A process called “scaffolding” is where teachers first demonstrate, explain, model, and implement the strategy with students in learning how to comprehend a text. Such instruction is consistent with socially mediated learning theory, where, in the course of working together on the material, a transactional relationship develops between the student and the teacher in which the student gradually acquires the teachers skills.

Students showed improvement in studies involving even a few hours of training. In those studies instructors taught students who were poor readers but adequate decoders to apply various strategies to expository texts in reading groups, with teacher modeling of strategies, and teacher scaffolding. Students using these strategies even in limited ways, produced noticeable improvement in the use of the instructed strategies, albeit with only modest improvement on standardized reading tests. More intensive direct instruction and modeling have been more successful in improving reading and standardized test scores.