teaching literacy in context: choosing and using

154The Reading Teacher, 64(3), pp. 154–165 © 2010 International Reading AssociationDOI:10.1598/RT.64.3.1 ISSN: 0034-0561 print / 1936-2714 online

expository text, the challenge is in knowing which instructional strategy to choose. Teachers can open a book and choose 1 of 50 or 100 instructional strate-gies, but it is more difficult to find an explanation of how an effective teacher chooses and uses them. In this article, we explain how Nancy, a 19-year veteran and board-certified teacher, embeds literacy in her social science instruction.

LinC: Literacy in ContextWhen Nancy teaches with expository text, she goes through a cycle of assessment, reflection, planning, and teaching/reteaching. Figure 1 shows this pro-cess, which we call the LinC cycle (Miller & Veatch, 2011). With the help of her sixth-grade team, she as-sesses students’ vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, and motivation. She reflects about her knowledge of students and the curriculum, and plans lessons with carefully chosen instructional strategies. She teaches and reteaches with a focus on fostering understand-ing of content and building proficient readers.

Engaging in this cycle has led Nancy and oth-ers at her diverse, rural, northern California school to see gains in their students’ proficiencies with ex-pository text (Miller & Veatch, 2011). In fact, on the 2009 statewide standards-based test, 67% of sixth- to eighth-grade students at Nancy’s school scored at or above proficient in English language arts, compared with the state average of 47% at or above proficient. Observing Nancy as she works through the process of assessment, reflection, planning, and teaching/ reteaching can give teachers insight into the selection and implementation of useful, instructional practices.

Teaching Literacy in Context: Choosing and Using Instructional StrategiesMimi Miller, Nancy Veatch

To help students become proficient with expository text, educators need to focus on how to choose and use the most appropriate instructional strategies for their students.

Nancy (second author), a sixth-grade teacher, has noticed that year after year, students come to her classroom without the literacy

skills necessary to comprehend their social science textbooks. The structure and readability of the text is too unfamiliar and complex. Students lack suf-ficient word-recognition abilities, vocabulary, and prior knowledge to navigate a sixth-grade expository text, and they do not know how to independently use reading strategies to build meaning.

Both standardized test scores and reports from teachers in the classroom attest to the fact that many preadolescents struggle with reading, especially when facing expository, content area text (Kamil, 2003). In fact, 69% of eighth-grade students in the United States are below proficient in their ability to comprehend text written at their grade level (Lee, Grigg, & Donahue, 2007). Without explicit exposi-tory reading instruction in elementary and middle grades, many students will become part of this trou-bling statistic.

A logical solution, in reach of all teachers, is to build vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, and motivation while teaching with expository text (Biancarosa & Snow, 2004). Although there are many best practices for teaching students to read

Administrator

155Teaching Literacy in Context: Choosing and Using Instructional Strategies

Inventory (Mokhtari & Reichard, 2002), gives an in-dication of which type of reading strategies students use most regularly. As part of their district assess-ment, students have fluency checks each trimester, and both the standardized tests and curriculum-based measures help inform Nancy about students’ needs with comprehension. With the help of other teachers on her sixth-grade team, she tracks student needs and growth.

Vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, and moti-vation are all part of this assessment. According to the students’ state standardized tests results from the previous year, one third of her class of 29 students will be frustrated by grade-level vocabulary. A look at the class’s fluency data shows that her students tend to have high reading rates, but their accuracy and prosody need to be strengthened. In terms of com-prehension, assessment results indicate that most of the class needs help with learning to use reading

AssessTo learn about her students, Nancy engages in on-going assessments focused on vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, and motivation that help her teach across the content areas. As Table 1 shows, each is an essential component of student proficiency with expository text. At the beginning of the school year, she invested time in compiling such assessment data about her students. Once she determined their areas of need, these data are simply updated as assess-ments are completed. This informs her instruction throughout the school year.

Nancy is not a reading specialist, but she has found accessible measures to use for identifying stu-dent literacy needs. For example, the Motivation to Read Profile for adolescents (Pitcher et al., 2007) al-lows teachers to measure students’ self-concept and their value of reading. Another assessment, called the Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies

Figure 1The LinC Cycle: Literacy in Context

Note. From Miller & Veatch, Literacy in Context (LinC), © 2011. Reproduced by permission of Pearson Education, Inc.

