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Written by Kate V. Crist and Dr. Ali Wilson  This week we are thrilled to launch a pilot implementation project with schools in the Pacific Northwest! Our focus? Bringing fluency routines to older students through a research-based approach we call the Tight 10. Designed for use across core content areas, the Tight 10 is a structured, 10 minute routine aimed at improving oral reading fluency as a means to deepen comprehension of complex texts. Oral reading fluency is how students sound when reading grade-level text aloud, demonstrating speed  (reading at an appropriate pace), accuracy (recognizing words automatically), and prosody (reading with proper expression). But more than that - it also gives us important information about what they do when they read silently, which is how adolescents spend the majority of their time reading. This is one reason attending to fluency is so important in the upper grades - it’s the highest leverage way secondary teachers can support students to develop strong reading skills.  Before we dig into the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of the Tight 10, let’s keep talking about why fluency is so important for older graders.  Reading Fluency is a Literacy Accelerator Reading fluency is often overlooked in middle and high school, despite being a key factor in reading comprehension. As Liben & Liben (2022) explain:  "Fluency is the most visceral element of reading instruction. Students can hear and feel it when they’re improving. So can their teachers and families. This provides an element of intrinsic motivation to undertake fluency work."  Yet research shows that nearly 80% of adolescents struggle with fluency, and explicit fluency instruction is rare in secondary classrooms. If more of us working in middle and high schools used fluency routines, they would become a powerful accelerator for adolescent reading skills.  Using fluency routines regularly helps to: Support comprehension of increasingly complex texts in the secondary grades Accelerate and extend literacy development for diverse learners Build student confidence in reading ability and help reinforce a student’s positive literacy identity Support secondary teachers to build foundational reading skills in a manageable and sustainable way without intensive training or knowledge With clear routines, fluency work can evolve to include advanced skills like morphology, syntax, and decoding complex multisyllabic words.   A Research-Based Protocol: Tight 10 The Tight 10 is a practical, research-based protocol that requires just 10 minutes,  three times a week. It empowers teachers to integrate fluency practice without requiring extensive training and help students build fluency, boosting their overall reading outcomes. The design of the fluency work in the Tight 10 is based on current research, including:  Use High-Quality Texts Across Topics : Choosing grade level texts with that demonstrate different levels of complexity Include multiple genres to build fluency, knowledge, and stamina Provide Strong Fluency Models:  Use teacher read-alouds or fluent peer models to demonstrate fluency. Highlight elements like prosody and syntax, allowing students to process and discuss what they observe Offer Purposeful Practice Opportunities and Provide Opportunities for Feedback : Center practice around  meaningful comprehension activities, like summarizing or answering questions. Listen and provide actionable feedback to support students’ prosody and accuracy Connect Fluency to Meaning-Making : Ensure fluency exercises support comprehension by including vocabulary and sentence/passage analysis. Leveraging this research, we have designed a fluency protocol that centers grade-level, content-area texts, evidence-based fluency routines, and text-dependent vocabulary and comprehension tasks. Ideally, the Tight 10 can be used by content area teachers across a single school so that students are getting the benefit of 30+ minutes of fluency practice in a single day (a good dosage for older students).  