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Print 1 -2 per grade leve- Puxi Grade Level Reflections

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Print 1 -2 per grade leve- Puxi Grade Level Reflections

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Achievethecore.org :: Academic Word Finder

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November 17- Next EKC Global Chat! Intersection of UDL and the Reading Rope

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November 17- Next EKC Global Chat! Intersection of UDL and the Reading Rope

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Following the tremendous success of our EKC book club last Fall, we heard educators from all corners of the globe asking for more opportunities to get together. Our new EKC Global Chats series is a space for sharing, asking for support, and brainstorming together.

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January 2024- Shifting with the Sciences of Reading Padlets

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January 2024- Shifting with the Sciences of Reading Padlets

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Puxi

Pudong

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Brand new post from Natalie Wexler re: Teaching Comprehension Strategies

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Brand new post from Natalie Wexler re: Teaching Comprehension Strategies

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Do We Need to Teach Comprehension Strategies Explicitly?

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The answer might depend on whether the strategy involves abilities that are “biologically secondary.”

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5 Opportunities to Make Learning to Read and Write Easier for Your Students This Year

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5 Opportunities to Make Learning to Read and Write Easier for Your Students This Year

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*Print 1 per participant- Labsite note catcher

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*Print 1 per participant- Labsite note catcher

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Learning Lab Notecatcher 2024 + Language Comprehension Noticings - Google Docs

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print one for each student in Grade 4 lab (two sided)- Britannica "The Silk Road"

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print one for each student in Grade 4 lab (two sided)- Britannica "The Silk Road"

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Epic collection

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Season 2 of the Knowledge Matters Podcast is here! T eachers and reading experts David and Meredith Liben host "Know Better, Do Better: Comprehension," a six-part podcast series based on their book of the same name .

With their signature charm and straight talk, David and Meredith take on an urgent problem in American schools today-kids not understanding what they read-and how reading comprehension can be taught more effectively.

Over six digestible episodes, David and Meredith explore how comprehension works in the mind of the reader, the roles of building knowledge and vocabulary, the importance of reading language-rich, grade-level texts, and how text-centered classroom instruction is the key to students' confidence and reading comprehension. The series features a range of teachers and expert voices, like Margaret McKeown and Lily Wong-Filmore , as well as practical ideas for classroom implementation.

Subscribe now to get all the episodes as they drop.

SPOTIFY APPLE PODCASTS AMAZON MUSIC

Natalie Wexler, education journalist and author of "The Knowledge Gap," hosts the inaugural series of our new podcast, Reading Comprehension Revisited.

In six short (~30-minute) episodes, Natalie tackles crucial questions such as, why do students from low-income backgrounds typically score lower on reading tests? Why do improvements in the early grades fade out as students advance to higher levels? And most significantly, why haven't substantial investments in education reform delivered expected results?

The answer lies in a longstanding misunderstanding about reading comprehension itself, and how students learn to make meaning from texts. Over six episodes, you'll learn what research tells us about how children really learn to read, and you'll hear from educators from around the country as they share their experiences of embedding knowledge-building into their literacy instruction, and the powerful effects this change has had on their students.

In response to popular demand, podcast host Natalie Wexler developed a study guide for educators who wish to use the podcast as a catalyst for discussions and collaborative learning about the important role that content knowledge plays in literacy.

For additional professional learning, join the conversation in our Facebook group.

OPEN GOOGLE DOC DOWNLOAD PDF DOWNLOAD WORD DOC

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Season 2 of the Knowledge Matters Podcast is here! T eachers and reading experts David and Meredith Liben host "Know Better, Do Better: Comprehension," a six-part podcast series based on their book of the same name .

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Word Mapper (phonemic awareness, phonics support)

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Word Mapper (phonemic awareness, phonics support)

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The word mapper lets you type in a word and see its individual graphemes and phonemes. It’s great for teaching phonics!

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about 6 copies, A4- Grade 5 sentence organizer

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about 6 copies, A4- Grade 5 sentence organizer

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1 copy (one sided, ideally COLOR)- Grade 3 background knowledge

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1 copy (one sided, ideally COLOR)- Grade 3 background knowledge

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Blast from the past: Teacher question: Shanahan response:
I teach 4th-grade general education. I have read several of your articles the last few days because I have a growing frustration regarding guided reading. I believe a lot of your ideas about what does not work are correct, but I don't understand what you believe we SHOULD be doing. I am confused about how to give students difficult textbooks to read without reading it to them. I thought I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. I do not know how to scaffold science or social studies text for students that are 2 years behind without reading it to them. I also feel pressure in these subjects to read it to them because I thought it was more important for them to understand the information thoroughly by reading the text aloud, having thoughtful discussions, and follow up activities. Every time I think I know what I should be doing, I read another article and realize that I am doing that wrong too. So, please give me guidance on how to best to teach nonfiction and fiction text to my class whole group. What strategies and types of activities are the best? Originally posted February 2, 2013; re-issued October 12, 2024. Over the past 15 years, I have issued several blogs concerning the value of teaching students to read more challenging texts than we have used in instruction in the past. Despite a growing body of evidence showing that teaching students at their "instructional reading level" provides no learning benefits - and that sometimes it limits learning - most teachers continue to avoid challenging text by moving kids to easier text, reading texts to the students, or replacing texts with other sources of information (e.g., videos, teacher presentations). Given that I thought it would be a good idea to reissue this one. Oh, and by the way, I just completed writing a book on this topic. It will be published by Harvard Education Press early in 2025.
I feel your pain. What would it look like to scaffold a fourth-grade lesson from a social studies book with children who are reading at second-grade level? There are several possibilities.

First, I would "level" (pun intended) with the kids. I would not try to hide from them that I was going to ask them to read a book that in the past we would have avoided. The point here is motivation. People like a challenge and kids are people. When you ask them to take on something hard, let them in on the secret so they can take on the challenge with the right mindset and so they can be proud of themselves when they manage to meet the challenge - and we will make sure that they meet the challenge.

Second, it is essential that the teacher read the chapter before the kids do. We need to identify the linguistic, conceptual, and textual features that may be the source of their difficulty. Look out for ideas that you think will be especially complicated, subtle, or abstract, assumptions of background knowledge that you think your students lack, unknown vocabulary, complicated sentences, cohesive links that might be hard to track, organizational structure that students might ignore, and so on. Basically, you are trying to figure out what might make this text hard for your students to comprehend.

I'm willing to head off or avoid a problem if I think the students cannot surmount it. For instance, if there is a word that I think the students will not know and the author doesn't define it, the context doesn't reveal its meaning, or it can't be figured out from morphology, then I am willing to familiarize the kids with it prior to reading. However, if it is possible to gain its meaning from the text, I will not try to avoid the problem. I'd rather that they miss it, which will allow me to teach kids how to take it on successfully. Teachers must decide which problems to solve for the kids and which to guide them to fix themselves. The real learning will come from the latter.
References
Third, the scaffolding described above will likely require some rereading-either of the whole chapter (fourth-grade science and social studies chapters can be surprisingly short, so rereading the entire chapter is usually not that big a deal). Thus, they try to read it; I question them and help them work through the problems; and then they reread it (perhaps more than once), to see if they can figure it out the second or third time.

Fourth, if your kids' reading levels are more than a year or two below the level of the book that you are trying to teach, consider starting with fluency work. Have those students read the text aloud, once or twice before the lesson aimed at comprehension of the text. This can be done many ways (e.g., having partners practice reading the social studies text during their ELA fluency time, getting parents involved, including this kind of practice in a Tier 2 intervention). The point of the fluency work is to reduce the amount of basic reading struggle - the reading of the words - that these students may face. Once they have engaged in the fluency practice, these students should read the text along with the rest of the class. They will benefit from the same comprehension scaffolds noted above.