Teach and reteach! Teach! Assess student learning! Design future instruction

The LinC Cycle: Literacy in Context

Assess! Language proficiency! Vocabulary! Fluency! Comprehension! Motivation

Reflect! Students! Curriculum

Plan! Establish learning outcomes! Know the text! Choose vocabulary for instruction! Review student needs! Select instructional strategies

156 The Reading Teacher Vol. 64, No. 3 November 2010

choose and use instructional strate-gies that lead to student learning.

StudentsWhile examining her students’ read-ing proficiency data, Nancy reflects about the needs of her students and the implications for instruction. She reaches some conclusions that will inform her teaching approach. She considers the language proficiency of her English learners; in addition, she reflects on her students’ vocabu-lary, fluency, comprehension, and motivation.

! English-language proficien-cy—Design instruction that accounts for students’ English proficiency levels and focuses on fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension strategies.

! Vocabulary—Build support for content vocabulary for all students, with a special focus on those who struggle to find

meaning and use the context clues in the text.! Fluency—Design opportunities to practice flu-

ency with content area text. Emphasize accura-cy rather than rate. Model appropriate prosody with expository text.

strategies, particularly ones that sup-port comprehension while reading. Furthermore, the Motivation to Read Profile (Pitcher et al., 2007) showed that while many of her students val-ue reading, a large number have low self-concepts as readers. To build students’ self-concepts, Nancy will need to support and help them ac-knowledge their reading competen-cies. Also, because some students in her class are English learners, in any lesson that Nancy teaches, she must consider students’ English proficiencies and support language development.

ReflectBefore planning and teaching, Nancy carefully considers her knowledge about the students and the curriculum. Each day, teach-ers make decisions based on their professional knowledge and infor-mation in the environment (Colton & Sparks-Langer, 1993). To reflect, they give careful attention to their experiences and the instructional choices that they make. When engaged with the LinC cycle, Nancy uses evidence and resources to inform her teaching practice. Reflection enables teachers to

PAUSE AND PONDER

! What do you think are the greatest demands of expository reading in grades 4–6?

! How do you use assessment data collected about your students’ literacy needs to inform your content area instruction?

! Recall a lesson that you planned; consider what process you used to develop your instructional plan and how you chose the instructional strategies. How could the Literacy in Context (LinC) cycle and plan make this process easier and more directed toward student literacy and content learning?

Table 1Four Essential Elements of Expository Reading

aFrom The Fluent Reader: Oral Reading Strategies for Building Word Recognition, Fluency, and Comprehension, by T.V. Rasinski, 2003, New York: Scholastic. bFrom Teaching Reading Comprehension Processes (2nd ed.), by J.W. Irwin, 1991, Boston: Allyn & Bacon. cFrom Motivation in Education: Theory, Research, and Applications (3rd ed.), by D.H. Schunk, P.R. Pintrich, & J.L. Meece, 2008, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Component Definition Relevance

Vocabulary Concepts and labels for concepts Students need help with difficult language in content text.

Fluency Reading accurately, with expression, at an appropriate pacea

If students can read fluently, they will be more able to focus on content.

Comprehension Using prior knowledge and the writer’s clues to construct meaningb

Students need to be able to use reading strategies and adapt them to different subject areas.

Motivation Process by which a goal-directed activity is initiated and sustainedc

Students need to see themselves as good readers who value reading.


PlanIn the planning stage of the LinC cycle, Nancy plans which instructional strategies will best meet the needs of her students. She uses the LinC teaching plan (see Table 2) to incorporate her knowledge of the content, the text, the students, and instructional strategies. She prepares to engage her students in in-struction that both builds knowledge of the subject matter and strengthens their vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, and motivation.

Nancy’s planning involves identifying the learn-ing outcomes of the lesson, analyzing the text, iden-tifying key vocabulary, and choosing instructional strategies that will support the vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, and motivation of her students. Because she uses the LinC cycle daily to help her ac-complish this task, planning for this series of lessons takes little time.

Learning OutcomesShe first identifies the objectives (i.e., new knowledge and skills) and methods of assessment (i.e., the mea-surement of progress toward these objectives). She sets a content objective and assessment, as shown in Table 2. She wants her students to be able to sum-marize the policies and achievements of Emperor Shi Huangdi, and she will assess this content objective by asking her students to write a summary of their learning.

