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Get the basics on why background knowledge is key to comprehension, and how we can support children's acquisition of knowledge about the world.

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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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CommonLit | CommonLit Library | Browse Content by Theme, Grade Level and More

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View the CommonLit collection and filter by grade level, theme, genre, literacy device and common core standard.

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Student Texts

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Our searchable library of short texts offers a diverse mix of stories and perspectives. This multigenre, multimedia collection aligns with the Common Core's recommendations for text complexity and the Learning for Justice Social Justice Standards. Choose from informational and literary nonfiction texts, literature, photographs, political cartoons, interviews, infographics and more.

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ReadWorks | Award-Winning, EdTech Nonprofit Organization

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ReadWorks is an edtech nonprofit organization that is committed to helping to solve America's reading comprehension crisis.

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Explore Text Sets and Collections

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Find compelling classroom resources, learn new teaching methods, meet standards, and make a difference in the lives of your students.

We are grateful to The Hammer Family Foundation for supporting the development of our on-demand learning and teaching resources.

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Find compelling classroom resources, learn new teaching methods, meet standards, and make a difference in the lives of your students.

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Dramatic New Evidence That Building Knowledge Can Boost Comprehension And Close Gaps

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The Office of Intervention Services (Pre-K - 12) supports educators and parents who are working with struggling learners, including students who are learning English as a second language. This office is focused on improving academic and behavioral outcomes for students. Staff coordinate the local implementation of policies and procedures and provide professional development on Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) for school-based teams, administrators, staff, and parents.

The office also offers guidance and professional development opportunities for educators and parents related to intervention selection, data-based decision making, evaluation, progress monitoring, dyslexia, gifted learners, and English learners to ensure all students graduate high school ready for college and career.

Three Tier Instructional Model

The Three Tier Instructional Model is a part of State Board Policy 41.1). This model is designed to meet the needs of every student and consists of three tiers of instruction:

Tier 1: Quality classroom instruction based on Mississippi standards.

Tier 2: Focused supplemental instruction.

Tier 3: Intensive interventions specifically designed to meet the individual needs of students.

If Tier 1 and 2 instruction is unsuccessful, students must be referred to the Teacher Support Team (TST). The TST is the local team responsible for interventions developed at Tier 3. Each school must have a TST implemented in accordance with the process developed by the Mississippi Department of Education.

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The Office of Intervention Services (Pre-K - 12) supports educators and parents who are working with struggling learners, including students who are learning English as a second language. This office is focused on improving academic and behavioral outcomes for students.

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Mississippi ELA High-Quality Instructional Materials Roadmap to Text Adoption

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Mississippi ELA High-Quality Instructional Materials Roadmap to Text Adoption

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Overview

The goal of Phase I is to select materials that support a clear and common vision of great instruction for the subject, with stakeholder participation in the process. Teachers are central to every great selection story and reported learning from the process when it was done well.

More About Phase I

Overview

The goal of Phase II is to develop an intentional implementation plan - thinking through what it will take to use and support the materials well.

More About Phase II

The goal of Phase III is to support teachers as they use the curriculum to inspire great instruction and increase student learning. At the leadership level, the focus is on listening to teachers and observing practice with a goal of continuously improving teacher support. Phase III does not end after the first year - this is a continuous improvement journey that never ends.

More About Phase III

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Background - Our Story & Mission | Instruction Partners

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The goal of Phase I is to select materials that support a clear and common vision of great instruction for the subject, with stakeholder participation in the process. Teachers are central to every great selection story and reported learning from the process when it was done well.

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ELA Rubrics to Evaluate Your Curriculum Materials

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ELA Rubrics to Evaluate Your Curriculum Materials

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Similar to math, the Mississippi Department of Education has worked with Mississippi teachers, school districts, and EdReports to produce and publish ELA rubrics to help teachers and schools review their materials for quality.

Have you used the rubrics and want to provide feedback? Send your comments to msmaterialsmatter@mdek12.org.
The rubrics are made up of three gateways.
Gateway 1

Gateway 2

Gateway 3
Usability
View ELA Rubrics

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ELA Rubrics - Mississippi Instructional Materials Matter

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You can use these rubrics to evaluate your ELA materials. Similar to math, the Mississippi Department of Education has worked with Mississippi teachers, school districts, and EdReports to produce and publish ELA rubrics to help teachers and schools review their materials for quality. Have you used the rubrics and want to provide feedback?

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Achieve the Core: A Case for High-Quality Instructional Materials

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Achieve the Core: A Case for High-Quality Instructional Materials

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Because we don't want to confuse the math teachers...and other reasons we need high-quality instructional materials

While the teacher in the classroom has been singled out as the primary determinant for student success, high-quality instructional materials (HQIM) can help teachers understand the focus and details of their content. Classrooms where HQIM are the norm also provide students with advantages. HQIM are particularly important for achieving shifts in expectations associated with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Whether I am reviewing instructional materials for my own students, for my district, or as a contract reviewer, I always double-check related standards for nuanced deviations. Extraneous, erroneous, and missing content can confuse teachers about what is important, affecting the quality of instruction students receive.
HQIM Can Help Meet College- and Career-Ready Goals
A few states like mine (Missouri) voted out the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for political reasons. In general, those rewriting standards maintained most of the detail and alignment of the CCSS, but good standards didn't immediately translate into HQIM. Many publishers changed little beyond the sticker on the front of their textbooks. Teachers who were aware started making their own. Much of their work was creative and engaging, but some of their creations, along with many published materials, reflected an incomplete understanding of the standards and inadvertently contributed to the political uproar. Good resources for teachers and parents can avoid these issues.
HQIM Can Help Compensate for Poor Standards
In many ways, HQIM can compensate for poor standards. For example, Missouri Algebra 2 standards writers essentially removed all practical applications from the CCSS, leaving little more than a list of procedures to memorize. Selecting HQIM materials with rich problem-solving tasks, modeling, and explorations can address procedural fluency to meet Missouri standards and yet provide meaningful learning experiences. Unless teachers see examples of HQIM, though, it might be difficult for them to understand what their students are missing. Those students will have disadvantages in terms of relevance (affecting motivation) and higher order analysis found in multi-dimensional contextual problems (21st Century skills).
HQIM Can Clarify Content, Strengthen Understanding, and Build Coherence
Minor variances in state standards don't necessarily distract from the CCSS goal of preparing students for college and 21st Century careers. However, in some districts, the intent of the CCSS has become muddled because the instructional resources are not aligned. Breaks in vertical alignment, insufficient connections, and weak spiraling within and between grades can result in gaps in student understanding. Curriculum in lower grades might not connect addition with measurement and data. Middle school teachers might not understand fractions conceptually and tell their students to turn them all into decimals or "just" memorize. Skipping over conceptual understanding work can cause confusion and create gaps in students' knowledge that will affect future math work.

Deficiencies with fractions may impede success with Algebra. Algebra teachers may confuse sequence equations vs. functions. Unless instructional materials are aligned, that confusion is likely to persist.
HQIM Align with Today's Standardized Math and Science Assessments
Many veteran teachers in the US learned math as memorized steps, and many of the topics we learned have disappeared from standardized tests, such as ACT, AP, and SAT. The Next Generation Science Standards also align with CCSS. Instead of emphasizing what students encounter on standardized tests and apply in their science classes, teachers who are not aware of the Shifts may teach entire units that divert focus from important concepts. When math taught in science lessons supports what students learn in math lessons and vice-versa, learning becomes efficient. Students who learn math through rich problem-solving experiences also tend to have better long-term retention and report higher motivation in learning.
HQIM Develop Pedagogical Skills
In the past, "modeling" was related to word problems or something a teacher does to explain but " modeling" in the CCSS is different. Students with experience in CCSS modeling have the advantageof being able to apply mathematical thought processes to non-traditional problems and emerging technological c ontexts. However, learning to coach students through modeling problems is an entirely different skill than direct instruction. HQIM can guide educators to do this effectively.
Identifying HQIM
Students who master problem-solving skills are in high demand for new and emerging careers: privileged positions. Ed Reports has a growing list of instructional materials that are well aligned to the CCSS. There is every reason to believe we can level the playing field for all. Let's do it!

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A Case for High-Quality Instructional Materials - Peers and Pedagogy

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While the teacher in the classroom has been singled out as the primary determinant for student success, high-quality instructional materials (HQIM) can help teachers understand the focus and details of their content. Classrooms where HQIM are the norm also provide students with advantages.

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The Office of Secondary Education assists district personnel in improving classroom instruction through the development, revision, and training on our Mississippi College- and Career-Readiness Standards in both Academic and Career Technical Education (CTE). Through training and development, our content area specialists and program staff help school and district personnel implement state standards, as well as best practices for improving student achievement.

Resources:
Diploma Endorsement Options Seals
Click on the link above for information regarding seals that schools may use for student diplomas that represent the three different endorsement options.

The Access For All (AFA) Guide was developed by the MDE in collaboration with educators across the state to help teachers address issues that impact learners with a wide variety of needs.

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The Office of Secondary Education assists district personnel in improving classroom instruction through the development, revision, and training on our Mississippi College- and Career-Readiness Standards in both Academic and Career Technical Education (CTE). Through training and development, our content area specialists and program staff help school and district personnel implement state standards, as well as best practices for improving student achievement.

