Sanacore and Palumbo, Professors of Education at Long Island University, wrote this essay to explain what the phenomena of “the fourth grade slump” is and how to remedy it. The essay begins by examining the achievement gaps between students who come from low income families and students who come from affluent families. They discovered that one reason for the achievement gap is that students who come from low income families are exposed to half as many words than students from affluent families which creates a limited vocabulary for them. The essay then goes on to explain that that the fourth grade slump occurs primarily from test preparation methods and textbook learning which hinders reading and vocabulary skills. To fix this problem, the professors suggest two potential solutions. First, students should have more time to read for pleasure. Second, informational text should be introduced earlier within a child’s education rather than later. They suggest that fictional texts should be used to supplement textbook reading as students progress through their education. 

Author Hryniuk-Adamov states in her essay that students struggle with informational text because many of their reading experiences in the primary grades focus solely on listening to and reading fiction. As a result, students struggle because informational texts are organized in a different structure and are written using main ideas and supporting details which many students fail to distinguish between. To correct this issue, she advocates that teachers can help students improve their understanding of informational text by implementing the program Text Structures: Teaching Reading and Writing by Dianne Dillabough. Diane is a former elementary teacher and produced this program to build a deep understanding of informational text through step by step lesson plans, graphic organizers, and model paragraphs that come together to help students produce reading skills that can be transferable among subject areas. For maximum results of being able to learn skills to read informational text and transfer them, it is recommended to be used as a cross-curricular tool and with a gradual release model.