Nancy also notes ways in which her instruction supports the English language arts standards. After the lesson, students will be able to use vocabulary terms in writing and speaking, use a graphic orga-nizer to record ideas, and write a summary of the text. If her instruction includes both a graphic or-ganizer and a written summary, she will be able to use these two written assignments to assess student progress.

Nancy knows that some of her students, espe-cially those who are beginning and intermediate English learners, will need extra support during the lessons and assessments. For guidance, she consults her state’s English-language development standards, identifies learning outcomes for stu-dents of various English-proficiency levels, and writes the learning outcomes on the LinC teaching plan (Table 2).

! Comprehension—Improve comprehension and increase students’ strategy use, specifically two categories of during-reading strategies: support and problem-solving. (Support strategies, such as note-taking, help students transform the text while reading. Problem-solving strategies, such as rereading, help students correct their com-prehension [Mokhtari & Reichard, 2002].)

! Motivation—Choose instructional strategies that will boost students’ self-concept as readers.

While thinking about her class as a whole, Nancy also considers the strengths and needs of in-dividual students. For example, one of her students, Dominic (all student names are pseudonyms), has an Individualized Education Plan for a specific learning disability; he has difficulty processing text, and he reads at a second-grade level. Whenever Nancy plans a lesson, she differentiates instruction to ensure that Dominic is supported in his learning (Tomlinson, 1999). Differentiation can include providing one-on-one support and additional texts that present the con-tent at an appropriate readability level.

The CurriculumWhile reflecting about the students, Nancy consid-ers the sixth-grade curriculum. In California, all sixth graders study ancient civilizations. The class had been studying ancient China, and Nancy is prepared to teach her class about the Qin Dynasty of 221–207 B.C.E. Historians credit this dynasty with many in-novations and contributions, including building the Great Wall, devising a standardized monetary system, and building an expansive network of roads and ca-nals. The Qin Dynasty is also known for Legalism, a political philosophy that supports strong power of a single ruler. Nancy decides to focus on these unique contributions of this dynasty, as she did when the class studied the ancient civilizations of Egypt and India.

Additionally, one of the expectations of sixth grad-ers is to be able to write summaries. Summarizing is one of the 11 elements of writing instruction that are effective in helping adolescents develop writing pro-ficiency (Graham & Perin, 2007). Nancy’s students are in the fifth month of sixth grade, and they have been practicing summary writing since the begin-ning of the year, so it is appropriate to ask them to practice summary writing as part of this lesson.


Table 2The LinC Teaching Plan for a Sixth-Grade Lesson on the Qin Dynasty

Period Class Topic

2 Sixth-grade social science Ancient China

Learning outcomes Objectives Assessments

Content area ! List the policies and achievements of Emperor Shi Huangdi in unifying northern China under the Qin Dynasty.

! Does the summary paragraph include details about the policies and achievements of Shi Huangdi?

English language arts

! Use vocabulary terms from the text in speaking and writing.

! Use a graphic organizer to record main ideas and details from the text.

! Write a summary based on the text.

! Does the student record main ideas and details from the text on a graphic organizer?

! Does the summary paragraph include content vocabulary?

! Does the summary include an introduction, supporting details, and a conclusion?

English-language development

! Beginning—Orally describe the policies and achievements of Emperor Shi Huangdi.! Intermediate—Write short statements describing the policies and achievements of Emperor

Shi Huangdi.! Advanced—Write several sentences describing the policies and achievements of Emperor

Shi Huangdi.

Text Text type and structure Features

“The Qin Dynasty,” pages 194–198

Expository, descriptive Map, chart, headings, subheadings, photographs

Vocabulary level Vocabulary to know When to teach this vocabulary

1—Essential militaristically, opposed, standardized, suppressed

Before reading

2—Related achievement, founder, Great Wall of China, Legalism, mandate of Heaven, policies, terra cotta, unification

Before reading

3—Critical cavalry, elaborate, extravagant, rebels During and after reading

Literacy focus Instructional strategies

Day 1

Vocabulary Contextual redefinition chart

Fluency Guided fluency development instruction

Comprehension Survey strategy, main idea/detail graphic organizer

Motivation Scaffolded reading experience

Day 2

Vocabulary

Fluency Repeated reading

Comprehension Comprehension monitoring guide, summary writing

Motivation Scaffolded reading experience


The TextAs Nancy prepares to teach, she reads the section of the textbook that will be the focus of the upcom-ing lesson on the Qin Dynasty, mindful of the text’s structure and features. She identifies this section of the text structure as descriptive, a structure that sup-ports her objectives. She wants students to be able to describe the policies and achievements of the Qin Dynasty, and the text will help them reach that goal. On the LinC teaching plan, Nancy notes some signifi-cant features of this text section, including a map of ancient China and photographs of the Terra Cotta Soldiers and the Great Wall of China. She notes the headings and subheadings, and a chart listing the policies and achievements of Emperor Shi Huangdi.