A lesson plan for a week of using the Tight 10 in an ELA class reading Shakespeare’s Macbeth  would look like the following: A Tight 10 lesson plan using Shakespeare's MacBeth Structure of the Pilot Implementation Project To enable successful adoption, we’ve structured the Tight 10 rollout into 4-6 week cycles, gradually introducing fluency routines and layering in comprehension, vocabulary, and multisyllabic word reading tasks. Here’s a look at the implementation process: Cycle A Introduce Fluency Routines Cycle B Fluency + Comprehension Tasks Cycle C Fluency + Vocabulary and Morphology Cycle D Fluency + Syllabication Teachers will receive professional learning, classroom resources, and strategic support throughout the process. We will also ask teachers to gather evidence of implementation such as student work, recordings of students reading, and reflective notes on the implementation process. This evidence will be utilized to refine and enhance the Tight 10 based on real-world implementation. By the end of the 2024/2025 school year, we’ll have a fully developed framework ready for broader use. Please stay tuned for updates!  Want to Start a Fluency Routine Tomorrow? If you want more on reading fluency for middle and high school students or you want to start implementing a reading fluency routine right now, check out the blog post, You Want Me to Add Fluency ?  Research Referenced to Inform this Article Casey, L. B., & Wright, L. H. (2022). Examining reading fluency and comprehension in middle school students with reading difficulties: Evidence from a cross-sectional study. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 40(3), 255-269. https://doi.org/10.1177/07342829211057809 Denton, C. A., Wexler, J., Vaughn, S., & Bryan, D. (2008). Intervention provided to linguistically diverse middle school students with severe reading difficulties. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 23(2), 79–89. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ790878 . Heistad, D. (2008). The effects of Read Naturally on fluency and reading comprehension: A supplemental service intervention (four-school study) [Unpublished manuscript]. https://www.readnaturally.com/userfiles/ckfiles/files/heistad-study_4schools.pdf . Kim, J. S., Hemphill, L., Troyer, M., Thomson, J. M., Jones, S. M., LaRusso, M. D., & Donovan, S. (2017). Engaging struggling adolescent readers to improve reading skills. Reading Research Quarterly, 52(3), 357–382. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1146095 . Liben & Liben, 2022. Improving Foundation Reading for Older Readers: A Problem of Practice. Manset-Williamson, G., & Nelson, J. M. (2005). Balanced, strategic reading instruction for upper elementary and middle school students with reading disabilities: A comparative study of two approaches. Learning Disability Quarterly, 28(1), 59–74. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ710417 . Reed, D. K., Aloe, A. M., Reeger, A. J., & Folsom, J. S. (2019). Defining summer gain among elementary students with or at-risk for reading disabilities. Exceptional Children, 85(4), 413–431. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1219248 . Sprague, K., Zaller, C., Kite, A., & Hussar, K. (2012). Springfield-Chicopee School Districts Striving Readers (SR) program. Final report years 1–5: Evaluation of implementation and impact. The Education Alliance at Brown University. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED600926 . Toste, J. R., Capin, P., Williams, K. J., Cho, E., & Vaughn, S. (2019). Replication of an experimental study investigating the efficacy of a multisyllabic word reading intervention with and without motivational beliefs training for struggling readers. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 52(1), 45–58. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1199704 . Vaughn, S., Solís, M., Miciak, J., Taylor, W. P., & Fletcher, J. M. (2016). Effects from a randomized control trial comparing researcher and school-implemented treatments with fourth graders with significant reading difficulties. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 9(sup1), 23– 44. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1115339 . Wanzek, J., Petscher, Y., Al Otaiba, S., Rivas, B. K., Jones, F. G., Kent, S. C., Schatschneider, C., & Mehta, P. (2017). Effects of a yearlong supplemental reading intervention for students with reading difficulties in fourth grade. Journal of Educational Psychology, 109(8), 1103–1119. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1160638 . Zimmermann, L. M., Reed, D. K., & Aloe, A. M. (2021). A meta-analysis of non-repetitive reading fluency interventions for students with reading difficulties. Remedial and Special Education, 42(2), 78– 93. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1287974 .

