
Building Lifelong Readers at Springer
September 2, 2026
The Hidden Skills Behind Successful Reading
What if a student’s reading challenge isn’t really about reading?
A student may read words accurately and understand what they mean, yet still lose track of a passage, forget key details, or struggle to figure out where to begin. That’s because successful reading also depends on executive functioning skills like attention, working memory, flexibility, and organization.
Looking at these skills can help explain why reading sometimes feels harder than expected - and point toward strategies that can help.

Reading Takes More Than Reading Skills
As students get older, the demands of reading change. Around third grade, they begin moving from learning to read toward reading to learn. Reading is no longer focused on recognizing words. Students also need to remember information, connect ideas, identify important details, monitor their understanding, and decide what to do when something doesn’t make sense.
That requires several executive functioning skills working together.
Working memory helps students hold onto information as they continue reading, such as remembering the beginning of a sentence while reaching the end or connecting earlier events to what is happening now.
Cognitive flexibility helps students shift between tasks like decoding an unfamiliar word and thinking about the larger meaning of a paragraph.
Inhibitory control helps students tune out distractions and stay focused on the text.
Planning and organization help students decide how to approach an assignment, break a longer task into smaller steps, and keep track of materials and deadlines.
What Might It Look Like?
A student may read a passage accurately but struggle to explain what happened afterward. They might reach the bottom of a page and realize they have no idea what they just read. They may have difficulty remembering directions, connecting ideas across a chapter, or deciding which information matters most.
For students with ADHD, challenges with sustained attention, organization, and self-monitoring can make these demands especially difficult. Over time, reading may begin to feel frustrating or exhausting, which can also affect confidence.
Making Reading More Manageable
Parents and educators can help by making the reading process more structured and explicitly teaching students how to approach a task.
A few strategies to help:
- Set a purpose before reading. Ask, “What are you trying to learn from this?” A clear goal helps students focus and monitor their understanding.
- Break reading into smaller sections. Pause at natural stopping points to summarize or discuss a key idea.
- Use visual organizers. Graphic organizers, notes, or checklists can reduce the amount of information a student has to hold in working memory.
- Teach active reading. Annotation, highlighting, summarizing, and stopping to ask questions can support comprehension and self-monitoring. Questions like, “What is the author trying to tell me?” “How does this character feel?” and “Why is this important?” can help strengthen understanding.
- Normalize rereading. Strong readers regularly go back when something is unclear. Rereading is a strategy, not a failure.
Another useful tool is SQ3R: Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review. Students preview the material, develop questions, read with those questions in mind, explain the information in their own words, and review what they learned. This turns reading into a more active, structured process and helps students build stronger comprehension and memory skills.
Helping Students Become Strategic Readers
Reading challenges don’t always mean a student lacks reading skills. Sometimes, the missing piece is support with the executive functioning skills that help them stay focused, organize information, and monitor their understanding. Nurturing these skills, along with using reading strategies and staying motivated and engaged, can drive a student’s ability to put together all the pieces of reading to achieve comprehension.
Over time, these tools can make reading feel less complicated, and help students become more confident, independent learners.