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Great Minds Module 1 Instructional Plans

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Great Minds Module 1 Instructional Plans

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Writing to Read: Evidence for How Writing Can Improve Reading

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Writing to Read: Evidence for How Writing Can Improve Reading

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Writing to Read is a new Carnegie Corporation report published by the Alliance for Excellent Education which finds that while reading and writing are closely connected, writing is an often-overlooked tool for improving reading skills and content learning. Writing to Read: Evidence for How Writing Can Improve Reading identifies three core instructional practices that have been shown to be effective in improving student reading. Writing to Read is a part of a series of Carnegie Corporation of New York-funded reports intended to re-engineer literacy instruction across the curriculum to drive student achievement. The initial report, Time to Act: An Agenda for Advancing Adolescent Literacy for College and Career Readiness and corresponding reports were published in September 2009. Writing to Read is an extension of this work and provides practitioners with research-supported information about how writing improves reading while making the case for researchers and policymakers to place greater emphasis on writing instruction as an integral part of school curriculum.

Citation: Graham, Steve, and Michael Hebert. Writing to Read: Evidence for How Writing Can Improve. Carnegie Corporation Time to Act Report. Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellent Education, 2010. Print.

Program: Education

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Writing to Read: Evidence for How Writing Can Improve Reading | Carnegie Corporation of New York

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Writing to Read is a new Carnegie Corporation report published by the Alliance for Excellent Education which finds that while reading and writing are closely connected, writing is an often-overlooked tool for improving reading skills and content learning. Writing to ...

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Educators, parents, and others searching for hard-to-find information about what works in education now have a valuable new resource: a website loaded with well-organized articles, videos, and recommendations about curricula that do a good job of building crucial academic knowledge.

Back in 2015, an initiative was launched called the Knowledge Matters Campaign, soon followed by a website. The purpose of both was to make the case for devoting more class time to rich content in history, science, and the arts, especially at the elementary level.

For decades, younger students had been spending hours every week practicing supposed reading comprehension skills like "finding the main idea," using easy-to-read fiction or books on random topics. Enabling kids to acquire substantive academic knowledge and vocabulary was considered relatively unimportant. That left many students, and especially those from less educated families, ill-equipped to meet expectations at higher grade levels.

In most schools, that's still the case. But a lot has changed since 2015-and the Knowledge Matters Campaign's newly revamped website, unveiled on August 15, makes the most of it. (Disclosure: I'm a board member of the Knowledge Matters Campaign's parent organization, StandardsWork, and I provided some help on the website revision.)

One big change over the past seven years has been the emergence of several literacy curricula that put rich content rather than skills in the foreground. Cognitive science and empirical studies show that a knowledge-building approach in the elementary grades is far more likely to provide all children with what they need to succeed at higher grade levels-and in life. And an increasing number of schools and districts across the country have been adopting one of the new curricula that follow that science.

The new website builds on the Knowledge Matters School Tour, which has spent the last several years visiting classrooms around the country that have switched to one of seven new curricula, including some in math and science as well as literacy. There are articles, blog posts, and social media threads describing the visits, but perhaps most compelling are the video clips of teachers talking about what the change has meant for them and their students. There are about 130 snippets in all on the site, including some that show classroom instruction and interviews with parents and students.

"It's so helpful to have the rigor come from the curriculum and not be some added piece the teacher is having to fit in," says one Boston teacher about a curriculum called Fishtank ELA.

"They are so engaged in it and so involved in it," comments a teacher in Tennessee who initially thought the Core Knowledge curriculum would be too difficult for her third-graders. "They are capable of so much more than what I even thought they could be."

The videos and posts are searchable both by the curriculum discussed and by the benefits teachers talk about, such as "Academic Rigor," "Equitable Learning," and "Student Engagement."

The website also features a page describing six English Language Arts or literacy curricula that the Campaign has determined to be effective in "coherently building knowledge of words and the world" as well as providing systematic instruction in foundational reading skills and giving every student access to complex texts. The six curricula are:

· ARC Core

· Bookworms

· Core Knowledge/Amplify

· EL Education

· Fishtank ELA

· Wit & Wisdom

Accompanying text explains what generally makes an ELA curriculum effective and also goes into detail about each of the featured curricula and what topics and texts they cover. Curriculum publishers have provided additional material, including samples of student work. More knowledge-building curricula may be added to the list in the future.

For those interested in learning more generally about the importance of building knowledge beginning in the elementary grades, another page on the website offers links to articles on various aspects of that topic. The resources are briefly summarized and divided into three categories, depending on how deeply a reader wants to explore the issues.

The Campaign also has a 13-member Scientific Advisory Committee composed of well-respected figures in the field. All have signed a statement, posted on the site, calling on the "Science of Reading" movement to more explicitly embrace the importance of building the knowledge that fuels reading comprehension.

While the authors applaud the recent attention focused on efforts to align instruction in phonics and other foundational reading skills with scientific evidence, they caution that such skills are "literally meaningless unless readers can make sense of words and texts. This sense-making requires knowledge that must be systematically built (not just activated!) through instructional experiences and curricula that evoke curiosity and the desire to learn more. In short, knowledge matters."

The academics call not only on education leaders but also "K-12 journalists" to "bring the role of knowledge to the forefront of Science of Reading conversations." High-profile articles on reading and literacy, including one in magazine and another in the New York Times, have focused solely on foundational skills. Journalists have largely overlooked the problems with the way schools approach comprehension, and their enormous ramifications.

The website also offers suggestions for educators, parents, and policymakers who want to take action-and an opportunity to sign up for emails from the Campaign.

While the interest in knowledge-building curricula appears to be growing rapidly, there are still many who are unaware of the issue or skeptical of its importance. Among those already on board, there's often confusion about which curricula truly do an effective job of building kids' knowledge, or what to do if their school or district uses a curriculum that isn't working.

The new Knowledge Matters Campaign website may not answer every question about the topic, and it probably won't be the final stop on the road to an improved education system. But it makes a great beginning-and it's a sign of hope for anyone who aims to enable all students to reach their full potential and participate fully and responsibly in a democratic society.
This post originally appeared on Forbes.com.

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Curious About Knowledge-Building Curricula? Check Out This Website

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Educators, parents, and others searching for hard-to-find information about what works in education now have a valuable new resource: a website loaded with well-organized articles, videos, and recommendations about curricula that do a good job of building crucial academic knowledge. Back in 2015, an initiative was launched called the Knowledge Matters Campaign, soon followed by a website.

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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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Achievethecore.org :: Text Analysis Toolkit

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This toolkit aims to support educators in the process of selecting and analyzing texts based on complexity and cultural relevance. The resources focus on tools for reflecting on the identities of educators and the students they serve, analyzing texts with multiple lenses, and considering implication…

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https://www.thewritingrevolution.org/book-resources/pacing-guides/

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Advanced Language and Literature (Bedford, Freeman, Worth)
Grade 11
Language and Composition 3rd Edition AP (Bedford, Freeman, Worth)
Grade 12
Literature and Composition 2nd Edition AP (Bedford, Freeman, Worth)

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ELA - Mississippi Instructional Materials Matter

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Teaching and navigating ELA instruction may be challenging, but when teachers are provided high-quality, standards-aligned materials and training, they can focus on bringing their lessons to life instead of spending extra time searching for or creating materials.

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Leveled Reading Groups Don't Work- Why Aren't We Talking About It?

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Leveled Reading Groups Don't Work- Why Aren't We Talking About It?

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Leveled Reading Groups Don’t Work. Why Aren’t We Talking About It?

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You might want to sit down for this one, friends. The most pervasive practice in K–5 reading instruction is probably small group work in which students are grouped by reading level. Experts estimat…

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The Instructional Level Concept Revisited: Teaching with Complex Text

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The Instructional Level Concept Revisited: Teaching with Complex Text

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Boy, oh, boy! The past couple weeks have brought unseasonably warm temperatures to the Midwest, and unusual flurries of questions concerning teaching children at their, so-called, "instructional levels." Must be salesman season, or something.

One of the questions asked specifically about my colleague Dick Allington, since he has published articles and chapters saying that teaching kids with challenging text is a dumb idea. And, a couple of others queries referred to the advertising copy from Teachers College Press (TCP) about their programs. Both Dick and TCP threw the R-word (research) around quite a bit, but neither actually managed to marshal research support for their claims, which means that the instructional level, after 71 years, still remains unsubstantiated.

What I'm referring to is the long-held belief that kids learn more when they are matched to texts in particular ways. Texts can be neither too hard, nor too easy, or learning is kaput. At least that has been the claim. It sounded good to me as a teacher, and I spent a lot of time testing kids to find out which books they could learn from, and trying to prevent their contact with others.

According to proponents of the instructional level, if a text is too easy, there will be nothing to learn. Let's face it, if a reader already knows all the words in a text, and can answer all of the questions already with no teacher support, it wouldn't seem to provide much learning opportunity. Surprisingly, however, early investigations found just the opposite-the less there was to learn from a book, the greater progress the students seem to make. This was so obviously wrong, that the researchers just made up the criteria separating the independent and instructional levels.

Likewise, the theory holds out the possibility that some texts can be too hard. In other words, the more there would be to learn in a text, the less the students would be able to learn from it.

But what is too easy and what is too hard?

Back in the 1940s, Emmett Betts, reading authority extraordinaire, reported on a research study completed by one of his students. He claimed that the study showed that if you matched kids to text using the criteria he proposed (95-98% word reading accuracy and 75-89% reading comprehension), kids learned more.

Unfortunately, no such a study was done. Betts sort of just made up the numbers and teachers and professors have rapturously clung to them ever since. Generation after generation of teachers has been told teaching kids at these levels improves learning. (Though, due to Common Core, at least some programs have been advancing-arbitrarily-new criteria, perhaps in hopes of matching more students to books at the required levels.)