What you are trying to do with this encouragement, fluency work, and comprehension scaffolding is to enable the students to read the text that they are sure to struggle with. You can monitor their learning by how much improvement you see in their reading of each text. But remember your goal is not to avoid difficulty but to enable students to surmount difficulty. That means that you don't shift kids to texts at their supposed levels, you don't read the texts to the kids, and you don't go around the text by telling them what it says.

Shanahan, T. (In press). Leveled Readers, Leveled Lives. Cambridge: Harvard Education Press.

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How Can I Teach with Books that are Two Years Above Student Reading Levels? | Shanahan on Literacy

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This blog explains how teachers can teach students to read with books that are at the students’ supposed “instructional level.”

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Link to original publication

Reference sheet describing terms

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In this companion to their bestselling first book, David and Meredith Liben move beyond foundational skills to explore how the mind comprehends texts. They translate research in clear terms to help teachers understand what students truly need to read deeply for pleasure and with purpose. Focusing on vocabulary, knowledge building, and language structures, they provide cutting-edge instructional ideas and ready-to-use tools to help teachers put their understanding into action immediately.

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Know Better, Do Better: Comprehension: Fueling the Reading Brain With Knowledge, Vocabulary, and Rich Language

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In this companion to their bestselling first book, David and Meredith Liben move beyond foundational skills to explore how the mind comprehends texts. They translate research in clear terms to help teachers understand what students truly need to read deeply for pleasure and with purpose. Focusing...

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Possible multi-session reading flow

Shared reading planning menu

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Language Comprehension Planner Template 

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Language Comprehension Planner Template 

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For read aloud or shared reading, whole class or small group

More detailed version with an example

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Conferring through the Reading Rope (slides)

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Conferring through the Reading Rope (slides)

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"In Shifting the Balance, 3-5 , Cunningham, Burkins, and Yates go beyond the science of reading being only phonics. Taking a deeper dive into vocabulary, comprehension, fluency, and word identification for upper elementary students, this book helps teachers understand what is needed in their instruction through easy-to-read case scenarios. Thanks to these authors for once again bridging hearts and minds."

Donna Hejtmanek Retired Educator and Creator of the Science of Reading-What I Should Have Learned in College Facebook Group

" Shifting the Balance, 3-5 brings the Science of Reading from theory to direct application. This new take on literacy instruction brings forth the hope of long-lasting knowledge and continued growth for students. It is not only a thorough approach but is realistic and best of all, attainable!"

Clorasteen Wilson , Structured Literacy Instructor, Associate/OGA

"Teaching reading can sometimes feel like an impossible task. Our classrooms are filled with diverse groups of learners that present all different levels of instructional need. Shifting the Balance, 3-5 gives teachers tools they need to incorporate reading instruction that is purposeful and student-centered. With data driven techniques and lessons, this book will set up any upper elementary school classroom with success."

Michaela Durr , New York City Teacher

"While many of the big conversations about the Science of Reading (SOR) research have focused on the foundational skills in primary grades, upper elementary teachers no longer need to feel left in the dark. With this gem, Cunningham, Burkins, and Yates skillfully supply six scientifically-sound shifts―answering the big questions & providing high-leverage instructional routines, while weaving in all five pillars of reading. No matter where you are on your SOR journey, this sensational book is a must-read for all!"

Michelle Sullivan of The Colorful Classroom & Elementary Literacy Coach

"Cunningham, Burkins, and Yates clarify misunderstandings, summarize the research in an accessible way, and provide suggestions for what they call high-leverage routines to help teachers enhance their instruction and support students' growth as readers. Thoughtful, well-researched, and teacher-friendly, this book is an invaluable resource for anyone who wants to explore how to implement effective literacy instruction for readers beyond grade two."

Lisa Maucione , Reading Specialist, Dartmouth Public Schools, MA

"As the field of reading instruction continues to reinvent itself, so many of us elementary educators find ourselves in need of a road map. The authors of this second volume of Shifting the Balance step in, validate our good intentions, and offer to guide us as we reflect on, reconsider, refine and reimagine our practice. I look forward to referencing the ideas and resources in this edition (and online) as I continue striving to equip my students for meaningful reading experiences, now and in the future."

Katie McAlister , First Grade Classroom Teacher

"With all the noise in the world about reading instruction, Cunningham, Burkins, and Yates discuss a practical, research-driven, and student-based way to shift our reading instruction into balance and clarity. They've done the hard thinking in order to zoom in on what is necessary to teach intermediate readers to succeed."

Jeff Anderson , Lead author of the Patterns of Power series (PreK-12)

"The science of reading isn't just for the primary grades! In their clear and readable style, Cunningham, Burkins, and Yates examine the research and show teachers of grades 3-5 exactly how to apply it. With zero judgment and endless encouragement, the authors will inspire teachers to rethink current practices and make research-based decisions to help every student."

Anna Geiger , M.Ed., Host of the Triple R Teaching podcast and creator of The Measured Mom website

Dr. Katie Egan Cunningham is committed to supporting teachers in making learning joyful, purposeful, and evidence-based. She is an Associate Professor of Teacher Education at Sacred Heart University where she teaches literacy methods and children's literature courses. Her other work includes Start with Joy: Designing Literacy Learning for Student Happiness and Story: Still the Heart of Literacy Learning .

Dr. Jan Burkins is a full-time writer and literacy consultant dedicated to helping teachers and those who lead them negotiate the competing tensions in our field. Her favorite work is conducting literacy audits with schools and districts. Her other books include Shifting the Balance: 6 Ways to Bring the Science of Reading into the Balanced Literacy Classroom (K-2) , co-authored with Kari Yates, and Who's Doing the Work: How to Say Less So Readers Can Do More , co-authored with Kim Yaris.

Kari Yates is an author, speaker, and consultant with a passion for helping busy literacy educators thrive. Her other works include Shifting the Balance: 6 Ways to Bring the Science of Reading into the Balanced Literacy Classroom (K-2) co-authored with Jan Burkins, To Know and Nurture a Reader Conferring with Confidence and Joy , co-authored with Christina Nosek, and Simple Starts: Making the Move to a Reader-Centered Classroom .

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Shifting the Balance, Grades 3-5: 6 Ways to Bring the Science of Reading into the Upper Elementary Classroom

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Amazon.com: Shifting the Balance, Grades 3-5: 6 Ways to Bring the Science of Reading into the Upper Elementary Classroom: 9781625315977: Cunningham, Katie, Burkins, Jan, Yates, Kari: Books

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The Challenge of a Challenging Text- Fisher, Frey & Shanahan

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The Challenge of a Challenging Text- Fisher, Frey & Shanahan

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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. The common core state standards in language arts treat text difficulty as akin to weight or resistance in an exercise program.

This is in contrast to most past discussion of this topic, which emphasized how overly complex text may impede learning. Such discussion therefore focused on developing various readability schemes and text gradients to help teachers determine which books might be too hard for their students. The new standards instead propose that teachers move students purposefully through increasingly complex text to build skill and stamina.

To help students learn to read complex texts, teachers need to answer the question, What do we mean when we say that a text is difficult? Readability formulas usually answer this question by measuring two factors: challenging vocabulary and long, complex sentences. Here we look at these factors along with several others that also affect readers' ability to comprehend text.

If you ask students what makes reading hard, they blame the words. And they're right to place so much importance on vocabulary: Authors introduce their ideas through words and phrases, and if readers don't know what these mean, there's little chance that they will make sense of the text. Studies show that higher-order thinking in reading depends heavily on knowledge of word meanings.

Often, textbooks and teachers focus their attention on teaching students the vocabulary words that describe central concepts in science, history, mathematics, or literature. Domain-specific terms, such as erosion, Newton's third law of motion, rhombus, and metaphor, are sure to receive instructional emphasis in today's classrooms. However, these words are usually surrounded by other essential but more general academic terms, such as exerts, estimates, determines, distributed, resulting, culminates, and classify. These words, every bit as much as those in the first list, are used in particular ways in the various disciplines and warrant instructional attention. Students' ability to comprehend a piece of text depends on the number of unfamiliar domain-specific words and new general academic terms they encounter.

