The article by Pardo about reading comprehension verified some opinions I have had about comprehension for a long time.  One of which is the opinion that just because a child can read words doesn't mean they can comprehend what the words mean.  The elementary school I attended growing up was very traditional in how they taught reading comprehension......if a student was a good "reader," they must also be good at comprehension.   As a child, I suspected that that scenario was not completely accurate, because I was consistently one of the best readers for my age, but I never seemed to "get" what I was reading as well as the other kids.  I now realize that I struggled with comprehension, even though I was good at the mechanics of reading.
I am really happy that emphasis is now being put on several different aspects that aid in comprehension.  Students do need a certain amount of practice at decoding and memorization, but I think that other components to comprehension are equally, if not more so, important.  Two of these components are the teacher being able to present the material in interesting and exciting ways and helping the student relate the information to events or ideas that are specifically meaningful to that child.  I have always found that if information is interesting to me or relates to aspects in my life, I am able to understand what I read about that topic better than if I had no interest at all.