VocabularyNancy knows that her students will need help with learning key vocabulary in the text. As research has suggested, she targets words that are unfamiliar to her students and essential to understanding the text (Beck, McKeown, & Kucan, 2002; Bravo & Cervetti, 2008). She uses Flanigan and Greenwood’s (2007) four-level system to decide which words to teach and when to teach them:

! Level 1—Essential to understanding the reading and requires advanced teaching

! Level 2—“Foot-in-the-door” words that provide access to information in the reading (The best time to teach these words is before content in-struction begins.)

! Level 3—Critical to understanding the content, but not critical to the reading (These words are perfect for reviewing and teaching during and after reading.)

! Level 4—Should not be taught during the les-son, because they do not fit with the current learning objectives

After she decides which words to teach, Nancy re-cords them on the LinC teaching plan.

Instructional StrategiesNancy engages in assessment and reflection so that she can intentionally plan which instructional strat-egies to use. Mindful of the students and the cur-riculum, she plans to use instructional strategies to

enhance vocabulary, fluency, reading comprehen-sion, and motivation.

Vocabulary. Many of her students struggle to find the meaning of new words within the context of exposi-tory text. To introduce level 1 vocabulary, she decides to use a contextual redefinition chart, which has col-umns for students to record words, word-level clues (e.g., prefixes), context clues, and predicted mean-ings. Then, after the lesson, students record the actual meanings, which helps them use context clues to de-termine word meaning (Tierney & Readence, 2000).

Fluency. Nancy chooses guided fluency develop-ment instruction (GFDI; Miller & Veatch, 2011) to sup-port fluency within a meaningful context. GFDI takes components from successful elementary research-based fluency programs, such as fluency-oriented reading instruction (Stahl, Heubach, & Holcomb, 2005), and combines them to meet the demands of older students and content area text. Elements of GFDI include choral reading, teacher read-alouds, echo reading, and cloze reading. In addition, Nancy will use repeated reading to provide students with opportunities to increase oral-reading fluency (Vandenberg, Boon, Fore, & Bender, 2008) as they complete comprehension activities.

Comprehension. To support comprehension, Nancy plans to use the survey strategy to preview the section’s text features: text type, main idea, headings and subheadings, key vocabulary, and significant vi-suals. Studies show that previewing the text leads to increased reading performance by students (Spires, Gallini, & Riggsbee, 1992). Without this step, students do not know where they are headed or what to ex-pect in the reading.

Nancy understands that her students require explicit instruction to learn how to use strategies that support their comprehension during reading. Research findings indicate that graphic organizers can be effective tools to support comprehension for all stu-dents, including those who are at risk for academic failure (Kim, Vaughn, Wanzek, & Wei, 2004; Marzano, Pickering, & Pollock, 2001) or have been diagnosed with a learning disability (Kim et al., 2004). Because this text is descriptive, Nancy decides to use a main idea/detail graphic organizer. On it, students will note main ideas and important details about the poli-cies and achievements of Emperor Shi Huangdi. The


website (streaming.discoveryeducation.com; a large, high-quality video library with more than 9,000 ti-tles), and reading aloud a few poems about the Great Wall of China. Next, she uses the survey strategy ac-tivity to help her students identify important features of the text that will aid their comprehension. Figure 2 shows a portion of the dialogue from the class’s sur-vey of the text. Note that the teacher, Nancy, points out the photos and has her class chorally read the bolded text headings.

Next, she uses the contextual redefinition chart with the level 1 words. She guides the students in using the chart; a student’s chart can be seen in Figure 3. For example, with the word militaristically, the students determine that the -ly added to the ad-jective militaristic creates an adverb. Similarly, they know that the root word, military, has to do with the army. Students then look to the context and see that the term militaristically describes how the emperor unified the country. Finally, students predict that Shi Huangdi must have used military tactics to unify the people of China, and they confirm this meaning in the dictionary.

