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?

• Learn about scaffolding with vocabulary.

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.

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.