Selecting texts means building a coherent arc of work for students. You want to make sure that the texts that you ask students to work with cohere around similar ideas or topics – students should have a clear sense of how texts fit together across at least two to three texts. Working with multiple texts provides students an opportunity to build knowledge around an idea worth knowing or a genre without that knowledge being isolated to the ideas of one author. Additionally, working with multiple texts provides students opportunities to support their thinking and ideas with evidence from multiple resources. 

The steps below are meant to act as a guide when selecting texts for instruction. Some of the steps may not always be necessary during the text selection process, but the steps are meant to prompt deeper thinking around potential instructional texts and the tasks that you will ask students to complete. 

Planning

Step 1: Text Focus 

You don’t want to go into text selection completely blank – there’s a huge world of rich texts available and searching for texts without a focus can get you lost in some pretty serious (although often interesting!) weeds. The following question are meant to prompt some thinking about the texts that you are looking for.

1.     Which topics would students find interesting? Intellectually engaging? Emotionally engaging?

2.     What do students want to learn more about?

3.     Do you want this set of texts to focus on non-fiction or fiction? Narrative or informational? Or do you want the set to cohere around an idea and across genres?

4.     What type of writing would you like students to produce while they are working with these texts? (and does that writing require mentor texts?)

Step 2: Standards Focus 

You’ll also want to have a clear understanding of the standards that you want students to work towards because not all texts are good for teaching all standards – for example, you wouldn’t want to try and focus work on a standard that deals with non-linear texts using a text set that’s comprised of texts that are pretty linear. Before digging in to text selection, make sure that you can answer the following questions:

1.     Which standards do you want students to work with while doing text-based work with the texts you will select?

2.     What are the knowledge and skills required by those standards?

Selecting

Step 1: Going Beyond the Textbook 

Textbooks are promoted as a resource for grade appropriate texts to use with students; however, they are created to appeal to the masses and may not provide texts that allow students opportunities to see themselves in the characters in the texts or the authors represented. Additionally, the texts may not provide students the opportunity to develop the knowledge they need to be successful in your classroom. For that reason, we recommend going to textbooks as a last resort. Supplemental texts provide an opportunity to bring in different text types that can provide students with multiple varied models of professional authors and journalists working in their fields.  As you begin to search for grade appropriate texts, keep the following ideas in mind:

1. Don’t put too much focus on quantitative measures of text complexity as you begin your search. Measures such as Lexile scores are often inaccurate and misrepresent the complexity of a text. You’ll want to read through texts and use your professional judgment to determine what makes the text complex and to consider how the use of a sequence of text-based tasks could mediate some of the complexity. 

2. Move your search beyond Google and popular media. Magazines such as The New Yorker or Time will provide some articles that are worthy of multiple reads and deep discussion, but not everything will be deserving of instructional time. You’ll also want to make sure you aren’t relying too heavily on articles from standard newspapers such as The New York Times or The Washington Post. These periodicals are invaluable for the information they provide, but a majority of what they publish are articles meant to report information and won’t offer students a great deal of opportunity to dig into author’s craft. Additionally, newspapers typically report on information and straight facts, and don’t provide a lot of opportunity for interpretive work because there is not a lot of ambiguity to wrestle with. 

3. Utilize your librarian! Librarians are the holders of vast knowledge when it comes to books, magazines, literary journals, anthologies, etc., etc. Partner with your librarian during the text selection process. If you are able to tell them topics and grade level, they can point you to a whole world of sources. 

Step 2: You’ve found texts that you like, now what? 

As you start to find texts that you’d like to work with, you’ll want to note what makes each text complex and worthy of study, how you see each text supporting students to build knowledge and skills (standards based and otherwise), and, as you start to pair texts, how you see texts fitting together in pairs or trios and the work that students could do across texts.  

Sequencing texts can be like putting puzzle pieces together – when they fit together nicely, they form a really interesting and clear picture. However, finding out how they fit can take some time and thought (and texts might not always fit together in ways that you anticipate). You might find that some texts work as framing texts. These texts provide an idea or lens for the subsequent texts in a set. For example, in a text set on race and racism, you might begin with having students read an excerpt from So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo to understand how Oluo defines race. Students would then use their understanding of Oluo’s definition as a lens through which to view how authors such as Elizabeth Acevedo, Ibram X Kendi, or Ta-Nehisi Coates continue the discussion of race and racism. 

Another reason for sequencing texts might be linguistic – you might start with a text that uses more conversational language, language that isn’t too far away from language that students are used to reading and hearing, and then move into texts that use more complex language. This provides a cognitive lift for students - allowing students to build a foundation in the ideas important to the text set so that when they have to wrestle with more complex language, they aren’t trying to both learn brand new ideas and linguistically tricky language.

You’ll also want to consider short framing texts for your emergent bilingual students, especially if you are creating a text set around a historical event in the United States or another topic that is distinctly American that students who are new to this country may not be familiar with. These shorter framing texts should be written in students first language and provide emergent bilinguals with enough information to help them engage with the ideas in complex English language texts, but not do all of the heavy cognitive lifting for students. For example, in a text set on Ruby Bridges and school integration, emergent bilingual students might be provided several paragraphs in their first language about the American Civil Rights Movement. These paragraphs should provide contextual information around the Civil Rights Movement to help students understand why people were angry at Ruby for attending school in the subsequent text they’ll be asked to read. The framing text helps lighten some of the cognitive load by reducing the struggle to understand the historical context and giving students the opportunity to focus on understanding the language and ideas in the Ruby Bridges text and subsequent texts on school integration. 

Qualitative Text Complexity Rubric

Student Considerations Rubric

Text Analysis Document

High-Level/Low-Level Task Analysis Guide

Student Centered Routines Document