Over the past decade or so, several researchers have realized that this widely recommended practice is the educational equivalent of fake news, and have started reporting studies on its effectiveness. And, the instructional level has not done well; it either has made no difference-that is the kids taught from grade level materials do as well as those at an instructional level-or the instructional level placements have led to less learning. Instructional level placements have the tendency to limit kids' exposure to the linguistic and textual features that they don't yet know how to negotiate; the practice reduces their opportunity to learn. The kids not so protected, often do better.

It still makes sense to start kids out with relatively easy texts when they are in K-1, since they have to learn to decode. Beginning reading texts should have enough repetition and should provide kids lots of exposure to the most frequent and straightforward spelling patterns in our language. But, once that hurdle is overcome, it makes no sense to teach everybody as if they were 5-years-old. The studies are pretty clear that from a second-grade reading level on, kids can learn plenty when taught with more challenging texts.

Here are some related questions that have been asked of me over the past 2-3 weeks:
But my kids are learning to read and they have for years. Why change now?
Because of the opportunity cost; your students could do even better. Students often tell me that they hate reading specifically because they always get placed in what they call the "stupid kid books." If kids can learn as much or more from the grade level texts-and they can-we should be giving them opportunities to read the texts that are more at their intellectual levels and that match their age-level interests.
Isn't it true that the studies in which the kids did better varied not just the book levels, but how the students were taught?
Yes, that is true, and instructional level proponents have raised that as a complaint about these studies. However, no one is claiming that students will just learn more from harder books. As students, confront greater amounts of challenge the teaching demands go up. One suspects that part of the popularity of the instructional level idea is that the teacher doesn't have to do as much (since the kids start out knowing almost all the words and can read the texts with high comprehension with no teacher support).
What about older kids who are still "beginning readers?"
Anyone-at whatever age level-who is just starting to learn to read, is still going to need to master decoding. Teaching such older students with more demanding texts will just make it harder to master the relations between spelling and pronunciation. Definitely stay with relatively easy books with older readers who are reading at a kindergarten or first-grade level.
Are you saying no more small group teaching?
No, small group teaching is fine, unless the purpose of that grouping is to teach students with different levels of books. In fact, I think providing small group teaching to students when they are in the harder materials makes greater sense than how we tend to do it now (which is to put kids in easier materials when they work closely with the teacher-I'd do the opposite).
So you don't believe in differentiation?
I believe in differentiation, but I don't believe that means placing kids in different levels of books. There is a large and growing body of research that suggests that we could more profitably vary the amount and type of scaffolding for the needs of different students.
Dick Allington has admitted that some studies do show that kids can learn more from more challenging texts, but that the scaffolding in these studies is simply too demanding for the average teacher. What do you think?
Dick was referring to studies done by Alyssa Morgan and Melanie Kuhn (and their colleagues). In both, the frustration level placements led to more learning than the instructional level ones. In the Morgan study, she used paired reading, and the scaffolding was provided by untrained 7-year-olds (though they were the relatively better readers). I suspect most teachers can scaffold as well as a second-grader, and don't find paired reading interventions to be beyond most teachers' skills levels. I asked Melanie Kuhn directly about this criticism. She was surprised. Teachers in the original study had so easily used their teaching routines that Kuhn and company decided to collect data for an additional year. I reject the idea that only the most elite teachers can provide this kind of teaching.
So you totally reject the instructional level idea for anyone but beginners?
No, I've come to believe that the instructional level would be a great goal to aim at for at the completion of a lesson. If, when you are finishing up with a text, the kids know 75% or more of the ideas and can read 95% or more of the words, then you have done a terrific job. One of Linnea Ehri's studies found that the kids who did best ended up with 98% accuracy, for instance. Of course, if you keep starting with texts at those levels, then you would have little to teach. Start kids out with complex texts that they cannot read successfully; then teach them to read those texts well.
Should all the texts that we teach from be at the levels that Common Core set?
No, I would argue (based on very little direct evidence-so I'm stretching a bit here) that students should read several texts across their school days and school years. This reading should vary greatly in difficulty, from relatively easy texts that would afford students extensive reads with little teacher support, to very demanding texts that could only be accomplished successfully with a great deal of rereading and teacher scaffolding. I believe that much is learned from that kind of varied practice.

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The Instructional Level Concept | Shanahan on Literacy

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Boy, oh, boy! The past couple weeks have brought unseasonably warm temperatures to the Midwest, and unusual flurries of questions concerning teaching children at their, so-called, "instructional levels." Must be salesman season, or something. One of the questions asked specifically about my colleague Dick Allington, since he has published articles and chapters saying that teaching kids with challenging text is a dumb idea.

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Should We Teach Students at Their Reading Levels?

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Should We Teach Students at Their Reading Levels?

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Which text set approach is right for you?

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Which text set approach is right for you?

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Editor’s note: This article is part of the series The Right Tool for the Job: Improving Reading and Writing in the Classroom that provides in-depth reviews of several promising digital tools for English language arts classrooms.

The use of text sets is a promising instructional approach that is informed by solid research on reading comprehension. A text set is a collection of texts that are tightly focused on a specific topic. As described in this earlier post, it may include varied genres and media and can be organized in many different ways. But all high-quality text sets have this in common: they are designed to build knowledge of an academic topic and are presented in a specific order with attention to text complexity, vocabulary development, and background knowledge.

However, quality text sets are difficult to find and not easy to create, so identifying resources that can assist is invaluable. Newsela, ReadWorks, and Achieve the Core are three sites that all provide particularly high-quality text sets for use in the classroom. I have reviewed each of them previously, and you can find those reviews here, here, and here.

All three sites offer useful text-set resources, but which best meets an educator’s needs? The table below summarizes some of the most important features and resources on each site.

Newsela

ReadWorks

Achieve the Core

1. Provides high-quality texts aligned to the Common Core

X

X

X

2. Text sets are intentionally ordered

X

3. Assessments are available for each passage

X

X

4. Assessments are available for the text sets

X

5. Classroom activities are provided for each text within a text set

X

6. Texts are available at multiple reading levels

X

X

Let’s discuss each row in turn.

1. All three sites offer access to Common Core–aligned, high-quality texts from a variety of sources. Newsela has relationships with well-known media organizations, such as The Washington Post, Scientific-American, The Los Angeles Times, and the Associated Press, and it posts many news articles daily. Newsela also uses primary-source documents and historical documents in its text sets. ReadWorks has commissioned authors to write many of its passages and has partnerships with organizations such as the National Audubon Society, History.com, and the American Museum of Natural History. Achieve the Core’s text sets have the greatest variability, incorporating a variety of published texts, including books, poems, articles, song lyrics, videos, and websites.

ReadWorks and Achieve the Core offer approximately forty text sets each. Newsela’s site contains more text sets but lacks some of the resources that the other two sites offer. For instance, ReadWorks provides vocabulary resources and questions specific to text sets, while Achieve the Core offers classroom activities specific to each text within a text set.

2. Achieve the Core is the only one of the three sites that purposely orders its text sets with regard to vocabulary development, text complexity, and the building of background knowledge. This is a key characteristic of effective text sets, and teachers should give it due attention. ReadWorks does provide general guidance relative to the reading skills being taught, but its paired passages and text sets are not ordered. Newsela does not provide suggestions or guidance with regard to text order.

3. Both Newsela and ReadWorks offer text-dependent reading-comprehension assessments. Newsela provides four multiple-choice questions and an optional short-answer question for each article. The majority of ReadWorks’ passages contain assessments. These vary in length but usually contain five to ten text-dependent multiple-choice and short-answer questions.

4. ReadWorks provides questions for its passage pairs and text sets. This is unique to ReadWorks and constitutes a strong feature because it requires students to integrate knowledge from more than one text.

5. Achieve the Core provides guidance on how to use text sets by providing Common Core–aligned activities for each text as well as additional resources such as graphic organizers. The other two sites provide general guidance on the use of text sets and even have a few sample lesson plans, but Achieve the Core’s activities and implementation guides are much more thorough.

6. Both Newsela and ReadWorks offer multiple versions of texts to meet the needs of struggling readers. ReadWorks offers more accessible versions of many passages (a feature called StepReads) but not all passages. Newsela does this best by providing each article at five distinct Lexile levels. The site also continually assesses a student’s reading performance and adjusts the article level assigned to each student accordingly.

When it comes to usability (not shown in the table), ReadWorks is the easiest of the three sites to navigate. Although all three are well designed, ReadWorks has a straightforward format and clear, easy-to-use search functions. A teacher can swiftly find paired passages at specific grade levels that are focused on specific topics or skills. The only drawback is that it is difficult to find the text sets on the ReadWorks site, as this site does not have its own search feature.

Individually and together, Newsela, ReadWorks, and Achieve the Core provide teachers with online text-set resources that can be integrated into any instructional program to help build vocabulary, background knowledge, and strengthen reading comprehension. I encourage you to visit these sites and try teaching with text sets. You will find both the strategy and the resources quite powerful.

Shannon Garrison is a fourth- and fifth-grade teacher in California with two decades of teaching experience. She holds National Board Certification, serves on the National Assessment Governing Board, and was also recently selected as a Los Angeles County Teacher of the Year.

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What are text sets and why use them in the classroom?

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What are text sets and why use them in the classroom?

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Editor's note: This article is part of the series The Right Tool for the Job: Improving Reading and Writing in the Classroom that provides in-depth reviews of several promising digital tools for English language arts classrooms.

The shift to the Common Core State Standards has ushered in a renewed focus on effective instructional techniques for reading instruction. As Common Core's reading standards state, "To build a foundation for college and career readiness, students must read widely and deeply from among a broad range of high-quality, increasingly challenging literary and informational texts." In this vein, teachers are seeking how best to engage their students in text analysis, ways to develop and utilize text-dependent questions and methods for integrating more complex texts, and for other effective strategies to strengthen students' reading comprehension.

