This practical book grew out of a recent report written by the RAND Reading Study Group (RRSG), which proposed a national research agenda in the area of reading comprehension. In the book, RRSG members have expanded on their findings and translated them into clear recommendations to inform practice. The book explains research-based ways to plan effective instruction for students at all grade levels, meet the comprehension needs of English-language learners, promote adolescents' comprehension of subject-area texts, understand the complexities of comprehension assessment, and get optimal benefits from instructional technologies. Articles in the book are: (1) "Reading for Comprehension" (Catherine E. Snow and Anne Polselli Sweet); (2) "Comprehension Instruction: Adolescents and Their Multiple Literacies" (Donna E. Alvermann and A. Jonathan Eakle); (3) "The Reading Comprehension Development and Instruction of English-Language Learners" (Georgia Earnest Garcia); (4) "Individual Differences as Sources of Variability in Reading Comprehension in Elementary School Children" (Frank R. Vellutino); (5) "What Do Readers Need to Learn in Order to Process Coherence Relations in Narrative and Expository Text?" (Arthur C. Graesser; Danielle S. McNamara; Max M. Louwerse); (6) "Collaborative Approaches to Comprehension Instruction" (Annemarie Sullivan Palincsar); (7) "Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction: Practices of Teaching Reading for Understanding" (John T. Guthrie); (8) "Taking Charge of Reader, Text, Activity, and Context Variables" (Irene W. Gaskins); (9) "Electronic and Multimedia Documents" (Helen S. Kim and Michael L. Kamil); (10) "Professional Development in Reading Comprehension Instruction" (Janice A. Dole); (11) "Assessment of Reading Comprehension: Researchers and Practitioners Helping Themselves and Each Other" (Catherine E. Snow); and (12) "A Research Program for Improving Reading Comprehension: A Glimpse of Studies Whose Findings Will Aid the Classroom Teacher in the Future" (Anne Polselli Sweet). (NKA)