Session Six: Secondary Level Reading Comprehension Instruction: Theory and Best Practices

Name: Session Six: Secondary Level Reading Comprehension Instruction: Theory and Best Practices
Start: 2026-02-10T00:00:00-05:00
End: 2026-02-10T23:59:59-05:00
Location: Pastides Alumni Center at the University of South Carolina

February 10

Free

Description

Presenter: Dr. Devin Kearns

Reading comprehension requires a constellation of skills that are not easily acquired by all learners. Teachers can make a tremendous difference in supporting students’ reading comprehension by implementing a few simple practices:

Provide students with background knowledge before reading a text.
Providing students with information about the meanings of specific vocabulary words and teach their meanings directly.
Use high-efficiency strategies to help students when they need to consolidate knowledge or when they realize that comprehension has broken down.

In this session, Dr. Kearns will provide educators with an understanding of how to implement instruction in all three of these areas across the content to increase students’ reading comprehension achievement.

Schedule

Registration: 8:30 am
Session: 9:00 am – 3:45 pm (lunch on your own at 11:45 am)

About Dr. Devin Kearns

Dr. Kearns is currently the Goodnight Distinguished Professor in Early Literacy at North Carolina State University. Previously, Kearns was a professor of special education in the Department of Educational Psychology in the Neag School of Education at the University of Connecticut. He also worked as a research scientist for Haskins Laboratories affiliated with Yale University and the University of Connecticut. He studies how students in elementary grades learn to read and designs instructional programs to better meet the needs of these students. He holds a master’s degree in elementary literacy and language arts from Loyola Marymount University and a Ph.D. in special education from Vanderbilt University. Devin continues to help schools and districts implement high-quality reading instruction, including demonstrating how to implement evidence-based reading instruction.