One promising instructional strategy, developed based on reading-comprehension research showing the importance of background knowledge and vocabulary, is text sets. Text sets are collections of texts tightly focused on a specific topic. They may include varied genres (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and so forth) and media (such as blogs, maps, photographs, art, primary-source documents, and audio recordings).

Text sets can be organized in many different ways. Although all high-quality text sets are designed to build knowledge of an academic topic, some are arranged as series of texts (and other media) that become progressively more advanced, while others have a central or "anchor" text with supplementary texts that support the themes and content of the central text. No matter the organization, effective text sets are usually presented in a specific order with attention to text complexity, vocabulary development, content knowledge, and conceptual understanding. In other words, "the focus of study becomes concepts rather than the content of one particular book. Students gain both a broad perspective and an in-depth sense of the subject matter from reading many texts on the same topic."

Research has shown the use of conceptually coherent text sets to be effective in building knowledge and vocabulary, as well as preparing students for new texts on the same topic. Both broad knowledge and topic-specific knowledge are essential for reading comprehension. In turn, background knowledge allows readers to make inferences, which aids in comprehension, thinking, and memory. Studies have also shown that prior knowledge of a topic has a greater impact on reading comprehension than generalized reading ability. As educators, we must recognize the power of prior knowledge!

One drawback is that it takes considerable time and effort to plan an effective text set. Teachers must consider text complexity, vocabulary, and content knowledge in the context of a specific set of students. Though there are many books and articles available that walk through the process of planning text sets, it is often difficult for teachers to find the time to engage in this process. Luckily, there are websites out there that can help.

Newsela, Readworks, and Achieve the Core all have online text-set resources for educators. Over the next few weeks, I will review each of these text-set tools, their usability and organization, and overall strengths and weaknesses.

Stay tuned!
Shannon Garrison is a fourth- and fifth-grade teacher in California with two decades of teaching experience. She holds a National Board Certification, serves on the National Assessment Governing Board, and was also recently selected as a Los Angeles County Teacher of the Year.

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What are "text sets," and why use them in the classroom?

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Achievethecore.org :: Lesson Planning Tool

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References to Core Actions and indicators found in the Instructional Practice Guide: Coaching Tool can be found throughout the Lesson Planning Tool. Teachers using the Lesson Planning Tool with a coach or colleague can use these references to more easily make connections between what content and practice has been planned and what is to be observed during classroom instruction.

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ELA / Literacy: Text-Dependent Questions

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College- and career-ready standards, including the Common Core, expect students to use evidence from texts to present careful analyses, well-defended claims, and clear information. A key method to help students develop these skills is the use of text-dependent questions: questions that can only be answered by referring back to the text.

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David and Meredith Liben on a Text-First Approach

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David and Meredith Liben on a Text-First Approach

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David and Meredith Liben on a Text First Approach

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This resource kit includes all the materials you need to start a Book Basket Project in your school: instructions, professional development content, sample text sets, and promotional handouts.
Send Feedback

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This resource kit includes all the materials you need to start a Book Basket Project in your school: instructions, professional development content, sample text sets, and promotional handouts. Send Feedback

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Designing book baskets to boost motivation, enthusiasm and engagement

I teach first grade in Anacortes, Washington and my district recently adopted a popular balanced literacy curriculum. I have had wonderings and discussions with colleagues about students reading “at their level” and what this means for our struggling readers. I wondered how my struggling readers would ever access grade-level text if they were always reading “at their level.”  I also believe students have more than one level. If they have knowledge around a topic, they can read a higher level text and I wouldn’t want any books to be off-limits for a child to try and read.  I was recently invited to participate as a pilot classroom in a project to design “book baskets,” or collections of thematically similar books at varying complexity levels, out of the books in my classroom library. This work came along at a perfect time. I wanted to try something different to reach the needs of all of my readers, and ensure they were making progress tackling increasingly complex texts.  This project’s focus was on increasing student motivation, enthusiasm, and engagement when they were given choice in the books they read.

My classroom library is organized into topics and levels.  Each K-6 classroom in my district was given a leveled library. I created book sets with many of these new books. This campaign was about engagement so not only did I create sets based on topic for knowledge/vocabulary growth, I also chose books based on high-interest characters.

Here’s what I recommend doing:

1. Look through your books and see what topics stand out to you. Can you group your existing library into collections on the same theme, topic, or character?

2. After you’ve identified groups, look through your books to see if the texts are linked topically and present opportunities to build knowledge and vocabulary. Are there tier 3 words that are in common? Are there tier 2 words or concepts that will be reinforced through reading the linked texts? A guiding question for you can be “What content will my students learn by reading this set of books together?” or “How will students be able to access higher level texts if they read these topic-based sets?”

3. Put the books together in baskets, tubs, or Ziploc bags.  Ideally, the books in your sets will be at a variety of levels. Students can access the increasingly more difficult texts in the sets because they will have learned the vocabulary from the easier levels.

4. This can be done in stages.  You don’t need to create all of your sets before you get started.  As a first grade teacher, I started by creating sets of books from my leveled C-F books.

5. Introduce the book baskets to your class.  Tell your students they will be able to pick the sets they are interested in and become experts on a topic or character.

Book Baskets in My Classroom

This project created 3 positive changes to independent reading time in my classroom:

1. Students are accessing harder books in book baskets because of their knowledge and vocabulary learning in the text sets. By reading texts that are linked, they are building their knowledge of the topic and thus able to easily access more complex texts than they had been doing previously.

2. Students have choice. They choose the book basket they want to read and they choose the individual books they read during independent reading time.  My students have always had choice but in the past it was after they had spent time in “their level” of books.

3. Students don’t know their level.  This was a goal of mine when I began this project.  When asked why they chose a certain book or book basket, I did not want anyone to tell me it was because it was “their level.” Thanks to this project my students are now saying things like, “I chose this book basket because I love cats;” “Fly Guy makes me laugh;” or “My friend told me I would like it so I am trying it.”

Student Reaction to Book Baskets

Student motivation has never been higher. Students are eager to choose books and book baskets. One student suggested creating a sign-up list for the sets since students are anxious to get their hands on certain popular sets! They are excited when it is independent reading time and they get started right away sustaining their reading for 30 minutes. I remember one of my students being so excited about what he accomplished that he shouted to the whole room “Can you believe I read 21 pages?!” after reading about sea life – a topic of his choosing. Another of my students really loves books about Danny the Dog and asked if he could stay in at recess to search the classroom library to see if he could find any other books about Danny to add to our set.

When I look across my class during independent reading time, their eyes are on their books and they are silent or whisper reading. To really know if they are engaged, I have increased talking about books. The students get a chance to share what they read, what they learned from their book, what they enjoyed and why. I believe if they can talk about their reading, they are truly engaged with the work.  They want to share their learning and enjoyment with their friends. My students frequently want to recommend their favorites to their friends, and read aloud to me to show their skills. And they’re right to be proud – many of my students can read books above their level with ease now.

A student writing down new vocabulary she learns as she reads.

Final Thoughts

All of my students, including my reluctant readers, were motivated, enthusiastic, and became better readers because of this campaign. It is now part of the culture in my classroom for students to have choice in what they read during independent reading time. I plan to continue using book baskets. When students finish a set, they choose a new one.  I offer suggestions of topics they might be interested in reading and often they have a new set in mind based on peer recommendations. My students have read many of the sets already, so I will be putting more sets together (using the higher levels in my leveled library) as well as purchasing a few new books.  I have a student who is requesting a text set about sharks and a child who is really interested in wild cats. Their enthusiasm makes me excited to create sets on topics I know they want to read.

About the Author: MJ D’Amelio is a first grade teacher in Anacortes, Washington. MJ holds a BA in Interdisciplinary Child Development, a Master’s Degree in Curriculum and Instruction, and a Teacher Leadership certificate from the University of Washington. MJ is a Student Achievement Partner Washington State Core Advocate and is continuously seeking to better her classroom instruction and support teachers.

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How to Create Book Baskets - Peers and Pedagogy

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I teach first grade in Anacortes, Washington and my district recently adopted a popular balanced literacy curriculum. I have had wonderings and discussions with colleagues about students reading “at their level” and what this means for our struggling readers. I wondered how my struggling readers wou…

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Teaching Academic Content and Literacy to

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Teaching Academic Content and Literacy to

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This practice guide was prepared for the WWC by Instructional Research Group under contract ED-IES-12-C-0016.

The following research staff contributed to the guide: Joseph Dimino, Kelly Haymond, Russell Gersten, Madhavi Jayanthi, and Rebecca Newman-Gonchar.

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WWC | Teaching Academic Content and Literacy to English Learners in Elementary and Middle School

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This practice guide provides four recommendations that address what works for English learners during reading and content area instruction. Each recommendation includes extensive examples of activities that can be used to support students as they build the language and literacy skills needed to be successful in school.

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Abril's Class
2nd Grade
Westergard Elementary School in Reno, NV

Abril Cobian-Luna, Lydia Burton, and Grace Stapleton are discussing heroes of the Civil War.

They're getting started on a document-based question (DBQ), which asks them to use their prior knowledge and a set of texts and images to rank five Civil War-era leaders in order of heroism. Once they've made their rankings, they'll be asked to provide evidence for their top three in an essay.

Though they've only just gotten started, the girls already have a hunch about the two most heroic leaders on the list: Harriet Tubman and Clara Barton. Why? Both exhibited bravery, they explain with certainty.

If you remember this kind of exercise from your high school days, it's because DBQs are a mainstay of AP history courses. This one is no different.

