Do you ever feel like you’re spinning your wheels during your literacy block? You’ve picked out a beautiful picture book, your students are gathered on the rug, and you’ve prepared a thoughtful list of comprehension questions.

But when you start asking them, you’re met with blank stares—or worse, the same two students answering everything while the rest of the class tunes out.

If you’ve felt this way, you aren’t alone. Reading comprehension is an incredibly complex process. It’s the ultimate goal of reading, but getting our early readers from point A (decoding) to point B (true understanding) can feel like a mystery.

We often think of comprehension as something that just “happens” once phonemic awareness, phonics, and word recognition are in place.

But the truth is, skilled reading doesn’t just happen by accident; it requires explicit instruction and effective strategies.

In this blog post, to celebrate the launch of our brand-new course, Beyond Decoding: How to Teach Reading Comprehension in K-2, we’re diving deep into something every K-2 teacher has experienced: the “comprehension disconnect.”

I’ll share three common “pitfalls” we’ve all fallen into—and what to do instead!

1. Don’t Just Ask Surface-Level Questions—Model Your Thinking & Choose Engaging Ways to Ask

Many reading comprehension activities focus solely on “testing” a child’s understanding after they’ve read. We ask, “Who was the main character?” or “Where did they go?” but if a young reader doesn’t understand the thought process of figuring out the answer to the question, simply asking them to answer won’t help them learn the how behind the skill.

Try it in your classroom: Try a Think-Aloud during your next read-aloud. Let’s say you’re reading a short story where a character seems sad, but the text doesn’t explicitly say it. Stop and say:

“Wait, I’m looking at the illustration, and I see that the character’s shoulders are slumped, and his head is down. The text says he ‘sighed and walked away.’ My brain connected those clues to a time when I felt upset and looked like the boy in the illustration. I’m thinking he might be feeling disappointed because he didn’t get his way. That’s how I know the character is feeling disappointed, or sad.” This models how strong readers notice ideas in the text that aren’t specifically stated and connect them to their own personal experiences.

As Nell Duke and colleagues noted, “Instruction should provide students with the opportunity to see how a strategy is applied and to hear the thinking that goes into its application” (Duke et al., 2021).

Modeling gives students the tools to engage actively with the text as they read and monitor their own understanding.

Level Up Your Questions

Once you’ve modeled that thinking, you want to move beyond basic recall. A common pitfall is staying stuck in the “Remember” phase of comprehension. To truly build skilled readers, we need to ask questions at different levels of complexity:

• Understand & Apply: Ask things like, “How is the character similar to or different from you?” or “Who do you think would find this information helpful?”.
• Analyze & Evaluate: Push deeper by asking, “What can we infer from this part of the text?” or “Do you agree with the author’s statement? Why or why not?”.
• Create: Encourage them to think beyond the page by asking, “How else could this story have ended?”

Make it a Game!

We also know that sitting and answering questions can feel a bit like an interrogation for a young reader. In our new Reading Comprehension Course, I share interactive exercises to keep students engaged.

One fun way to do this is with a game like “Fiction Race to the Finish.” Instead of just calling on one student, students can roll dice to move along a game board. Each space asks a different type of question, from “What was the setting?” to “How did the main character’s feelings change?” This turns comprehension instruction into a collaborative activity.

2. Don’t Teach Retelling and Summarizing at the Same Time

We often lump these two together in our reading blocks, but they are very different foundational skills. Retelling is about the “whole story” (ordering all the events), while summarizing is about the “heart” (the key ideas – the most important events or facts).

Try it in your classroom: Keep them separate to avoid overwhelm. Focus on retelling using graphic organizers like a “Story Train” or “Story Map.” Students can place pictures of events in the engine (beginning), the middle cars, and the caboose (end).

Only once they are confident with the sequence should you move into the “big ideas” of summarizing (this often doesn’t really happen until 2nd grade and up). A great fun way to do this is the “Somebody-Wanted-But-So-Then” framework.

It pushes students to move away from a play-by-play and focus on the big ideas and the character’s arc. This is a critical step in helping them become strong readers.

3. Don’t Skip the Background Knowledge

You could be the best teacher in the building, but if you hand a student a short passage about sea otters and they have zero prior knowledge about marine life, their comprehension will suffer. 

Background knowledge acts as the “mental filing cabinet” where new information is stored.

Try it in your classroom: Before you even open the book, spend five minutes building a “Knowledge Bridge.” For example, if you’re teaching a social studies or science unit, don’t just dive into the reading selection. Show a quick 30-second video clip, look at a map, or bring in real-life photographs to build new knowledge.

As Natalie Wexler explains in The Knowledge Gap, “If students don’t have the background knowledge to understand a text, no amount of ‘strategy’ instruction will help them make sense of it” (Wexler, 2019).

Pre-teach two or three key words that are vital to the story. If they understand the topic before they start, they can spend their mental energy on language comprehension rather than just trying to figure out what a “habitat” or “solar system” is.

Transform Your Comprehension Instruction

If you’re ready to move beyond the “guess and check” method and want to see explicit instruction in action, I have something so exciting to share with you!

Our new course, Beyond Decoding: How to Teach Reading Comprehension in K-2, is officially open for enrollment. This isn’t just more theory—it’s a practice guide full of interactive exercises to help your students become strong readers.

Inside the course, you’ll find:

• Bite-Sized Video Trainings: Designed to fit into your busy schedule
• Demonstration Lessons: Watch me model actual comprehension lessons for Kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd grade. You’ll get the lesson plans and the digital books I use so you can teach them tomorrow!
• The Bonus “Comprehension Kit”: This includes a read-aloud planner, a close-reading planner, a list of comprehension questions by grade level, reading response sheets, and posters for genres and text structures.
• Flexible Tools: Graphic organizers and activities can be integrated into any reading program or curriculum you’re already using.

Whether you’re working with Kindergarteners just starting to decode or Second Graders needing extra support identifying a story’s main idea, this course is for you.

Ready for step-by-step lessons? Join our Reading Comprehension Course: Beyond Decoding to transform how you teach understanding.

Let’s make reading comprehension the most engaging, successful part of your day!

Happy Teaching!

References

Duke, N. K., Ward, A. E., & Pearson, P. D. (2021). The science of reading comprehension instruction. The Reading Teacher, 74(6), 663-672.

Wexler, N. (2019). The knowledge gap: The hidden cause of America’s broken education system–and how to fix it. Avery.