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Cognitive Load Theory and Implications in Writng

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Cognitive Load Theory and Implications in Writng

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Singapore AS MS Content Session - April 2025

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Singapore AS HS Content Sessions - April 2025

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Email: jenny@erinkentconsulting.com

Linked In: Jenny Killion

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Breaks it down for teachers - and could also be a great tool for parents and kids!

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Supporting Adolescent Readers - Fisher & Frey

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Supporting Adolescent Readers - Fisher & Frey

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How should middle and high school teachers and leaders think about reading and literacy instruction for adolescents? Far too often, elementary models of reading are applied to adolescents, without much success. Models based on extensive reviews of research in early childhood may not serve adolescents well. Adolescents have different motivations, different experiences with the world and reading, more background knowledge, and different needs when it comes to supports necessary to continue their development as skilled readers.

Thus, teachers of adolescents need an evidence-based model for continuing students' reading development. Our extensive review of research focused on adolescents, rather than elementary students, suggests that there are several components necessary to support students' reading journey. It's important to remember that many of the components of reading are unconstrained skills, meaning that they continue to develop over our lifetime. Chief among these are background knowledge and vocabulary. In other words, being a strong reader in fourth grade does not necessarily mean that a student will be a strong reader in ninth grade-the expectations continue to rise, and new skills need to develop further.

We combined the components of adolescent reading instruction into a framework that we think of as a battery or power cell (see the figure below). Note that the cell is powered by self-efficacy. There are thousands of studies that clearly demonstrate the power of efficacy and the role it plays in learning. Simply put, if students don't have a goal or don't believe they have the skills to reach the goal, they are not likely to engage or exert effort. When this happens, otherwise excellent instruction has virtually no impact on student learning.

The Need to Experience Success

Experiencing success is one powerful way to build efficacy. When students experience success, they are motivated to try again. But teachers often tell them that they learn from failure. It's true, we can learn from failure, but we don't like it very much. It doesn't feel good, much less foster self-efficacy, to repeatedly fail. Starting with hard, complex inferences during reading shuts down a lot of students who immediately experience failure and give up.

Adolescents need to regularly experience success, and as they do, the tasks and text can become more complex. For example, when introducing a new text, teachers can begin the lesson with literal questions that ensure student success while reading a complex text. But we don't leave students there. As the lesson progresses, teachers can ask increasingly complex questions that allow students to apply their literal knowledge to more inferential thinking.

Note that the battery is filled with background knowledge, which remains a significant indicator of comprehension. Teachers should build and activate relevant background knowledge so the texts students are asked to read are more comprehensible. Teachers can build background knowledge through videos, illustrations, and explanations. In addition, teachers can create text sets, with students initially reading less complex texts as they build background knowledge for increasingly complex texts. Figure 2 below contains sample instructional strategies for each of the components of the adolescent reading model.

Component of Adolescent Reading Sample Strategies

Background knowledge

Videos and illustrations
Explanations of key ideas
Text sets
K-W-L charts (what do I know, what do I want to know, what did I learn?)
Advance organizers such as anticipation guides
Concept maps and graphic organizers

Word recognition

Sight word instruction with arm tapping
Syllable segmenting
Fluency routines (choral reading, shared reading)

Word knowledge

Morphology instruction (prefix, suffix, root, base)
Teaching word solving (context clues)
Word journals
Vocabulary self-assessment
Word walls

Sentence fluency

Juicy sentence protocols
Highlight and parse complex sentences in readings
Sentence combining
Close reading instruction

Verbal reasoning

Comprehension strategy instruction
Complex texts that require inferencing
Metacognition instruction
Debates and Socratic seminars
Classroom discussion

Inside the cell are four aspects that must be addressed as part of the reading instruction students receive in their classes. These apply to all content area classrooms. Stronger readers are not supported by English teachers alone. Instead, every teacher contributes to the reading development of all students. Of course, there are some students who need supplemental and intensive interventions, especially when their foundational skills (phoneme awareness, phonics, or fluency) are still developing. These students require additional time on reading tasks that are more developmental in nature, which can be accomplished through push-in support during class or added time outside of class.

Focusing on Word Recognition

For all students, teachers need to focus on word recognition. This includes decoding multisyllabic words and building students' sight word vocabularies. There are words in every content area that students simply must recognize by sight. We are not talking about high frequency words (e.g., when, said, could, another) but rather words that need to be recognized instantly so that reading is smooth. These may include words like hypothesis (science), federalism (social studies), aesthetic (art), equation (math), endurance (physical education), and metaphor (English). Through the process of orthographic mapping, students see the word and instantly recognize its pronunciation and meaning. This contributes to their fluent reading and understanding of texts.