Next, Nancy builds fluency with GFDI. She reads parts of the text to the students, and they read other sections chorally. As they finish each paragraph, they complete a section on the main idea/detail graphic organizer. Figure 4 shows a portion of one student’s graphic organizer, with notes from the text section “China Under the Qin Dynasty.”

Day 2The next day, the students engage in repeated read-ing as they read the section aloud with a partner. As they read, they consider the statements on the comprehension monitoring guide. Figure 5 shows samples of two students’ responses to true-and-false statements about the text.

After reading, the students each write a one-para-graph summary that explains the policies and ac-complishments of the Qin Dynasty. Nancy had been teaching students to write summaries since the start of the year, so this provided another opportunity to assess how well students were able to write a well-formed summary paragraph (see Figure 6 for two students’ summaries). While some of the class writes independently, Nancy meets with English learners and her students with special needs for oral assess-ments of their learning.

graphic organizer serves as a support for reading and a place to record notes for later writing assignments.

As an assessment of their understanding of the social science content, students will complete written summaries after reading. Teaching students to sum-marize what they have read has been shown to lead to increased comprehension (Brown, 2002). While most of her class is engaged in writing summaries, Nancy will meet individually with her English learners and students with special learning needs to have them ex-plain the policies and achievements of Emperor Shi Huangdi. In this way, she will differentiate instruction and assessment to meet the needs of her students.

Nancy knows that her students will benefit from instruction in comprehension monitoring. The ability to monitor one’s own comprehension is thought to be the first step toward becoming a strategic reader (Baker, 2002). She plans to use a comprehension monitoring guide that asks students to read a list of statements and decide whether, based on the text, each statement is true or false. To construct this guide, she selects six statements from the text, con-verts some of them to false statements, and types them on a handout.

Motivation. In this class, many students have low self-concepts as readers. It is not surprising, since the class text for these sixth-grade students is at a seventh-grade readability level. Nancy knows that to develop student motivation, instruction should en-sure mastery of content and literacy skills. She there-fore chooses strategies to scaffold student reading and learning before, during, and after reading the text. By engaging students with a scaffolded reading experience (Boling & Evans, 2008), she can ensure success and build the students’ confidence with text.

TeachAfter planning, Nancy is ready to begin teaching with this section of expository text. Her lesson lasts a total of two hours (one hour on two consecutive days). It provides students with a scaffolded reading experi-ence, differentiating instruction to the point that they can all be successful with content text.

Day 1Before opening the textbook, Nancy sparks student interest in Emperor Shi Huangdi by showing a short video clip from Discovery Education’s Streaming

Administrator


Figure 2An Example of Class Dialogue During the Survey Strategy

Note. Student names are pseudonyms.

Teacher: Open your book to page 194 and let’s survey our social science textbook reading for today. We will begin reading on page 194. Who can share with us what page this section ends on?

Justin: It ends on page 198.Teacher: Let’s read the heading together. Remember, “Qin” is pronounced “chin.”Students: [chorally] The Qin DynastyTeacher: Now, let’s chorally read the subheadings for this section.Students: [chorally] “Shi Huangdi Takes the Throne,” “China Under the Qin Dynasty,” “A Unified China”Teacher: Look at the map of China on page 195 and note the location of the Qin Dynasty. It was located in

northeastern China. Notice how the northern border stops at the Great Wall. Also, note the photograph of the Terra Cotta Soldiers on pages 196–197. They were built to protect Shi Huangdi in death. Notice how each one of them has unique facial features, hairstyles, and expressions.

Susan: Why is one of them painted? Did they all used to be painted?Teacher: No, actually they were all terra cotta. If we read the caption, it tells us, “Here a computer model shows

us what a soldier might have actually looked like.”

Figure 3A Sixth-Grader’s Contextual Redefinition Chart for Level 1 Words in a Text on Emperor Shi Huangdi

Figure 4A Section of a Sixth-Grader’s Main Idea/Detail Graphic Organizer on Emperor Shi Huangdi


ReteachEvaluate Learning OutcomesAfter the lesson, Nancy assesses student learning and thinks about her next steps in teaching. She considers her original objectives and examines student work.

