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Sentence Anagrams Scaffolding PD - Google Jamboard

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Evidence that Building Background Knowledge Boosts Comprehension

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Evidence that Building Background Knowledge Boosts Comprehension

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Studies now in progress promise to show that building children's knowledge can have powerful effects ... [+]
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Studies show it's easier to understand what you're reading if you have knowledge of the topic, but some reading experts say there's little evidence that building kids' knowledge boosts reading comprehension. That may be changing.

Among scientists who study the learning process, it's well established that having prior knowledge of a topic has a strong positive effect on reading comprehension. While there are few studies directly addressing that phenomenon, cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham has said the effect is so well known that studies on other topics routinely control for it. There's also evidence that scores on reading comprehension tests are highly correlated with general cultural knowledge.

And yet, if you look at schools in the U.S. and some other countries, you would never know that's the case. Year after year, students get many hours of reading comprehension instruction that neither takes their prior knowledge into account nor tries to increase it. Students are given periodic tests to determine their reading levels based on passages on topics they may or may not know anything about. They're then matched with books that have been assigned levels based on easily measurable factors like word length and sentence length.

These efforts to boost comprehension have the trappings of science, but they're omitting what science has found to be a key factor: knowledge. (And in the case of individual reading levels, there's apparently no scientific underpinning whatsoever.) The theory is that if students practice comprehension skills and strategies like "making inferences" on a random variety of books that are fairly easy for them to read, they'll become better readers. But a reader's ability to make an inference will vary depending on the topic and her knowledge of it, so it's not a general skill that just gets better with practice, like playing tennis.

There is evidence that teaching certain comprehension strategies can have positive effects in the short term-most studies last only about six weeks. But there's no reason to believe that doing it year after year boosts comprehension. Considering that only about a third of American students test at the proficient level or above on reading tests-a proportion that hasn't changed in over twenty years -it seems that the skills-focused approach to comprehension must be leaving out something important. Like, perhaps, building kids' academic knowledge and vocabulary as early and as much as possible, so that they're more likely to understand whatever they're expected to read.

But first: what do we really know about the effect that background knowledge has on children's reading comprehension? There's some more or less accidental evidence, like the correlation between more social studies and higher reading scores, or the inadvertent experiment that occurred when France abandoned its content-rich elementary curriculum.

A recent " critical review " of the more formal research, going back to 1950, provides a useful summary-with the caveat that different researchers used different measures of comprehension. The authors of the review based their findings on 23 studies of children ages six to twelve, most done in the 1980s and 1990s, that either used a "knowledge-building intervention" or looked at correlations between prior knowledge and reading performance.

· The more knowledge children had of the topic, the better their reading comprehension-across the board.

· Readers deemed to have "generally poor comprehension skills" were able to compensate for that if they had a lot of relevant background knowledge, especially when they were just asked to recall what they had read as opposed to making inferences about it.

· Readers who lacked knowledge of the topic understood a text better if it was well written. Interestingly, readers with a lot of knowledge who were generally poor readers did better when the text didn't hang together as well, maybe because the effort of reading the text got them more engaged.

· Background knowledge was more important when the texts were expository rather than narrative.

But not all of these studies were what researchers consider the "gold standard"-randomized controlled trials, or RCTs. Such experiments call for dividing subjects into two comparable groups and then giving only one group some kind of "treatment," with the other group acting as the "control." Results are measured in standard deviations (see here for a better explanation of that term than I can provide). That kind of study indicates that the treatment-for instance, building kids' knowledge-is probably what caused the result.

Another issue is that most of the studies in the review that involved building students' knowledge did so for only a few hours. That's a problem, especially when the measure of comprehension is a standardized test that covers topics unrelated to what children have actually learned. It can take years for students to acquire the critical mass of academic knowledge and vocabulary that will equip them to understand passages at "grade level," regardless of whether they know much about the specific topic.

That's probably why the few RCTs that have examined the connection between knowledge-building and comprehension have mostly yielded inconclusive or undramatic results. One study done in England and published in 2017 purported to be the "first ever RCT of the Core Knowledge curriculum," referring to an approach associated with E.D. Hirsch, Jr., a longtime advocate of building children's knowledge. The researchers found that after one year of using the curriculum with children ages seven to nine, there was no effect on comprehension overall as measured by a standardized test, and only a small positive effect for children from lower-income families-the students most likely to benefit, since they're the least likely to pick up academic knowledge at home.

But the study actually didn't actually involve one of the curricula developed by the Core Knowledge Foundation, and the researchers acknowledge high levels of attrition and poor implementation by teachers hampered by their own lack of background knowledge. One reading researcher, Sonia Cabell, has pointed out that the study doesn't meet the standards set by a federal government clearinghouse for education research.

Cabell herself is leading an RCT of the Core Knowledge Foundation's Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) curriculum in early elementary classrooms. CKLA is designed to be implemented during the "literacy" or "language arts" block in elementary school, but instead of putting comprehension skills and strategies in the foreground it focuses on meaty topics, including some in social studies and science. It's the oldest of several recently developed literacy curricula that take such an approach.

In an article, Cabell and a co-author discussed four other studies that have examined the effect of knowledge-building curricula or interventions on comprehension in the early grades. All found positive effects on measures of the vocabulary or knowledge that had actually been taught, and two also found the harder-to-achieve effects on standardized comprehension measures.

Cabell's own study also found both kinds of effects, based on the first year of what is designed to be a multi-year study. After just one semester, she and her fellow researchers found significant gains in knowledge and vocabulary that kindergartners had been taught and on some standardized measures of vocabulary and knowledge.

In an interview on the Science of Reading podcast, Cabell said she hadn't expected to see results like that until at least first grade. True, the effects weren't apparent across all of the measures used, and what effects there were appear to be small-.06 and .12 of a standard deviation. But most RCTs of language interventions see effect sizes of only .01, she said. Given that context, she called the results "quite remarkable." Unfortunately, the pandemic has temporarily derailed Cabell's study, but eventually it will continue.

Meanwhile, another long-term, large-scale RCT examining curriculum based on the Core Knowledge Sequence may yield even more remarkable results. While it hasn't been published yet, its findings were described by Hirsch in his most recent book, based on a talk given by the lead researcher, David Grissmer. According to Hirsch, Grissmer found that after three years, students in charter schools that had developed a curriculum based on the Core Knowledge framework exceeded the verbal achievement of a control group by more than half of a standard deviation. Among students from the lowest-income families, the difference was two thirds of a standard deviation.

To be sure, knowledge isn't the only factor in reading comprehension. Familiarity with the conventions of written language, which is far more complex than most spoken language, is also crucial. And it's important to ask kids to analyze what they're learning, including by doing things like making inferences. But let's hope that studies like Cabell's and Grissmer's-and someday, RCTs of other knowledge-building elementary curricula-will provide the evidence needed to put content rather than comprehension "skills" front and center in literacy instruction.
Update, 4.1.21: References to the study by David Grissmer have been corrected to clarify that it focuses on charter schools using the Core Knowledge Sequence rather than the CKLA curriculum.

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Yes, There Is Evidence That Building Knowledge Boosts Reading Comprehension

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Studies show it's easier to understand what you're reading if you have knowledge of the topic, but some reading experts say there's little evidence that building kids' knowledge boosts reading comprehension. That may be changing. Among scientists who study the learning process, it's well established that having prior knowledge of a topic has a strong positive effect on reading comprehension.