Words are not the whole picture. Sentence structure matters, too, because it determines how the words operate together. Thus, understanding the sentence "The stork was walking in the beautiful cornfield" requires more than just being able to define individual words. The sentence must also tell the reader how the ideas expressed by these words fit together (Which stork? Where was the stork? What was it doing?). If the text instead said, " Stork beautiful the walking in was the cornfield," all the same ideas would have been presented, yet readers would not understand the meaning.

Other aspects of sentence structure can determine how hard it is for readers to make sense of text. Shorter sentences, for example, tend to be easier to read than longer sentences; presumably, they put less demand on the reader's working memory. Longer sentences are likely to include multiple phrases or clauses, so they tend to include more ideas that have to be related to one another. They also have a greater density (longer noun or verb phrases) and more embedding (more complex relationships).

Authors construct such complicated sentences for a variety of reasons. In some cases, complex sentence structures are necessary to communicate the complexity of the information itself-thus the long noun phrases common in science. In literary passages, long-sentence writers like William Faulkner or Evelyn Waugh may be trying to get readers to slow down and explore the architecture of the thoughts and feelings being expressed. In attempting to convey emotional complexity, we might write a sentence like this:

The yellow snow blower that my father bought for my mother for their 15th wedding anniversary last year is now sitting in the garage, under a pile of old boxes and newspapers, where she left it that night, just before she threw her mobile phone, the one with my picture on it, at dad, and burst into tears.

The many layered phrases in this sentence express the complicated emotions connected with the events better than a series of shorter, clearer sentences would do. However, such sentences can be hard to untangle because of the demands they place on working memory: What happened just before the mother threw her phone? Who burst into tears? The verb phrase is so deeply embedded in this sentence that it can be hard, at first, to identify what is happening. If students are to interpret the meanings such complex sentence structures convey, they need to learn how to make sense of the conventions of text-phrasing, word order, punctuation, and language.

Another challenge concerns how particular words, ideas, and sentences in text connect with one another, a feature referred to as coherence. Authors use pronouns, synonyms, ellipses, and other tools to connect the ideas across text. For example, take this simple passage:

John and Mary went to space camp. They liked it there. Of course, boys often like rockets, but Mary, too, enjoyed it.

The first sentence tells about something two children did. To make sense of the second sentence, the reader has to recognize that the pronoun they refers to the two children who were named in the first sentence and that there refers to space camp. Similarly, to interpret the third sentence, the reader has to link boys to John and recognize that it means the same thing as there did in the second sentence.

Younger students often have difficulty making such connections, especially if the ideas are far apart or the referents don't get restated frequently. Distant or complex cohesive links can also be challenging for second-language learners or for older students reading about an unfamiliar topic.

Ideas can be arranged across text in many ways, some more straightforward than others. For example, some kinds of text-such as a science experiment or a recipe-order events in a time sequence. This would also be true of some fiction or historical stories, but not all of them. You will most likely never see a writer play around with a time sequence in presenting a science experiment, but flashbacks in literature and nonsequential presentations of events in historical writing are common and important.

Other organizational structures include compare-contrast and problem-solution. For example, in science texts, detailed comparisons between species like alligators and crocodiles or between concepts like meiosis and mitosis are common. Similarly, problem-solution structures are evident in both science and social studies; for example, an essay might explain multiple causes of water pollution and then explore multiple solutions for each of these causes. Some organizational structures are used to organize particular text features; for example, a social studies textbook may include particular categories of detailed information (history, geography, economics, and culture) in each chapter.

Students who are aware of the patterns authors use to communicate complex information have an advantage in making sense of text. For example, it's easier to follow Moby Dick if you know that it is a narrative of a voyage punctuated by a series of digressions-that one chapter might move the story forward, followed by another that describes the anatomy of whales, the history of whaling, or a sermon that one might hear in a whaling-town church in the 19th century.

Vocabulary, sentence structure, coherence, and organization can all be determined by closely analyzing the text itself. A final determinant of text difficulty, however, depends on the reader's prior knowledge.

For example, Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea is often recommended for use with adolescents. Hemingway's language is spare and plain; he uses common words, and his sentences are often short, without embedding or complexity. A text gradient analysis would place this text at a 6th grade reading level.

Yet many students at this age would have difficulty understanding this beautiful book. The reason is obviously not in the book itself but in the interaction between the reader and the book. Few preteens have had the emotional experiences that would prepare them to understand the old man's determination to maintain hope and dignity in the face of overwhelming odds. Students' background knowledge, including developmental, experiential, and cognitive factors, influences their ability to understand the explicit and inferential qualities of a text.

Knowledge of text complexity can help teachers design three important components of literacy instruction: building skills, establishing purpose, and fostering motivation.

Let's face it: Some students can't make sense of a complex text because they can't decode it. Any older student who still struggles with decoding needs intervention to address this difficulty.

But even students who have basic decoding skills sometimes struggle to deploy these skills easily and accurately enough to get a purchase on challenging text. To help these students develop reading fluency, teachers should give them lots of practice with reading the same text, as well as instruction to help them develop a stronger sense of where to pause in sentences, how to group words, and how their voices should rise or fall at various junctures when reading aloud.

Fluency instruction becomes more powerful when it's taught not as an end in itself, but rather in the context of students' attempts to make sense of a particular text. True fluency is not merely lining up one sentence after another and reading them aloud quickly; it's also maintaining understanding across a text. Therefore, fluency instruction should emphasize sentence structure and meaning. Teachers should have students pause to discuss the meaning of the text. They should pair repeated readings of the same text with questions that require the student to read closely for detail and key ideas.

Ongoing, solid vocabulary instruction is another essential component to help students develop skill in reading complex text. This instruction should focus not just on domain-specific words and phrases that describe the central concepts in the subject area, but also on general academic words. Effective vocabulary instruction usually provides a rich exploration of word meanings, in which students do more than just copy dictionary definitions-they consider synonyms, antonyms, categories, and specific examples for the words under study.

Students also explore the connections among words, considering other words in the same category, comparing and contrasting words with similar meanings, evaluating or constructing analogies, and building word webs. They also have opportunities to use the words in reading, writing, speaking, listening, drawing, and even physically acting them out. As students analyze the use of the vocabulary terms in text, teachers can guide them to think about the meanings that the authors intended to convey (for example, the differences in implication between nosey and curious, or cheap and frugal).

Recently, we were asked to explain why a passage about deserts was challenging for readers. As we started to read the text, we noticed its beautiful language, vivid imagery, and well-wrought descriptions. Despite its beauty, however, we found it hard to make sense of this passage. The problem was that we couldn't tell whether it was meant to be a literary text or a scientific one. Without knowing what kind of text we were reading or what we were expected to do with the information, we had no idea what to attend to.

Students often find themselves in this kind of bind. Younger children frequently encounter hybrid texts that combine a narrative story with expository information. For example, in the Magic School Bus books, the characters take field trips to learn about electricity, weather, dinosaurs, and other topics. When reading these books, children need to determine whether to focus on the story of the field trip or the information about the concepts. Until they figure it out, they may feel confused.

Older students are confronted with texts from science, history, mathematics, and literature; and they have to grasp the purposes for reading each of these texts so that they can focus their attention appropriately. For example, science texts focus heavily on causation. These texts convey information about what causes what, but they are not typically concerned with the intention behind these events. Students reading a science text may learn that apples grow on trees and that birds eat them, which plays an important role in spreading the seeds around, which creates even more apple trees; however, readers will not be expected to question whether apples grow on trees intentionally so that birds may eat them. In contrast, in reading history and literature, readers need to be concerned with not just the causes of events, but also the human intentions behind these causes.

