Think Again: Should Elementary Schools Teach Reading Comprehension?

The conventional wisdom among educators and literacy gurus is that reading comprehension depends on the acquisition of isolatable, teachable, and generalizable skills. Consequently, many elementary and middle school English classrooms follow the "reading workshop" model, an approach to literacy instruction, with several variations that typically involve teachers spending a few minutes modeling a supposedly important skill before sending students off to practice by reading self-selected but appropriately "leveled" books. This policy brief challenges that orthodoxy. It asserts that, once students have learned to decode, reading books and other texts of any purported "level" with understanding depends more on knowledge than skills and that successful knowledge building requires explicit, carefully sequenced and paced, teacher-directed instruction across multiple subjects, including but not limited to social studies, science, and literature. Key questions asked in this report include: (1) Does reading comprehension depend on acquiring a set of teachable skills?; (2) Do students need practice with "just right" books?; (3) Does letting students choose the books they read foster the motivation necessary to improve reading comprehension?; and (4) Does extended literacy instruction enhance reading comprehension?