Students and Teachers Actively Reading Text

Teachers often lament that their students can read but they do not understand. The most important thing about reading is comprehen-sion. It is the reason that we read. However, many teachers express concern about their ability to effec-tively teach all of their students to become strategic metacognitive readers. Schools today are spending enormous amounts of time and money preparing students for high-stakes tests even though such a nar-row focus on test preparation does not translate into real learning (Klein, Hamilton, McCaffrey, & Stecher, 2000; Linn, 2000). According to Guthrie (2002), one of the most well-established findings in reading re-search is that comprehension develops through a va-riety of purposeful, motivated reading activities. By fostering students to become active, engaged read-ers, teachers enable them to gain competence and a sense of self-efficacy (Guthrie, 2002). Although comprehension improves through ex-tensive reading, researchers have concluded that comprehension could improve more if all readers were taught to use the comprehension strategies that good readers use (Block, Gambrell, & Pressley, 2002). Nearly 30 years ago, Durkin (1978/1979) re-ported that students received very little instruction in comprehension. All these years later, despite all that we have learned about comprehension instruction, researchers have found that there is still very little comprehension instruction occurring in the classroom on a daily basis (Pressley, 2006