Word recognition is related to word knowledge. Students need to recognize the words and know what they mean. In middle and high school, this often requires students to understand that many words have multiple meanings. The words set and prime have meanings outside of the mathematics classroom, as well as specific meanings in that content area. Teachers must help students understand those words so they can apply appropriate word meanings as they engage with texts. Building students' depth and breadth of word knowledge is critical as words represent the concepts we understand. Ultimately, words are labels for concepts. Thus, teachers should teach concepts first and then label those concepts. Asking students to memorize suffrage when they have no concept about it is nearly impossible. Instead, teaching the concept through examples and exemplars allows students to apply the label to the concept and remember it.

Words are critical but we read them in connected sentences. Note that sentence analysis is not part of elementary models but is a critical aspect of adolescent literacy. Understanding syntax and grammar are required aspects of reading for understanding. Words do not occur in isolation and sometimes meaning is influenced by the context and word placement in a sentence. Protocols such as introducing students to "juicy sentences" (complex sentences with tons of information) allow teachers to parse the sentence and explore various aspects such as noun phrases, adverbial clauses, academic vocabulary, voice, referents, clauses, and other aspects of written language that contribute to complexity. In addition, close readings of complex texts allow students to apply their word knowledge in longer pieces of text. Close reading involves students annotating the text and re-reading and discussing the text while considering a range of text-dependent questions that generally focus on three levels of thinking:

Literal: What does the text say? (Focused on key details and general understanding.)

Structural: How does the text work? (Focused on words in context, text structure, author's purpose, and author's craft, such as genre, point of view, and literary devices.)

Inferential: What does the text mean? (Making logical inferences and connections between texts.)

And readers must put this all together to make sense of the text.

The final aspect of our reading model is verbal reasoning, which may sound strange given that we're focused on reading and not speaking. But readers use their oral reasoning skills as they engage with texts. Verbal reasoning is the ability to infer to find logical coherence in a text. It involves understanding concepts as they are framed in words, especially in terms of making inferences and understanding figurative language such as metaphors and idioms. For some students, it's a piece of cake. For others, they get by the skin of their teeth. Notice what we just did? We tapped into your verbal reasoning skills to make our point. Verbal reasoning requires instruction in implied messages, referents (often through pronouns referring backwards or forwards to something specific, figurative language, and multiple-meaning words in the English language).

Conclusion

Middle and high school teachers can have a significant impact on students' reading development. Models from elementary school should be updated and adapted for the secondary level to reflect the evidence about adolescent reading. To that end, instructional design in middle and high schools should include each aspect of the reading battery so that educators can empower students to become efficacious individuals who want to learn to read more and better.
Douglas Fisher is a professor and chair of educational leadership at San Diego State University and a teacher leader at Health Sciences High. Previously, he was a teacher and professional development coordinator. Nancy Frey is a professor of educational leadership at San Diego State University and a teacher leader at Health Sciences High. Previously, she was a teacher, academic coach, and central office resource coordinator.
References

Ehri, L.C. (2014). Orthographic mapping in the acquisition of sight word reading, spelling memory, and vocabulary learning. Scientific Studies of Reading, 18(1), 5-21. doi.org/10.1080/10888438.2013.819356

Fillmore, L.W., & Fillmore, C.J. (n.d.). What does text complexity mean for English learners and language minority students? Understanding Language. ul.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/resource/2021-12/06-LWF%20CJF%20Text%20Complexity%20FINAL_0.pdf

Fisher, D., Frey, N., Anderson, H., & Thayre, M. (2015). Text-dependent questions: Pathways to close and critical reading, grades 6-12. Corwin.

Fisher, D., Frey, N., Ortega, S., Barbee, K., & Allen-Rotell, A. (2025). Teaching foundational skills to adolescent readers. Corwin.

Student Achievement Partners. (n.d.). Juicy sentence guidance. achievethecore.org/content/upload/Juicy%20Sentence%20Guidance.pdf

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ISTOCK.COM/SOMMEZ KARAKURT How should middle and high school teachers and leaders think about reading and literacy instruction for adolescents? Far too often, elementary models of reading are applied to adolescents, without much success. Models based on extensive reviews of research in early childhood may not serve adolescents well.