In clearly communicating the purpose of reading to students, teachers should not convey so much information that it spoils the reading or enables students to participate in class without completing the reading; rather, they should let students know what learning to expect from the reading. For the text about deserts, for example, establishing the purpose, "Determine the difference between desert and tundra biomes" would direct the reading differently from establishing the purpose, "Examine the author's use of imagery and consider how you could apply it in your own writing." Although both of these purposes are worthwhile, reading for one purpose while performing a task for another would likely result in confusion and even failure. When students struggle to understand the task, they pay less attention to the text itself.

Over time, as students read with purpose, they develop background knowledge and a deeper understanding of the organizational structures authors use to convey information. This understanding gives students access to increasingly complex texts.

Learning to read challenging text is similar to undergoing physical therapy. Initially, such therapy is often painful and exhausting, and it's tempting to cheat on the exercises a bit. Physical therapists have to focus not only on the muscle groups that need to be strengthened or stretched, but also on the patient's motivation. They need to keep the patient's head in the game, because working past the pain is beneficial.

Similarly, it can be tough for students to hang in there and stick with a text that they have to labor through, looking up words, puzzling over sentences, straining to make connections. Teachers may be tempted to try to make it easier for students by avoiding difficult texts. The problem is, easier work is less likely to make readers stronger. Teachers need to motivate students to keep trying, especially when the level of work is increasing. The payoff comes from staying on track.

A good physical therapist knows what good teachers know: You need to create successive successes. Students experience success in the company of their teacher, who combines complex texts with effective instruction. They apply their growing competence outside the company of their teacher by reading texts that match their independent reading ability. Over time, they engage in close reading of texts of their own choosing, as well as assigned texts that build their subject-area knowledge. All the while, they set goals with their teachers so that they can gauge their own progress. Forward motion toward a goal matters.

Gone are the days when text was judged as difficult solely on the basis of sentence length and syllable count. We now know that many factors affect text complexity. With this increased understanding, teachers do not have to rely on intuition to figure out which books their students can handle. Instead, teachers can select texts worthy of instruction and align their instructional efforts to ensure that all their students read complex, interesting, and important texts.

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When teachers understand what makes texts complex, they can better support their students in reading them.

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Rethinking How to Promote Reading Comprehension- Hugh Catts

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Rethinking How to Promote Reading Comprehension- Hugh Catts

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It is February 2015, and I am at a national conference listening to a panel present the results of their research on improving reading comprehension. Several members of the panel, like myself and a few others in the room, are funded by the Institute of Education Sciences as part of the Reading for Understanding Initiative. This $120 million program supported six interconnected research teams in their efforts to improve reading achievement in the United States. ¹ Educators and policymakers had for some time been concerned about the performance of American children on tests of reading achievement. Over the last 20 years, only about a third of students have scored at the proficient level on the reading subtest of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). ² This assessment is administered biennially to a representative sample of fourth- and eighth-grade students (and every four years to 12th-graders) from across the nation. Somewhat better, though still troubling, levels of performance have also been reported on state-based reading tests, administered annually starting in third grade. The Reading for Understanding Initiative was intended to jump-start instruction in reading comprehension and significantly improve reading achievement on state and national assessments. In fact, it was described by program officials as the "moonshot" for reading comprehension.

Unfortunately, the preliminary results that the panel presented fell short of these expectations. The reported studies found that students receiving a variety of comprehension interventions made gains, compared with control groups, on assessments closely tied to the interventions-but they showed limited or no significant gains on standardized measures of reading comprehension. Needless to say, conference attendees were surprised and discouraged by these results.

Sitting in the back of the room, I clearly remember not being particularly alarmed by what the panel reported. As part of my work on the Reading for Understanding Initiative and earlier related projects, I had spent many hours thinking, studying, and talking with teachers and colleagues about reading comprehension. Through these efforts, I had come to recognize that the field's general approach to reading comprehension was shortsighted. We were treating reading comprehension as if it were a single construct that could be measured with one or more general reading tests and improved with a short-term intervention. At a deeper conceptual level, most researchers (including those funded by the Reading for Understanding Initiative) recognized that reading comprehension was multidimensional, but it had been common practice in education and research for some time to study, assess, and provide instruction as if comprehension were a skill, rather like swimming. If we teach someone to swim, they can soon transfer that skill to any body of water, whether it be a pool, lake, or ocean. But reading comprehension is not a skill someone learns and can then apply in different reading contexts. It is one of the most complex activities that we engage in on a regular basis, and our ability to comprehend is dependent upon a wide range of knowledge and skills.

The Comprehension as Skill Myth

How have we come to think of comprehension as a skill? I believe a major reason this has occurred is because we have talked and written about comprehension in the context of related skill-like abilities. Discussions about reading often include the topics of phonics, fluency, and related skills, such as phonemic awareness, together with comprehension. As an example, take the work of the National Reading Panel. ³ This panel of reading experts was convened by Congress to assess the effectiveness of different approaches to teaching reading. They examined a wide range of instructional approaches related to comprehension, but in overviews of their work, comprehension has been reduced to one of the "Big Five," along with phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, and vocabulary. As such, it is depicted alongside these skills as one of the "pillars" of reading. In another common graphic, the word comprehension is displayed within a box similar in design (actually smaller) to boxes for other skill-like components of reading. Whereas such a consideration and depiction are thought to form a useful heuristic, it can give the false impression that comprehension is comparable to these skills in terms of its complexity and the way it is best taught and measured.

Furthermore, widely used approaches to teaching reading comprehension reinforce this view. ⁴ Comprehension has typically been taught through the use of strategies such as "find the main idea," "make a prediction," or "monitor your comprehension." These strategies are taught and practiced in order to gain automaticity, much like what is done with other skill-like behaviors. This, in turn, can lead us to believe that comprehension can be thought of in a similar manner to these other skills.

A More Accurate and Complex Model

Despite this common view about comprehension, several lines of enquiry have recognized the true complexity of reading comprehension for some time. Nearly 20 years ago, this complexity was captured by the RAND Reading Study Group. ⁵ This federally funded group was charged with developing a research agenda to address pressing issues in literacy. As part of their 2002 report, they conceptualized reading comprehension as a combination of factors within three different categories: the reader, the text, and the activity of reading.

The reader brings a set of cognitive abilities (such as attention, memory, and reasoning), language knowledge and skills, motivations and interests, and background knowledge to the task of reading. Readers vary considerably in these factors, and this variability impacts their comprehension. Considerable research attention has been focused on reader variables, and their impact on comprehension is well documented.

The text includes such elements as genre, topic, and complexity. Students encounter texts with different genres-such as narrative, descriptive, expository, or persuasive-and these texts vary in their subject matter and level of complexity. Although not emphasized in the RAND report from 2002, texts also now vary in their form. They may be in a paper or digital form, and the latter can be displayed on a variety of devices, such as a phone, tablet, or computer. Each of these forms imposes its own set of constraints and challenges on comprehension. The notion of multiple texts can also be added to this category to account for the fact that skilled readers often rely on more than one text for comprehension.

The activity refers to the task or purpose of reading. It is often argued that the purpose of reading is comprehension. But we actually seek to comprehend for a specific reason, be it to prepare for a test, evaluate the strengths of an argument, learn the rules of a game, or enjoy a magazine article or book. Each purpose brings unique knowledge and skills that must be acquired to be successful.

Importantly, the RAND Reading Study Group viewed these various elements interacting within a sociocultural context that involves factors such as where the reading occurs (e.g., school or home), how much support there is (e.g., individual, teacher- or caregiver-led, or group activity), and what cultural value is placed on reading by students' families, peers, racial and ethnic groups, and other groups that are central to the students' identities.