A Fangirl Moment When I was a classroom teacher, I consistently used Grammar Girl’s “Quick and Dirty Tips” to help students improve their writing. To say I was a fan of Mignon Fogarty is to put it mildly. Her work on grammar supported my students work with language for years . Students would read a short article like “How to Use Commas”  and apply it to an essay they were drafting on the causes of the French Revolution. I would turn an article on “ affect vs. effect ” into a short lesson on language that students would apply to their summaries on the impacts of famine in post-colonial West Africa. Fast forward a decade: I’m living in Reno and a good friend actually knows Mignon. As in, has lunch with THE Grammar Girl. Still a fan-girl, I was always envious. And then I had to do a double take when said friend introduced me to THE Grammar Girl over email with the subject line of “questions about literacy”. Mignon and I connected and had a long conversation about the literacy landscape in the US. This led to a podcast on the same subject. If anyone had told me when I was teaching “ affect vs. effect ” that I would later be a guest on Grammar Girl’s podcast I would have laughed at the idea. And now I find myself delighted to have had the opportunity.  Our Conversation Mignon and I talked about national literacy rates, why literacy rates are so low for Americans of all ages, and what you can do for readers in your life (both young and old!). In this excerpt, we are chatting about some of my favorite moments teaching high school students who could not yet read at grade leve l. You can get the full conversation at the links below: Watch:  https://youtu.be/mLwMZ3sf2cM Read:  https://grammar-girl.simplecast.com/episodes/crist/transcript Listen:  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-kids-cant-read-and-what-we-can-do-about-it-with-kate-crist/id173429229?i=1000698059752 Subscribers will get bonus content - Mignon and chat about what really is the science of reading?  Literacy Resources In the Grammar Girl podcast I name a number of resou rces. You can get a full list here . I thought it was worth re-listing some of those reso urces here. They are a bit of departure from this blog’s usual focus on secondary literacy, but they are worth exploring if you want to better understand the national literacy challenge and/or help readers in your life.  Curious about national literacy rates? Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)   Curious about why literacy rates are so low in this country? The Right to Read  The Truth About Reading  Sold a Story   Curious about how to help the readers in your life?  These Family Guides  from Seek Common Ground are designed to help adults better understand what their kiddos should know and be able to do at each grade level.  To understand how we learn to read, this graphic guide cannot be beat: How We Read  (It was written for adolescent students, it’s great for adults too.) Quite a few materials are made for parents to use at home to support skilled reading. I have used some portion of these with all my own kis: Reading Buddies , Toddlers Can Read,   Learning Dynamics , How to Teach your Kid to Read in 100 easy lessons   For older readers: check out City Stories  books and this set of recommendations from the Literacy Architects  (and if you want to get super nerdy, this article from Reading Rockets ). FULCRUM  has a great set of resources to help you advocate for better literacy outcomes in your local school or district.  Do you have resources you use to support the readers in your life? Have you listened, read, and still have questions? Comment below! 👇🏼

Why fluency routines matter in secondary school & how you can use them (tomorrow) Do your students struggle to read class materials? If you are a middle or high school teacher whose students struggle to read core texts in your class, this post is for you. Maybe you dread asking students to read aloud because they refuse to or they stumble awkwardly through the passage. Possibly, only a few students will read that novel at home. Perhaps when you assign students to read the textbook in class, only a small handful do. Getting students who have been denied reading skills to read something complex on their own is a real problem for many of us in middle and high schools.  The challenge is as a secondary teacher you have content to cover - chemistry experiments to do, Before the Ever After  to read, U.S. Reconstruction documents to engage with. You don’t have time to teach adolescent students reading skills. If you had the time, you might not even know where to start. Here’s the thing - students can accelerate their reading skills while focusing on course content . Really! Fluency routines are the way. Let’s see why and how you can use them.  But first…what is reading fluency and why should I care about it? Oral reading fluency can be described as how students sound when they read grade level text. Specifically, fluent readers can read a text with:  Speed: an appropriate rate Accuracy: word recognition with automaticity Prosody: proper expression akin to normal speech Those students of yours who stumble through reading course texts out loud? Those students are not fluent readers. And the important thing to know here is that students who do not read fluently do not comprehend what they are reading; too much of their cognition is caught-up in attempting to decode each word. However, once students know what the words say (decoding text), they can get down to the business of exploring what the words mean (comprehending text). Therefore, improving reading fluency gives students access to those challenging texts  and makes possible the hard work central to your discipline. Using fluency routines will support learning how to turn pennies into gold, exploring the disillusionment of dreams in Before the Ever After , and arguing about to what extent the Reconstruction Era was an unfinished revolution.  