Chart Your Course
Chart Your Course: Text Complexity and Instructional Practices
Using complex text during instruction requires careful planning. Reader and task considerations are a part of a text's complexity measurement. By carefully thinking about your students' needs as well as particular challenges of tasks assigned, you can seamlessly include the support needed into your plans.
How do I use this process of determining text complexity as part of my instructional practice?
- Watch a video featuring Tim Shanahan.
- Watch it in action through videos from America Achieves.
- Check out a grade 6-8 lesson plan using the text Words We Live By.
- Watch a video with Kylene Beers and Bob Probst to hear their thoughts about text complexity in the classroom.
How do I address vocabulary when teaching with complex text?
How much complex text do I teach? Should it all be complex?
- Read the article The Challenge of Challenging Text by Shanahan, Fisher, and Frey to learn about using increasingly complex text to build skills and stamina.
- Read a great analogy of learning to swim and working with text in the article by Turner, The Common Core Struggle: The Struggle over Struggle.
- Read Fisher and Frey's article, Improve Reading with Complex Texts.
- Review Mesmer's PowerPoint on Stretching Elementary Students in Complex Texts: Why? How? When?
What role does close reading play in teaching complex text?
- Too Dumb for Complex Texts? by Beauerlein explores cultivating the habit of slow reading.
- A Close Look at Close Reading: Scaffolding Students with Complex Text is an article by Beth Burke that illustrates how a close reading lesson can support students as they work with complex text.
- Close Reading and Text Complexity is a PowerPoint with different examples of strategies to use when closely reading a complex text.
- Sonic Patterns is a high school lesson plan example of how to read a complex poem closely to understand poetic techniques.
- Get Close to Think Deeply: Creating Primary-Level Close Readings is an elementary lesson plan example.
- Supporting Students in Close Reading is a publication by Barbara Jones, Sandy Chang, Margaret Heritage, and Glory Tobiason that explores many aspects of close reading including choosing a text and using close reading in formatively assessing students.
How do I plan for a year or a semester when considering complex text?
- Read Laura Robb's article, Teaching with Complex Texts.
- Check out suggestions from the Teacher Channel blog, Making Time for Complex Text in Literacy Instruction.
Is the entire text complex?
- Look at the Lexile by-chapter model created by Metametrics.