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William Van Cleave - Syntax: The Link Between Sentence Writing & Sentence Comprehending

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Knowledge about the world fuels a child's reading comprehension and critical thinking. We share stories from schools that use "knowledge-building" curricula from the earliest grades to inspiring effect.

Introducing the Knowledge Matters Review Tool

A Guide for Evaluating K-8 ELA Curriculum

Developed by literacy experts, the Knowledge Matters Review Tool helps to determine if an ELA curriculum is truly "content-rich" and aligned to research on the role that background knowledge plays in reading comprehension.
Learn More

New study guide for our podcast, as it hits 100,000 downloads

Reading Comprehension Revisited, the inaugural season of our podcast, has achieved 100,000 downloads - and counting! With six short episodes (which are roughly 30 minutes each), it is perfect for professional learning. Host Natalie Wexler has developed a new companion study guide in response to numerous requests from educators.
Learn More

Knowledge is an essential pillar of the "Science of Reading"

Broad knowledge about the natural and human world is an essential ingredient in reading comprehension, as shown by long-standing research. A group of distinguished reading researchers calls on the growing movement for evidence-based reading instruction to elevate the role of background knowledge in reading success.
Read Their Statement

Every student deserves a knowledge-building literacy curriculum

To develop students' reading comprehension muscles from the earliest grades, leading schools use English language arts (ELA) curricula that are carefully designed to build background knowledge in science, history, literature, and the arts, alongside sound foundational skills instruction.

Introducing all young children to rich disciplinary content and vocabulary levels the playing field for learning. Knowledge is like an interest-bearing savings account: the more you know, the faster you learn. Therefore, growing knowledge about the natural and human world in the early grades is an essential equity investment, and it sets the stage for a lifetime of critical inquiry and analysis.
Explore Curricula

Follow our School Tour into classrooms

Our Knowledge Matters School Tour has traveled the country visiting schools that use knowledge-building curricula, and we have been inspired in each district!

Hear classroom stories in our collection of School Tour videos and feature articles.
Explore Videos and Articles

We collected helpful resources for understanding the importance of background knowledge to literacy and learning.
Explore Resources

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Knowledge about the world fuels a child's reading comprehension and critical thinking.

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Lessons specifically designed to highlight the ELA/literacy Shifts and expectations of college- and career-ready standards

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This is a MUST WATCH resource.  Shanahan debunks the myth of using "just right" texts. (Skip ahead to minute 28:00 for that.)

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Ohio Department of Education and Workforce Server

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ODE  Teaching Students to Read Complex Text

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Rethinking How to Promote Reading Comprehension

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Rethinking How to Promote Reading Comprehension

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Wexler Article: Why American Students Haven't Gotten Better at Reading in 20 Years

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Wexler Article: Why American Students Haven't Gotten Better at Reading in 20 Years

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Schools usually focus on teaching comprehension skills instead of general knowledge-even though education researchers know better.

Every two years, education-policy wonks gear up for what has become a time-honored ritual: the release of the Nation's Report Card. Officially known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, the data reflect the results of reading and math tests administered to a sample of students across the country. Experts generally consider the tests rigorous and highly reliable-and the scores basically stagnant.

Math scores have been flat since 2009 and reading scores since 1998, with just about a third of students performing at a level the NAEP defines as "proficient." Performance gaps between lower-income students and their more affluent peers, among other demographic discrepancies, have remained stubbornly wide.

Among the likely culprits for the stalled progress in math scores: a misalignment between what the NAEP tests and what state standards require teachers to cover at specific grade levels. But what's the reason for the utter lack of progress in reading scores?

On Tuesday, a panel of experts in Washington, D.C., convened by the federally appointed officials who oversee the NAEP, concluded that the root of the problem is the way schools teach reading. The current instructional approach, they agreed, is based on assumptions about how children learn that have been disproved by research over the past several decades-research that the education world has largely failed to heed.

The long-standing view has been that the first several years of elementary school should be devoted to basic reading skills. History, science, and the arts can wait. After all, the argument goes, if kids haven't learned to read-a task that is theoretically accomplished by third grade -how will they be able to gain knowledge about those subjects through their own reading?

The federal No Child Left Behind legislation, enacted in 2001, only intensified the focus on reading. The statute required states to administer annual reading and math tests to students in grades three through eight and once in high school, and attached hefty consequences if schools failed to boost scores. The law that replaced No Child Left Behind-the Every Student Succeeds Act, passed in 2015-has eased the consequences but has hardly weakened the emphasis on testing.

What is tested, some educators say, gets taught-and what isn't doesn't. Since 2001, the curriculum in many elementary schools has narrowed to little more than a steady diet of reading and math. And when test scores fail to rise after third grade-as they often do, especially in high-poverty schools-subjects such as history and science may continue to be relegated to the far back burner through middle school.

To some extent, it does make sense to focus on reading skills in the early years. One component of reading is, like math, primarily a set of skills: the part that involves decoding, or making connections between sounds and the letters that represent them.

But educators have also treated the other component of reading-comprehension-as a set of skills, when in fact it depends primarily on what readers already know. In countries that specify the content to be taught at each grade level, standardized tests can test students on what they've learned in school. But in the United States, where schools are all teaching different content, test designers give students passages on a variety of topics that may have nothing to do with what they've learned in school-life in the Arctic, for example, or the disappearance of Amelia Earhart. The tests then ask questions designed to assess comprehension: What's the main idea of the passage? What inferences can you make?

On a daily basis, teachers have their students practice skills and strategies such as "finding the main idea" or "making inferences." And teachers select books that match the given skill rather than because of the text's content. Rarely do the topics connect: Students might read a book about bridges one day, zebras the next, and clouds the day after that.

Cognitive scientists have known for decades that simply mastering comprehension skills doesn't ensure that a young student will be able to apply them to whatever texts they're confronted with on standardized tests and in their studies later in life.

One of those cognitive scientists spoke on the Tuesday panel: Daniel Willingham, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia who writes about the science behind reading comprehension. Willingham explained that whether or not readers understand a text depends far more on how much background knowledge and vocabulary they have relating to the topic than on how much they've practiced comprehension skills. That's because writers leave out a lot of information that they assume readers will know. If they put all the information in, their writing would be tedious.

But if readers can't supply the missing information, they have a hard time making sense of the text. If students arrive at high school without knowing who won the Civil War, they'll have a hard time understanding a textbook passage about Reconstruction.

Students from less educated families are usually the ones who are most handicapped by gaps in knowledge. Another panelist-Ian Rowe, who heads a network of charter schools serving low-income students in New York-provided a real-life example during his remarks. A sixth grader at one of his schools was frustrated that a passage on a reading test she'd taken kept repeating a word she didn't understand: roog-bye. The unfamiliar word made it hard for her to understand the passage. When Rowe asked her to spell the word, it turned out to be rugby.

The implication is clear. The best way to boost students' reading comprehension is to expand their knowledge and vocabulary by teaching them history, science, literature, and the arts, using curricula that guide kids through a logical sequence from one year to the next: for example, Native Americans and Columbus in kindergarten; the colonial era and the American Revolution in first grade; the War of 1812 and the Civil War in second grade; and so on. That approach enables children to make sense of what they're learning, and the repetition of concepts and vocabulary in different contexts makes it more likely that they'll retain information. Not to mention that learning content such as this can be a lot more engaging for both students and teachers than the endless practice of illusory skills.