Taken together, it is easy to see how any one individual may have multiple levels of comprehension ability depending upon what they are reading and why they are reading it. As a result, comprehension cannot be reduced to a single notion because it is not a single ability.

The Role of Knowledge

Chief among the factors influencing reading comprehension is background knowledge. Research clearly shows that how much readers understand about the text's topic before they read it is a major factor in how much they understand while and after they read it. ⁶ Unfortunately, much of the efforts directed toward improving reading comprehension have neglected building background knowledge. (As discussed later, there are widely used strategies for "activating" background knowledge, but they do not necessarily develop new knowledge.) It was this neglect that first alerted me to the problems with the way we were thinking about reading comprehension.

In my graduate training, many years ago, I was introduced to the role of knowledge in reading comprehension. At that time, schema theory was a popular topic in research on human cognition and learning. A schema is an organized unit of knowledge that forms the foundation for many activities involving human thought. Richard Anderson, a professor of educational psychology, brought the notion of a schema to education and argued for its critical role in reading comprehension as well as learning in general. ⁷ He was among the first to convey to me the importance of teaching knowledge to improve comprehension.

In my psychology classes, I was introduced to a study that continues to be one of my favorites. The following passage, which was designed to be ambiguous, was read aloud to college students, and they were asked to recall as much as they could.

The procedure is actually quite simple. First you arrange things into different groups. Of course, one pile may be sufficient depending on how much there is to do. If you have to go somewhere else due to lack of facilities that is the next step, otherwise you are pretty well set. It is important not to overdo things. That is, it is better to do too few things at once than too many. In the short run this may not seem important but complications can easily arise. A mistake can be expensive as well. At first the whole procedure will seem complicated. Soon, however, it will become just another facet of life. It is difficult to foresee any end to the necessity for this task in the immediate future, but then one never can tell. After the procedure is completed one arranges the materials into different groups again. Then they can be put into their appropriate places. Eventually they will be used once more and the whole cycle will then have to be repeated. However, that is part of life. ⁸

Students given the topic of the passage beforehand quickly made sense of what they heard and recalled many details. (Those students were told, "The paragraph you will hear will be about washing clothes.") But those who heard the same passage without the topic were confused and recalled little. Of particular interest, a third group of students was given the topic after they heard the passage, but they too were confused and recalled little. Of course, it was not simply the topic but rather the knowledge associated with it that allowed the students to make sense of what they had heard-but only if this knowledge was available from the start.

It was studies like this, including similar ones involving reading rather than listening, that early on clearly demonstrated for me the importance of knowledge for comprehension. But somewhere along the line, educators and researchers-myself included-got distracted and failed to pay attention to its importance. It is not exactly clear how this happened. Perhaps it was a shift in focus to bottom-up models of reading that argued that meaning was contained within the text and that the reader's job was to extract it. Or maybe it was just that knowledge took too much time to teach, and it made more sense to focus on skills that could be taught quickly and applied across topics. Also, considering comprehension alongside skill-like aspects of reading probably distracted us from the role of knowledge.

But whatever the reason, knowledge has come back to the forefront in discussions of reading comprehension. Proponents such as E. D. Hirsch Jr., Daniel T. Willingham, and Natalie Wexler have written extensively about the role of knowledge in comprehension.* Their work and that of others ⁹ has begun to have an influence on research in reading comprehension, but change has been slow. Some of the projects in the Reading for Understanding Initiative did have knowledge as a central component, but the other projects paid only limited attention to knowledge in instruction and/or assessment. Limited attention also plagued other large-scale projects, such as those within the Striving Readers program. This program funded by the US Department of Education involved a set of 17 studies designed to improve reading comprehension in middle and high school students. ¹⁰ While materials did address different topics, there was no direct effort to build knowledge as part of the intervention or assessment. Again, it is not surprising that these studies only demonstrated small effects at best on improving reading comprehension.

What Knowledge Does for Comprehension

Why is knowledge so critical for comprehension? To begin with, it provides a framework for organizing incoming information and guides us as we read through a text. We better understand what the topic is and have expectations about where a passage may be going. By doing so, knowledge keeps us on track and prevents us from going down "blind alleys" in our understanding. This framework also gives us a place to anchor new information in memory and associate it with past knowledge. We use these building blocks of the new and the old to construct an initial understanding of what we are reading and then continuously revise and add to it as we move through a text. It is this integration of the new information in the text with what we already know that brings meaning to what we read.

Background knowledge also allows us to make inferences and fill in information that is not explicitly provided. Authors rarely tell us all we need to know in order to understand a text, so we need to fill in some of the details with our background knowledge. Knowledge also enables us to more easily recognize which of the multiple meanings of a word is appropriate for the context. For example, when reading a passage about baseball, knowing that the word pitcher refers to a person rather than an object could be critical for comprehension.

Knowledge is also essential for thinking. But in certain contexts these days, it is seen as secondary to thinking. Critical thinking has become the rage in education. All too often, teachers are urged to engage students in thinking deeply and critically about what they read as if these skills were independent of the topic; meanwhile, background knowledge is downplayed as if the specific information about a topic could be looked up on the internet when necessary. ¹¹ But it is the specific information that gives students something to think critically about-and our minds are surprisingly limited in how much new information they can take in at one time. Knowledge must accumulate over time to ensure a level of depth that allows for a critical analysis of the subject matter. We can't think logically about different approaches to government without knowing a lot about different forms of government. So, in this sense, knowledge is the most critical component of critical thinking.

Knowledge also allows us to make the most use of our working memory, where much of thinking takes place. There are limitations on how much information we can hold and think about simultaneously in working memory, and this amount is heavily influenced by knowledge. Knowledge coming from long-term memory places a much smaller burden on working memory than new knowledge coming from a text (or a speaker); it also leaves us with more capacity in working memory to think about things in novel ways. As a simple example, it is easier to remember the letter sequences USA, FBI, and NBC than PDQ, RJB, and FVO. When reading, the more information related to the topic we already have stored in long-term memory, the more deeply we can think about that topic-even as we read a passage that offers new information.

Finally, the relationship between knowledge and reading comprehension is reciprocal in nature. Not only does knowledge improve comprehension, but comprehension allows the reader to build new knowledge. Creating a coherent understanding of what one reads modifies the background knowledge that is available for subsequent reading comprehension either later in the same text or in future reading of related texts. ¹²

Implications for Instruction

It should be evident from my comments that improving reading comprehension is a complex process that requires multiple levels of instruction and practice. Clearly, building background knowledge that is both deep and broad is needed to lay the foundation for comprehension and for further knowledge acquisition. However, students also need high-quality reading instruction involving decoding, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension strategies in order to best use their knowledge in different reading contexts and for different purposes.

For many years, the primary way knowledge has been addressed in the context of reading has been through activating background knowledge using strategies like prereading discussions, concept maps, and anticipation guides. These strategies can be effective-but they only work when the appropriate knowledge is available. Often, children will not have the requisite knowledge, or their knowledge will be impoverished or inaccurate. If inaccurate, this activation can actually be detrimental to comprehension.

Whereas knowledge activation has been widely viewed as a component of reading instruction, building knowledge often has not. In fact, instruction devoted to content knowledge has actually been replaced by other aspects of reading instruction. In most elementary schools, social studies and science instruction has been supplanted by English language arts (ELA) instruction. Surveys have shown that, on average, children in grades 1-4 receive only 2.3 hours of science instruction per week, whereas four times that amount is spent on ELA instruction teaching word-reading skills, comprehension strategies, and vocabulary. ¹³ The thinking has been that if we want children to improve their reading comprehension, we have to work on reading skills to achieve fluency before we can use reading to build knowledge. However, this false dichotomy between learning to read and reading to learn has not led to better reading achievement.

