Although reading comprehension skills are indispensable in the 21st century, many upper elementary students unfortunately struggle with it. Moreover, the reading strategy use and autonomous reading motivation of many upper elementary school students is worrisome (Boakye, 2017; Mullis et al., 2016; Rasinski, 2017). Both factors (i.e. reading strategies and motivation) though appear to correlate positively with effective reading comprehension (Boakye, 2017; Mullis et al., 2016). Therefore, this dissertation aimed to gain more insights into upper elementary students’ reading outcomes (i.e., reading motivation, strategy use, and comprehension) and how these can be fostered within a response-to-intervention (RTI) design. Since appropriate measurement instruments were lacking, both a self-report questionnaire to measure upper elementary students’ strategy use and a tool to monitor these students’ reading comprehension progress was developed (see chapter 2 and 3). Additionally, chapter 4 revealed that struggling comprehenders are only seldom supported by teacher aides, despite the fact that teacher aides recognize the importance of this skill. Based on the results of the first three chapters (research line 1), the RTI intervention ‘Everybody Reading Athlete’ was developed and implemented to foster upper elementary students’ reading outcomes (research line 2). More specifically, this RTI design showed promising results, in particular for struggling comprehenders (see chapter 5 and 6). In sum, referring to the title of this dissertation, ‘Everybody Reading Athlete’ can serve as a promising start to get everyone on board of the reading boat, even struggling comprehenders.