How can I figure out if my students need fluency routines?  Most high school students are not proficient readers . This is, of course, no fault of their own. Previous schooling denied them access to grade level reading skills. But here they are, just the same. And students deserve access to reading skills. If you are unsure if your students are meeting grade level fluency expectations, you can find out by using an evidence-based assessment. Using such measures are key to understanding your students’ current fluency needs - they give reliable data so that strategic supports meet actual needs and interrupt biases we all have about which students can or cannot read. One easily implemented assessment is determining a student’s reading rate, known as Words Correct Per Minute (WCPM). To measure WCPM, have a student read aloud for 60 seconds from a grade level  passage (note: this means the grade students are currently in). After 60 seconds, count the number of words students read correctly. That’s your WCPM score. Anything below 150 likely means the student could use some fluency support. (Want more information or assessment types? Check out Tim Rasinski’s fluency assessments and resources  for the Ohio Literacy Alliance. They are fantastic.) I’m in. How do I use fluency routines in my classroom? In a nutshell, fluency practice will look like:   Step Zero: Text Selection Select a single text passage you will use for each routine throughout the week. Fluency is built through repetition. So pick something worth rereading for its complex structure, key information, centrality to the unit, unusual syntax, raw beauty, or other reasons compelling to your discipline. The text must be a grade level one so that grade level skills are developed.  Step One: Model Reading Provide a fluent model of the text read aloud. You can read aloud or give students an audio recording of the text. Disfluent students hearing disfluent models are not helpful (or kind). Note : Students must track the text with their eyes as they hear the fluent model. Though middle and high school students will rarely use a finger to track, asking them to use their pencils to follow along word-for-word usually does the trick. Step Two: Fluency Routine Engage in a short routine - choral  reading, echo  reading, and paired  reading are a few favorites. You can find more evidence-based fluency routines here .  Step Three: Connect to Comprehension Do a vocabulary or comprehension task after reading. These tasks can be sourced from your course materials. Use 2-3 comprehension questions or do some text-based vocabulary work. These tasks extend fluency work to knowledge building and word recognition. Steps 1 through 3 should take about 10 minutes. This means any time students are reading grade level text in your classroom, you can integrate fluency work. Do this a few times throughout the week and students on on their way to accelerating their reading skills. Better yet, join with a team of teachers and you each implement fluency routines in various content areas 2 to 3 times a week. Now you have reading acceleration across content areas.   But will students DO fluency work?  In short - they sure will. Students want to be able to access class materials, they just haven’t been given the reading skills to do so. You can make clear that the work of fluency routines will provide them reading skills. When introducing fluency routines into your classroom, consider a combination of transparency, giving students small wins, and providing the space for students to own the work. Some ideas to consider: Start with a mea culpa on behalf of the school system : the fact that students cannot yet read at grade level has nothing whatsoever to do with a student’s intelligence and everything to do with bad instruction. A student’s current gap can be mended with their hard work. Make a deal  with students; if they do the work, they will get better at reading.  Give a little more 'why' on the importance of fluency work and expand on the concept of reading having no connection to intelligence.  The graphic guide, How We Read makes clear what reading skills are and how to develop them. The text can be paired with this close reading  lesson. Both resources help students understand how decoding, word recognition, and fluency impact their reading skills.  Ground the work in empowering students to be agents of their own literacy. Students could decide how they will engage in the work and track their own progress. Make space for students’ identities and assets within the context of building reading fluency.    Finally, a reminder that our own biases about our students can often cloud our judgment of their engagement. Rather than seeing students’ unwillingness to engage in fluency routines as oppositional, lazy, or not valuing literacy, ask how you are framing the work, how you are putting students in the center as experts, and how you are valuing their voice in the process. It is our job as teachers to make sure students can read.  AND, don’t forget to revel in the magic that is being able to read. There is deep joy in this work!