Recently, educators have begun to rethink reading instruction and consider how to better integrate knowledge acquisition with literacy in ELA instruction. ¹⁴ In these more integrated approaches, students build knowledge at the same time they are learning reading-related skills. This involves a concentrated effort to build rich and connected ideas about social studies, science, and other subjects during ELA lessons. Such instruction does not necessarily replace the science and social studies instruction that may be taking place at other times but rather supplements it. As with other content instruction, reading materials in an integrated ELA program are selected to build knowledge. Instead of reading, for example, about volcanoes one day and Rosa Parks the next, which has often been the case in ELA instruction, reading materials are arranged by topic in a logical and sequential manner and form an integrated, content-rich curriculum. In this way, knowledge is acquired and accumulated over time.

Such content-rich, connected instruction can be especially engaging and can draw children's interests to literacy and learning. Student engagement and learning can be further fostered by culturally responsive instruction. One example is a program called Readiness through Integrative Science and Engineering. ¹⁵ This program takes a home-to-school approach to connect new knowledge with culturally relevant knowledge concerning the people, places, and objects that students interact with on a daily basis. By understanding, appreciating, and connecting with this knowledge, learning can be especially enhanced for all children.

In an integrated literacy and knowledge-building curriculum, there should be a strong focus on teaching fundamental reading skills. Depending on the grade and specific skills taught, instruction in decoding, spelling, and fluency could comprise its own unit or be blended with discussion and activities designed to acquire and build content-area knowledge. Vocabulary, an important focus of ELA instruction, can be taught especially well within a content-rich, integrated curriculum. Novel words related to the content are excellent targets for instruction. These words are often repeated multiple times in a text, and their meanings are well supported by the context in which they occur. In addition, once learned, they become part of the knowledge base of the topic. General-purpose academic words, or what are sometimes referred to as Tier 2 words, also are learned more easily in a rich context. When these words are supported by content knowledge, the reader can use this knowledge to more easily infer their meaning. Also, a rich context can prove particularly helpful in learning words with multiple meanings, such as "bright" or "palm." ¹⁶

Content-rich materials are also excellent contexts in which to learn more about academic language. Written language is characterized by more complex grammar than spoken language, and students can benefit from explicit instruction in how this grammar works. Specifically, science texts tend to privilege nouns for compacting information, developing logical reasoning, and achieving precision. ¹⁷ For example, consider this text: "Asthma is a disorder in which the respiratory passages narrow significantly as a result of an allergen. This narrowing...." Here the author creates an abstract noun (i.e., "this narrowing") to represent the entire previous clause. Recognizing the referent of this abstract noun is critical to comprehension and, in cases like this, could benefit from explicit instruction. In other academic texts, students will be confronted with complex and elaborated noun phrases, rather than reduced ones, as well as challenging noun, adverbial, and adjectival clauses. For example, social studies texts use "noun clauses (e.g., 'Jefferson's next argument was that King George III had violated the colonists' rights by passing unfair laws and interfering with colonial governments'), adverbial clauses (e.g., 'Even before Washington reached Boston, the Patriots took action'), and adjectival clauses (e.g., 'He was influenced by the Enlightenment idea of the social contract, which states that governments and rulers must protect the rights of citizens') to pack a large amount of information." ¹⁸ Given this complexity, explicit instruction in how to unpack academic grammar could prove helpful to students in understanding informational texts.

Integrated approaches also can incorporate many of the same comprehension strategies employed in traditional ELA instruction. Some of these strategies, like inferencing and paraphrasing, are rather general and can be explicitly taught and used across various contexts. However, within an integrated approach, some strategies are best selected and taught based on their relevance to what is being read and for what purpose. The nature of texts and purposes for reading vary across subject matters, and thus, the strategies that may be most advantageous will vary as well.

Some of these strategies will be the common ones (e.g., mental imagery) identified by the National Reading Panel. Others will be more text- and task-specific metacognitive approaches to assist comprehension. For example, during a social studies lesson, students may be presented with an explanation or argument and asked to evaluate its validity. In such a case, students would benefit from explicit instruction and practice on how to identify a claim and judge the relevance, sufficiency, and accuracy of the evidence provided. Alternatively, science texts often provide a description of some object, animal, or process, and students are often tested on what they have learned from their reading. For such a task, students may benefit from being taught how to use a graphic organizer to summarize and categorize the information within different organizational structures. Students will also benefit from recognizing that a science text (from a trustworthy source) is an authoritative account and is different from texts in which the author's perspective is central, such as a poem or a historical figure's diary entry. This more nuanced approach to strategies becomes ever more important as students move through the grades and the comprehension skills needed are increasingly determined by the characteristics of the text and the activities carried out within the different disciplines. Nevertheless, knowledge of how disciplinary texts work, or what is called disciplinary literacy, can and should be part of instruction in the elementary grades. ¹⁹

There are now quite a few integrated, content-rich curricula being used across the country. Some of these programs are commercially available through curriculum publishers, such as Core Knowledge Language Arts and Wit & Wisdom, whereas others have been developed by researchers, such as Model of Reading Engagement. ²⁰ Some of these programs have been developed specifically to be used as part of ELA instruction. Others are truly integrated across the curriculum and operate instead of or in addition to ELA materials. There is also quite a bit of variability in the scope of literacy instruction within these programs. Nevertheless, a recent meta-analysis showed that when compared with traditional programs in which literacy and content instruction were provided separately, integrated, content-rich programs resulted in students scoring significantly better on vocabulary and comprehension (including on standardized measures of comprehension). Not surprisingly, significant gains were also made in the content taught. ²¹

Implications for Assessment

The multidimensional nature of reading comprehension presents a significant challenge for assessment. Because of the numerous factors in play, a reader's comprehension ability is more fluid than often thought. In other words, any one individual will have different levels of ability depending on what is read and for what purpose.

Perhaps the best demonstration of this variability and its impact on assessment comes from a study that included scores from 995 children who were administered four different standardized measures of reading comprehension. ²² The researchers found that the median correlation between the different tests was only .54, which was surprisingly low given that the tests purported to measure the same thing. In another analysis of the data, they identified children scoring in the lowest 10th percentile on each of the measures and compared the overlap of these groups across measures. Their results showed that, on average, only 43 percent of the children identified by one test as poor readers were also identified as poor readers on another test. In other words, the odds of any two tests diagnosing the same student as having a comprehension deficit were less than half. Further analyses showed that it was not just a problem of consistency at the lower end of the scale; there was just as much inconsistency in identifying children performing in the highest 10th percentile.

The inconsistency in the results of the different measures of reading comprehension was likely due in part to the poor reliability of these measures, something that is not uncommon for diagnostic measures of reading comprehension. On the other hand, the measures also differed in their formats, so that could have contributed to the variability. One measure employed a cloze task in which children read passages and filled in missing words. In the others, children read either passages or single sentences and then answered open-ended or multiple-choice questions. These formats are known to place different demands on reading-related processes, such as word reading, language ability, and working memory. ²³ Thus, children with different strengths and weaknesses in these processes would be expected to perform differently on the measures.

The content of the passages/sentences may also have added to the variability of the measures. That is, children were likely to have varied in their knowledge about the topics covered, and that could have influenced their performance. Such variability may be present not only across tests but also across passages within a test. For example, in the Reading for Understanding project that my colleagues and I carried out, students read four different passages from an informal reading inventory and answered open-ended questions. We observed considerable variability within students from one passage to another. It was not uncommon for a student to get nearly all the questions correct on one passage and most wrong on another. Whereas there may be several reasons for this variability, differences in background knowledge is a likely contributor.