Another panelist-Timothy Shanahan, an emeritus professor at the University of Illinois and the author or editor of more than 200 publications on literacy-went on to debunk a popular approach that goes hand in hand with teaching comprehension skills: To help students practice their "skills," teachers give them texts at their supposed individual reading levels, rather than the level of the grade they're in.

According to Shanahan, no evidence backs up that practice. In fact, Shanahan said, recent research indicates that students actually learn more from reading texts that are considered too difficult for them -in other words, those with more than a handful of words and concepts a student doesn't understand. What struggling students need is guidance from a teacher on how to make sense of texts designed for kids at their respective grade levels-the kinds of texts those kids may otherwise see only on standardized tests, when they have to grapple with them on their own.

That view was endorsed by Marilyn Jager Adams, a cognitive and developmental psychologist who is a visiting scholar at Brown University. "Giving children easier texts when they're weaker readers," she said during the panel discussion, "serves to deny them the very language and information they need to catch up and move on."

The failure to build children's knowledge in elementary school helps explain the gap between the reading scores of students from wealthier families and those of their lower-income peers-a gap that has been expanding. More affluent students may not learn much in elementary school, but compared to their disadvantaged peers, their parents tend to be more educated and have the money to provide knowledge-boosting perks such as tutoring and trips to Europe. As a result, those wealthy children are far more likely to acquire knowledge outside of school. Poorer kids with less educated parents tend to rely on school to acquire the kind of knowledge that is needed to succeed academically-and because their schools typically focus exclusively on reading and math, in an effort to raise low test scores, they're less likely to acquire it there.

The bottom line is that policy makers and advocates who have pushed for more testing in part as a way to narrow the gap between the rich and the poor have undermined their own efforts. They have created a system that incentivizes teachers to withhold the very thing that could accomplish both objectives: knowledge. All students suffer under this system, but the neediest suffer the most.

The NAEP is a valuable educational barometer, but it's important to understand that while standardized tests can identify a problem, they can't provide the answer to it.

Although some elementary teachers have embraced the approach advocated by the NAEP panel, it's clear that most have been trained to teach in methods that aren't supported by research, and that many are resistant to change. Shanahan, at the University of Illinois, noted that when he speaks to teachers around the country, they're aghast at the idea of giving struggling readers grade-level books-even when their state's literacy standards call for doing so.

Still, schools in some parts of the country are embracing the kinds of insights offered by the panelists. Louisiana has not only created its own curriculum but has also asked the federal government for permission to give tests based on that curriculum rather than passages on a variety of randomly selected topics. If that movement spreads, the NAEP may finally live up to its name, and the American education system may at last be able to unlock the untold potential of millions of students.

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national assessment of educational progress

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endless practice of illusory skills.another panelist

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Why American Students Haven't Gotten Better at Reading in 20 Years

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Schools usually focus on teaching comprehension skills instead of general knowledge-even though education researchers know better. Every two years, education-policy wonks gear up for what has become a time-honored ritual: the release of the Nation's Report Card.

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Syntactic Awareness: Teaching Sentence Structure (Part 1) - Keys to Literacy

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The ability to understand at the sentence level is in many ways the foundation for being able to comprehend text. The ways in which authors express their ideas through sentences greatly affects a reader's ability to access and identify those ideas.

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A recent article "Why American Students Haven't Gotten Better at Reading in 20 Years" in The Atlantic addressed the critical role that background knowledge plays in the ability to comprehend. The article subtitle was "Schools usually focus on teaching comprehension skills instead of general knowledge - even though education researchers know better."

The piece suggests that educators have treated comprehension as a set of skills, when in fact comprehension depends primarily on what readers already know. The article refers to a panel of literacy experts convened by officials who oversee the National Assessment of Educational Progress. As a member of the panel, Daniel Willingham, explained:

"Whether or not readers understand a text depends far more on how much background knowledge and vocabulary they have relating to the topic than on how much they've practiced comprehension skills. That's because writers leave out a lot of information that they assume readers will know. If they put all the information in, their writing would be tedious. But if readers can't supply the missing information, they will have a hard time making sense of the text."

Willingham and like-minded literacy experts posit that the best way to boost students' reading comprehension is to expand their knowledge and vocabulary by teaching them history, science, literature, and the arts, using curricula that guide kids through a logical sequence from one year to the next. Willingham has been making this point for a long time. I first read a piece he wrote about this in 2006 " How Knowledge Helps" around the same time I read E.D. Hirsch's book "The Knowledge Deficit", in which Hirsch claims that the solution to improving reading comprehension is to teach a core set of content topics over the grades.

In another 2006 Willingham article, "The Usefulness of Brief Instruction in Reading Comprehension Strategies", Willingham made the case that, even though decades of research shows that teaching reading comprehension strategies is effective, he considered them a "bag of tricks that can indirectly improve comprehension" and called for less explicit instruction of comprehension strategies. He wrote a later article in 2014 "Can Reading Comprehension Be Taught?" that begins with this:

"In this commentary, we suggest that reading comprehension strategy instruction does not actually improve general-purpose comprehension skills. Rather, this strategy represents a bag of tricks that are useful and worth teaching, but are quickly learned and require minimal practice."

Having spent many years successfully teaching comprehension strategies, especially to struggling readers, Willingham's 2006 piece took me aback. Since then, I have gained a better understanding of the complex factors that contribute to reading comprehension and have a greater appreciation for the role that background knowledge plays. However, I still believe that teaching general knowledge is not THE solution to reading comprehension deficits as Willingham and The Atlantic article claim.

Part of the issue has to do with how much inference is typically required during reading. As Willingham notes, writers leave out a lot of information that they assume readers will know. Here are some examples (from Oakhill and Cain, 2016):
Example 1: Bobby was busy with his bucket and spade. The sandcastle was nearly complete. Then a huge wave crashed onto the shore. On seeing that his day's work has been ruined Bobby started to cry.

Inference: Bobby was making a sandcastle.

Background knowledge needed: a bucket and spade is used to make things out of sand at the beach

Inference: The sandcastle was ruined by the wave

Background knowledge needed: incoming tides cause waves to come onto the beach and flatten sand sculptures

Example 2: Johnny carried a jug of water. He tripped on a step. Mom gave him a mop.

Inference: Johnny spilled the water when he tripped.

Background knowledge needed: experience with spills and the mess they make

These are very simple examples, but they show why reading comprehension is a dynamic interaction between the reader and the text. It is a process of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning and most texts cannot be understood without contributions from readers, including background and "world" knowledge.

Clearly, readers must have sufficient background knowledge in order to construct meaning through inferences, especially when reading academic, subject area text. But they ALSO need a set of meta-cognitive strategies to process and organize the information they are reading. That's where explicit instruction of strategies comes in.

Tim Shanahan referenced The Atlantic article in a recent blog post although his position about the importance of background knowledge was more measured:

"Research has long shown the importance of knowledge in comprehension. If a reader knows much about a topic, his/her reading comprehension rises. Studies of what American kids (and adults) know about science, geography, economics, technology, and history suggest that Professor Willingham has a point. Our kids simply don't know enough. (There are great inequities in knowledge distribution, just as there is great inequality in reading attainment.)"