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Singapore AS MS/HS - December 2024 Visit

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Asynchronous Course Padlet: What matters most for MS/HS readers?

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Asynchronous Course Padlet: What matters most for MS/HS readers?

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Singapore AS: What matters most for MS/HS readers?

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Resources to support Part 1 of our asynchronous course

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Asynchronous Course Padlet: What matters most for MS/HS writers?

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Asynchronous Course Padlet: What matters most for MS/HS writers?

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Singapore AS: What matters most for MS/HS writers?

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Resources to support Part 2 of our course

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Know Better, Do Better: Comprehension | The Scholastic Teacher Store

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In this timely book, the Libens explore what kids truly need to comprehend texts. Focusing on vocabulary, knowledge building, and language structures, they offer ideas to put into action now.

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Singapore AS MS Content Session - April 2025 (1)

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Suggested G5-12 Writing Scope & Sequence: Macro Level

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Suggested G5-12 Micro Skill Writing Progression

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Suggested G5-12 Micro Skill Writing Progression

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Suggested G5-12 Writing Scope & Sequence: Micro Level

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Singapore AS HS Content Sessions - April 2025 (1)

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Beyond the Science of Reading | Natalie Wexler

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Beyond the Science of Reading: Connecting Literacy Instruction to the Science of Learning

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Great resources for unit planning - text ideas, EU, EQ, assessments ideas!

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Fishtank Learning helps teachers engage, challenge and inspire their students with free, high-quality K-12 math and ELA curriculum.

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Great resource for research-based reading strategies, especially to support striving readers!

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Episodio de podcast · The Book Review · 11/04/2025 · 32 min

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think SRSD (self-regulated strategy development)

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Understand the key characteristics of SRSD that make it a deeply structured and evidence-based approach to teaching writing. Transform your classroom today.

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Teaching Secondary Students to Write Effectively

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Teaching Secondary Students to Write Effectively

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Interesting report from What Works Clearinghouse that includes some strategies and ideas to support students

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Teaching Secondary Students to Write Effectively

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If you're like many digitally savvy Americans, it has likely been a while since you've spent much time writing by hand.

The laborious process of tracing out our thoughts, letter by letter, on the page is becoming a relic of the past in our screen-dominated world, where text messages and thumb-typed grocery lists have replaced handwritten letters and sticky notes. Electronic keyboards offer obvious efficiency benefits that have undoubtedly boosted our productivity - imagine having to write all your emails longhand.

To keep up, many schools are introducing computers as early as preschool, meaning some kids may learn the basics of typing before writing by hand.

But giving up this slower, more tactile way of expressing ourselves may come at a significant cost, according to a growing body of research that's uncovering the surprising cognitive benefits of taking pen to paper, or even stylus to iPad - for both children and adults.

In kids, studies show that tracing out ABCs, as opposed to typing them, leads to better and longer-lasting recognition and understanding of letters. Writing by hand also improves memory and recall of words, laying down the foundations of literacy and learning. In adults, taking notes by hand during a lecture, instead of typing, can lead to better conceptual understanding of material.

"There's actually some very important things going on during the embodied experience of writing by hand," says Ramesh Balasubramaniam, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Merced. "It has important cognitive benefits."

While those benefits have long been recognized by some (for instance, many authors, including Jennifer Egan and Neil Gaiman, draft their stories by hand to stoke creativity), scientists have only recently started investigating why writing by hand has these effects.

A slew of recent brain imaging research suggests handwriting's power stems from the relative complexity of the process and how it forces different brain systems to work together to reproduce the shapes of letters in our heads onto the page.

Your brain on handwriting

Both handwriting and typing involve moving our hands and fingers to create words on a page. But handwriting, it turns out, requires a lot more fine-tuned coordination between the motor and visual systems. This seems to more deeply engage the brain in ways that support learning.

"Handwriting is probably among the most complex motor skills that the brain is capable of," says Marieke Longcamp, a cognitive neuroscientist at Aix-Marseille Université.

Gripping a pen nimbly enough to write is a complicated task, as it requires your brain to continuously monitor the pressure that each finger exerts on the pen. Then, your motor system has to delicately modify that pressure to re-create each letter of the words in your head on the page.

"Your fingers have to each do something different to produce a recognizable letter," says Sophia Vinci-Booher, an educational neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University. Adding to the complexity, your visual system must continuously process that letter as it's formed. With each stroke, your brain compares the unfolding script with mental models of the letters and words, making adjustments to fingers in real time to create the letters' shapes, says Vinci-Booher.