Social Science Content. The students’ completed comprehension monitoring guides and written sum-maries provide evidence of learning about the social science content. By examining the guides, Nancy concludes that students have a good understanding of the content. In the examples shown in Figure 5,

Figure 5Responses From Two Sixth-Graders’ Comprehension Monitoring Guides

Figure 6Examples of Two Sixth-Graders’ Written Summaries

Note. Student names are pseudonyms. The students’ new vocabulary words are underlined.

You have just completed reading a section of text entitled “The Qin Dynasty.” Summarize this expository passage noting the policies and achievements made by Emperor Shi Huangdi during his rule. Include new vocabulary in context.

EmmaIn the expository text section “The Qin Dynasty”, we learned many things about the first emperor of China. Most people did not like him, for he was not exactly the kindest, most peaceful emperor. For one thing, he taxed his people so heavily and forced them into so much labor, that he started doing rash things to prevent rebellions. He did not want any people to be educated, so he buried scholars alive and burned almost any books he could get his grimy hands on. But, that’s not all. He suppressed schools. He opposed all teachings of Confucianism and only supported Legalism. Despite all of this, he also did great things. One was he standardized the written language. He militaristically unified the country, built the Great Wall of China, the canals in the northeast, and an elaborate system of roads.

ColbyIn the expository passage “The Qin Dynasty,” we learn about the legendary Chinese ruler, Shi Huangdi. He started militaristically defeating the other numerous Chinese nations in 246BC. He ruled from the Yangzi River to the Gobi Desert. He was the founder of the Chinese government and was the reason for the unification of the people of China. He standardized the laws of the people and land. In conclusion, Shi Huangdi did a lot of good things for China, but didn’t seem to care about the pain he caused along the way.


these two students are able to correct the false state-ments. They understand who led the Qin Dynasty and the significant advancements that were made under Shi Huangdi’s rule.

Furthermore, the written summaries provide evidence that students understand the policies and achievements under the reign of Shi Huangdi. In the examples in Figure 6, both students share details about Shi Huangdi’s rule. Emma details the emperor’s policies and how they affected the Chinese people. She concludes her writing by noting the achieve-ments made in spite of the policies he enacted. Colby summarizes Shi Huangdi’s reign and briefly gives de-tails to support his policies and achievements. Other students in the class write similar summaries. Nancy’s English learners and students with special needs are able to briefly describe, through words and drawn symbols, the policies and achievements. As a class, the group seems to grasp the understanding that Shi Huangdi’s rule brought many positive advancements in ancient China despite the harsh policies that he enacted.

Vocabulary. Were students able to build content vocabulary? Based on a review of their contextual redefinition charts and written summaries, students have a better understanding of the vocabulary at the end of the lesson. The majority are able to inde-pendently analyze the word-level and context clues of several words to determine their meanings (e.g., standardized, opposed, suppressed). The true test of vocabulary understanding is whether students can use the terms correctly in speaking and writing, which many of Nancy’s students do in their writing, as shown in Figure 6. However, Nancy notes that the majority of students use just 3 or 4 of their 12 vocabu-lary words in their essays. In the future, she will need to help students become even more comfortable with these terms so that they will use them when writing.

Graphic Organizer. Recall that one of Nancy’s ob-jectives is to teach students to record the main ideas and details of each paragraph on a graphic organiz-er. All but two students created detailed main idea/detail graphic organizers. The student work shows that two of her students need further instruction on how to take detailed notes on a graphic organizer.

Written Summary. There is a difference in the de-velopment of students’ summaries. Nancy matches

students’ graphic organizers with their essays, and she notes that students with less-developed writing skills have one of these two issues: (1) they do not have enough detail about the policies and achieve-ments on their graphic organizers, or (2) they have trouble transferring the information into their essays. She realizes that future instruction will need to focus on both of these issues. She recalls that she did some modeling of how to transfer information from the graphic organizer to a well-written essay; however, she will need to continue to model this important skill.

At the other end of the spectrum are students who have very detailed graphic organizers and well-developed essays. On her graphic organizer, Emma includes details that go beyond the reading—con-cepts from the movie and poetry Nancy shared before the lessons began. Nancy realizes that all stu-dents would benefit from an opportunity to use an outside resource to complete their charts and makes a mental note for her next lesson.

Nancy also notices the structure of the writing. Emma’s summary has a strong introduction and many supporting details, but it lacks a conclusion sentence. Colby’s summary has all of the parts of an essay, but it lacks sentence variation and flow. Nancy decides to focus on these elements during a subse-quent writing lesson.