written by Brandon White & Kate Crist  edited by Meredith Liben  Who We Are Missing in the Knowledge Conversation For those of us working in middle and high schools, we know from experience there are many, many students who cannot independently read and understand grade level complex text. Assessment data reflects this reality -  about 60% of secondary students  are not proficient on the National Assessment on Educational Progress (NAEP). This struggle for older students comes from inequitable reading instruction  in early grades. American literacy instruction is a deeply inequitable landscape. Those students who were not taught to read in grade school rarely receive the interventions they need in later grades and so the opportunity gap widens  throughout their education.  Part of this widening is due to a consistent lack of access to and experience with rigorous, rich, grade level material. Expectations for middle and high school students who cannot yet read at grade level are low. For many of us who work with such students, the thinking is: “ these students cannot read grade level text, so I will give them something they can access ”. However well intentioned, the result is that rather than reading a complex and compelling novel, students get something less: a PowerPoint summary, a simple excerpt of the novel, a less complex text, or the audio version of the book. While students can “do” this work, it is not rigorous, rich, grade level work. Providing a consistent diet of less rigorous and below grade level work only serves to extend the inequity of elementary schools straight into middle and high schools. What a high quality education requires is ensuring access to grade level materials . For each and every student.  Importantly, struggling to read does not mean struggling to think. All students are curious and passionate about a variety of subject matters and are capable of complex thoughts and ideas. Middle and high school classrooms should be places where this curiosity and passion can propel students to explore other worlds, critique narratives, and build complex identities. And here is the good news: even students struggling to read at grade level can and should do this work. The challenge of students not yet reading at grade level is a solvable  one. Older students can  accelerate  their reading skills.  However, they must have  grade level, complex, and diverse texts to do this critical work. Students cannot get better at something they do not do - in this case, reading grade level, complex, and diverse texts. To provide access to these texts, teachers can focus on intentionally leveraging existing funds of knowledge and building new knowledge.  Building Knowledge is a Key Accelerator for Reading Skills  The importance of knowledge building has a widening audience in elementary schools and deserves attention for older grades. A wide and deep knowledge base is essential for reading comprehension ; to meaningfully engage with secondary disciplines, students need a robust store of knowledge and vocabulary. Ideally, this is built in elementary grades. But here's the rub - because we haven’t done an adequate job teaching reading in the early grades, many students don’t often get the opportunity to build this robust knowledge store. In short, too many students do not know enough about enough topics to independently read complex texts in later grades. Therefore, we must strategically leverage existing funds of knowledge and build new ones to provide access to our grade level complex texts.  Consider for a moment a high school English Language Arts unit focused on the themes of ‘identity’ in the novel Passing . Tasks and supporting texts might explore ideas around identity, choice, and uncertainty.  But what if students know little or nothing about the setting of the novel, Harlem in the 1920s? How are they to grasp themes in the novel around race, identity, and choice without such contextual knowledge? Much less the novel's references, dialogues, vocabulary, and descriptions? Instead of grounding in themes, the unit on Passing  can be grounded in building understanding of Harlem in the 1920s by leveraging what students already know and adding to it to build a deep understanding of the topic. This knowledge will become the sticky, “mental Velcro” students need to then explore the  themes of identity and uncertainty present in Passing . Rather than detracting from the novel, this knowledge-building focus provides access into the rich and diverse text at the center of the unit.  Additionally, our disciplines in middle and high school do their work in specific content. Although literature, history, or and the sciences might connect along broad themes, they do their deep work in specifics. Consider: Historians explore themes of expanding and contracting civil rights, and do so via the study of the United States in the post-Civil War Reconstruction Era.  Physicists work on general relativity, and do so within a focus on spacetime and gravity.  Literature explores themes of uncertainty, identity, and choice against the backdrop of 1920s Harlem in the novel Passing .  In each of these, if students focus on the surface themes (e.g. expanding and contract civil rights) and do not engage with the work of the specific time and place (in this case, post-Civil War Reconstruction), they miss the opportunity of challenging content explored in compelling ways. Think of this opportunity as a wide river. Students stand on one bank with all their experience and desire, sometimes without the full battery of reading skills to get across. Grade level work stands on the other bank, with all its complexity and interest. Between the two you can build a bridge made of knowledge - the road must be rich in vocabulary and composed of interrelated, engaging topics. The cables supporting this bridge must be student interest and passion, making the bridge strong and stable. Such bridges remake the existing inequitable landscape by intentionally and strategically building knowledge  and vocabulary to access the grade level content.  How to Build the Knowledge Bridge   These bridges should exist as an essential part of any literacy-based content area - English Language Arts, the Sciences, and History-Social Studies. Students need to build different bodies of knowledge in all these different content areas because they each have their own knowledge demands and disciplinary specific literacy  skills. And while this work is good for all students, it is a critical bridge for those students who are not yet reading at grade level.  