Flinders CCC Reading for Life

Here, we define comprehension as a combination of thought processes, rather than a teachable skill.

For comprehension to take place, phonological awareness, phonics, fluency and vocabulary, which are teachable, have to have reached reasonable levels.

This section goes on to stress the importance of background knowledge and how low-content, discovery/investigation type teaching in the early years leads to an unacceptably low success rate of children in schools. We caution against making reading comprehension the primary driver for literacy instruction and intervention.