That's not true for typing.

To type "tap" your fingers don't have to trace out the form of the letters - they just make three relatively simple and uniform movements. In comparison, it takes a lot more brainpower, as well as cross-talk between brain areas, to write than type.

Recent brain imaging studies bolster this idea. A study published in January found that when students write by hand, brain areas involved in motor and visual information processing " sync up" with areas crucial to memory formation, firing at frequencies associated with learning.

"We don't see that [synchronized activity] in typewriting at all," says Audrey van der Meer, a psychologist and study co-author at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. She suggests that writing by hand is a neurobiologically richer process and that this richness may confer some cognitive benefits.

Other experts agree. "There seems to be something fundamental about engaging your body to produce these shapes," says Robert Wiley, a cognitive psychologist at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. "It lets you make associations between your body and what you're seeing and hearing," he says, which might give the mind more footholds for accessing a given concept or idea.

Those extra footholds are especially important for learning in kids, but they may give adults a leg up too. Wiley and others worry that ditching handwriting for typing could have serious consequences for how we all learn and think.

What might be lost as handwriting wanes

The clearest consequence of screens and keyboards replacing pen and paper might be on kids' ability to learn the building blocks of literacy - letters.

"Letter recognition in early childhood is actually one of the best predictors of later reading and math attainment," says Vinci-Booher. Her work suggests the process of learning to write letters by hand is crucial for learning to read them.

"When kids write letters, they're just messy," she says. As kids practice writing "A," each iteration is different, and that variability helps solidify their conceptual understanding of the letter.

Research suggests kids learn to recognize letters better when seeing variable handwritten examples, compared with uniform typed examples.

This helps develop areas of the brain used during reading in older children and adults, Vinci-Booher found.

"This could be one of the ways that early experiences actually translate to long-term life outcomes," she says. "These visually demanding, fine motor actions bake in neural communication patterns that are really important for learning later on."

Ditching handwriting instruction could mean that those skills don't get developed as well, which could impair kids' ability to learn down the road.

"If young children are not receiving any handwriting training, which is very good brain stimulation, then their brains simply won't reach their full potential," says van der Meer. "It's scary to think of the potential consequences."

Many states are trying to avoid these risks by mandating cursive instruction. This year, California started requiring elementary school students to learn cursive, and similar bills are moving through state legislatures in several states, including Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina and Wisconsin. (So far, evidence suggests that it's the writing by hand that matters, not whether it's print or cursive.)

Slowing down and processing information

For adults, one of the main benefits of writing by hand is that it simply forces us to slow down.

During a meeting or lecture, it's possible to type what you're hearing verbatim. But often, "you're not actually processing that information - you're just typing in the blind," says van der Meer. "If you take notes by hand, you can't write everything down," she says.

The relative slowness of the medium forces you to process the information, writing key words or phrases and using drawing or arrows to work through ideas, she says. "You make the information your own," she says, which helps it stick in the brain.

Such connections and integration are still possible when typing, but they need to be made more intentionally. And sometimes, efficiency wins out. "When you're writing a long essay, it's obviously much more practical to use a keyboard," says van der Meer.

Still, given our long history of using our hands to mark meaning in the world, some scientists worry about the more diffuse consequences of offloading our thinking to computers.

"We're foisting a lot of our knowledge, extending our cognition, to other devices, so it's only natural that we've started using these other agents to do our writing for us," says Balasubramaniam.

It's possible that this might free up our minds to do other kinds of hard thinking, he says. Or we might be sacrificing a fundamental process that's crucial for the kinds of immersive cognitive experiences that enable us to learn and think at our full potential.

Balasubramaniam stresses, however, that we don't have to ditch digital tools to harness the power of handwriting. So far, research suggests that scribbling with a stylus on a screen activates the same brain pathways as etching ink on paper. It's the movement that counts, he says, not its final form.
Jonathan Lambert is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance journalist who covers science, health and policy.

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Why writing by hand beats typing for thinking and learning

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Researchers are learning that handwriting engages the brain in ways typing can't match, raising questions about the costs of ditching this age-old practice, especially for kids.

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CER Outline for The Giving Tree WITHOUT Reasoning

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CER Outline for The Giving Tree WITHOUT Reasoning - Option 2

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Ways to Support Students with Complex Texts

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Ways to Support Students with Complex Texts