Enter the use of text sets: complex & diverse core text(s) supported with various conceptually related texts at different complexity levels. These text sets are centered on a coherent body of knowledge - a deep binding idea that anchors text selection and task design for units. Student interest matters a lot here, topics that anchor text sets should be compelling, relevant, and engaging. Such text sets work to: Build student content knowledge and provide access to the more complex core text(s). Tools like Knowledge Maps  are helpful for 6-12 curricular analysis to identify what knowledge is built, how and when it's built, and who it's built for.  Develop the interlocking information and word knowledge students need to access unit texts and those to come in later grades. Think of this interlocking information like “mental Velcro” - more information on the same topic creates a stronger and more sticky base of knowledge. Sharpen students’ socio-political consciousness and criticality . This is work that many adolescents are eager to do.  What Does a Topic-Based Unit Look Like?  Let’s take two different ELA curricular examples: One unit titled “People and the Environment” and another titled “Things Fall Apart”. As you read through their unit tit;e, unit assessment, and core text list, consider: What is the knowledge building focus in each? How does each use text(s) to build a coherent body of knowledge? How does the unit assessment leverage the knowledge built via the listed texts?  Unit Title  Unit Assessment Texts  People and the Environment  How have the texts in this unit changed or reinforced your perspective about the relationship between people and the environment? Use at least two unit texts to support your response. “Lee Sherman and the Toxic Louisiana Bayou” by Arlie Hochschild “He—y, Come on Ou—t!” by Shinichi Hoshi (translated by Stanleigh Jones) “Song for the Turtles in the Gulf” by Linda Hogan  “Quiet Town” by Jason Gurley “The Sea Also Rises” by Ron Cassie  “Letter to Someone Living Fifty Years from Now” by Matthew Olzmann “Trophic Cascade” by Camille T. Dungy  Things Fall Apart  Write a character analysis of Okonkwo. In your analysis, consider how internal and external factors influence his relationships and contribute to his fate at the end of the novel. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats   Excerpts from “An African Voice” by Katie Bacon  “Igbo Culture and History” by Don Ohadike “The Colonial Era (1882-1960)” by the Harvard Divinity School “What Is Colonialism? A History of Violence, Control and Exploitation” by Jamila Osman   “Paintings Show the Casual Violence of Colonial Masters” by Eliza Anyangwe  “Art Historian Cécile Fromont Uncovers Kongo’s Christian Visual Culture” by Mike Cummings “Christianity’s African Roots” by Nana Ekua BrewHammond Both these units include a series of texts that seem  to be related. At a glance they seem to build knowledge. However, examining the text list for “People and the Environment”, you can see that the texts jump from place to place and impact to impact. The setting and context - the things we build knowledge around - are always changing so nothing is repeated or built one from the next.  In such a text set, there is very little time for students to construct their “mental Velcro” or add significantly to their stores of vocabulary. The effect is students are left with a series of fleeting impressions without any durable or meaningful learning. The topic of “People and the Environment” is not the problem, the shallow footing of its text set is. In contrast, the texts listed for the “Things Fall Apart” unit remain focused on a single place and time - the setting and context are repeated or build one from the next. This gives students the opportunity to build the knowledge and vocabulary needed to understand the setting of Things Fall Apart  and grapple with its complex themes, turning points, and character development.  Such topic-based unit design is a crucial equity move because it creates a coherent body of knowledge students can use to deeply analyze the novel. Later, this body of knowledge becomes part of bridges built to give students access to other texts. A focus on themes with shallow knowledge footings cannot build these bridges. The knowledge building curriculum therefore becomes not just engaging and meaningful for high school students, but acts as a critical literacy accelerator . What Our Students Can Gain Too many middle and high school students are underprepared and overwhelmed when engaging in complex texts. And these students have just a handful of years to strengthen their reading skills. The goal should be to graduate high school seniors with a full repertoire of robust literacy skills so they are confident and empowered to engage with the real world. Accelerating literacy is a move we must make now to ensure their success. Using topic-based units is one such move that can be made across core content literacy classrooms, English Language Arts chief among them. For some ELA teachers, these suggestions around knowledge building might feel like a strong departure from the usual focus of the discipline. However, we believe that far from abandoning the discipline you love, we are suggesting a return to its roots. Strategically building knowledge in your ELA classroom allows your students to explore the human condition and to further comprehend the context from which the human condition is created. In doing so, students are provided greater access to the interrelated texts and understanding of themes that might bind them. This is precisely the kind of disciplinary work we want to do in our ELA classrooms.  Literacy-based core content areas can position themselves as spaces deeply rooted in knowledge building to create bridges across opportunity gaps. This strategically built knowledge will create a flywheel of knowledge and vocabulary that propels adolescent student engagement into compelling topics and  themes. It is by learning about the world that students can engage meaningfully with large-scale themes like justice, betrayal, balancing of rights and responsibilities. This is the intellectual and material access all students deserve to wrap their passions around.

