires Explicit Teaching

Walk into most kindergarten or first grade classrooms during a reading block and you’ll hear the familiar rhythm of phonics instruction: segmenting sounds, blending words, and practicing fluency. 

This work is crucial. Mastering phonics and decoding are the foundations of reading. But once students begin to read more independently, comprehension isn’t always taught with the same degree of focus and structure, says Jen O’Sullivan, a former elementary school teacher and lecturer in literacy at Ireland’s Marino Institute of Education. 

In a recent Reading Teacher article O’Sullivan argues that comprehension doesn’t simply develop on its own, and many students may struggle to make meaning from what they read. “Skilled reading is not simply a matter of recognizing words on the page,” she writes. “It requires the ability to understand, interpret, and engage with meaning. This is where language comprehension becomes vital.” O’Sullivan describes comprehension as a “dynamic” process that involves helping students not only “grasp what is stated explicitly” in a text, but also integrate that information “with prior knowledge to construct meaning.” 

“When we nurture both word recognition and language comprehension from the earliest years, we give children more than the ability to read words on a page,” O’Sullivan writes. “We open the door to understanding, curiosity, and lifelong enjoyment of reading.”

Here are several research-backed strategies to teach foundational comprehension skills in early elementary classrooms.

Build on Students’ Natural Curiosity

When students make inferences about what they read, they “bridge the gap between literal text and implied meaning,” and learn to draw conclusions, make predictions, and understand implications—skills that are essential to reading comprehension, writes O’Sullivan. 

Conveniently, making inferences is something that young children already do in their everyday lives, O’Sullivan says. If a student sees someone enter the classroom soaked and carrying an umbrella, they might announce, “It’s raining”—a natural inference based on observable clues and background knowledge. Early readers can learn to make similar inferences in texts—as long as they’re guided to notice and use evidence. 

One way to build inferencing skills, O’Sullivan suggests, is through hands-on, non-reading activities such as:

• Mystery bags: Give students everyday objects (like a lunchbox, crayon, and library card) and ask them to infer who the items might belong to and why.
• Visual analysis: Study images or paintings—such as Norman Rockwell’s Going and Coming—and discuss what might be happening, where people are going, or what clues suggest the time of year.
• Wordless picture books: Use books like The Snowman or Journey to prompt students to infer characters’ feelings, motivations, or next actions.
• Role-play and puppets: Act out familiar scenarios like arriving late to school without a backpack, and ask students to predict what might happen next or explain why a character acted a certain way.

To help students transfer this thinking to written texts, O’Sullivan recommends making the connection explicit. During read-alouds, teachers can pause to model their own thinking—naming the clues they notice and explaining how those clues lead to an inference. For example, while reading Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes, a teacher might stop and say, “Pete stepped in strawberries and his favorite white shoes turned red. But I don’t think he’s upset because he’s still smiling and singing his song.” Sentence stems like “I think ___ because ___” help students practice grounding their ideas in textual evidence, even as they’re still developing decoding skills.

Help Students Connect What They Know 

Once students can decode text, comprehension increasingly depends on background knowledge—the concepts, vocabulary, and experiences they bring to what they read. Research shows that when instruction is organized around content-rich themes that draw on science, social studies, and literature—rather than isolated skills—students build knowledge they can carry with them to new texts. 

For example, instead of jumping from one unrelated story to the next, a class might spend several weeks reading fiction and nonfiction about dinosaurs, weather, or communities, revisiting key vocabulary across subjects. In a recent Harvard study, students who read widely on shared topics like this built stronger mental frameworks that helped them make sense of new, related texts—and later helped students outperform their peers on reading comprehension tasks.

But building knowledge isn’t enough. To support comprehension, students need help learning to activate what they already know before they begin reading. As O’Sullivan notes, readers must not only “grasp what is stated explicitly in the text,” but also “integrate that information with prior knowledge to construct meaning.” Brief activation activities can help kids surface their understanding of relevant ideas or vocabulary before they encounter them. Some strategies to try include: 

• Prediction Discussions: Invite students to share what they already know about a topic—such as storms—and what they expect a text on that topic might include.
• Classroom Polls: Before reading a story about a birthday party or family dinner, for instance, ask students what the word celebrate means and how they celebrate at home. Charting their responses helps them connect the text to their own experiences as they read.
• Collective Word Exploration: Before reading a text, ask students to discuss what a key word might mean. For example, third-grade teacher Karen Wills has students explore the word claim before reading Edison’s Best Invention, gathering their ideas before introducing the formal definition.
• Brainstorm Webs: For upper elementary students, write a word like photosynthesis on the board and invite students to share related ideas or words—like, plants, sun, and water—to surface what they already understand about the concept, suggests UCLA education instructor Rebecca Alber.

