This paper describes a set of sentence meaning skills which has been identified to help teachers better focus their instruction in reading comprehension. The specific skills in the sentence meaning strand are developed through two sets of objectives: an analysis aspect, where the focus is on identification and understanding of details, and a synthesis aspect, where the learner paraphrases or restates the meanings conveyed by varied sentence structures. This strand is a logical progression of skills that teachers may wish to implement with commercial materials. It is strongly recommended that content area texts (e.g., social studies, science) be used as opposed to only basal readers. Once the skills have been integrated into the regular comprehension program, teachers may wish to determine through testing whether the students can use sentence meaning skills independently. Students able to use particular skills should be involved in activities requiring them to apply the skills in a variety of contexts. (JM)