Because of the variability due to passages, state- and national-level tests of reading use numerous passages that cover multiple topics. But, of course, this introduces the problem of these tests favoring students who have more knowledge about a broad range of topics than those with less knowledge. This has led E. D. Hirsch Jr. to argue that reading tests are actually knowledge tests in disguise. ²⁴

The fact that state and national reading tests are knowledge heavy introduces a further problem: performance on these tests will likely be more difficult to change in the short term, since knowledge acquisition is incremental in nature. Indeed, as I stated at the outset, American children's performance on NAEP has remained virtually unchanged for some time. This has been in spite of significant federal, state, and local efforts. For example, in North Carolina, the percentage of students failing to reach proficiency on state reading tests has remained largely unchanged, hovering above 50 percent, since 2013-14, when the state passed its K-3 Read to Achieve literacy act. ²⁵

Maybe the problem is not only the instructional practices teachers have been encouraged to use but also the way we are assessing comprehension. An alternative approach would be to teach children using an integrated literacy and content-rich curriculum and to test their ability to read and comprehend passages covered in that curriculum. In other words, offer a better match between instruction and assessment. Don't just test the skills and strategies that have been taught; test the specific content-area topics that have been taught. Such an approach would be fairer and more equitable for all involved. Teachers would have a clear idea of what content within which to imbed their literacy instruction. Students would have the opportunity to learn from content-rich curricula and be assessed based on what they learned in school (instead of what they may or may not have learned at home, over the summer, etc.). Also, because instruction would be better matched with assessment, there would be a greater opportunity for schools and districts to evaluate the progress they are making.

One approach that has attempted to better match instruction with assessment is being carried out within the guidelines of the Every Student Succeeds Act assessment pilot program. ²⁶ This program encourages local involvement in the development of the next generation of assessments. It allows states, with approval by the US Department of Education, to pilot new and innovative assessments in lieu of current state exams. Initially, this takes place in a small number of districts before moving on to statewide implementation. As of October 2021, five states have received approval to develop these assessments. Most notable, Louisiana has begun a multiyear process to offer a humanities assessment as an alternative to its English language arts and social studies assessments. ²⁷ The new humanities assessment draws from texts and topics that are included in the state's recommended curriculum. ²⁸ Thus, the content of the test is likely to be well matched with the instruction students receive.

A very limited pilot of this new assessment, LEAP 2025 Humanities, began in the 2018-19 school year, and then implementation was interrupted by the pandemic, ²⁹ so it will likely be several more years before researchers can evaluate the impact of this new approach. Of course, designing an assessment that is in keeping with current research on literacy development is just the first step. The extent to which the assessment will help enhance instructional practices depends on many related components, including meaningful professional development on how to use the results to inform teaching; time (appropriately allocated and compensated) for teachers to learn collaboratively as they adjust to the new assessment; genuine opportunities for all teachers to have a voice in providing feedback on the curriculum and assessment; and lower stakes tied to the assessment results such that teachers are not afraid to be innovative. In fact, one of the findings of the Reading for Understanding Initiative was that "a major roadblock to teacher uptake of new practices is the accountability infrastructure of reform movements. The more test scores matter, the less the likelihood that teachers will adopt novel teaching practices." ³⁰

Still, I am especially encouraged by Louisiana's efforts and am hopeful that other states and districts will also consider how to better align what is tested with what is taught. It is these types of programs, combined with integrated literacy and content-rich curricula, that I believe can better address comprehension. These programs move beyond characterizing comprehension as simply one of the "Big Five" and recognize its complexity and what it will take to help all children understand and learn from what they read. I look forward to attending future conferences where the results of these programs are presented.
Hugh W. Catts is a professor in the Florida State University School of Communication Science and Disorders and is affiliated with the Florida Center for Reading Research. The author of dozens of peer-reviewed articles and editor of several books, Catts has been engaged in research on language and literacy development for over four decades. Much of his work focuses on early identification and prevention of language-based reading disabilities and on reading comprehension assessment and intervention.
*For articles by Hirsch, Willingham, and Wexler on the importance of building knowledge, see the "Reading" section of American Educator's subject index. ( return to article)

Endnotes

1. P. Pearson et al., eds., Reaping the Rewards of the Reading for Understanding Initiative (Washington, DC: National Academy of Education, 2020), naeducation.org/reaping-the-rewards-of-reading-for-understanding-initiative.
2. National Assessment of Educational Progress, "National Achievement-Level Results," Grade 4, Nation's Report Card, 2019, nationsreportcard.gov/reading/nation/achievement/?grade=4.
3. National Reading Panel, Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction (Bethesda, MD: National Institute of Child and Human Development, 2000).
4. D. T. Willingham and G. Lovette, "Can Reading Comprehension Be Taught," Teachers College Record (September 2014).
5. C. Snow, Reading for Understanding: Toward an R&D Program in Reading Comprehension (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2002).
6. G. N. Cervetti and T. S. Wright, "The Role of Knowledge in Understanding and Learning from Text," in Handbook of Reading Research, ed. E. B. Moje et al. (Taylor and Francis Group, 2020).
7. R. Anderson, "Schema-Directed Processes in Language Comprehension," in Cognitive Psychology and Instruction, ed. A. Lesgold et al. (New York: Plenum, 1978).
8. J. Bransford and M. Johnson, "Contextual Prerequisites for Understanding: Some Investigation of Comprehension and Recall," Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 11 (1972): 722.
9. For a review written by one of these pioneers, who in turn describes several others, see S. Neuman, "The Role of Knowledge in Early Literacy," Reading Research Quarterly 36, no. 4 (November 2011): 468-75.
10. B. Boulay et al., Summary of Research Generated by Striving Readers on the Effectiveness of Interventions for Struggling Adolescent Readers, NCEE-2016-4001 (Washington, DC: US Department of Education, National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, October 2015).
11. For a paper that addresses many of the widespread misconceptions about critical thinking, see D. T. Willingham, "How to Teach Critical Thinking," commissioned paper, Education: Future Frontiers (May 2019).
12. Pearson et al., Reaping the Rewards.
13. R. K. Blank, "What Is the Impact of Decline in Science Instructional Time in Elementary School?: Time for Elementary Instruction Has Declined, and Less Time for Science Is Correlated with Lower Scores on NAEP," prepared for the Noyce Foundation, 2012.
14. See, for example, the Knowledge Matters Campaign, knowledgematterscampaign.org, and Curriculum Matters, curriculummatters.org.
15. C. McWayne et al., "Incorporating Knowledge from Children's Homes and Communities," Young Children 75, no. 5 (December 2020): 20-26.
16. J. Gustafson, "Robust Vocabulary Instruction: Bringing Knowledge-Rich Curricula to Life," Achieve the Core, September 30, 2019.
17. Z. Fang, "Scientific Literacy: A Systematic Functional Linguistics Perspective," Science Education 89, no. 2 (March 2005): 335-47.
18. Y. Zhang, "Supporting English Language Learners in Social Studies: Language-Focused Strategies," Social Studies 108 (2017): 2.
19. C. Shanahan and T. Shanahan, "Does Disciplinary Literacy Have a Place in Elementary School?," The Reading Teacher 67, no. 8 (2014): 636-39.
20. J. Kim et al., "Improving Reading Comprehension, Science Domain Knowledge, and Reading Engagement Through a First-Grade Content Literacy Intervention," Journal of Educational Psychology 113, no. 1 (2021): 3-26.
21. H. Hwang, S. Cabell, and R. Joyner, "Does Cultivating Content Knowledge During Literacy Instruction Support Vocabulary and Comprehension in the Elementary School Years?: A Systematic Review," Reading Psychology, manuscript under review.
22. J. Keenan and C. Meenan, "Test Differences in Diagnosing Reading Comprehension Deficits," Journal of Learning Disabilities 47, no. 2 (2014): 125-35.
23. J. Keenan, R. Betjemann, and R. Olson, "Reading Comprehension Tests Vary in the Skills They Assess: Differential Dependence on Decoding and Oral Language," Scientific Studies in Reading 12, no. 3 (2008): 281-300.
24. E. D. Hirsch Jr., Why Knowledge Matters: Rescuing Our Children from Failed Educational Theories (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2016).
25. S. Koon, B. Foorman, and T. Galloway, "Identifying North Carolina Students at Risk of Scoring Below Proficient in Reading at the End of Grade 3," REL 2020-030 (Washington, DC: US Department of Education, Regional Educational Laboratory Southeast, August 2020).
26. Every Student Succeeds Act, Pub. L. No. 114-95 (2015).
27. For the state's documents on the assessment, see "LEAP 2025 Humanities," Assessments, Louisiana Department of Education, louisianabelieves.com/resources/library/assessment.
28. Louisiana Believes, "Louisiana's Innovative Assessment Pilot National Update," Louisiana Department of Education, August 15, 2019.
29. Louisiana Believes, "Parent Guide to the LEAP 2025 Humanities Student Reports," Louisiana Department of Education, louisianabelieves.com/docs/default-source/assessment/parent-guide-to-leap-2025-humanities.pdf; and N. Munyan-Penney and C. Barone, "Innovative Assessment Pilot: Louisiana's LEAP 2025 Humanities Assessment," Education Reform Now, November 2020, edreformnow.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Louisiana-IADA-LEAP-2025-Humanities.pdf.
30. Pearson et al., Reaping the Rewards, 5.

