Preparing Your Students for Complex Texts

by UnboundEd

You’ve heard it time and time again; all students, regardless of their reading level when they arrive in the grade they find themselves in, deserve to be given access to grade-level texts. The consequences of not doing so are simply too high to ignore. Students who graduate from high school unprepared for the reading and writing expectations of college and the workforce are more likely to take on debt-incurring remedial courses, a lower paying career, and a life path they have significantly less control over. Literacy is freedom, and it’s on us to provide every student who steps through our doors that opportunity.

As educators, we know that you can’t simply replace leveled-readers with more complex texts and expect your students to make immediate leaps and bounds in reading comprehension. There are a number of necessary moves that come along with this shift, including increased instruction, preparation, and scaffolding.

To that end, we’re excited to share UnboundEd’s senior director of ELA, Alice Wiggins’ thoughts about what it takes to create the conditions necessary to prepare all students for grade-level texts. In this video, Alice talks about the moves necessary to prepare not only your students, but yourself, for the journey of diving into complex texts.

You’ll learn about:

  • Shifting the mindset away from the “deficit model” of how we view students to one that focuses instead on what we as educators have or have not provided in the past.
  • Engaging in complex texts in a manner that nudges students forward, without giving away meaning or frontloading.
Ask Yourself

What am I doing to prepare myself and my students for complex texts?

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