This report describes a program for teaching students to use specific strategies to construct meaning from text. The targeted population consisted of elementary and middle school students in a growing urban community in northern Illinois. The lack of reading strategies was documented by data describing the reading behaviors and achievement of the population. Analysis of probable cause data revealed that students lacked specific strategies for comprehension of written text. Faculty reported student weakness in reading or listening comprehension in subject areas across the curriculum. Reviews of curricula content and instructional strategies revealed a lack of student instruction in strategies for self-monitoring of reading comprehension. A review of solution strategies suggested by knowledgeable others, combined with an analysis of the problem setting resulted in the selection of one major intervention: reciprocal teaching strategies to improve reading comprehension developed by Annemarie Palincsar and Ann Brown. Post intervention data indicated an increase in listening comprehension at the kindergarten level, and an increase in reading comprehension levels for targeted fourth and fifth grade students. Limited improvement in reading comprehension of math word problems was evident at the seventh grade level. (Contains 28 references, and 3 tables and 11 figures of data. Appendixes contain assessment instruments, reading logs, journal prompts, and pre- and posttest instruments.) (Author/RS)