[Illustrations by Jessie Lin]

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Rethinking How to Promote Reading Comprehension

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It is February 2015, and I am at a national conference listening to a panel present the results of their research on improving reading comprehension. Several members of the panel, like myself and a few others in the room, are funded by the Institute of Education Sciences as part of the Reading for Understanding Initiative.

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Instructional Equity with Zaretta Hammond

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Instructional Equity with Zaretta Hammond

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A Conversation About Instructional Equity with Zaretta Hammond

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Collaborative Classroom board member Zaretta Hammond shares her insights about instructional equity, the importance of distinguishing between multicultural education, social justice education, and culturally responsive education, and the "inequity by design" of our education system.

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Should we match texts to students' reading levels?- Shanahan

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Should we match texts to students' reading levels?- Shanahan

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Should we match texts to students' reading levels?

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Blue Whales & Buttercups text

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Conceptual coherence, comprehension, and vocabulary acquisition: A knowledge effect?

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Conceptual coherence, comprehension, and vocabulary acquisition: A knowledge effect?

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The Active Ingredient in Reading Comprehension Strategy Intervention for Struggling Readers: A Bayesian Network Meta-analysis

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The Active Ingredient in Reading Comprehension Strategy Intervention for Struggling Readers: A Bayesian Network Meta-analysis

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The Active Ingredient in Reading Comprehension Strategy Intervention for Struggling Readers: A Bayesian Network Meta-analysis - Peng Peng, Wei Wang, Marissa J. Filderman, Wenxiu Zhang, Lifeng Lin, 2024

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Based on 52 studies with samples mostly from English-speaking countries, the current study used Bayesian network meta-analysis to investigate the intervention e…

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Grade 3 potential text set- Inherited Characteristics

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Grade 3 potential text set- Inherited Characteristics

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Inherited Characteristics in Animals and Examples

Bird beaks & Evolution (above GL)

Jaws: Feeding Adaptations (above GL)

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Inherited Characteristics in Animals and Examples (Tuto

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Conservation of Energy text (800- 1200L)

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The Reading League curriculum evaluation guidelines

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The Reading League curriculum evaluation guidelines

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Direct link to document

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Use the Curriculum Evaluation Guidelines to evaluate how well a curriculum aligns with the findings from the science of reading.

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Grade 4 potential text set- Energy Britannica

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Grade 4 potential text set- Energy Britannica

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Grade 4 potential text set- Conservation of Energy Britannica

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Grade 4 potential text set- Conservation of Energy Britannica

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Grade 4 potential text set- What is energy?

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Grade 4 potential text set- What is energy?

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Grade 4 potential text set- Energy text book page

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Grade 4 potential text set- Energy text book page

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Grade 4 potential text set- Forms of Energy

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Grade 4 potential text set- Forms of Energy

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2-3 per grade level group- Language Comprehension Planner Template 

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2-3 per grade level group- Language Comprehension Planner Template 

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2-3 per grade level group- Reading Rope Guide

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2-3 per grade level group- Reading Rope Guide

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1 copy A3, one sided- G3 close read sentences

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1 copy A3, one sided- G3 close read sentences

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1 copy- Grade 3 potential text set- Inherited Characteristics

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1 copy- Grade 3 potential text set- Inherited Characteristics

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Inherited Characteristics in Animals and Examples

Bird beaks & Evolution (above GL)

Jaws: Feeding Adaptations (above GL)

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Inherited Characteristics in Animals and Examples (Tuto

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Grade 3 potential text set- Animal Behaviour- Britannica

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Grade 3 potential text set- Animal Behaviour- Britannica

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Original link

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1 copy- Grade 3 potential text set- Animal Behaviour- Britannica

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1 copy- Grade 3 potential text set- Animal Behaviour- Britannica

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DONE 1 copy (color, two sided) Grade 4 potential text set- Forms of Energy

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DONE 1 copy (color, two sided) Grade 4 potential text set- Forms of Energy

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DONE 1 copy (color) Grade 4 potential text set- What is energy?

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DONE 1 copy (color) Grade 4 potential text set- What is energy?

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DONE 1 of each- Grade 3 potential text set

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DONE 1 of each- Grade 3 potential text set

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Inherited Characteristics in Animals and Examples

Bird beaks & Evolution (above GL)

Jaws: Feeding Adaptations (above GL)

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1 copy, one side- Grade 4 Close reading sentences

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1 copy, one side- Grade 4 Close reading sentences

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1 copy, one side- Grade 4 background knowledge

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1 copy, one side- Grade 4 background knowledge

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Epic collection

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Epic collection

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*Print one for each student in the lab (ideally two sided, stapled) Grade 5

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*Print one for each student in the lab (ideally two sided, stapled) Grade 5

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*1 copy, one side- Grade 5 background knowledge

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*1 copy, one side- Grade 5 background knowledge

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10 Facts about Hurricanes! - National Geographic Kids

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about 6 copies- G5 text set- Hurricanes 2

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about 6 copies- G5 text set- Hurricanes 2

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about 6 copies- G5 text set- Hurricanes 3

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about 6 copies- G5 text set- Hurricanes 3

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Wildfires_ How They Form, and Why They're so Dangerous

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about 6 copies- G5 text set- Wildfires 2

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about 6 copies- G5 text set- Wildfires 2

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Wildfires Article, Forest Fires Information, Wildland Fires Facts -- National Geographic

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about 6 copies- Grade 5 text set- Wildfires 3

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about 6 copies- Grade 5 text set- Wildfires 3

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1 copy (one sided, color)- Grade 4 knowledge & vocab

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1 copy (one sided, color)- Grade 4 knowledge & vocab

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about 6 copies- Grade 4 text set- Silk Road 2

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about 6 copies- Grade 4 text set- Silk Road 2

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about 6 copies- Grade 4 text set- Silk Road 3

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about 6 copies- Grade 4 text set- Silk Road 3

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about 6 copies- Grade 4 text set- Trade 2

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about 6 copies- Grade 4 text set- Trade 2

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about 6 copies- "Ughs" text set-  Earthworms

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about 6 copies- "Ughs" text set-  Earthworms

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about 6 copies- "Ughs" text set- Under One Rock field notes

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about 6 copies- "Ughs" text set- Under One Rock field notes

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Under One Rock Field Notes (G3 Text Set)

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about 6 copies- "Ughs" text set- Dung Beetle

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about 6 copies- "Ughs" text set- Dung Beetle

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about 6 copies- "Ughs" text set- Ladybugs

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about 6 copies- "Ughs" text set- Ladybugs

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about 6 copies- "Ughs" text set- Creepy Crawlies

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about 6 copies- "Ughs" text set- Creepy Crawlies