Shanahan points out that, in addition to devoting a significant amount of time to reading and writing instruction, it is important to provide time for reading about content to build background knowledge.

Based on experience, I think the kind of "workbook" activities that were commonly used in the 1970's through the 1990's to teach discreet comprehension "skills" (such as choosing the correct answer from four options for the main idea or a conclusion drawn) were not effective. Students did not apply these skills that they were practicing in isolation to real reading. That's why a long time ago I focused on training content teachers of all subjects to embed strategy instruction and guided practice into content learning using real content reading (see The Key Comprehension Routine). Time and again I have seen very successful results, which is why I can't accept Willingham's conclusion that background knowledge is the main solution and comprehension strategy instruction should be minimal.

Reference:

Oakhill, J. & Cain, K. (2016). Supporting reading comprehension development: From research to practice. Perspectives on Language and Literacy, 42 (2).

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Background Knowledge and Reading Comprehension - Keys to Literacy

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A recent article "Why American Students Haven't Gotten Better at Reading in 20 Years" in The Atlantic addressed the critical role that background knowledge plays in the ability to comprehend. The article subtitle was "Schools usually focus on teaching comprehension skills instead of general knowledge - even though education researchers know better."

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Reading Comprehension Requires Knowledge of Words and the World

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Reading Comprehension Requires Knowledge of Words and the World

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Reading Interventions Digital - Session 9 - Scaffolding Complex Texts

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Casualties of War: Reading Science Denial and Racism's Impact on African American Children

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Strong reading skills are the foundation of all academic success, yet African American students as a group score lower on most standardized tests than white students. In spite of the 2000 National Reading Panel's conclusions that students need direct, explicit instruction that teaches phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension, educational institutions are failing to implement the Reading Panel’s findings. University training has been inadequate, forcing K-12 systems to fill classrooms with under-prepared teachers who then receive little support, training, or aligned materials.

African American students suffer disproportionately when not taught to read using evidence-based practices that leverage research. During this provocative hour-long webinar, Kareem Weaver, Member of the NAACP Oakland Branch's Education Committee, discusses how:
- The debate over reading philosophy has left key pillars of reading acquisition, especially critical for African-Americans, untaught
- Expectations of African American students impact the timing and tenor of interventions that could prevent reading problems 
- Perceptions of intellectual capacity create a lens through which learning differences are interpreted by educators
- Racism and bias within school systems influence policy and practices and create a tolerance for failure

It is critical that schools provide African American children the same opportunities to achieve academic success as other children. This webinar provides insights into how to address the persistent issues that create the achievement gap, particularly the lack of quality, evidence-based reading instruction.

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What Students Can Show Us About How School Is Letting Them Down-and How to Fix It

We've been telling students that doing well in school creates opportunities-that showing up, doing the work, and meeting teachers' expectations will prepare them for their futures. Unfortunately, that's a myth.

Far too many students graduate from high school still unprepared for the lives they want to lead. They enroll in college and land in remedial courses, or start jobs and discover they're missing skills they need. We wanted to understand why.

To do this, we followed nearly 4,000 students in five diverse school systems to learn more about their experiences. What we found was unnerving: classroom after classroom filled with A and B students whose big goals for their lives are slipping further away each day, unbeknownst to them and their families-not because they can't master challenging material, but because they're rarely given a real chance to try.

In fact, most students-and especially students of color, those from low-income families, those with mild to moderate disabilities, and English language learners-spent the vast majority of their school days missing out on four crucial resources: grade-appropriate assignments, strong instruction, deep engagement, and teachers with high expectations. Students spent more than 500 hours per school year on assignments that weren't appropriate for their grade and with instruction that didn't ask enough of them-the equivalent of six months of wasted class time in each core subject. And middle and high school students reported that their school experiences were engaging less than half the time. In classrooms with more access to these resources, students did better-particularly if they started the school year behind their peers.

This lack of access isn't random. It's the result of choices adults make at every level of our educational system. We're asking all adults whose choices affect students' experiences to commit to unraveling the opportunity myth.

Citation: TNTP. (2018). The Opportunity Myth: What Students Can Show Us About How School Is Letting Them Down-and How to Fix It. https://tntp.org/assets/documents/TNTP_The-Opportunity-Myth_Web.pdf

Bring TNTP to your school system

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What Students Can Show Us About How School Is Letting Them Down-and How to Fix It We've been telling students that doing well in school creates opportunities-that showing up, doing the work, and meeting teachers' expectations will prepare them for their futures. Unfortunately, that's a myth.

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Presentation (Zoom webinar)

This event will be recorded and made available on the member site
Text selection is a critical aspect of adolescent literacy that has the potential to maximize, or minimize, adolescents' literacy growth and knowledge base. This presentation will discuss what we know about selecting texts for literacy instruction as well as selecting texts for learning in content areas. We will discuss how and why to select texts of varying complexity, perspectives, and modalities and how we can maximize students' learning new knowledge through thoughtful text selection. The presenter will share a framework for selecting texts that embodies these ideas called the quad text set framework that teachers can use to guide their choices to increase students' literacy skills and content learning. Additionally this presentation will discuss the role of knowledge on reading comprehension and address misconceptions about the "knowledge gap," and how these notions can negatively impact instructional choices that teachers make, particularly around selecting texts.
Pre-reading resources:

Lupo, Sarah & Strong, John & Lewis, William & Walpole, Sharon & McKenna, Michael. (2017). Building Background Knowledge Through Reading: Rethinking Text Sets. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy. 61. 433-444. http://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.701

Lupo, Sarah, Strong, John & Smith, Kristin. (2018). Struggle Is Not a Bad Word: Misconceptions and Recommendations About Readers Struggling With Difficult Texts. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy. https://doi-org/10.1002/jaal.926

Hattan, Courtney & Lupo, Sarah. (2020). Rethinking the Role of Knowledge in the Literacy Classroom. Reading Research Quarterly. [In press]

Resources in PP:

Anticipation Guide

KWL Chart

Facilitate text-based discussion

Text sets examples on Sarah Lupo's blog: https://appliedliteracy.wordpress.com/

Resources in Chat:

Book-text access during COVID-19: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10tE4qEONiq_tVajxhMHP-8ViqPJWjWXD0AJJKQkzozs/edit?usp=sharing

Gholdy Muhammad's framework in Cultivating Genius!

MAX Teaching (Forget) 3-level guides are also a great tool for leading students to post-reading discourse/debate.

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Presentation (Zoom webinar) This event will be recorded and made available on the member site Text selection is a critical aspect of adolescent literacy that has the potential to maximize, or minimize, adolescents' literacy growth and knowledge base. This presentation will discuss what we know about selecting texts for literacy instruction as well as selecting texts for learning in content areas.

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Ohio Department of Education Literacy Academy

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Ohio Department of Education Literacy Academy

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Fifty years ago, when I was becoming a teacher, reading instruction consisted of a ubiquitous classroom practice: placing students in instructional groups according to their reading level. These groups were sometimes known by various colors or animals. I distinctly remember the redbirds, the bluebirds, and the buzzards among the most popular appellations. Today, although groups are now labeled with letters (Level G, Level L, etc.) and ornithological monikers are out of fashion, assigning students to instructional groups according to their reading levels is still a common practice in classrooms across the country.

