Text Complexity

Regardless of the grade level or subject area you teach, students come face to face with text almost constantly. In their book Leveled Books (2006), Fountas & Pinnell outline some important considerations for us as we aim to inspire EACH student EVERY day:

"When students are reading a book they can read with success, they are able to use many different sources of information in a smoothly operating processing system."
Did you catch that? Reading is a smoothly operating processing system. Reading is not finishing pages or paragraphs. The purpose of reading is making meaning, if you aren't able to run through the processing system enough to make meaning, you aren't reading, you're calling out words.

"If they are struggling, they cannot use what they know in efficient  strategic ways. In fact, forcing students to read-too hard texts has devastating results."
Did you hear THAT? Devastating. It can't just be someone else's problem that your 3rd, 8th or 12th grade student can't read your textbook, it has to be yours. It has to be mine.

So what are you supposed to do? You have a textbook, actually you have a class set of textbooks, access to texts online...but how do you choose? And how will you make them accessible to your students?

1) The first strategy I would suggest is modeling. Yes, even you EPHS teachers :) The way you approach a text is intentional as an experienced reader (even when you're not trying to be intentional.) Open up the textbook, or the text you are expecting them to read, and talk through how YOU would read it and why. Do you read all the headings first? Do you look at diagrams and maps as you go or before you start? Why do you do it that way? What is your response to bold words? What is the narrative in your mind as you read the novel? Do you take notes about questions or observations? You are the expert reader in your classroom. If we don't make the internal process of reading external for them, they won't ever gain the skills and strategies they will need to read complex texts. (Cris Tovani's I Read it, But I Don't Understand it!)

2) The other strategy is to find several passages about the topic you are teaching, at various levels. One of the passages should be from your textbook or class text. Distributing these to students in a packet, or electronic folder allows them to view and choose the ones they can most easily interact without having to publicly choose the easiest. After reading 2 of the passages from the selected group. You can guide small groups through a discussion of similarities in order to building background knowledge about the topic. You can use newspaper articles, copy and paste text from Time for Kids articles from other grade levels or even other grade level textbooks. Doing this before tackling the larger text or concept allows students to get grounded in the content at their own level, propelling them to be more engaged in a difficult text.