Comprehension skills and strategies can be very similar in form. For example, students might take the actions of a particular character in a story and write out the pros and cons of the character's action. The difference lies in what the student does after completing the activity. Often, comprehension skills are turned in, while students apply comprehension strategies toward an additional reading activity that helps the student understand the story, such as writing a summary of the story.
Teachers teach students reading comprehension strategies, since many students do not learn reading comprehension strategies on their own. Teachers use comprehension skills often as an assessment method. Teachers usually work on improving student reading comprehension after the students learn how to decode words and the basics of grammar, syntax and phonetics.
Comprehension allows students to actually understand the ideas contained within the text. Teachers often have students read textbooks and works of literature, only to receive blank stares the next day when they ask questions about the text. Students understand the words, but they don't understand the meaning of the passages as a whole. Reading skills help teachers assess reading comprehension, while comprehension strategies help them improve students' comprehension.
The reading strategies are clear and specific. Students can make connections, visualize, ask questions, assess text importance, synthesize and make inferences. Students make connections between different texts, between texts and the world, and between texts and themselves. For example, students may relate to the experiences of characters in stories they read. Students learn to ask questions related to gaps in the information contained in the texts. They also learn to make predictions based on limited information, called inferences. Comprehension skills are not as specific.
Teachers almost always help students learn comprehension strategies through read alouds, which are exercises where the teacher reads with the students out loud and explains exactly what strategies she is using when reading the text. With reading skills, teachers assign activities to the students that they complete and turn in.
Reading comprehension occurs when students connect what they read to what they already know. To some extent, reading comprehension improves as students learn more. However, they must also engage in specific activities that further help them understand what they read.