First- and second-grade students in two intact multiage classrooms were engaged in three read-aloud sessions with thematically related trade books, each portraying a scientist involved in authentic investigation. One group engaged in discussion of text ideas during reading, whereas the other group engaged in discussion only at the conclusion of the read-alouds. Students in the during-reading group demonstrated greater gain scores from pretest to posttest. This suggests that the cumulative effect of exposing students to multiple texts focusing on the work of scientists did affect students' comprehension, and cuing students to important ideas and encouraging text-to-text connections during reading was more beneficial than engaging students in similar discussion after reading. (Contains 6 tables.)