This article describes some of the thought processes that can help students perform well on standardized tests of reading comprehension. It includes two reading passages along with sample test questions that call on skills that eighth grade students should master to be on track for college readiness. Also included are explanations for the correct answer choices.

Fluent readers can read text accurately, smoothly, and with good comprehension. Students who get bogged down in the mechanics of reading have trouble with this skill. With proper instruction, struggling readers can improve their fluency.

Morphology describes how words are formed from building blocks called morphemes, the smallest unit of meaning in a word. Students who don't understand this structure have trouble recognizing, understanding, and spelling words. Find out how proper instruction can help them learn this key skill.

Text comprehension allows readers to extract or construct meaning from the written word. Students who misread words or misinterpret their meanings are at a disadvantage. Proper instruction can boost students' skills in this key area.

What's in a word? Mastery of oral and written vocabulary promotes comprehension and communication. Find out how proper instruction can help students who struggle with vocabulary.

Students who don't write well aren't able to learn and communicate effectively. This article explains what good writing skills are and how to help struggling young writers gain those skills through proper instruction.

Learning happens when we connect new information to what we already know. When children have limited knowledge about the world, they have a smaller capacity to learn more about it. Here are four ways teachers can build content knowledge that will expand the opportunity for students to forge new connections - and make them better independent readers and learners.

A strategy for vocabulary instruction that involves introducing new vocabulary in related clusters. This approach can help diverse learners, including those students learning English, to make important vocabulary connections.

Every content area, from chemistry to history, has unique literacy demands: texts, knowledge, skills. But how are these critical literacies learned, let alone taught?

Literacy practices interviews are informal assessments that elicit information on students' reading and writing activities, including their free-time reading habits, their access to books, and their attitudes toward reading and writing. Use the interviews in one-on-one or small, focus group-like settings.

Engaging all students in a themed study or unit is a challenge that teachers can resolve by using materials that match students' independent or instructional reading levels (Robb 1994, 2000). When students face textbooks that are above their reading levels, teachers can help them access the required information by filling their classrooms with multiple texts that vary in readability level. Multiple texts improve students' application of reading-thinking strategies, build confidence, and develop the motivation to learn. Through the use of multiple texts, all students have the opportunity to learn new information and make meaningful contributions to discussions. Moreover, varied texts provide multiple perspectives that help students rethink events and issues that impact everyone and deepen their knowledge of literary genres.

Thematic pairings of novels/short stories with movies can help students access difficult texts and can lead to deeper comprehension and lively classroom discussion. This article suggests pairings for some commonly assigned middle and high school texts for several important themes.

Pre-reading activities can engage student interest, activate prior knowledge, or pre-teach potentially difficult concepts and vocabulary. They also offer a great opportunity to introduce comprehension components such as cause and effect, compare and contrast, personification, main idea, and sequencing.

Textbook previewing strategies focus not only on the structure of the text - such as the table of contents, index, chapter introductions, and so forth - but on a content overview, which focuses on the concepts and questions covered in the chapter and their interrelationships.

This article answers four common questions teachers have about vocabulary instruction, including what words to teach and how well students should know vocabulary words.

Students need to learn the purposes and methods of narration in order to understand the narrative framework and to eliminate frustration when they read. When students know the narrative elements, they can more easily follow the story line and make successful predictions about what is to occur. In addition, understanding these elements develops higher-level thinking skills.

Comprehension strategies are conscious plans - sets of steps that good readers use to make sense of text. Comprehension strategy instruction helps students become purposeful, active readers who are in control of their own reading comprehension. The seven strategies here appear to have a firm scientific basis for improving text comprehension.

Social support strategies that sustain the preparation and success of all students are critical to improving academic achievement, raising expectations, and increasing the college-going rates of underserved students.

Many areas of instruction can have a rippling effect for the expansion of readers' repertoire of skills, including pre-reading, predicting, testing hypotheses against the text, asking questions, summarizing, etc. Literacy-rich, content-area classrooms include a variety of instructional routines that provide guidance to students before, during, and after reading.

The most effective vocabulary instruction teaches word meanings as concepts; it connects the words being taught with their context and with the students' prior knowledge. Six techniques have proven especially effective: Concept Definition Maps, Semantic Mapping, Semantic Feature Mapping, Possible Sentences, Comparing and Contrasting, and Teaching Word Parts. RI.9-10.4 word meanings/impact of choice