Several pressing issues in reading instruction have prompted educators world-wide to conduct researches on how to best improve reading comprehension skills. Although there is a wealth of reading comprehension researches done with EFL learners and native English speakers, there seems to be limited published studies conducted in the Philippine ESL context, particularly one that focuses on the sub-skills of reading comprehension. The researchers attempted to address the aforementioned by assessing the effectiveness of Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (CIRC) in improving the reading comprehension of 127 Grade 8 Filipino ESL learners particularly in recalling details, summarizing, identifying the main idea, making inferences, and determining fact vs. opinion within three sessions in a span of two weeks. Adopting a quantitative quasi-experimental research design, the researchers discovered that, despite the insignificance of the posttest scores between the lecture and CIRC groups, there were notable internal improvements for both groups in particular sub-skills. This short-term study provides an important direction to ESL teachers in, but not limited to, the Philippine classroom. Other pedagogical implications are further discussed in this study.