Turning the Page on Complex Texts

Ensure all learners become successful close readers. In this powerful resource, the authors examine what features make a text complex. Learn how to select appropriate complex texts and design instruction to meet the needs of every student. Explore grade-specific classroom scenarios that illustrate how to scaffold lessons to foster close reading and deepen comprehension at all stages of K–12 education.

Benefits

• Gain practical teaching strategies for creating close reading lessons.
• Consider grade-level-specific instructional scenarios that illustrate how to support students’ reading comprehension as they learn to read closely.
• Learn how to evaluate a text’s complexity and how to ask text-dependent questions that can help students engage with a text.
• Study evidence for why continuous close assessment of student performance is vital for making sure all students learn to closely read complex texts.
• Discover potential contingency scaffolds for the classroom and how to use them to promote student success in closely reading a text.

Contents

Introduction

Part I: Background and Planning Information

1              Understanding Close Reading

2              Identifying Text Complexity

3              Making Decisions That Support Close Reading Instruction

4              Assessing During Close Reading

Part II: Instructional Scenarios

5              Understanding What the Text Says Through Differentiated Scaffolds

6              Understanding How the Text Works Through Differentiated Scaffolds

7              Understanding What the Text Means Through Differentiated Scaffolds

8              Supporting Knowledge Demands with Differentiated Scaffolds

Epilogue

Appendix A

References and Resources