Except Abril and her classmates aren't in high school. They're in second grade.

Learning Isn't Cute

In Chris Hayes' second-grade classroom at Westergard Elementary School in Reno, Nevada, this is how her students will finish off their unit on the Civil War-synthesizing their knowledge, forming opinions based on evidence, and writing and talking about it.

Here's the assignment this group of second graders will tackle: "A hero is a person who is admired for courage and achievements that help others. Using evidence found in the following documents, your knowledge of our readings, and at least four of the vocabulary words above, rank all of these people in order from least heroic to most heroic. Then, write about your top three most heroic choices. Make sure to use details to support your reasoning for why these people are heroic."

The seven-page packet in front of her students today includes photographs and passages about Abraham Lincoln, Harriet Tubman, Robert E. Lee, Clara Barton, and Ulysses S. Grant. The vocabulary words at the top of the first page include "Confederacy," "abolitionist," and "emancipation," among others.

Around the room, quiet but thoughtful conversations about the first document in the packet are taking place. Abril, Lydia, and Grace are nestled amongst pillows on the rug, huddled over their clipboards. At a nearby table, Madison Brenner and Alyson Burke are parsing out the finer points of Abraham Lincoln's debates with Stephen Douglas.

"Explain what Lincoln meant when he said, 'A house divided against itself cannot stand,'" Madison reads from her packet. The girls reread the text silently, underlining in pencil as they go.

"So," Madison, 8, posits, "that means, if everyone's arguing, the country will break apart."

Most of us probably wouldn't overhear these conversations or read this assignment and peg them for second grade. But Mrs. Hayes' Civil War unit is part of Core Knowledge, a literacy curriculum aligned to the Common Core State Standards. In Core Knowledge, students build reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills through units that center on social studies topics like westward expansion, the War of 1812, and ancient Asian civilizations, and science topics like the human body and insects. Students are becoming literate, in other words, while also becoming informed-and vice versa.

Mrs. Hayes believes that if most of us don't think second graders can do this level of work, it's because we rarely ask them to try.

"We hear kids this age having complex conversations with each other, and our reaction is that it's cute. But it isn't cute. It's what we should expect them to do," Mrs. Hayes says. "The kids are engaged. They think learning is fun. But I don't teach this way because it's fun. That makes it too simple. What we're doing for them is very important."

It's important not just because these second graders are building critical content knowledge that helps them become stronger readers, writers, listeners, and speakers (and that will be built upon in higher grades). It's also important because in asking her students to do so much active thinking and engaging on these topics, Chris Hayes is laying the foundation for her students to persevere through more challenging work in the years to come. She is building students who own their learning.

Challenging Content is a Civil Right

Abril, 7, is one of those learners.

A few weeks before Mrs. Hayes' class even gets to the DBQ, they're already building their knowledge of the Civil War. As the class gathers on the rug to hear a story about Ulysses S. Grant, Abril positions herself right in front.

Soft-spoken and pensive, Abril speaks Spanish at home and struggles with reading; writing and math both come more easily to her. Nonetheless, come time for the Civil War read-aloud, Abril's eyes are glued on her teacher, ready to listen. When Mrs. Hayes pauses and asks the class to discuss a question related to the story, Abril eagerly turns to her partner to participate.

It's the first time they've heard of Grant. But they already have a lot of context and related vocabulary to support their understanding, so no one panics when a few minutes later, Mrs. Hayes sends them back to their tables to write-completely unstructured-about Grant in their Civil War notebooks.

Abril scribbles away, describing Grant as a "civil war general" who was "a really brave man." Though she hasn't heard of Grant before today, she explains that she knows about him from "listening to the story."

Is it a lot to ask a seven-year-old who is still building her English skills to listen to new information about American history, talk about it with her classmates, and write independently about it?

Sure, says Mrs. Hayes. But that's the point, and Abril's not fazed. It's something she and her classmates do often, and she likes learning from stories. "It tells me what's going on. Listening and learning is fun," Abril says quietly, before returning to her paper.

Across the table from Abril, her classmate Mia McDowell, 8, has written almost twice as much, and she's lobbing follow-up questions at Mrs. Hayes.

"When did Ulysses S. Grant die?"

Mrs. Hayes demurs, saying Mia will have to wait to find out.

"Well, when was he born?"

Here, Mrs. Hayes pauses. She doesn't know offhand.

"We'll have to look it up," she tells Mia, who nods, satisfied.

Mia and Abril are accessing today's lesson at different levels. Mia, who joined Westergard from a local parochial school and isn't shy about telling everyone how much of a better education she's getting in Mrs. Hayes' class, is galloping ahead, analyzing the text, shooting her hand up to answer every question, and writing in complex sentences. Abril's grasp, for now, is more surface-level. Still, from Mrs. Hayes' perspective, both girls are getting something critically important out of this approach to literacy instruction: They're building knowledge while they develop their reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills-and the knowledge, in turn, is helping them deepen those literacy skills.

"Some people think it's not appropriate for our English language learners or students with any kind of learning challenges to do this work. They think it goes over their heads," says Mrs. Hayes.

"To me, it's a civil rights issue. Who are you to decide what they can and can't access? If I withhold the Civil War from Abril, the other kids are going to pass her by. I need to help her with her reading skills, but she has to have knowledge too, so that when she catches up with her reading, she'll be right there with the rest of the kids. If, year after year, we don't expose them to this level of work, we're making the problem worse."

The read-aloud portion of Mrs. Hayes' lesson is critical for that. Research shows that students, especially in the early years, are able to access much more complex ideas through listening than reading. So when Abril listens to that story on Grant, she's processing more complex syntax, vocabulary, and ideas than she would get from a text she's currently able to read independently. And listening comprehension supports reading comprehension-so if students don't get exposure to challenging texts read aloud to them, it's harder for them to move ahead with their reading.

"If Abril lived in the books we're reading together, it's Pat's favorite cat," Mrs. Hayes explains. "There's no discussion there. There's no deeper level questioning. She needs to be exposed to that questioning, that discussion, which cannot be done with the text she's able to access on her own right now."

That doesn't mean students aren't still spending time reading books "on their level"-meaning at the level they can decode independently. They do, every morning. And students who need reading support still get it, in the form of phonics and one-on-one instruction. But now that is just one piece of their literacy instruction, not the whole thing.

Mrs. Hayes believes this content-rich approach to literacy instruction means all her kids are getting access to not just content knowledge, but also the critical thinking skills that come along with it, which will serve them well in the years to come.

"I ran into a teacher from a very affluent school with excellent test scores," she explains. "She asked me about Core Knowledge, and I was telling her how my students had gotten into this amazing debate about slaves shooting their owners to get away. And she said, 'Oh, my kids do the same thing. We read The Three Little Pigs and we talked about who was right, the wolf or the pigs.'"

Mrs. Hayes pauses, frustrated even by the memory.

"It's totally not the same thing. We are giving them knowledge, and it's very powerful. When they are really and truly supposed to attach themselves to this information, they will be ready."

Kids Need to Learn Stuff

Chris Hayes has been teaching for twenty-two years, all over Washoe County. She learned to teach elementary school by giving students information, teacher-to-student: in math, formulas; in literacy, discrete reading and writing skills. In social studies and science, not much of anything.

"Everyone was just picking topics they were interested in," Mrs. Hayes says. "A unit on pumpkins; a unit on butterflies. There was no cohesiveness to it."

Today, Mrs. Hayes is an unapologetic advocate for the Common Core standards. She believes the transition to the standards, which Nevada adopted in 2010, has dramatically improved her teaching, and she's seeing dramatically stronger learning from her students as a result.

"I taught for twenty years before someone said, 'Hey, we need to be teaching them stuff,'" says Mrs. Hayes. "We were teaching them content, but in isolation. It was very superficial, especially in K-2. The expectations were just way too low."

Mrs. Hayes' higher expectations are paying off by any measure. Her students have an average reading score of 191 on the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) tests, the benchmark assessments used by Washoe County, compared to an average of 178 for the district. Nationally, average growth on the MAP reading assessment is about 13 points per year; this year, Mrs. Hayes' students grew an average of 11 points in just one term.

That's not the result of test prep, though; she doesn't do any. "They are more prepared for any testing situation than ever before because I'm asking them to do more complex things in class. But it's not to prepare them for a test."

She thinks her students also succeed in testing situations because they're used to being challenged. When faced with a tricky passage on a MAP test-or with a challenging text in any context-Mrs. Hayes says her kids "sit there and try. Because they know I expect them to try. They don't give up. That's the expectation."

To listen to Mrs. Hayes talk about how her instruction has shifted as a result of the new standards, it's hard not to think this is common sense. But the transition to the new standards has been met with tremendous resistance.

In part, Mrs. Hayes thinks professional development for teachers has over-focused on particular skills-the how of teaching to the Common Core standards-and less on the why. She believes changing that would address some of the resistance to the standards she sees among her peers.

"A lot of teachers have been down this road before. The new book is the answer. This is the answer. I think they're just cautious. Professional development needs to be about why this is so important, why it's important to build knowledge and vocabulary."

As for learning how to do it, Mrs. Hayes posits that the content itself might be even more important. "I would rather my own child sit in a class with a not-so-great teacher listening to great content, than an excellent teacher doing a pumpkin unit. I think the content is more important than the delivery."

She laughs. "That's not a popular opinion."

Whether it's the content or the delivery-or most likely a combination of the two-it's hard to argue with Mrs. Hayes' results. It's even harder to argue with the happy, engaged faces of the children in her classroom.

Nobody's Crying

Brandon Galvan, 8, has one of those happy faces. An amicable kid with a big grin, Brandon has been inspired by the challenging content in Mrs. Hayes' classroom, according to his mother, Kelly Galvan.

