Engaging adolescents in discussions about text
Dr. Janice Dole, who helped develop the Improving Adolescent Literacy Practice Guide, talks about the effectiveness of giving students opportunities for extended discussion of text meaning and interpretation.
Inference and informational text
This 6th grade teacher uses a simple photograph to help her students recognize all the information they can infer from a photo — a springboard into having the students work together to determine what they can infer from passage they read.
Learning to love text complexity
ELA teacher and literacy expert Carol Jago talks about the difference between readability and Lexile levels — and true text complexity.
Benefits and limits of comprehension strategies
ELA teacher and literacy expert Carol Jago says that comprehension strategies represent the things that good readers do all the time, and the goal is to “make them visible in order for them to go away.”
The critical reader
Literacy expert Nancy Frey says we should teach students to read critically — to question and interrogate the text they are reading. Students should ask, “whose voice is not represented?”
Using higher-order questions
Dr. Annemarie Palincsar discusses the importance of asking higher-order questions and how to build opportunities for deep explanations in the classroom.