A recent survey aimed at identifying the most popular current programs used to teach reading ¹ found that one common feature of all the top sellers was that they organize their teaching around leveled books. Other recent surveys show that teaching reading with leveled books is on the increase and that teachers believe it is endorsed or supported by their state educational standards, ² though, in most cases, it is not.

But how effective is such teaching? Does it work?

On the surface, those are easy questions. Leveled readers obviously work. Most American students are learning to read, at least at basic levels, ³ and since most are being taught with leveled books, there must be some potency in the approach.

But the real question isn't whether children can learn from leveled books, but whether such leveling confers any learning advantages. Might students do even better if taught with books they can't already read so well? That's the real question. In this article, I examine the research on leveled reading approaches and offer more effective ways that classroom teachers can ensure their students acquire the skills and knowledge they need to not only read a text but also comprehend it. First, I provide a brief history lesson in how we got here.

Teaching with Gradually More Difficult Texts

The idea of testing students to place them in different levels of text for instruction was first recommended more than 100 years ago, ⁴ and an early survey indicated that 58 percent of primary-grade reading instruction was already being delivered in small ability-based groups and that 42 percent of the teachers were adjusting text levels to facilitate learning. ⁵ They may not have referred to these texts as "leveled readers," and no company that published basal readers had yet coined the term "guided reading," but the practices of that time were markedly similar to those of today.

During the 20th century, research identified text features that correlate with reading comprehension, ⁶ and publishers started to control these features to a degree previously unimagined. One reading program I remember from my childhood bragged that it never introduced more than one new word per page, and any word that was introduced was repeated 15 times over the following pages. That's why those texts could be so mind-numbingly repetitive: "Oh. Oh. Oh. Look, Jane, look." If learning to read meant learning words-and at least since the time of Horace Mann that's been an idea held by many-then the accumulation of words gradually from selection to selection was how someone would best advance in learning to read.

But such tight readability controls made beginning reading texts so artificial that they eventually elicited an adverse reaction. The most remarkable of these reactions was the adoption of "whole language" policies by California in the 1980s. ⁷ These reforms required that the texts used to teach reading not be designed for reading instruction, and severely limited the text revisions that could be made for pedagogical purposes. What this meant was that for a brief period of time, even the beginning reading materials got much harder, ⁸ perhaps so hard for beginning readers that they represented a significant impediment to learning. ⁹ If the old basal readers were easier than necessary, these new books were decidedly too hard for the beginners, and they provided teachers with little or no guidance on how to teach with texts that the older students couldn't read successfully on their own. Exacerbating the effects of these harder books was that California's policies simultaneously discouraged phonics and spelling-instruction that could have helped students to better read the challenging materials, and the term "whole language" often came to mean "whole class" instruction in many schools. ¹⁰ Perhaps the thinking was, why group for instruction if nobody could read the books anyway?

It was in this environment that Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell published their landmark book in 1996, Guided Reading: Good First Teaching for All Children. There was nothing terribly original in their presentation, but they rediscovered and championed a set of teaching procedures that in the not-too-distant past had been widely used to facilitate reading instruction. They recognized that texts varied in difficulty and that one could guide student progress successfully across a gradually harder progression of books. To do this successfully, they asserted that teachers would need to group children, matching different books to students based on their varied levels of reading. Their approach offered immediate relief for those beginning reading classes where easier books made sense, but even in the grades beyond, the shift was welcome because of the lack of any pedagogical support for teaching challenging books. Fountas and Pinnell's approach, although reminiscent of earlier popular instructional practices, differed from them in one important regard: because of the burgeoning availability of high-quality children's trade books, they could propose doing this without textbooks.

In the Fountas and Pinnell version of guided reading, teachers assess students to determine their reading levels and then assign them books that they can read with a high degree of accuracy and comprehension. Over time, if retesting shows improvement, the students are switched to more demanding books. When it doesn't work so well, students may languish for long periods at their current levels. Such languishment has been enough of a problem that in the second edition of their book, they recommend moving students up sometimes even when the testing shows no evident improvement. (This seems to me like a judicious amendment to the original plan, but it raises the question about why these students can be expected to learn from the harder books when it is assumed that no one else would be able to.) Currently, this approach to reading, in which leveled books are matched to student reading levels for reading instruction, predominates in U.S. classrooms.

Determining Text Levels

There are basically two ways to determine how difficult texts may be and to set their levels: quantitative readability measures and qualitative judgments about texts. Although they approach the task differently, the purpose of both is to array texts on a continuum of difficulty.

The quantitative study of readability identifies text features that may affect comprehension and then tries to array these features in an algorithm that will allow accurate predictions of text difficulty. It turns out that accurate predictions can be obtained with only two text variables: vocabulary and sentence complexity. Such formulas are imperfect, but reasonably accurate. They aren't able to make fine distinctions, and until recently, haven't been able to measure beginning text levels very well. Nevertheless, quantitative readability algorithms are able to provide a largely reliable and accurate scientifically derived text gradient.

Still, it is important to remember that readability was not developed to match books to students in a way that would facilitate learning. Readability measures predict comprehension, not reading progress. The idea of using these kinds of measures to establish which books would best promote learning to read came later.

With the advent of computer technology, readability measurement has improved. ¹¹ The newer readability measures that have emerged are now widely used by researchers and publishers and were employed by the Common Core State Standards to specify text level aspirations for the various grade levels. Despite all this, when teachers speak of "leveling" books, they are most likely referring to Fountas and Pinnell levels.

Researchers provide a useful history of the development of this qualitative leveling system. ¹² Basically, an early version of the approach was developed for use with Reading Recovery, ¹³ a short-term reading intervention for first-graders who have difficulty learning to read, and Fountas and Pinnell refined and expanded this system to apply to texts from beginning readers through eighth-grade texts. Texts are evaluated by judges who place them on a multipoint continuum (from A to Z) based on 10 criteria: genre/forms, text structure, content, themes and ideas, language and literary features, sentence complexity, vocabulary, words, illustrations, and book and print features. ¹⁴

No studies have evaluated the reliability of these judgments, but a couple of small studies suggest that the Fountas and Pinnell gradient correlates reasonably well with the better-validated quantitative readability measurements. ¹⁵ Publishers have now leveled tens of thousands of books using this scheme. But given its complexity-the simultaneous qualitative evaluations of 10 factors with no explicit prioritization rules-it is unclear how accurate these levels may be (a point Fountas and Pinnell themselves make ¹⁶). Clearly, this approach lacks the scientific rigor of the quantitative approaches and may result in varied book placements depending on who makes the judgments. But until more evidence is available, let's at least for the sake of argument accept that these levels are sufficiently accurate to consider their use.

To sum up, there are two approaches to setting text levels-one based on a great deal of scientific evidence and one less well understood. Nevertheless, existing data suggest that both can place texts on a reasonable comprehensibility continuum, from easy to difficult. The problem is that research does not support the idea that either approach can identify from which texts students will learn best. The point of leveling is both to establish a text gradient and to place students in the appropriate text along that gradient. The latter is the issue to which we now turn.

Book Levels That Promote Learning

More than 70 years ago, Emmett Betts published an influential textbook on the teaching of reading. ¹⁷ Betts claimed all readers have three reading levels: independent, instructional, and frustration. According to Betts, the independent level refers to texts that readers can handle on their own without assistance. Instructional-level texts are a bit harder, but not so hard that students can't improve their reading from working with them under the guidance of a good teacher. And, frustration level? These books would be so difficult that learning would be unlikely even with supportive teaching.