Ms. Galvan says the challenging content in second grade has pushed her son far beyond what he knew he was capable of-and beyond what she'd seen in him before.

These days, Brandon comes home excited to tell his family what he's learning. " It's comforting as a parent to know that he loves school and he's getting a great experience," says Ms. Galvan. According to his mom, the challenging content has helped Brandon become a more eager and independent learner.

Brandon's older brother went through Westergard before the school adopted Core Knowledge, and his experience was notably different. "We had some less challenging years," says Ms. Galvan. "That hasn't been the case at all with Brandon this year."

Today, Brandon and his tablemate, Lena Nouwakpo, are busily writing about Grant, who they agree is a pretty cool guy. Both say they love reading and writing stories-and it's clear that they're getting hooked on history, and knowledge-building more broadly, through reading and writing in this classroom.

"I like challenging stuff," Brandon says. "If I'm not good at it, I want to practice more and get good at it."

From Mrs. Hayes' perspective, that's exactly the point of stretching her kids: It gets them excited about what they're capable of. That's not a position everyone agrees with.

"There is a strong belief that if we give them things that are too hard for them, we'll frustrate them, shut them down," says Mrs. Hayes. "They will quit school, go home, and cry. They don't, obviously. Nobody's crying. Everybody's happy doing this work, and I'm supporting them."

The point is putting the work in front of them and seeing what happens, she says-not necessarily holding fast to a particular, pre-determined bar. "I give it to them and just see what they can do with it."

Despite twenty-two years of teaching, Mrs. Hayes says she's still learning as she goes. "Because it's new, I'm not quite sure of the expectation. How appropriate is it to expect seven-year-olds to reason? I don't know yet. I push for it, but not everyone can do it yet."

Still, she says, that's not a good reason to keep them from trying.

"Everyone can write to this topic. Everyone can say, 'This is why the War of 1812 began.' Or, 'This is why he or she is my hero from the Civil War.' Everyone can do that, no matter what level."

What Makes a Hero?

As the class wraps up their unit on the Civil War, they run into a complex question. Can Robert E. Lee be considered a hero?

Mrs. Hayes asks them to offer some evidence in support of their positions. A heated debate ensues.

Griffin Muckel, 8, sees room for gray area. "He's sort of a hero, because he did fight for slavery, and he fought in the Mexican-American War."

Grace, also 8, draws a harder line. "Now that's why he's not a hero," she says. "Because I don't want slavery."

"But maybe he didn't want slavery-maybe he just didn't want to go against his own state," a classmate considers.

The discussion spills over into music time, and Mrs. Hayes has to cut them off to get them out the door. "Who's feeling a little conflicted about this?" she asks, and the kids nod.

By the end of the week, they've hashed out their lists of heroes. Brandon, for his part, chooses Clara Barton, Abraham Lincoln, and Harriet Tubman as his top three. In his essay, he cites Barton's founding of the Red Cross and notes that she once took a bullet through her sleeve and kept on working.

Abril, too, puts Barton on the top of her list. "She wanted to save the people from dying," Abril writes in her final essay. "And she was not scared."

For these second graders, fearlessness seems to impress more than anything else. And as they dive headlong into learning new content, debating with their classmates, and expressing their ideas in writing, it's clear there's not much they're afraid of, either.

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Abril's Class 2nd Grade Westergard Elementary School in Reno, NV They're getting started on a document-based question (DBQ), which asks them to use their prior knowledge and a set of texts and images to rank five Civil War-era leaders in order of heroism.

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Language of learning: Content-rich texts build knowledge and skills

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Language of learning: Content-rich texts build knowledge and skills

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Picture a classroom where two bright, inquisitive 8-year-old girls sit side by side. They both love soccer and math, and they both come from families who value education and have high expectations for their children's futures.

Katie, who was born just down the road and has attended the school since prekindergarten, is one of the strongest students in the class, and her teachers often give her enrichment work and books to take home.

Maria Elena came to the school six months ago, after her family fled violence in El Salvador. She had no prior exposure to English and is working hard to learn how to speak with her teachers and classmates. But for the first time in her life, she feels disengaged and hopelessly behind her peers academically.

At first, Maria Elena looked forward to math class, expecting to find it easier to follow numbers than spoken language. But while her classmates learned about multiplication, she was pulled out for English lessons, vocabulary lessons, and reading instruction using texts designed specifically for decoding skills.

During these lessons, she could hear Katie and other classmates in the next room cheering as they played math games on the white board while she read sentences like, "The brown cat sat by the mat."

Maria Elena frequently heard her mother talk about what a great education she was getting in the United States, but she was doubtful.

English learners like Maria Elena are capable of doing the same demanding work and developing the same complex skills as their peers who are native speakers. Indeed, recent education policies have specified that all students should meet common college- and career-ready standards.

Yet many schools use an outdated and ineffective approach to educating English learners, one that focuses on functional vocabulary and basic skills rather than the complex thinking and communication and literacy skills young people need to thrive in today's world.

Too many students like Maria Elena have missed the chance to fulfill their potential because their teachers - many of them well-intentioned - don't have the knowledge and capacity to serve them effectively.

Seeking to change that trend, beginning in the early 2000s, my colleague Lily Wong Fillmore and I developed an approach to teaching English learners that came to be called 3Ls. 3Ls stands for learning as the core instructional focus, with language and literacy integrated in seamless and purposeful ways that support core academic content rather than replacing it. Learning is the instructional goal; language and literacy are the vehicles to achieve it.

3Ls is a set of processes and tools educators can use to engage English learners - and all students - in college- and career-ready learning. We developed this work in the New York City and Boston public schools, but it has grown to reach other districts and populations.

Recently, we partnered with the Council of the Great City Schools, a national coalition of urban public schools, to create a program of online professional learning courses in using 3Ls. It is designed for educators serving high-needs English learners, but it is applicable to all students, not just English learners and not just those in urban settings. Professional learning for teachers and those who oversee and support them is central to the 3Ls approach.

FOCUS ON ACADEMIC LANGUAGE

The groundwork for 3Ls was laid in 2007, when, as director of research and development for English learners for New York City Public Schools, I set out to raise expectations and improve achievement among English learners in more than 350 public schools in the city.

These schools needed extra support because they had large numbers of students who had quickly learned the basic English skills needed to negotiate everyday life but lacked the reading and writing skills needed to meet grade-level expectations in English language arts and math.

Many of these students, like Maria Elena, had remained in beginner and intermediate level English classes for years, where the instructional model often consisted of drab, dumbed-down texts that were decontextualized and focused on everyday vocabulary and where students were rarely exposed to grade-appropriate content.

At that time, there was more confusion than clarity about how best to address the educational needs of English learners. Many educators hadn't had much training on how to work with these students, and bilingual education wasn't available in many places. Thus, the strategy was to teach English first and content later. In lieu of strategies tailored to English learners, schools used content materials meant for kindergarteners or 1st graders, no matter how old the English learner was.

Professional learning for teachers and those who oversee and support them is central to the 3Ls approach.

But Fillmore's research on the instruction and experiences of these students raised a major red flag. She found that these students experienced stalled progress in language and literacy because of lack of exposure to complex and compelling text. Without a diet of rich and robust content input, English learners' output continued to lag far behind their classmates.

Fillmore's research laid out an alternative path in the form of "juicy texts" - texts that are authentic, rich, and engaging. These texts use academic language, which includes contextual, relevant background information that allows the reader to make sense of the text, even in an unfamiliar topic area.

These juicy texts offer clues about how this academic language works. Using these authentic and amplified texts, learners can advance in learning mature forms of academic language that go far beyond just vocabulary. (Download the supplemental content below to see sidebar on p. 35 for more information about specific instructional strategies that leverage the juicy texts.)

With this fortified input and appropriate support, Fillmore proposed, we would see a different progression - flashes of insight in the output of English learners and all students who needed a more robust and content-based approach to language and literacy (Fillmore & Fillmore, 2013).

BUILD EDUCATOR CAPACITY

Fillmore and I began collaborating to operationalize her research into concrete instructional practices and lesson and unit designs for teachers. What resulted was a learning process not only for educators, but for us about how to equip teachers with the knowledge and skills they need.

We knew that a prescriptive curriculum would not achieve our goals for teachers' understanding or students' learning. Instead, we focused on supporting teachers' instructional vision so they could create lessons using texts, talk, and tasks to examine content, develop knowledge, and uncover learning, all while developing rich and complex academic language. Professional learning had to be at the heart of this approach.

In designing the professional learning, we began with three main instructional principles derived from research:

Text, talk, and tasks should be cognitively demanding.

Instruction should provide access, attention, and active engagement.

Students learn from quality texts that are complex, compelling, concise, and connected.

It is not enough for a text to be complex. Students are more inclined to roll up their sleeves and tackle tough texts if the ideas in them are compelling. We looked for texts written by authors who are not only gifted writers, but also scholarly and passionate about their subjects. These texts create a sense of awe and wonder and invite inquiry and investigation.

Furthermore, all texts inside a unit of study should be connected to one another, so that those introduced later in the unit build on the ideas nested in the texts that came before. Concise yet complete excerpts are then chosen for close reading, during which teachers attend to the big ideas nested inside.

Rather than simply assigning rich texts, teachers need to use instructional moves that demystify academic language found in these complex texts. This attention to language involves rich and robust talk sessions between teacher and students and among student pairs or groups. They then actively engage students in differentiated tasks to provide pathways to learning at all levels of language and literacy.