I recently had the privilege of attending a roundtable discussion hosted by Lexia, focused on the question: What does the science of reading mean in secondary settings? Researchers and practitioners were at the table - we represented both academia and the real world of middle and high schools. The conversation was illuminating and compelling. The take-aways are worth sharing and then pulling on. Fifty-Plus Years of Research First, the science of reading is a huge body of research - spanning over 50 years and representing many aspects of reading (the Reading League has a great definitional guide). This research has implications for teaching and learning in middle and high schools, though research in these spaces is harder to source than in elementary schools. Among these implications: the importance of morphology, fluency, and knowledge building. Critically important here was the fact that: content area teachers need some access to and practice with science-of-reading aligned instructional moves; reading specialists can and should help students who have so far been denied the opportunity to read at grade level; school building and system leaders need to support this work with professional learning, redesigned school structures, and quality instructional materials. Every teacher is a language teacher. Also discussed at length was the importance of language in how we learn - language is how we engage in literacy in the disciplines (reading, writing, speaking & listening). Rather than every teacher being a reading teacher, every teacher is a language teacher. Therefore, secondary teachers have an obligation to make the language of their discipline accessible to students. This might mean engaging in morphology in a social studies classroom, or fluency in practice in a science classroom. All of it should be done in the pursuit of accessing challenging content and engaging with that content in a disciplinary way. In other words, literacy accelerators in the name of accessing content. Student experience and outcomes matter. Finally, we all agreed that changing programs, instructional materials, and system structures can be great, but only when measured by the impact on students. In other words, student experience and outcomes matter. Deeply. How does literacy work in various content areas affirm or challenge students’ identity as Gholdy Muhammad reminds us? How does students’ coursework provide Rudine Sims Bishop’s windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors? How do the stories students studied and tasks they engaged in reflect the socio-political consciousness Gloria Ladson-Billings insists upon? As summer rolls into fall and my work with secondary educators continues, I want to pull further on these threads: How does the body of evidence we call "the science of reading" influence literacy teaching and learning in secondary schools? How do language and literacy act as access points to (or gatekeepers from!) content? How might aligned instruction empower and liberate students to engage in critical work?

Improving Literacy Outcomes for Secondary Students The Challenge In recent years there has been a groundswell of attention paid to early literacy instruction.  The work has been a multi-pronged effort by parent groups, educators, journalists, and field organizations to shift instructional practices, curriculum, teacher education, and education policy to better align with the science of reading. This attention is well deserved, as reading scores in the US have been dismal for decades. Where the attention has shifted the learning experiences of students, reading scores are improving (see reports on the Mississippi miracle, using Core Knowledge, and 3rd grade reading in Tennessee). There is, however, a compounding challenge we must also consider; the impact of decades of poor reading instruction. There are cohorts of students who were not successfully taught to read in the early years and were not provided the opportunity to gain those skills in later years. Some students are lucky - their parents have the financial means to provide for private reading tutors, others find themselves in schools that know how to address reading gaps in later grades. But these are the exceptions, not the norm. Currently in middle and high schools all over the country, there are  scores of students unable to independently read grade level material and who are being denied the right to read. When you talk to middle and high school students they can tell you about it. So too can their teachers. You can see the systemic challenge in reading data and in college remediation rates. The lack of grade level literacy in secondary schools is a pervasive and real problem. Bright Spots The good news is, this problem is totally solvable. Students who struggle to read at grade level today do not need to graduate still struggling. They can catch-up. These older students have the same right to read as younger students do. We owe them sustained solutions that support identity and community building, accelerate foundational skills, build disciplinary knowledge and vocabulary, and engage students in critical & relevant grade-level tasks. Some of those solutions have been done in schools for years - bright spots from teachers like Julie Brown and Larissa Phillips. Reading clinics have been using proven methods with clients in clinical, school, and carceral settings for decades. More recently, states like Tennessee have been turning policy and money to the challenge in secondary literacy. And in recent years, education organizations have started attending to the challenge with a focus on field research, model programs, and emerging work with districts. All of this attention is welcome. Moving the Needle Looking forward, this attention needs our collective foot on the gas. Each of us - be it in teacher preparation, classroom