Reading Comprehension Strategy Selector

What This Skill Does

Identifies the most appropriate reading comprehension strategies for a specific text and reader challenge, and provides a complete implementation guide including a teacher modelling script. Rather than defaulting to "use all the strategies" (a common but ineffective approach), this skill matches specific strategies to specific comprehension challenges — predicting when the text structure is unfamiliar, questioning when the content is dense, clarifying when vocabulary is technical, summarising when the text is long and detailed. The output tells teachers not just WHICH strategy to use but HOW to teach it with this specific text. AI is specifically valuable here because strategy selection requires simultaneously analysing the text's demands, the readers' likely difficulties, and the evidence base for each strategy — a three-way match that most teachers don't have time to make explicitly.

Evidence Foundation

Duke & Pearson (2002) identified six comprehension strategies with strong evidence: predicting, questioning, monitoring/clarifying, visualising, making connections, and summarising. Crucially, they emphasised that strategy instruction must be explicit — teachers must model the strategy through think-aloud, guide students in applying it, and gradually release responsibility. Pressley (2002) showed that skilled readers use strategies flexibly and selectively, choosing different strategies for different reading challenges — teaching students to use all strategies all the time produces cognitive overload and superficial application. The National Reading Panel (2000) confirmed that comprehension strategy instruction produces significant effects (especially questioning and summarising), but cautioned that strategies are means to understanding, not ends in themselves — the goal is comprehension, not strategy use. Palincsar & Brown (1984) demonstrated the effectiveness of reciprocal teaching — a structured approach where students take turns applying four strategies (predicting, questioning, clarifying, summarising) — with effect sizes of 0.74 for comprehension gains. Shanahan et al. (2010) noted that strategy instruction is most effective for intermediate readers who can decode but struggle with meaning; for beginning readers, decoding instruction takes priority.

Input Schema

The teacher must provide:

• Text description: What students will read. e.g. "A Year 9 History textbook extract (800 words) about the causes of the Industrial Revolution — dense with unfamiliar vocabulary and multiple causal factors" / "A short story by Roald Dahl with an unexpected twist ending — Year 5 reading level"
• Reader challenge: The specific difficulty. e.g. "Students tend to read the surface events but miss the underlying causes" / "Students don't notice the clues that foreshadow the ending" / "Students get lost in the technical vocabulary and give up"
• Student level: Year group and reading competence. e.g. "Year 7, can decode fluently but struggle with inference" / "Year 4, mixed — some confident readers, some still developing fluency"

Optional (injected by context engine if available):

• Reading purpose: Why students are reading this text