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This article focuses on the building knowledge shift of the three shifts. One thing that stuck out to me was that knowledge building should start early.

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Facts should be meaningful

Knowledge acquisition can be incidental

Not all knowledge needs to be detailed

Knowledge learning should start early

Reprinted with permission from the Spring 2006 issues of the American Educator, the quarterly journal of the American Federation of Teachers.

For any reprint requests, please contact the author or publisher listed.

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Learning happens when we connect new information to what we already know. When children have limited knowledge about the world, they have a smaller capacity to learn more about it. Here are four ways teachers can build content knowledge that will expand the opportunity for students to forge new connections - and make them better independent readers and learners.

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This article focuses on the building knowledge shift of the three shifts of the three shifts. One of the things that stuck out to me was imbedding social studies and science into the ELA content.

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Elementary school teachers pave the way for their students to be able to take part in rigorous project-based learning (PBL) down the line by ensuring that students develop foundational reading skills. This comes through phonics and vocabulary work, which helps students build content knowledge across disciplines.

Unfortunately, schools don't always emphasize the importance of building content knowledge.

For instance, Jessica Winter argues in The New Yorker that reading instruction is often anchored to skill development and strategic guessing without rich content knowledge and intentional development of academic vocabulary in subjects such as science and social studies. A curriculum that is built strictly on high skill development, high collaboration, and high strategic guessing equates to what she calls a "vibes-based literacy."

As a former high school science teacher, I found that students struggled to think critically about something that they didn't have thorough knowledge of to begin with. The solution is to provide students with rich content knowledge to read, write, and talk about in class.

Rigorous PBL

Rigorous PBL is an inquiry-based approach that follows a specific pathway of enabling students to develop three levels of learning:

Surface (I know ideas or skills),

Deep (I can relate ideas and/or skills), and

Transfer (I can apply ideas or skills in multiple contexts).

Rigorous PBL is built on the understanding that knowledge of subject areas is critical to successful learning across the levels of rigor. It also requires an equal intensity and integration of all three levels, and this is developed when students routinely engage in tasks that require reading, writing, and talking. For maximum effect, these activities should be addressed by ensuring that teachers are following best practices anchored in the science of reading.

Science of Reading and Rigorous PBL

Within rigorous PBL, students need content knowledge development to effectively learn how to read, write, and talk. Without surface-level knowledge, students are unable to access deep and transfer learning within and across subjects. Studies have shown that skills don't transfer without a rich content basis in which these skills can link.

Common approaches to PBL fall short of building and deepening content knowledge. Often the main culprits are ideologies that assume students will not be motivated by content or will lose a sense of power by having to engage in direct instruction. The results are a "vibes-based PBL methodology" built on teaching skills such as problem-solving, collaboration, and research without the necessary knowledge to successfully meet all levels of complexity.

Rigorous PBL, however, is based on the idea that knowledge is power, and we must design and teach strategies to not only activate but embed content knowledge.

Moreover, rigorous PBL is based on the concept of balance. We need to bring learning to read and reading to learn together for students in early grades, and we need to deepen their content knowledge.

4 Strategies to Increase Content Knowledge

1. Position skill and knowledge learning intentions and success criteria side by side. Ensuring that students are clear on expectations of learning has been well documented in a myriad of research studies and books. The question is to what degree are the expectations we provide to students balanced between content and skill expectations? This is especially critical when we are in a literacy block. As journalist and author Natalie Wexler writes in The Atlantic, content should be embedded when we learn literacy.

Let's help students see the need for literacy skills in fully accessing the knowledge we are learning. Skills should be considered our tools for answering our "need to knows" within and across disciplines.

Place content-based outcomes next to skill outcomes in your unit plans, on rubrics, and when co-constructing clarity with students.

2. Embed social studies and science into literacy-informed inquiry units. Often, in elementary schools, we have literacy blocks that range from 30 to 100 minutes of instruction. In rigorous PBL, the suggestion is to incorporate the direct teaching of science and social studies within those blocks by doing the following:

Conducting interactive read-alouds that embed content syntactically a few grade levels ahead. The teacher reads the passage, students reread, and brief summaries are discussed in think-pair-shares.

Building academic vocabulary with students and incorporating the use of that vocabulary when previewing texts, reading text, and discussing the text after reading a passage.

Providing students with content-rich books in which to read and write about daily.

3. Use deep learning strategies to think aloud about content. Getting students to talk about content is really important. Using protocols such as fishbowls, discussion mapping, four As, and final word protocols enable students to understand and consolidate information.