LEARNING FROM LAB SITES

As we began putting these principles into a professional learning structure for the New York City schools, we quickly realized we needed a way to test and refine the strategies we were developing. We created 3Ls lab sites where we could work intensively and refine the strategies in a risk-free and nurturing atmosphere. At the lab sites, we videotaped kindergarten through high school classrooms and used those videos to observe practices we were developing, continue our research, and make changes as needed.

These lab sites gave us a snapshot of how 3Ls work can impact student achievement and teachers' professional growth. The shift to compelling texts, talk, and tasks re-energized not only the student learners, but also the instructional staff as learners and researchers themselves. As one principal said, "I could see the change in the way our English language learners were participating in class, hands raised and on the edge of their seats."

One of the main lessons for us from the lab sites was that professional learning for teachers needed to be scaffolded by support for leaders and systemic infrastructure. We saw that, for the 3Ls approach to take hold and thrive, it needed to be led in each school by informed and caring instructional leaders who supported teachers as they created lessons and units of study that were cognitively demanding and scaffolded to meet the needs of English learners and all learners who are striving in terms of academic language.

Furthermore, changing the paradigm from simplified to amplified texts, from a remedial approach to one that was grade-appropriate and accelerated, would require also educating and supporting superintendents, district staff, and school-based instructional leaders so that everyone would be working from a common understanding of best practices for English learners.

BROADEN THE REACH

The approach that grew out of the lab sites is a three-year, three-pronged approach focused on juicy texts. It includes seminars for district and instructional leaders, teacher training, and laboratories of practice in which to observe, create, replicate, and assess these instructional practices.

To build on success in New York City, Boston, and elsewhere and make the approach accessible to a wider range of educators, we worked with the Council of the Great City Schools to develop a series of five online courses. Educators can complete the courses at their own pace and within a timeframe that works for them and their job responsibilities.

These are not one-shot courses, but a sustained, multipart program of courses that build on one another to transform teaching practices with practical tools, examples, and practice.

To start, all participants complete a foundations course to build a common understanding of the theory of action and a common vocabulary. Then they choose to follow either an English language arts/English language development pathway or a mathematics pathway. The pathways consist of five courses that walk participants through the essential elements of the 3Ls approach, including the research behind the approach, what the instructional approach should look like, and how to implement it.

Each course includes voices from instructional leaders, teachers, and students. The courses provide in-depth examples of teachers planning, implementing, and reflecting on the 3Ls approach. Coursework includes reading professional articles, reviewing sample lessons, and using implementation guides and templates for participant's learning, applying, and reflecting stages.

POSITIVE CHANGES

As I look back and reflect on our work in New York City, Boston, and other large districts, I see many positive changes in schools. More districts are providing models of professional learning that begin with the firm belief that all students, including English learners, have the capacity for rich and robust instruction. Instructional leaders are making structural changes such as co-teaching to enable English learners to learn in classrooms with their native speaker peers.

Above all, English learners like Maria Elena are much less likely to be pulled out of mainstream classrooms for isolated skill instruction with simplified texts. Instead, they are more often sitting side by side with their native speaker classmates, joining in on compelling and complex social studies, science, math, and English language arts lessons and seizing opportunities to learn and grow in promising ways.

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Language Of Learning: Content-rich Texts Build Knowledge And Skills | Learning Forward

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Picture a classroom where two bright, inquisitive 8-year-old girls sit side by side. They both love soccer and math, and they both come from families who value education and have high expectations for their children's futures.

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How Knowledge Helps:  It Speeds and Strengthens Reading Comprehension 

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How Knowledge Helps:  It Speeds and Strengthens Reading Comprehension 

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“Knowledge is Good.” So read the motto of the mythical Faber College in the 1978 movie, Animal House. Those of us who work in education would agree, even if we were unable to express ourselves so eloquently. But why, exactly, is knowledge good? When I’ve discussed this question with teachers, many have used the metaphor “It’s grist for the mill.” That is, the goal of education is seen not so much as the accumulation of knowledge, but as the honing of cognitive skills such as thinking critically.

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Supporting All Learners with Complex Text

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Supporting All Learners with Complex Text

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Text Sets: Building Knowledge and Vocabulary

Lessons using a volume of reading on specific topics to support all learners in building background knowledge and vocabulary

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12/17/20

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Multimodal STEM Text Sets

A multimodal STEM text set is a coherent sequence of texts and materials pertaining to a specific STEM topic or line of inquiry that su…

Grades 6–8

05/12/17

1 FILE

Working with Animals

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grades 2–4

05/12/17

1 FILE

Renewable Energy

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grades 10–12

05/12/17

1 FILE

Insects and Bugs

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grades 4–5

05/12/17

1 FILE

Big Cats

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grades 2–4

05/12/17

2 FILES

African Savanna

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grades 2–8

09/21/16

1 FILE

Alexander the Great

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grade 6

09/21/16

1 FILE

Lincoln's Assassination

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grades 10–12

09/21/16

1 FILE

Saving the Tropical Rainforest

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grades 3–5

09/21/16

1 FILE

Body Systems

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grades 2–3

09/21/16

1 FILE

Properties of Matter

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grades 2–3

09/21/16

1 FILE

Choctaw Indians

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grade 4

09/21/16

1 FILE

Breathing Deep

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grades 6–8

09/21/16

1 FILE

Animal Adaptations

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grades K–4

09/21/16

1 FILE

States of Matter

Each expert pack:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resour…

Grades 6–8

09/21/16

1 FILE

Statue of Liberty

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grade 3

09/21/16

1 FILE

Endangered Animals

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grade 5

09/21/16

1 FILE

Fossils

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grade 3

09/21/16

1 FILE

Challenges of Being an Immigrant

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grade 3

09/21/16

1 FILE

Poisonous Animals

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grades 3–5

09/21/16

1 FILE

Japan

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grades 2–3

09/21/16

1 FILE

Evolution of the Internet

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grades 9–11

09/21/16

1 FILE

K9 Police Dogs

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grade 3

09/21/16

1 FILE

Inventors

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resourc…

Grades 4–6

09/21/16

1 FILE

Remember the Ladies - Women of American Revolution

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grades 8–10

04/04/16

1 FILE

Immunizations

This resource is created by New Schools for New Orleans.  All resources created by this organization may be found here. Each text…

Grades 9–10

04/04/16

1 FILE

Columbus

This resource is created by New Schools for New Orleans.  All resources created by this organization may be found here. Each text…

Grades 9–10

04/04/16

1 FILE

Coral Reefs

This resource is created by New Schools for New Orleans.  All resources created by this organization may be found here. Each text…

Grades 9–10

02/17/16

1 FILE

Smokejumpers: Life Fighting Fires

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grades 9–12

08/16/15

1 FILE

History of Toys

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grades 4–5

08/15/15

1 FILE

Money: Saving and Spending

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grades 4–5

08/15/15

1 FILE

Spies of the Revolutionary War

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resourc…

Grades 6–8

08/15/15

1 FILE

Standing up for Civil Rights

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grades 7–9

08/15/15

1 FILE

Unwanted Guests

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grades 4–5

08/15/15

1 FILE

Harlem Renaissance

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grades 4–5

08/15/15

1 FILE

Human Body Circulatory System

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grades 4–5

08/15/15

1 FILE

Life During the Great Depression

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grades 4–5

08/15/15

1 FILE

The Internet: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resourc…

Grades 4–5

08/15/15

1 FILE

Real Zombies in Real Life

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grades 5–6

08/15/15

1 FILE

Bacteria and Viruses

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grades 9–10

08/15/15

1 FILE

Growing Up in the Early Colonies

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grade 5

08/15/15

1 FILE

How Movies and T.V. Programs are Made

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grades 4–5

08/15/15

2 FILES

Salem Witch Trials

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grades 5–10

08/15/15

1 FILE

Women in the American Revolution

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grade 5

08/15/15

1 FILE

Transportation

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grade K

08/15/15

1 FILE

Harlem Renaissance Artists

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grade 7

08/15/15

1 FILE

Our Solar System

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grades 2–4

08/15/15

1 FILE

Homes

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grades 2–4

08/15/15

1 FILE

Muscles

Each : text set Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources (i.e…

Grades 2–3

08/15/15

1 FILE

All Eyes on the Moon

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grades 2–4

08/15/15

1 FILE

Desert Animals

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grades 5–7

08/15/15

1 FILE

Wild Weather

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grades 4–6

08/15/15

1 FILE

Icky Insects

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grades 2–3

08/15/15

1 FILE

Entrepreneurship

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grade 3

08/13/15

1 FILE

Immigration and Citizenship

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grades 6–8

08/13/15

1 FILE

Animals, Animals Everywhere!

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grades K–3

08/13/15

1 FILE

Human Body, Five Senses

Each text set:  Centers on a single topic (i.e., insects, desert animals, entrepreneurship) and contains a variety of resources…

Grades K–1

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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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Placing Text at the Center of the Standards-Aligned ELA Classroom

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Placing Text at the Center of the Standards-Aligned ELA Classroom

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Real-world advice for how to scaffold complex text for struggling students

Editor’s Note: Author Adrienne Williams co-presented a webinar focused on scaffolding strategies. Webinar participants were allowed to ask questions via chat submission. The following questions were the most commonly asked regarding elementary ELA scaffolding. The full webinar can be downloaded here.

1. Teachers are concerned that students will become frustrated or disinterested when faced with challenging texts with which they may not initially be successful. How do you help students persevere? What strategies keep motivation high even when students struggle?

