Based on students’ declining reading comprehension there is a need to develop systematic explicit instruction in teaching reading. This study is based on theories of metacognition, reading comprehension, reading instruction and Legitimation Code Theory and has the reading triangle as a model for teaching expository texts. The model has been tested in one class with eighth-grade students. The students have estimated their own reading comprehension and how they worked before, during and after reading an expository text, both before and after work with the reading triangle. The students in this survey have been taught and have worked with texts based on three levels of the reading triangle. The materials in the study are students’ self-assessments, texts with underlining and comments and interviews with the students and their teacher. The results show that the model, the reading triangle, as a part of an approach to develop literacy, with modelling and metacognitive textual conversations, can contribute to an understanding of the students’ reading process and knowledge of how global and local aspects of texts – such as purpose, text structure and choice of words – are connected with and influence reading comprehension. The study shows that the link between local and global levels must be explicit, since a focus on details can be detrimental to the overall understanding of texts. The use of the reading triangle in the classroom can also help the teaching move between the concrete and the abstract, enabling students to use the acquired knowledge and insights in new texts and reading situations.