"Reading comprehension is not a skill you teach but a condition you create. Teaching content is teaching reading. Reading comprehension is not improved through teaching “metacognitive skills”.
"It's true that knowledge gives students something to think about, but a reading of the research literature from cognitive science shows that knowledge does much more than just help students hone their thinking skills: It actually makes learning easier. Knowledge is not only cumulative, it grows exponentially. Those with a rich base of factual knowledge find it easier to learn more—the rich get richer. In addition, factual knowledge enhances cognitive processes like problem solving and reasoning. The richer the knowledge base, the more smoothly and effectively these cognitive processes—the very ones that teachers target—operate. So, the more knowledge students accumulate, the smarter they become. The more you know, the easier it will be for you to learn new things.”
Inferences:
"Comprehension demands background knowledge because language is full of semantic breaks in which knowledge is assumed and, therefore, comprehension depends on making correct inferences. An obvious way in which knowledge aids the acquisition of more knowledge lies in the greater power it affords in making correct inferences. If the writer assumes that you have some background knowledge that you lack, you'll be confused. If you know more, you're a better reader.
Most of the time you are unaware of making inferences when you read. Those conscious inferences are unnecessary because the cognitive processes that interpret what you read automatically access not just the literal words that you read, but also ideas associated with those words. All of these associations and inferences happen outside of awareness. Only the outcome of this cognitive process—that John is concerned his tux won't fit anymore—enters consciousness."
Faster reading, less rereading:
"People with more general knowledge have richer associations among the concepts in memory; and when associations are strong, they become available to the reading process automatically. That means the person with rich general knowledge rarely has to interrupt reading in order to consciously search for connections. Rich background knowledge means that you will rarely need to reread a text in an effort to consciously search for connections in the text."
Chunking:
"Most of the time when we are listening or reading, it's not enough to understand each sentence on its own—we need to understand a series of sentences or paragraphs and hold them in mind simultaneously so that they can be integrated or compared. Doing so is easier if the material can be chunked because it will occupy less of the limited space in working memory. But, chunking relies on background knowledge."
Freeing up working memory:
"Knowledge enhances thinking in two ways. First, it helps you solve problems by freeing up space in your working memory. Second, it helps you circumvent thinking by acting as a ready supply of things you've already thought about. If you don't have sufficient background knowledge, simply understanding the problem can consume most of your working memory, leaving no space for you to consider solutions. Experts don't just know more than novices—they actually see problems differently. For many problems, the expert does not need to reason, but rather, can rely on memory of prior solutions."
Robert Pondiscio again:
Every teacher is a literacy teacher:
“It’s a bit of an education cliché to say “every teacher is a literacy teacher.” Since background knowledge is a fundamental building block of language proficiency, it’s technically true: A teacher in any subject can’t help but be a literacy teacher, even if the effects are diffuse. If all of this sounds obvious or anodyne, consider that “literacy” tends to be viewed as the exclusive concern of English teachers if not elementary school teachers long before students showed up in secondary school classrooms—this view of literacy as not my job is almost certainly as common among subject-specific middle and high school teachers in the U.S. as the U.K.”
Vocab tiers:
“The emphasis on disciplinary literacy makes clear that every teacher communicates their subject through academic language, and that reading, writing, speaking, and listening are at the heart of knowing and doing Science, Art, History, and every other subject in secondary school. Here the authors invoke Isabel Beck’s helpful and clarifying “tiers of vocabulary.” So-called “Tier 1” words are the simplest, the kinds of words children often come to their first days of school already commanding—desk, ball, baby, etc. “Tier 3” words tend to be discipline-specific terms like “photosynthesis” or “isotope” that are seldom used outside of particular fields of study. The richness of language tends to reside in high-frequency “Tier 2” words that may occur across disciplines, but that take on different meanings in different contexts. “It is easy to see how confusion for students can occur,” the authors write, in mathematical words like value, prime, area, mean, fraction, and improper, which mean entirely different things in math class and everywhere else.”