There are two key levers for getting reluctant readers to engage with text: interest and access. By providing students with a topic that is high interest, students start with some degree of buy-in. To prepare them for the complex text, consider building them up to it by giving them opportunities to build knowledge and vocabulary with lower texts before presenting them with the complex text. Be careful, however, not to limit their exposure to just lower-level text. The goal is to hook them with the topic, allow them to feel successful, and then present the challenge of the complex text with the frame that they have the tools to work through it.

Providing an access point for the complex text is another way to allow students to feel some initial success. Determine what aspects of the text they can connect to and understand. Start small! You may start out focusing on story elements and, over a series of lessons or repeated reads, get to focusing on the evolution of characters throughout the text. With repeated practice and the opportunity to feel some success by scaffolding up to the hardest task, even the most reluctant readers will learn they can tackle any text.

2. How should teachers allocate their time to different instructional strategies? How should teachers determine what percentage of their reading blocks should be allocated to each type of instruction?

When considering how to allocate time between all the different components of literacy, it’s important to keep in mind the amount of instructional time you have, specific student needs, and your role in facilitating learning. Ideally, the time you spend on each would be flexible based on what your students need. The important thing is that you provide them a balance and variety of opportunities to engage in each. That being said, I’ve found that having a set amount of time daily for foundational skills, read aloud, and centers is useful.

3. How can teachers make this doable in a whole-class setting? It can be challenging to deal with a lot of different reading levels all at the same time. Additionally, pre-teaching and scaffolding is time-consuming. How can you make it all work?

In order to use your planning and instructional time most efficiently, consider which TWO strategies you can use for any lesson to provide better access. Think of one strategy for during the reading and the other to provide access to the task you’re asking students to do. When choosing which strategies to use, think about what will benefit the most students. During reading, that could be a visual anchor chart or visual vocabulary cards. When considering the task, only make two versions: scaffolded and non-scaffolded. My scaffolded student work includes more visuals and vocabulary cues. My non-scaffolded is more text heavy. As you get better at planning for your varying ranges of students, it will be easier to make changes and offer more options of student tasks. Collaborate with your special educator or reading specialist to get a list of go-to ideas.

4. The reality is that many teachers are working with what they have: leveled readers. How can they ensure students have complex texts when they must use the readers supplied in their curriculum?

When you have to stick with what’s provided in your curriculum, which in most cases is leveled readers, you have to get creative on how to incorporate complex text.

First: Consider what instructional time you have to dedicate to complex text. Are there days when you don’t have to use the readers? Could you fit in two days a week with complex text?

Next: Identify resources from which you can pull complex texts for your students. Check the books you already have in your library; ask your colleagues. Some of the best supplemental articles and text sets I’ve found are from these three resources:

Readworks.org (free)

NewsELA (free & paid pro license)

Achieve The Core (free)

Last: Create your rationale for using complex text so that when your administration asks why you’ve done something differently, you can justify it based on research and student data.

Article: Why Complex Text Matters

5. Can you share strategies for effective read-alouds? How often should you do them?

A read-aloud is only as effective as the effort you put into planning it. Planning is the most important aspect of doing a read-aloud because it focuses your lesson, aligns your questions, and dictates your task. Once you have identified the ‘big idea’ of the lesson, or what you want students to take away, consider how you will provide them access to the text. Because you’re already reading it aloud, the next most effective strategy is to provide a visual anchor and/or focus on key vocabulary. This can be done by using various types of anchor charts, picture vocabulary cards, and using props.

Visual Anchor Example

Visual anchor example

Visual anchor example

Next, make sure that your questions are targeted and in service of your big idea. Last, determine how you will assess student understanding. Each part of the lesson needs to be strung together in service of what you want students to walk away with. In terms of how often you should do them, it depends on the unit you’re doing and the content. There is no right or wrong number. If you have the flexibility, consider doing three read-alouds a week and on the other two days give students a chance to do a close read, gain content through a hands-on experience, or incorporating writing in response to text.

About the Author: Adrienne Williams is Curriculum Manager for Center City PCS in Washington, DC. Originally from Syracuse, NY she came to DC for college - attended George Washington University for international affairs and development and came to teaching through an alternative route. Trained and certified through Urban Teachers (formerly Urban Teacher Center), she completed 6 years of teaching before transitioning to her current curriculum role. In that role she supports teachers in PreK-3rd grade in literacy and math.

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Top 5 Questions about ELA Scaffolding in Elementary School - Peers and Pedagogy

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Editor's Note: Author Adrienne Williams co-presented a webinar focused on scaffolding strategies. Webinar participants were allowed to ask questions via chat submission. The following questions were the most commonly asked regarding elementary ELA scaffolding. The full webinar can be downloaded here. 1. Teachers are concerned that students will become frustrated or disinterested when faced with [...]

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Strategies for Supporting Struggling Readers

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Strategies for Supporting Struggling Readers

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Lesson Planning and Reflection: ELA/Literacy

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Lesson Planning and Reflection: ELA/Literacy

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ReadWorks | Award-Winning, EdTech Nonprofit Organization

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ReadWorks is an edtech nonprofit organization that is committed to helping to solve America’s reading comprehension crisis.

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Home Book Lists Resources Training

"Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created and recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror. Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection, we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience. Reading, then, becomes a means of self-affirmation, and readers often seek their mirrors in books." (Rudine Sims Bishop,1990)

While appropriate within the context of the unit or lesson, books, articles, and reading passages may contain language and content that will require additional review to ensure the selection is suitable for your students and instructional goals.

Click on the grade to view the book list:

K: Family Guide 2: Family Guide 3: Family Guide 4: Family Guide

1: Family Guide

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5: Family Guide

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Equipped Book List: Lists by Grade Level

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Home Book Lists Resources Training "Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created and recreated by the author.

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Newsela for Mississippi

Contact MS team

1. Address the literacy gap with flexible content that helps teachers differentiate instruction, making learning accessible for all students.

2. Promote equity and diversity with representative content from 100+ sources.

3. Use content aligned to the Mississippi College and Career Readiness Standards that challenges students to critically examine multiple perspectives, while allowing teachers to promote reading engagement and literacy skills.

4. Integrate social-emotional concepts into instruction with relatable, real-world content that helps students process the changes they're experiencing

Contact MS team

Newsela curates thousands of relevant, engaging, standards-aligned texts for the classroom.

Curations, Lessons, and Customizations
Create custom activities, search for content by standard, curate Text Sets, and control the reading levels students experience.

Quizzes, Writing Prompts, and Assignments
Create and share customizable assignments and give students access to reading comprehension quizzes, customizable writing prompts, and annotations.

Aligned to Mississippi State Standards
Use Newsela to teach the standards and priorities of your school, district and the state of Mississippi. We support leading frameworks, and commonly used curricula to ensure instruction is both engaging and driving learning.

Complement your ELA curriculum

Breathe new life into 40+ providers of core materials. Pair engaging, authentic texts students love with the curriculum you have, without disrupting a thing.

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We know how important it is to play nice with your existing technologies. That's why we integrate with top rostering solutions and support IMS standards.

Authentic, standards-aligned content that supports the standards and mandates that matter to Mississippi schools.

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"Newsela is a powerful teaching resource. This easy-to-use platform provides teachers and students with access to fiction and non-fiction texts of varying complexities. Activities may be hosted on the website or printed for easy use. The text is aligned with many national core reading series (including Journeys, which we purchased last school term), features writing instruction support, and includes vocabulary instruction support. Resources are available for second-grade through twelfth-grade (2nd-12th) ELA, science, and social studies. This is supported by reporting, data tracking, and professional development. The platform has a growing bank of texts and access for kindergarten and first-grade."

"Our teachers were already using the free version of Newsela and loving it. As a result, when funds recently became available we decided to invest in premium Newsela accounts for all of our teachers. We wanted to unlock all of the wonderful resources that are not available in the free version. With a renewed focus on literacy skills development in our district, Newsela will provide valuable resources to support our literacy goals. Our teachers are excited to learn more about what Newsela can do for their students and the customer service has been outstanding."

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Newsela for Mississippi Contact MS team Address the literacy gap with flexible content that helps teachers differentiate instruction, making learning accessible for all students. Promote equity and diversity with representative content from 100+ sources. Use content aligned to the Mississippi College and Career Readiness Standards that challenges students to critically examine multiple perspectives, while allowing teachers to promote reading engagement and literacy skills.

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The Connections Between Writing, Knowledge Acquisition, and Reading Comprehension

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The Connections Between Writing, Knowledge Acquisition, and Reading Comprehension

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Advertisement Windward Teacher Training Institute Professional Development Opportunities in Reading, Writing, Math, Social Skills and Language Development Appropriate for teachers in mainstream and remedial settings Instruction is based on scientiﬁcally validated research Live video streaming available for large groups Certiﬁcation offered in Multisensory Structured Language Education (IMSLEC) Classes offered in Manhattan and Westchester Online registration available facebook.com/WindwardTeacherTrainingInstitute FOR MORE INFORMATION: thewindwardschool.org/wtti or 914-949-6968 ext. 1221 twitter.com/WindwardTTI Advertisement 24 Perspectives on Language and Literacy Fall 2019 International Dyslexia Association

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Perspectives on Language Fall 2019 Page24

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Menu Advertisement Windward Teacher Training Institute Professional Development Opportunities in Reading, Writing, Math, Social Skills and Language Development Appropriate for teachers in mainstream and remedial settings Instruction is based on scientiﬁcally validated research Live video streaming available for large groups Certiﬁcation offered in Multisensory Structured Language Education (IMSLEC) Classes offered in Manhattan and Westchester Online registration available facebook.com/WindwardTeacherTrainingInstitute FOR MORE INFORMATION: thewindwardschool.org/wtti or 914-949-6968 ext.

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Chief Joseph's 1879 Lincoln Hall Speech Excerpt