Which evidence-based literacy strategies support reading comprehension in elementary students?

• A. Predicting, questioning, clarifying, summarizing, activating background knowledge, utilizing graphic organizers, and explicit strategy instruction such as reciprocal teaching.
• B. Phonemic awareness and phonics.
• C. Silent reading without instruction.
• D. Only high-level vocabulary drills.

Answer: (A)

Understanding how to read for meaning comes from using explicit, evidence-based strategies that help students actively construct meaning. Predicting, questioning, clarifying, and summarizing are metacognitive techniques that keep students engaged with the text, help them monitor their understanding, and build a coherent representation of what they read. Activating background knowledge connects new information to what students already know, making it easier to integrate and retain new ideas. Graphic organizers give a visual structure to ideas, relationships, and details, which supports organizing and retrieving information. Explicit strategy instruction, like reciprocal teaching, models these practices, guides students through applying them, and gradually releases responsibility so they can use them independently.

These elements together form a strong approach to comprehension. Phonemic awareness and phonics are crucial for decoding, which supports later comprehension but don’t by themselves teach how to understand or interpret text. Silent reading without instruction misses guided practice in using strategies to understand meaning. Relying only on high-level vocabulary drills focuses on word meaning without teaching how to apply those words to make sense of text.