Reading comprehension is so complicated! So many things go into whether or not you understand what you've read. Comprehension is deeply connected to oral language, background knowledge, fluency, and even motivation. In these episodes, we explore what comprehension really is, how it develops, and how to support it in your classroom.

In this blog post, we’ve grouped podcast episodes about comprehension into themes to help you find the episodes that you want to listen to. Whether you’re thinking about texts, classroom routines, or what the research says, you can find a helpful episode right away! 

Understanding What Reading Comprehension Really Is

Comprehension is complex, but that doesn’t mean you can’t teach it. You can teach reading comprehension, but you don't want to treat it as an isolated skill or strategy of the week. Comprehension is a meaning-making process that happens when the reader, the text, and the purpose for reading come together.

Students need strong word reading skills to access a text. Anita Archer says “There’s no comprehension strategy powerful enough to make up for not being able to read the words.” But decoding alone isn’t enough. Readers also bring their vocabulary, background knowledge, and motivation to the table, and those things matter just as much.

Every text has its own features, like vocabulary, structure, and complexity. And every reader has a different reason for reading. It might be to learn something new, gather facts, or take action. That’s why comprehension instruction has to go deeper than “main idea” and “text evidence.” It has to help students make meaning.

These episodes dig into all of that. If you’ve ever wondered what comprehension really is, and how to support it, start here

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Moving Beyond Strategies: Grounding Comprehension in Text

We’ve all taught comprehension strategies like finding the main idea or drawing conclusions. And while those strategies can be helpful tools, the research is clear: isolated strategy instruction doesn’t necessarily improve reading, especially when it’s taught using contrived texts that don’t reflect the kind of reading students do in real life.

Instead of teaching students to become experts in “doing” strategies, you want to help them become thinkers and readers who use strategies purposefully to make sense of what they’re reading. Comprehension strategies are most effective when they’re taught briefly, explicitly, and in the context of authentic texts.

In these episodes, we talk with literacy leaders about how to move beyond the “strategy of the week” mindset.

Knowledge as the Foundation for Comprehension

If students don’t know much about what they’re reading, it’s hard for them to make sense of it. That’s why knowledge matters so much. As researcher Susan Neuman says, “knowledge is comprehension in disguise.”

Knowledge and comprehension have a powerful, reciprocal relationship. When students already know something about a topic, it’s easier for them to understand and remember new information. It’s like “mental Velcro,” as author Natalie Wexler says. Knowledge sticks best to related knowledge. 

In these episodes, you’ll hear from researchers and literacy leaders about why knowledge is essential, and how to build it into your instruction.

Building Routines for Comprehension

There’s a lot that you can do to support students’ comprehension, like building knowledge, teaching vocabulary, guiding sentence-level understanding, and making text structures visible. To make these moves stick, you'll need strong, consistent routines.

Comprehension doesn’t just happen. It grows when students know how to approach a text, monitor their understanding, and adjust when something doesn’t make sense. That’s where strategies like rereading, summarizing, and unpacking vocabulary come in, but they work best when embedded in purposeful instruction.

These episodes offer practical frameworks to help you turn research into action, and build a classroom where comprehension is supported every day.

Pushing into Difficult Texts

If you want students to read and comprehend complex texts, you have to give them the chance to actually read complex texts. Using leveled texts for instruction might feel supportive, but research shows it doesn’t improve comprehension, and it may even hold students back over time.

When students are only given access to easier texts, they miss out on opportunities to grow their vocabulary, build knowledge, and tackle more sophisticated sentence structures. Meanwhile, students reading richer, more challenging texts tend to get further ahead. That’s the Matthew Effect in action: the more you read, the more you grow.

The good news? Most students can read complex texts with the right support. These episodes explore what that support can look like, from scaffolding and modeling to using text sets and selecting content-rich passages. If you’re ready to move past “just right” books and lean into grade-level complexity, these conversations will help you get there.

There’s no single right way to teach comprehension, but there are better questions to ask, better texts to choose, and better systems to build. These episodes are full of research, classroom insight, and encouragement as you continue growing your practice.

We’re still learning, too, and we’re glad you’re on this journey with us.

📘 Check out the Comprehension chapter of our book: The Literacy 50–A Q&A Handbook for Teachers: Real-World Answers to Questions About Reading That Keep You Up at Night