Because it is far easier to talk about what we read than the actual process of reading and writing, protocols should be considered a potential precursor to reading and for debriefing our reading. This goes for writing as well.

As students are engaging in these routines, teachers should prompt students to use academic language in their discussions.

4. Infuse writing into routine tasks. "Thinker's block" gets in the way of writing. That is, students struggle with writing when they don't have much to write about. When students encounter rich content-based reading and talking, there's a great opportunity for them to engage in the process of writing.

Moreover, we need to build writing as a habit that's infused into the everyday lives of students. One strategy to consider is quick writes to predict what students will be reading, sharing an opinion on a piece that they are reading, and summarizing and reflecting on a piece of reading.

Making learning content a daily habit of reading, writing, and talking is critical for students to develop all three levels of complexity and is an essential ingredient of rigorous PBL.

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4 Strategies for Building Content Knowledge

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Exposing young students to rich content knowledge helps them become better readers and paves the way for PBL in later years.

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This article focuses on the complexity shift of the three shifts. One thing that stuck out to me was the quote "Teachers need to know whether students can independently read the range and complexity of grade level discipline-specific materials, and if not, what supports and strategies they need."

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How is reading complex text like lifting weights? Just as it's impossible to build muscle without weight or resistance, it's impossible to build robust reading skills without reading challenging text. - Shannon, Fisher & Frey
The New York State Next Generation English Language Arts Learning Standards (2017) outline the importance of teaching a range of texts, including focusing on the complexity of reading the words on the page, as well as the complexity of building language and knowledge.

The importance of increasing the complexity of texts that students read and the need for teachers to better understand what makes the texts challenging arose out of research that showed nearly half of the students graduating high school need some kind of remediation to cope with the reading required in college and during their careers.

As students move through grades, they are faced with texts that are increasingly longer and more complex in terms of the vocabulary used, sentence structure and text organization. In middle and high school, the texts present greater conceptual challenges, and may include more detailed graphic representations, demanding a much greater ability for the reader to synthesize information.

Central to instruction with complex texts is the notion that the teacher is able to match students' texts and tasks to promote student learning. Teachers need to know whether students can independently read the range and complexity of grade level discipline-specific materials, and if not, what supports and strategies they need. To do this, teachers need to have information on:

Their students as readers

The complexity of the texts they are using with the students, i.e. supports and challenges

The nature of the tasks they set (how students are going to interact with the text) and the level of support the teachers will provide

This guide is designed to help teachers to determine the complexity of the texts they use.

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A Beginner's Guide to Text Complexity | Generation Ready

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How is reading complex text like lifting weights? Just as it's impossible to build muscle without weight or resistance, it's impossible to build robust read ...

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This article focuses on the complexity shift of the three ELA shifts. One thing that really stuck out to me was the quote, "Teachers and school leaders needed to believe that students CAN achieve at high levels and provide the discipline to hold students accountable with academic tasks."

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Shifting perspectives about high-interest, low-level texts.

I began my educational journey as a second-grade teacher, but it wasn't until my MSE scholarship program, focusing on teaching children with reading difficulties, that I learned how to teach and apply the science of reading to my instructional practices. At times it felt as if I were teaching literacy against the current because the majority of schools in which I taught at that time focused on the whole language or the classroom workshop model. However, with time, there has been a shift to demand more of our educators and to follow the science about what works best when teaching children to read.

Three years after my MSE program, I used my skills as an early elementary school teacher, reading specialist, and literacy coach into a new role in alternative education with an amazing group of teachers and school leaders.

For context, our students were 17-23 years old and were seeking to obtain their high school equivalency diploma. Almost 60% of our students were reading below a 5th-grade level; 55% were English language learners (majority newcomers to the country); students with disabilities didn't always have their IEPs honored because of teacher capacity; and a large majority of teachers and school leaders in the program were high school certified or content specialists. The need for a deep understanding of foundational skills was evident and also how to support adult learners with building their literacy skills and knowledge. Over time, there were reading specialists hired in our program to work with building students' literacy skills in intensive, small groups. This helped a great deal. This freed space to support teachers in building literacy to increase fluency and comprehension.

When the state shifted to the Common Core Standards, we understood that complex text was being used as a driver for the standards. The instructional shifts for ELA mapped out the "how" to the CCSS' "what"; it was just a matter of getting the right texts into the hands of students. This was a difficult task, however. For one, our students stayed with us in our program for an average of 58 days and often had inconsistent attendance. Reading a novel or a text over an extended period of time would be difficult. Students' reading levels also made this task challenging. Without having the proper certification and professional development, teachers rarely had the knowledge about implementing scaffolds to help students access the text. Lastly, there were mindset shifts that needed to occur. Teachers and school leaders needed to believe that students CAN achieve at high levels and provide the discipline to hold students accountable with academic tasks.

