If you have middle or high school students who are struggling with comprehension, you are absolutely not alone. Comprehension is such a complex skill, and many students don’t have a clear strategy to help them dig deeper into text. The good news is that comprehension is a skill that can be developed.

The important thing to keep in mind is that we are looking to build routines so that students know when to use each of the different strategies. It’s great to teach how to find the main idea and key details, and to teach how to make inferences and predictions, but it’s even more important that they know how everything fits together so they can actually use these strategies independently.

We know the importance of phonemic awareness for our young students - but we absolutely cannot forget about this literacy skill when it comes to working with our older students!