This is Susan Lambert, host of Science of Reading the podcast.

If you haven't noticed, there's a particular topic that's been on my mind a lot lately.

Comprehension is complicated.

There are lots of factors that contribute to reading comprehension.

Can we talk comprehension, though?

We're actually going to be talking about comprehension today, which was super exciting. Maybe it has become a bit of an obsession, but in my

defense, it's because our expert guests keep telling us how important, but often misunderstood,

comprehension is. It's not a single thing. I mean, that's the problem. The more I really started

to look into it, the more I saw there's actually a lot more going on while students are reading.

That's important to their comprehension.

I started up with some hypotheses, and it took a week and a half to have some of those hypotheses shattered.

That's why we're devoting our upcoming 10th season to fully unpacking comprehension.

We'll explore the various factors involved in the comprehension process.

We'll dive into the newest thinking on comprehension assessment.

We'll share evidence-based tips for boosting student comprehension, and we've got a brand

new lineup of expert guests ready to talk about the latest research.

We took a look at one of these studies together and he was like, my best guess is that 40 to 50% of

students in middle school and high school grades are probably disfluent.

Fluency is a prerequisite to comprehension. And in communities of the highest need, it may be as high as 80%. That is an

epidemic. I always say that if you're a teacher thinking about language comprehension, whatever time

you devote to helping people understand language, if you can be effective in doing that,

you'll never waste a kid's time. Join me for our deep dive into

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