My coaching team and I made a decision to support teachers with layering texts. ELA, social studies, and science teachers needed support as to which text to give to students, so we created booklists and ordered a mass of books at varying levels to provide teachers with texts. High-interest, low-level (or "Hi/Lo") texts are books written at lower grade levels that contain content explicitly for older readers. These texts tend to be culturally relevant, with engaging and relatable topics. Texts ranging from Monster by Walter Dean Myers to All American Boys by Brendan Kiely and Jason Reynolds to The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood were placed in the hands of students across our program. Complexity, in terms of word frequency and sentence length, or essentially what we think of as Lexile levels, can increase with time and instruction. If we begin with texts that are lower in Lexile but of high interest, we will begin to engage reluctant readers and draw on students' funds of knowledge.

It worked! Teachers were not resistant to engaging students with Hi/Lo texts, and students were eager to read. However, this is NOT where your students' text journey should end. Hi/Lo texts are great appetizers to the main course of complex, grade-level texts. If we truly want to prepare students for college and career readiness, we must ensure that we not only provide the materials that can facilitate this type of thinking and learning but also ensure that we are equipping students with the appropriate support to allow access to complex texts.

Supports look like using text sets to build knowledge of a topic. Supports also look like close reads where students are evaluating and investigating the text multiple times for multiple purposes. Supports sound like whisper, choral, and partner reads. Supports sound like the constant buzz of a busy classroom, where student discourse and debates are happening. Supports sound like questions being asked that allow students to dig deeper into content and concepts. Finally supports should feel like safety, where students feel they can take risks and be incorrect without judgment.

My call to action: provide Hi/Lo texts to help build and facilitate knowledge that can help students access complex, grade-level text. Increase their reader confidence, draw on their funds of knowledge, and ensure they see themselves-and others-and can navigate between those worlds effortlessly. Once you have built their confidence, stamina, and reader identity, support students in navigating complex, grade-appropriate texts. If we only provide texts that are below grade level, no matter how engaging and complex the topic, students will never have the opportunity to perform at high levels and therefore will not be fully prepared to enter the workforce, college, or life outside of the four walls of our classrooms.

About the Author: Shanita Rapatalo is currently a national independent education/literacy consultant and co-owner of The Rapatalo Group, LLC. She has worked in the education non-profit sector as well as district and charter schools in New York City and Washington, DC. Her passion is developing strong teacher practitioners, strengthening school leader instructional capacity, and assessing promising practices that best support students in the most equitable way. She has worked with organizations such as the New York City Department of Education, UnboundEd, TNTP, Student Achievement Partners, Rising Academies, and DCPSB, and began teaching 19 years ago as a Teach For America corps member. She has experience teaching students from kindergarten through adult education and held roles such as a Classroom Teacher, Reading Specialist, Literacy Coach, Instructional Borough (Manhattan) Coach, and ELA Content Lead. She received her BS in Biology from Trinity College, and MSE in Curriculum and Instruction as well as a graduate certificate for School District Administration, both from Fordham University. She is currently a doctoral student at Fordham University focusing on Education Administration, Policy, and Supervision. She resides with her husband and two children in New Jersey, on the sacred lands of the Munsee Lenape people.

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Text Complexity is...well...complex! - Peers and Pedagogy

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I began my educational journey as a second-grade teacher, but it wasn't until my MSE scholarship program, focusing on teaching children with reading difficulties, that I learned how to teach and apply the science of reading to my instructional practices. At times it felt as if I were teaching literacy against the current because the [...]

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This article focuses on the evidence shift of the three key shifts in ELA. The article discusses strategies that teachers can use to teach and use evidence in the classroom.

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Six Key Strategies for Using and Explaining Text Evidence * The Great Books Foundation

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Common ELA standards require not just that students cite text evidence but also that they explain how it supports an argument. It can be challenging to establish a meaningful, supportive context for practice with evidence.

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This article focuses on the evidence shift of the three key shifts in ELA. It mainly describes using read alouds to teach using evidence.

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Text Evidence Activities and Strategies - Tips for Teaching Students to Find Text Evidence

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Do your students struggle with finding and citing text evidence? Check out this post for text evidence activities, tips, and strategies (with freebies).