Reading proficiency remains a major challenge for Grade 7 students in need of extra support to enhance their capacity to understand what they read, even with interventions already existing and available, therefore pointing towards the need for targeted strategies to help close literacy gaps that continue to exist. This study examined the effectiveness of intensive guided oral reading as an intervention to improve reading comprehension among Grade 7 ARAL Plus learners at a public secondary school in Palo, Leyte. This study was based on the zone of proximal development by Vygotsky, Schema Theory, and the Simple View of Reading, and used a pre-experimental one-group pretest-posttest design. A total of fifteen grade seven students were purposefully selected from an intact class because they met the inclusion criteria as identified by their performance on a reading assessment tool being below the minimum proficiency level. The intervention included a series of intensive guided oral reading sessions conducted during the third quarter of the school year 2025 – 2026. All three types of comprehension (literal, inferential, and critical) were targeted. An improvement measure was developed through the administration of two parallel 20-item reading comprehension assessments, which were adapted from validated DEPED assessment tools, correlated with the MATATAG curriculum standards, vetted by content area experts, and tested for reliability. Descriptive statistics, paired samples t-tests, and Cohen's d effect size measures were utilized to analyze the data. Significant improvements in literal comprehension (students advanced to instructional level) and meaningful increases in inferential and critical comprehension (though students are still at the frustration level). This research demonstrates that intensive guided oral reading is an effective intervention strategy for improving reading comprehension for struggling ARAL plus learners. Therefore, this study provides evidence-based strategies for supporting learning recovery and literacy development. As such, these research findings provide some direction for the Department of Education’s ARAL program; specifically, that structured, scaffolded, and intensive reading interventions will improve students’ capacity to comprehend what they read, help to achieve SDG 4 (quality education), and provide some insight into how literacy programs may be developed in future post-pandemic classroom environments.