When I learned to drive, I first took a driver's ed class at school. We memorized the rules of the road from the textbook and saw movies about the horrors of irresponsible driving. I felt like an expert before I even got behind the wheel. Of course, my "expertise" didn't translate when I actually started driving - I ran over curbs and found it impossible to stay at a consistent speed. And forget about trying to drive somewhere new - it was all I could do to stay on the roads that I'd grown up on.
For many children, reading works the same way. After diligently memorizing letter sounds and sight words, they still have no idea what they're doing. They may be able to pronounce the words in a book, but they have no idea what the story was about. Or maybe they can summarize a story brilliantly - as long as someone else read it to them first.
Good readers use many, many skills to read and comprehend fluently. I've broken them into four main components.