Draw ConclusionsBy examining student work, Nancy comes to some conclusions about future lessons. She knows she will need to do the following:

! Make an extra effort to highlight important vocabulary during reading and show students how to use these terms in their writing.

! Model how to take notes on a graphic organizer, especially for the two students who had trou-ble recording details on their main idea/detail graphic organizers.

! Model how to take information from a graphic organizer and write well-constructed sentences that form a summary.

! Model how to write strong conclusion sentences and also teach students how to use more sen-tence variation and transitions.


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Each of these goals will become part of future les-sons, as Nancy continues to engage in a cycle of assessing, reflecting, planning, and teaching/reteaching.

ImplicationsThe process of supporting students’ reading devel-opment and content understanding is continual. As Nancy engages in assessment, reflection, planning, and teaching/reteaching, she gains insights into stu-dent learning and her own teaching practices. Within this spiral process, Nancy learns more about her stu-dents and becomes better able to support their learn-ing. Rather than looking for a single best instructional practice, she makes thoughtful decisions based on the students and the curriculum. To help students become proficient with expository text, all educators need to focus on how to choose and use the most appropriate instructional strategies for their students.

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Beck, I.L., McKeown, M.G., & Kucan, L. (2002). Bringing words to life: Robust vocabulary instruction. New York: Guilford.

Biancarosa, G., & Snow, C.E. (2004). Reading next: A vision for ac-tion and research in middle and high school literacy. A report to Carnegie Corporation of New York. Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellent Education.

Take ACTION!1. Assess—Compile available data that show students’ strengths and areas for growth in vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, and motivation. For a quick measure of fluency with expository text, have students read aloud for one minute from the content text. Record how many words are read correctly and compare these results to Hasbrouck and Tindal’s (2005) grade-level fluency norms charts (available at www.brtprojects.org/publications/tech_reports/TechRpt33_Fluency Norms.pdf).

2. Reflect—Consider the available data. Are your students reading at, above, or below grade level? Consider their strengths and areas for growth in vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, and motivation. Although all areas are important, what would you choose for your initial instructional focus?

3. Plan—Select a segment of expository text that supports your content teaching. Based on your students’ knowledge, choose an instructional strategy that targets an explicit area of reading development.

4. Teach—Use the instructional strategy to support the reading of the text before, during, and after reading. If introducing a new reading strategy, be sure to model it and support students as they gradually learn to apply the strategy independently.

5. Reteach—Collect student work and other forms of evidence of student learning. Look for patterns that help you identify how to further support content reading.


Miller teaches at California State University, Chico, USA; e-mail [email protected]. Veatch teaches at Evergreen Middle School, Cottonwood, California, USA; e-mail [email protected].

Marzano, R.J., Pickering, D.J., & Pollock, J.E. (2001). Classroom instruction that works: Research-based strategies for increas-ing student achievement. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Miller, M., & Veatch, N. (2011). Literacy in context (LinC): Choosing instructional strategies to teach reading in content areas for stu-dents grades 5–12. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Mokhtari, K., & Reichard, C.A. (2002). Assessing students’ metacog-nitive awareness of reading strategies. Journal of Educational Psychology, 94(2), 249–259. doi:10.1037/0022-0663.94.2.249

Pitcher, S.M., Albr ight, L .K., DeLaney, C.J., Walker, N.T., Seunarinesingh, K., Mogge, S., et al. (2007). Assessing ado-lescents’ motivation to read. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 50(5), 378–396. doi:10.1598/JAAL.50.5.5

Spires, H.A., Gallini, J., & Riggsbee, J. (1992). Effects of schema-based and text structure-based cues on expository prose comprehension in fourth graders. The Journal of Experimental Education, 60(4), 307–320.

Stahl, S.A., Heubach, K.M., & Holcomb, A. (2005). Fluency-oriented reading instruction. Journal of Literacy Research, 37(1), 25–60. doi:10.1207/s15548430jlr3701_2

Tierney, R.J., & Readence, J.E. (2000). Reading strategies and practices: A compendium (5th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Tomlinson, C.A. (1999). The differentiated classroom: Responding to the needs of all learners. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Vandenberg, A.C., Boon, R.T., Fore, C., III, & Bender, W.N. (2008). The effects of repeated readings on the reading fluency and comprehension for high school students with specific learn-ing disabilities. Learning Disabilities: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 15(1), 11–20.

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