Monitor For Meaning 

As students read a text—whether independently or during a read-aloud—it’s important to explicitly model how reading isn’t just about getting through the words. It’s also about routinely checking for meaning as they go, Alber writes. 

Instead of telling students to “just read” or “just listen,” she suggests giving them a simple “mission as you read.” For example, you might ask students to be on the hunt for answers to questions like:

• Who is the main character?
• What happened in the beginning, middle, and end?
• Where does the story take place? How do you know?
• How is the character feeling? How do you know?

These prompts help students stay alert to meaning and begin internalizing the habit of asking themselves questions as they read—an important metacognitive skill. “This ability to think about their thinking is critical for monitoring comprehension and fixing it when it breaks down,” writes elementary reading specialist Brooke MacKenzie. 

To help nurture this skill, MacKenzie recommends modeling what it feels like when a text does—or doesn’t—make sense and making that inner dialogue visible. She keeps an anchor chart of questions in the classroom that students can ask themselves: Does it look right and sound right? Can I picture the story? Can I retell it? Does my mind feel good? If the answer to any of those questions is no, then students know what to do next: “slow down, reread, sound it out, and read on.”  

Teach Students How to Get Unstuck 

Even strong readers hit moments when meaning falls apart: they reach the end of a page and can’t explain what they just read, stumble over an unfamiliar word, or finish the story and realize it doesn't make any sense. 

In those moments, writes educator Nina Parrish, students need clear strategies to get back on track.

One essential repair strategy is rereading. Teachers can model this by explaining their thinking aloud before successive reads of a text—the first read is to get the big idea, and the second is to look more closely for details or answers to questions. During a read-aloud, Parrish also recommends modeling for students what it looks like to pause and reread when something doesn’t make sense. A teacher might say, “Hmm, I’m not sure why she’s sad here. I’m going to reread the last few sentences and look for a clue about what happened.” This shows students that strong readers don’t just keep going when they’re confused—they stop and repair their understanding. 

Rereading can also help students make sense of unfamiliar words, another common barrier to comprehension. Research shows that when students don’t understand many of the key terms in a text, comprehension suffers because they’re likely to misinterpret key ideas or lose track of what’s happening in the text. While previewing vocabulary ahead of time helps, students will always encounter words they don’t know as they read. 

In these moments, literacy researcher Timothy Shanahan suggests modeling how to pause and ask questions like: “What’s happening in the story that can help me understand what this word might mean?” or “What clues do the pictures or nearby sentences give me?” Finally, teachers can also encourage students to make a reasonable guess about a word’s meaning, and keep reading to see if it fits. “Sometimes readers just need to power through,” Shanahan notes, making sense of as much of the text as they can—even if a few words remain unclear.

Read Aloud—and Model it All 

Read-alouds are one of the most effective and flexible ways to support comprehension in the early grades. They give students regular access to grade-level and above texts while allowing teachers to demonstrate what skilled reading looks and sounds like. “By choosing texts thoughtfully, pausing to ask questions, and encouraging children to reflect on what they know and what the text shows,” O’Sullivan writes, teachers help students move from “surface-level decoding to deeper understanding.” 

Research consistently shows that frequent, well-structured read-alouds improve students’ vocabulary, fluency, and overall comprehension—especially when teachers are intentional about what happens before, during, and after reading. Previewing key ideas or words ahead of time and giving students opportunities to talk, retell, or reflect after a shared reading all help students build meaning without interrupting the flow of the text.

During read-alouds, teachers can also model comprehension moves students are still learning to do on their own—such as inferring how a character feels, predicting what might happen next, or noticing when something doesn’t make sense and showing how to reread or look for clues. 

In this way, read-alouds create a low-stakes space for students to practice comprehension skills like inferencing, activating background knowledge, and monitoring for meaning. Over time, seeing these strategies modeled repeatedly helps students internalize them and apply them later when reading independently.