AbstractOver the last decade much has been learned about the underlying cognitive and psychological processes involved in reading comprehension. But until only recently, however, have researchers focused their efforts on the task of applying this accumulating body of research to the problem of how to better teach children to comprehend what they read. An increasing number of reading instructional studies and a large body of research on teacher effectiveness suggest that certain characteristics are associated with effective reading comprehension instruction. This article presents a reading comprehension instructional strategy which is based upon these established characteristics of effective reading comprehension instruction and which is generalizable to instruction in a wide range of reading comprehension skills. Specifically, the procedure consists of five steps: (a) Introduction, (b) Example, (c) Direct Instruction, (d) Teacher‐Directed Application, and (e) Independent Practice. The article contains a description of each step, and a sample lesson following this procedure is provided.