instruction, or state education policy - can focus our work on improving secondary literacy. While everything must get done, everyone does not need to do everything. Consider your position in the education system; what work can you do in your corner of the world to support and accelerate adolescent literacy? Collectively we can provide the intense focus and support needed to create lasting and sustainable changes for middle and high school students' literacy. As a classroom teacher: Do you know the strengths and weaknesses of your students’ literacy skills? What support might they need in word recognition, reading fluency, knowledge & vocabulary? As a school leader:  How can your school or district focus on the literacy experiences and outcomes of middle and high school students? In what ways do you provide the time and support for teachers to better know the literacy needs of their students and how to address them? As a professional learning provider: How does your support of teachers address the knowledge, pedagogy, and instructional practices necessary to meet the literacy needs of adolescents? As a curriculum writer (in a district or for a publisher): How can your materials provide just-in-time and strategic supports to build students’ reading skills within content areas, build coherent bodies of relevant knowledge and vocabulary, and regularly engage students in critical grade-level tasks? As a state and district leader: How might your policies around student assessment, course requirements, and teacher learning attend to the literacy needs of middle and high school students?  How do you fund and support school programming models, instructional materials, and professional learning to improve adolescent literacy? With multiple entry points into supporting the literacy of secondary students, there are numerous other questions we might ask. The point is for each of us to step into the work so we can get the needle moving.

So you've done the hard work of ensuring your high school classroom centers diverse and complex text...now what do you do?! You cannot just give students the texts and say, "Read! Tell me what you learned!" You have to support that engagement, and cross content learning moves can help. These moves are designed by high school teachers for their own use to center the reading, writing, and discussion tasks students must do to learn the content and skills in various disciplines. By using these moves, your students can understand the evidence under consideration, adjust their conceptions, and share their own compelling ideas and analysis. High school classrooms can be places where students build both literacy skills and content knowledge. What are Cross Content Learning Moves? Cross content learning moves support using class time to engage with relevant grade level work. They provide just-in-time text-specific support for students across literacy tasks: Reading moves focus on the content and construct of the text. Students get access to diverse, complex text through rereading, chunking, and other efficient scaffolds. Discussion moves give students the opportunity to clarify and adjust their own thinking on important subjects, using evidence from reading to engage in oral collaboration with their peers. Writing moves support students to capture and organize essential evidence, help them write compelling and complex sentences, and unlock the structure of longer writing tasks. What Does it Look Like in Other Schools? When I was a high school history teacher, I worked with a team of grade level teachers who used common learning moves. Our team consisted of a science teacher, a health teacher, an English teacher, and myself. We selected just three common learning moves:Text Annotations, Save the Last Word, and Sentence Summarization. We committed to regularly pairing these moves with course texts and tasks. Our goal was to see increased engagement with grade level course materials. While a little clunky at the start, in just a few weeks we saw enormous benefit. We saw an increase in engagement with grade level work - students were reading core texts, grappling with what they meant, and using evidence from texts in their peer discussions and individual writings. We saw other unexpected benefits too. Students recognized the learning moves from class to class and were able to make them their own. They employed the learning moves in clever and helpful ways beyond what we had originally assigned. Additionally, we as teachers could compare student work from class to class. This allowed us to learn from our students and one another about how to best support rigorous work. Other high schools and districts have engaged in similar shared writing practice, literacy moves, and phonics instruction to great results. The work to engage with shared learning moves may not be easy to start, but it is so worthwhile. Wondering How to Get Started? Start small. To start using such learning moves in your own school or district, consider starting small. You can work with a group of teachers, maybe with your own content area or across a grade level. As a collaborative, discuss the needs of your students and content areas. Use these findings to select a short list of moves you all commit to using. Implement the moves and compare notes. After a few times implementing, ask students how the learning moves are helpful or not. Get together with your teacher team to compare student work and discuss what is going well and what needs to be adjusted. Iterate. Based on these experiences, make the necessary adjustments and try again. To help get you started, some of Education 4500’s favorite moves are listed and described below. Interested in learning more? Perhaps you want to design such learning moves for your own school, department, or classroom? Reach out to info@education4500.com - we love partnering with educators.