All students can engage with complex texts with Lenses on Literature.
Testing day was not going well. My 10th graders were supposed to be reading an excerpt from Things Fall Apart and analyzing character development, but at least three students were sleeping, a few others were crying, and I had to beg one not to crumple their paper and walk out of the room.
I didn’t understand. My students read every single day. I knew every student’s reading level and gave them personalized leveled texts that matched their interests and their current level.
My students participated in class and completed every worksheet I gave them. Sure, we hadn’t covered every standard, but they were reading and writing!
What I thought was good scaffolding had actually held my students back. I used resources that were supposed to help struggling readers but instead kept them from doing the thinking work required for their grade level.
I needed to change the way I scaffolded instruction, and I needed to give my students the kind of tools that would help them not just get through the class period but grow into the lifelong readers, writers, and thinkers that I knew they could be.
Let me tell you what I wish I knew then.
Why should all students engage with complex texts and tasks?
It’s not that leveled texts are the enemy. They are an incredibly helpful tool for fostering students’ reading stamina and independence, but they are just one tool in your toolbox.
The greatest lesson that my 10th graders taught me was that I couldn’t just rely on leveled texts to meet my students’ wide range of needs. They needed more. They deserved a teacher who helped them engage with complex texts every day, not just when it came time for a big assessment.
Students who engage with complex texts have to grapple with complicated language and tricky sentence and paragraph structures. Determining layers of meaning within a complex text helps students develop transferable skills that make them stronger readers and thinkers.
Research shows that when we use grade-level curriculum and materials, all students benefit. Students who enter a school year below grade-level improve when they receive grade-level instruction from day one, rather than building up to it over weeks or months.
What kinds of scaffolding can make this possible?
Logically, I knew that my students needed more opportunities to engage with complex texts and grade-level instruction. But I worried that my students would shut down when faced with harder reading.
What I needed was to rethink my understanding of scaffolding. I needed tools that didn’t alter the text or the task but instead created a pathway for all of my students to master grade-level content.
Examples of effective scaffolding include:
Teachers have to add countless hours to their planning to build these scaffolds into each lesson. It takes time to personalize these supports for the wide range of learners, which often leads to teachers falling back on leveled texts and below-grade-level tasks.
It’s for this reason that our new ELA curriculum, Lenses on Literature, offers seven levels of embedded learner supports to ensure that all grade 6-12 students can successfully engage with complex texts.
What are the seven levels of support in Lenses on Literature?
In Lenses on Literature, we know that each student’s needs are different, and not every student responds the same to a particular learning support. With that knowledge in mind, we have designed differentiation tools that prioritize levels of support based on assessment data, teacher observation, and students’ unique learning needs for a highly customizable student experience.
Our embedded learning supports ensure that every student has the tools they need to engage with complex texts. The seven levels are:
Core Support: Given what we know to be the needs of most students and teachers, we have embedded several accessibility measures and learner supports—like audio recordings for every text—into the core curriculum that every student can benefit from.
Light Support: These supports can be used for students who are close to proficient but need occasional prompting. Teachers may decide to assign light support—like embedded annotation cues or sentence frames—to students who have trouble with certain text types or need support with specific vocabulary.
Light Support-Multilingual Learner (MLL): Students receiving multilingual light support receive the same types of support as students using monolingual light support, as well as some access to content in their home language.
Moderate Support: These supports are for students who need multiple scaffolds to fully access the content. Moderate supports include additional vocabulary in the text and student exemplars.
Moderate Support-MLL: Students receive the same types of support as students using monolingual moderate support, along with more access to content in their home language.
Intensive Support: Students who require intensive support will receive all of the previously mentioned resources as well as modifications—like synonyms and visuals for vocabulary words—to streamline their thinking and prioritize focus skills.
Intensive Support-MLL: Students receive the same types of support as students using monolingual intensive support, but with all of the home language supports offered to Multilingual Learners.
The following table indicates which scaffolds are available to Lenses on Literature students for each of the seven levels of embedded support:
How would a teacher use this in a lesson?
Levels of Support can be adjusted for any activity. Supports are meant to be responsive to student needs, so the level of support needed in one unit may be reduced in the next, as appropriate.
I wasn’t wrong to want to personalize the scaffolds my students received, but I was only using one tool in my toolkit. A tool like embedded annotation cues can help students interact with a complex text, and with Levels of Support, I can change the frequency and types of cues students receive at each level. All of my students can get supports that meet them where they are, while still pushing them to engage with complex, grade-level instruction.
In this poem taken from the Lenses on Literature 6th grade curriculum, a teacher has set the level of support to Light for their student. In this case, the student will read through the first two paragraphs of the text, then be prompted with embedded annotation cues:
Because Lenses is a digital-first solution, this particular support can be provided for only the students who need it. Other students may require more intensive supports, while still others may not need any at all. Teachers can make text-by-text and student-by-student decisions to best promote standards-driven, grade-level literacy.
Empower students through effective scaffolding
It’s no wonder that my 10th graders couldn’t make the jump from a leveled reader in class to a challenging reading passage on a standardized test. I had spent too much time trying to bridge their individual reading levels with their grade level, and ultimately we never made it across. A better approach would have been to provide learning supports that gave them what they needed to be successful while still engaging in the productive struggle of learning.
You, too, can implement the learning supports mentioned above—regardless of your ELA curriculum. Doing so will help your students engage more meaningfully with complex texts, which, in turn, will help them achieve grade-level literacy starting on day one.
Tired of doing the heavy lifting yourself? Be sure to check out Lenses on Literature for an ELA core solution that embeds all seven levels of support for seamless integration in your classroom, school, or district. Find out how Lenses can help your students think critically, read joyfully, and write confidently.
Carolyn Foster is a Senior Instructional Designer at Carnegie Learning. She has spent more than 10 years as a Reading Specialist, supporting adolescent learners to develop critical literacy skills both in and out of the classroom. Her passion lies in the intersection of building community-based learning opportunities and the design and implementation of accessible, research-driven literacy instruction. She holds a B.A. from Catawba College and an M.A. from Teachers College, Columbia University.
Explore more related to this authorI needed to rethink my understanding of scaffolding. I needed tools that didn’t alter the text or the task but instead created a pathway for all of my students to master grade-level content.
Carolyn Foster