Betts wrote that the way to determine these levels was to have students read from the books aloud and answer comprehension questions. Instructional-level texts, according to Betts, were those that could be read with 95-98 percent accuracy (in terms of word reading) and understood with 75-89 percent comprehension-the criteria that continue to be used today. Instructional-level texts generate small numbers of mistakes and misunderstandings, which can then presumably be addressed successfully through instruction and practice. Betts claimed that research supported the idea of matching books to students in this way to optimize learning. This instructional-level scheme is what is used today in most popular reading programs.

It's easy to understand why someone might propose (or adopt) such an approach. It is incredibly frustrating when students can't read a text very well. At a time when teachers were limited to one grade-level text for reading, there would be plenty of students who wouldn't be able to read it proficiently. Under those circumstances, teachers would gladly embrace the idea of working only with books that children could already read well. But as gratifying as the idea of teaching students at their instructional levels may have been, there are legitimate questions about the degree of effectiveness of this approach. When there is so little to learn from a particular text, it is possible that progress will be needlessly slow moving.

Despite Betts' original claims and the current popularity of leveling, research evidence has not been especially supportive of the approach. The study Betts referred to as the source of the instructional-level criteria was a doctoral dissertation of one of his students, ¹⁸ and that study neither matched books to students for instruction nor evaluated learning. Betts' doctoral student simply checked to see how many oral reading errors fourth-graders could make and still maintain 75-89 percent reading comprehension; that was the source of the 95-98 percent accuracy criterion. Years later, the researchers were questioned about the source of comprehension numbers, and they couldn't remember from whence those had come. ¹⁹ Not a very substantial basis for such a widely recommended instructional practice.

In the 1960s and 1970s, William Powell challenged Betts' criteria, though he fully accepted the kind of evidence Betts had used to set them. ²⁰ Powell thought Betts got the numbers wrong. To that end, he conducted studies in which children from grades 1-8 were evaluated in much the same way as in Betts' doctoral student's study. Powell found a couple of interesting things. He reported different instructional levels for different grades; that is, some children could tolerate more disfluency and still comprehend what they were reading. He also reported that some students could tolerate quite a bit of disfluency, suggesting Betts was placing students in books that were too easy.

Later, another study tested how well second-graders could read the books they were taught with, and then measured how much they learned. The researcher found that texts that could be read with about 85 percent accuracy and less than 50 percent comprehension led to the biggest learning gains. In other words, students learned more from books that were at their "frustration levels."

Over the past few decades, there have been several direct tests of the instructional level, and these have all ended with one of two outcomes. Instructional-level texts either have provided no learning advantages or have done harm. One example of the latter is another study with second-graders. ²¹ This study was the first randomized control trial of this practice. Students were tested and, using Betts' criteria, randomly assigned to one of three treatments. One group worked with texts at their instructional levels, one worked with texts two grades above this, and the third worked with books four grades above. Students read in pairs, practicing reading fluency with a partner. At the end of the school year, the students placed in books above their instructional level had made significantly bigger learning gains than those placed in the books supposed to facilitate their learning. This study was later replicated with third-graders. ²² Other studies again found big learning advantages from working with books at the children's grade levels rather than reading levels. ²³ Even students with learning disabilities have been found to obtain no benefit from these text placements. ²⁴

Betts saw a problem-students being taught from books that many couldn't read-and he proposed a solution, moving students to books that they could. Another solution, one he apparently didn't entertain, was that teachers could adjust their instruction in particular ways to facilitate students' interactions with these hard-to-read books. As a recent study found-this one with high school students-most students who were asked to read grade-level materials were able to learn more than those placed in the easier books. ²⁵

Basically, what this research reveals is that limiting students to texts they can already read well reduces their opportunity to learn-by limiting their exposure to sophisticated vocabulary, rich content, and complex language. With knowledge of the research on effective reading instruction, skilled teachers can facilitate students' productive interactions with harder text.

But what has happened since states started requiring that students be taught to read more challenging text?

In 2010, the majority of states adopted the Common Core State Standards. These standards, for the first time ever, set text levels that students were supposed to be able to read by the time they reached particular grade levels. The levels were set high to enable students to reach levels of proficiency that would ensure later life success.

States may have thought they had accomplished something pretty big by adopting those standards, and likewise district administrators may have thought they had dealt successfully with the complex text requirements when they purchased new textbooks matched to these new requirements. However, according to national surveys, ²⁶ all that has happened is that teachers, seeing that more of their students are now struggling with these newer texts, have increasingly relied on the idea of instructional-level teaching, and more and more are placing students in below-grade texts for reading instruction.

A More Effective Approach

As a teacher, I always taught with leveled books and worked hard to match texts to students in the ways described here. However, as I've learned of the research, I've gone a very different way-except with beginning readers. I know of no studies with kindergartners or first-graders showing that they should be trying to read particularly demanding texts (in contrast, there is a benefit to teachers reading aloud demanding texts to build young children's knowledge and vocabulary).

I've come to think of reading as the ability to make sense of the ideas presented in text, by taking advantage of the affordances and overcoming the barriers included in the text. Learning to read means becoming aware of these text features-and learning how to deal with them. Instructional-level texts are usually too easy to provide students with the opportunities to confront text features that they cannot already manage.

Affordances or barriers-and these are basically the same things-are features that authors build into their texts to facilitate communication. A particular text feature serves as an affordance if it does that, and-for some readers-it may serve as a barrier to understanding. For example, an author might aim for clarity and accuracy through apt diction, and for readers who know the meanings of the words so chosen, this can be a powerful text affordance. But for readers with more limited vocabularies? That potential affordance may become an unfortunate barrier for them.

It's not, however, as simple an equation as instructional-level theory makes out. It is not that some students have better vocabularies, so we should let them work with the relatively difficult books (the ones with the rich content and complex language), and that the other students-those who know fewer words-should be segregated into easier and more limited texts. That approach can have some unfortunate implications for students who are minorities and those from low socioeconomic backgrounds. ²⁷

What if, instead of segregating them into what some students call the "stupid books," we placed them in books with demanding vocabulary and taught dictionary skills, use of context, and morphology? What if we taught them when it was essential to figure out an unknown word meaning and when they might be able to soldier on successfully without doing that?

And, of course, vocabulary is just one of many such text features. Studies have long shown that teaching students how to disentangle the grammar of some sentences, ²⁸ how to take advantage of the cohesive links across a passage, ²⁹ and how to identify and use a text's organizational structure ³⁰ all can improve reading comprehension. Teaching students to negotiate these features of a text only makes sense if students are to be confronted by challenging texts, and none of them have value for students reading, what for them, are easy books.

If we are serious about raising reading achievement, we must think hard about whether it makes sense to continue teaching students to read books they can already understand so well. These easier books make learning unnecessary and, without adequate challenge, may even drain the fun out of learning. That doesn't mean that every selection used for reading instruction must significantly challenge students, only that grade-level texts should be part of the instructional mix.

Instead of a steady diet of instructional-level texts, students should be reading a range of texts in their classrooms. Some proponents of leveled reading claim they too support this idea, but they propose that instructional-level texts should be the focus of small-group teaching. I recommend just the opposite, having students reading really demanding texts when the teacher is close by and ready to help, and less demanding ones when on their own or when a teacher just isn't going to be available.

