Comprehension [Grades K-12]: The Skill, Will, and Thrill of Reading

Radically change the way students learn from texts, extending beyond comprehension to critical reasoning and problem solving.

Is your reading comprehension instruction just a pile of strategies? There is no evidence that teaching one strategy at a time, especially with pieces of text that require that readers use a variety of strategies to successfully negotiate meaning, is effective. And how can we extend comprehension beyond simple meaning?

Bestselling authors Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, and Nicole Law propose a new, comprehensive model of reading instruction that goes beyond teaching skills to fostering engagement and motivation. Using a structured, three-pronged approach--skill, will, and thrill--students learn to experience reading as a purposeful act and embrace struggle as a natural part of the reading process. Instruction occurs in three phases:

• Skill. Holistically developing skills and strategies necessary for students to comprehend text, such as monitoring, predicting, summarizing, questioning, and inferring.
• Will. Creating the mindsets, motivations, and habits, including goal setting and choice, necessary for students to engage fully with texts.
• Thrill. Fostering the thrill of comprehension, so that students share their thinking with others or use their knowledge for something else.