Hi Blakely,
You’re right. Reading comprehension is not simply a set of skills to learn, but rather a process of making meaning from a text. In order to most effectively help students comprehend text, we need to both understand how readers derive meaning from text, as well as investigate where the areas of breakdown are for the student.
First, consider that students must be reading the words accurately, and at a pace sufficient to support comprehension (often regarded at the 50th percentile on normed charts of Oral Reading Fluency). If students are misreading words, or if their reading is slow and/or choppy, then their comprehension will almost certainly be compromised.
Consider that a large component of reading comprehension, in the absence of any difficulty with word reading, is language comprehension. Vocabulary, especially, is known to be one of the biggest contributing factors towards reading comprehension at this age. Oftentimes, students have an underlying difficulty with language that is most pronounced when attempting to read due to the more complex vocabulary and sentence structures usually present in written language (even texts geared towards elementary-aged students) as compared to typical oral language (even that spoken by a well-intentioned teacher). Because of the relative simplicity of vocabulary and syntax structures used in spoken language, and how redundant this language is with visual cues, gestures, and tone of voice that also contribute to meaning (as well as a host of other reasons), language difficulties such as developmental language disorder (DLD) are significantly underdiagnosed in children, and often first identified because of their struggles with reading.
What some prominent theoretical frameworks of reading don’t include is the involvement of self-regulation on students’ comprehension. Have you ever gotten to the end of a page while reading and realized you had completely zoned out and have no idea what you just read? When students lack the sustained attention, executive functioning skills, and/or motivation to concentrate on the text, they will experience this unawareness more regularly.
I certainly can’t unpack the topic of comprehension in this one article, but my best advice to really nail down why your students struggle would be this: First, perform a measure of Oral Reading Fluency (ORF) and ensure they are reading accurately and with sufficient automaticity. Next, really pull apart a text with an individual student piece by piece. As they are reading aloud, stop them every 1-3 sentences. Ask them to restate what they just read in their own words. Ask them what some of the challenging words mean. Ask them both detail-oriented questions, and those that require inferential thinking (such as asking why a character may have acted in such a way, or what they think will happen next). Which of these tasks is the student able to do independently? Which are they able to do after rereading the excerpt? Which do they struggle with, without further support? Take ample notes to be able to establish patterns of your students’ strengths and weaknesses and use this information to target the specific areas your students need help with.
While this does require a not insignificant amount of one-on-one time with each student, I think you will find the information you gather from it invaluable in being able to help, rather than just shooting in the dark.