But this is not just an avenue to higher achievement (though research suggests that it could be), it is also an issue of equity. If fourth-graders are taught from a second-grade book, when will they have the opportunity to confront the language and ideas of fourth-grade books? This is a cruel math problem that tells students they are best served by books that don't match their interests, their curiosity, or their social aspirations. Leveled reading emphasizes students' current limitations, rather than increasing their possibilities, especially for the least advantaged of our students. We can do better.
Timothy Shanahan is a distinguished professor emeritus of urban education at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the founding director of its Center for Literacy. Previously, he was the director of reading for Chicago Public Schools. A past president of the International Literacy Association, he was the chair of the National Early Literacy Panel and a member of both the National Reading Panel and the English Language Arts Work Team for the Common Core State Standards Initiative. He writes about education at www.shanahanonliteracy.com.
Endnotes

1. S. Schwartz, "The Most Popular Reading Programs Aren't Backed by Science," Education Week, December 3, 2019.
2. D. Griffith and A. Duffet, Reading and Writing Instruction in America's Schools (Washington, DC: Thomas Fordham Foundation, 2018); and J. Kaufman et al., Changes in What Teachers Know and Can Do in the Common Core Era (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2018).
3. National Assessment of Educational Progress, Results from the 2019 Mathematics and Reading Assessments (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, 2019).
4. L. Zirbes, "Diagnostic Measurement as a Basis for Procedure," Elementary School Journal 18, no. 7 (1918): 505-522.
5. W. Theisen, "Provisions for Individual Differences in the Teaching of Reading," Journal of Educational Research 2, no. 2 (1920): 560-571.
6. G. Klare, The Measurement of Readability (Ames, IA: Iowa State UP, 1963).
7. California State Board of Education, English-Language Arts Framework for California Public Schools, Kindergarten through Grade 12 (Sacramento, CA: California State Department of Education, 1987).
8. E. Hiebert, "Changing Readers, Changing Texts: Beginning Reading Texts from 1960 to 2019," Journal of Education 195, no. 3 (2015): 1-13.
9. E. H. Hiebert and C. W. Fisher, "The Critical Word Factor in Texts for Beginning Readers," Journal of Educational Research 101, no. 1 (2007): 3-11.
10. P. Pearson, "The Reading Wars," Educational Policy 18, no. 1 (2004): 216-252.
11. A. Stenner et al., "How Accurate Are Lexile Text Measures?," Journal of Applied Measurement 7, no. 3 (2006): 307-322.
12. P. Pearson and E. Hiebert, "The State of the Field: Qualitative Analyses of Text Complexity," Elementary School Journal 115, no. 2 (1991): 161-183.
13. B. Peterson, "Selecting Books for Beginning Readers: Children's Literature Suitable for Young Readers," in Bridges to Literacy: Learning from Reading Recovery, ed. D. DeFord, C. Lyons, and G. Pinnel (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1991), 119-147.
14. I. Fountas and G. Pinnell, "Guided Reading: The Romance and the Reality," Reading Teacher 66, no. 4 (2012): 268-284.
15. J. Hoffman et al., "Text Leveling and Little Books in First-Grade Reading," Journal of Literacy Research 33 (2001): 507-528; and P. Hatcher, "Predictors of Reading Recovery Book Levels," Journal of Research in Reading 23 (2000): 67-77.
16. Fountas and Pinnell, "Guided Reading."
17. E. Betts, Foundations of Reading Instruction (New York: American Book, 1946).
18. P. Killgallon, "A Study of Relationships among Certain Pupil Adjustments in Language Situations" (unpublished PhD diss., Pennsylvania State University, 1942).
19. H. Beldin, "Informal Reading Testing: Historical Review and Review of the Research," in Reading Difficulties: Diagnosis, Corrections, and Remediation, ed. W. Durr (Newark, DE: International Reading Association, 1970), 67-84.
20. W. Powell, "Reappraising the Criteria for Interpreting Informal Reading inventories," paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Reading Association, Boston, MA, 1968.
21. A. Morgan, B. Wilcox, and J. Eldredge, "Effect of Difficulty Levels on Second-Grade Delayed Readers Using Dyad Reading," Journal of Educational Research 94, no. 2 (2000): 113-119.
22. L. Brown et al., "The Effects of Dyad Reading and Text Difficulty on Third-Graders' Reading Achievement," Journal of Educational Research 111, no. 5 (2017): 541-553.
23. M. Kuhn et al., "Teaching Children to Become Fluent and Automatic Readers," Journal of Literacy Research 38, no. 4 (2006): 357-387.
24. R. O'Connor, H. Swanson, and C. Geraghty, "Improvement in Reading Rate Under Independent and Difficult Text Levels: Influences on Word and Comprehension Skills," Journal of Educational Psychology 102 (2010): 1-19.
25. S. Lupo et al., "An Exploration of Text Difficulty and Knowledge Support on Adolescents' Comprehension," Reading Research Quarterly 54, no. 4 (2019): 457-479.
26. D. Griffith and A. Duffett, Reading and Writing Instruction in America's Schools (Washington, DC: Thomas Fordham Foundation, 2018); and V. Opfer, J. Kaufman, and L. Thompson, Implementation of K-12 State Standards for Mathematics and English Language Arts and Literacy: Findings from the American Teacher Panel (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2016).
27. A. Sørenson and M. Hallinan, "Effects of Ability Grouping on Growth in Academic Achievement," American Educational Research Journal 23, no. 4 (1986): 519-542.
28. V. Mih and C. Mih, "Reducing Children's Reading Comprehension Difficulties through a Training for Enhancing Sentence Organization Skills," Cognition, Brain, Behavior. An Interdisciplinary Journal 16, no. 3 (2012): 387-401.
29. J. Irwin, "Linguistic Cohesion and the Developing Reader/Writer," Topics in Language Disorders 8, no. 3 (1988): 14-23.
30. K. Wijekumar, B. Meyer, and P. Lei, "Web-Based Text Structure Strategy Instruction Improves Seventh Graders' Content Area Reading Comprehension," Journal of Educational Psychology 109, no. 6 (2017): 741-760.

[Illustrations by Angela Hsieh]

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Limiting Children to Books They Can Already Read

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Fifty years ago, when I was becoming a teacher, reading instruction consisted of a ubiquitous classroom practice: placing students in instructional groups according to their reading level. These groups were sometimes known by various colors or animals. I distinctly remember the redbirds, the bluebirds, and the buzzards among the most popular appellations.

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Leveled Reading, the Making of a Literacy Myth

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Leveled Reading, the Making of a Literacy Myth

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Will Challenging Texts Put a Crimp on Motivation?

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Will Challenging Texts Put a Crimp on Motivation?

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I know you advocate the idea of teaching reading with more complex text. But what about motivation? Won't this approach discourage students?
Shanahan response:

I do support the idea of teaching reading with grade level texts. The theory that there is a magical way to match kids to books that will increase learning simply hasn't panned out. Studies of the instructional level find that it at best makes no difference - that is, kids learn as much from grade level text as they do from instructional level ones. And, in the worst cases, the studies show that those easier text placements actually hold kids back and severely limit their learning.

Within-class grouping in reading is usually driven by the idea of trying to match kids to instructional level books. Studies show that those most likely to end up in the below grade level groups are racial or linguistic minorities, kids with disabilities, and high poverty kids (Hallinan & Sorenson, 1983). Groups who certainly don't need to have their learning depressed by a flawed and out-of-date theory.

I recognize that when kids are starting out in kindergarten or first-grade, it is helpful to limit text difficulty since those kids need to master basic decoding. Having texts that repeat words and spelling patterns frequently is beneficial. Instructional level is fine in kindergarten and grade one, but by the time kids can read at a second-grade level, research champions more complex text.

The instructional level scheme was first articulated in the 1940s, and part of the idea behind it was that it would limit students' frustration. That's why texts more challenging than instructional level are labeled "frustration level." But that was the 1940s, when Freud was all the rage. Frustration then was something to be avoided at almost any cost.

The claim was that if students struggled with a text, that would cause frustration which would not only interrupt learning but would upset the child. As a result, he/she would be more likely to act out in class and have other psychological maladies.

Interesting theory... but it is consistent with data from real kids. Several years ago, Linda Gambrell and colleagues did a cool study. They determined which kids were placed in frustration level texts and observed their behavior in class. Sure enough, as expected, it was the kids in frustration level books who misbehaved.

So far so good.

Then they intervened. They changed the book placements so these students wouldn't be psychologically frustrated anymore. The changes in book placements did nothing to improve these kids' behavior.

The lowest kids almost always will be placed in relatively harder books than the better readers. Those are also the kids most likely to act out in your class. The mistake is to think that those two facts are connected. We imagine a causal link when none exists.

Roberts found that kids motivation for reading wasn't related to the degree to which the books matched their abilities; in other words, kids at "frustration level" were as interested in reading as their supposedly more aptly placed peers. Even studies that measure changes in motivation during reading tasks finds no connection between the two (Fulmer & Tullis, 2013).

I suspect this whole theory is buggy. Theories of motivation usually tout the motivating power of challenge, not comfort and ease. It is only the reading educator who dedicates himself/ herself to making sure there are no challenges to promote motivation.

Recent studies of the relationship of text difficulty on motivation suggest either no relationship or a markedly more complicated one than we have been operating under (e.g., Rosenzweig & Wigfield, 2017).

I suggest telling your students how demanding the instructional texts are going to be. Explain to them that you'll be teaching them to books harder than anything they've ever tried in the past. Tell them that you will teach them with harder texts than anything you would have attempted with their older brothers and sisters.

Don't get me wrong. No one wants to fail. It is not enough to tell kids how hard the books will be. You then have to make them successful with those books.

That's where the teaching comes in. These days my goal is to start with a text that kids can't read well already. But by the end of a series of lessons they should be able to. They should have command of the content and the vocabulary. They should be able to read it with fluency. Instead of placing kids at their instructional level, move on when they reach that level of proficiency.

When kids are challenged and their learning is obvious, you won't need to worry about discouragement or a lack of motivation.

References

Fulmer, S. M., & Tulis, M. (2013). Changes in interest and affect during a difficult reading task: Relationships with perceived difficulty and reading fluency. Learning and Instruction, 27, 11-20.

Gambrell, L. B., Wilson, R. M., & Gantt, W. N. (1981). Classroom observations of task-attending behaviors of good and poor readers. Journal of Educational Research, 74, 400-404.

Hallinan, M. T., and A. B. Sorensen. (1983). "The Formation and Stability of Instructional Groups." American Sociological Review 48, 838-851.

Hunt, L.C. (1970/1997). The effect of self-selection, interest, and motivation upon independent, instructional, and frustration levels. Reading Teacher, 50(4), 278-282.

Killeen, P.R. (1994). Frustration: Theory and practice. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 1, 323-326.

Roberts, T. (1976). 'Frustration level' reading in the infant school. Educational Research, 9, 41-44.

Rosenzweig, E.Q., & Wigfield, A. (2017). What if reading is easy but unimportant? How students' patterns of affirming and undermining motivation for reading information texts predict different reading outcomes. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 48, 133-148.

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Will Challenging Text Put a Crimp in Students' Motivation?

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I know you advocate the idea of teaching reading with more complex text. But what about motivation? Won't this approach discourage students? Shanahan response: I do support the idea of teaching reading with grade level texts. The theory that there is a magical way to match kids to books that will increase learning simply hasn't panned out.

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Fordham -Reading and Writing Instruction in America's Schools 

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Fordham -Reading and Writing Instruction in America's Schools 

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Since 2010, when most states adopted the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), the Thomas B. Fordham Institute has been committed to monitoring their implementation. One of our initial reports, written in 2013 by lead author Tim Shanahan, surveyed middle and high school English language arts (ELA) teachers and found broad support for the CCSS-ELA, yet highlighted several red flags.

Five years later, the CCSS (or close facsimiles) are still in place in most states. And given that high expectations only matter when reflected in classroom practice, we owe it to teachers to continue supporting their efforts to implement these more rigorous standards.

Accordingly, we're back with another nationally representative survey of ELA teachers.

Reading and Writing Instruction in America's Schools, authored by Fordham's senior research and policy associate David Griffith and FDR Group's Ann Duffett, suggests real progress in implementing state ELA standards, but also-like the baseline 2013 report-real cause for concern. For example, middle and high school teachers are asking more text-dependent questions and report that students' ability to accurately cite evidence from the text has improved-both of which are in line with the CCSS-ELA. Yet they have also become more likely to assign texts based on students' current reading levels-as opposed to their grade levels-contrary to the intent of the standards. There are troubling signs on other fronts, too: fewer classic works of literature that teachers are assigning; a predilection for creative over evidence-based writing; and students' continued lack of content knowledge.

Based on the results, we draw four conclusions:

First, if we want teachers to assign texts based on students' grade levels-rather than their reading levels-we need to do more to help them bridge the gap between the two. Increasing the complexity of the texts that all students are exposed to is a hallmark of the CCSS-ELA, yet the survey results suggest that there has been serious backsliding in this area since our 2013 report. In our view, the most likely explanation is that teachers lack the supports they need to carry out this portion of their mission.

Second, teachers should take another look at their ELA curriculum to make sure they aren't overlooking classic works of literature. Although it's encouraging that ELA teachers are assigning more informational texts and literary nonfiction, as the CCSS expect, it's concerning that they seem to be doing so at the expense of "classic works of literature."

Third, writing instruction needs serious attention. By the time students graduate high school, they should be able to construct a coherent argument. Yet the results suggest that teachers are still prioritizing creative expression over evidence-based writing.

Finally, teachers should tackle the content-knowledge deficit. In particular, they should take the lead in adopting content-rich curricula and organizing their lessons around well-constructed "text sets" that help students build on their prior knowledge and learn new words more quickly.

In addition to the survey results, the report also features seven " Literacy Lifelines " that contain practical advice for teachers who are struggling with the challenges outlined above. May they not tire from the hard work of implementation!

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Reading and Writing Instruction in America's Schools

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Since 2010, when most states adopted the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), the Thomas B. Fordham Institute has been committed to monitoring their implementation. One of our initial reports, written in 2013 by lead author Tim Shanahan, surveyed middle and high school English language arts (ELA) teachers and found broad support for the CCSS-ELA, yet highlighted several red flags.

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Word Puzzle, Syllable Cards - Google Jamboard

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Mastering Multisyllabic Words

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Scaffolding Complex Text Kansas MTSS 2023