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TUTOR FOR UNDERSTANDING:

SECONDARY LITERACY

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OUR ESSENTIAL QUESTION

How do older readers navigate complex texts most effectively?

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LET’S START BY EXPLORING…

What makes a text complex?

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THREE-PART MODEL OF TEXT COMPLEXITY

Inherent to the Text:

  1. Quantitative Measures
  2. Qualitative Features

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Teacher Considerations

  1. Reader and Task

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LEXILE LEVEL

  • Represents text complexity as a numerical value – for example: 820L

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  • Determined by a computer

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  • Based on:
    • Sentence length
    • Word frequency

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COMPLEXITY: MORE THAN A NUMBER

(Taylor, 2016)

(Davies, 2001)

720 Lexile

720 Lexile

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THREE-PART MODEL OF TEXT COMPLEXITY

Inherent to the Text:

  1. Quantitative Measures
  2. Qualitative Features

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Teacher Considerations

  1. Reader and Task

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QUALITATIVE COMPLEXITY

Meaning

Structure

Language

Knowledge

Qualitative Features

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QUALITATIVE COMPLEXITY

Meaning

Structure

Language

Knowledge

Qualitative Features

  • Layers of meaning
  • Concept complexity
  • Subtle theme
  • Vocabulary
  • Sentence Length and Structure
  • Figurative Language
  • Historical Language or Dialects
  • Organization
  • Text Features
  • Connections between ideas
  • Content Knowledge
  • Disciplinary Knowledge
  • Intertextuality
  • Background and Experiences

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WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?

Meaning

Structure

Language

Knowledge

Qualitative Features

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BUILDING KNOWLEDGE DURING TUTORING SESSIONS

“Knowledge” is more than just putting more informational texts in front of students!

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It’s about intentionally building students’ knowledge of the world through engagement with rich texts, which in turn enables them to comprehend increasingly complex texts in the future.

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“KNOWLEDGE” AS A SUPPORT

Building Knowledge

Activating Knowledge

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WHAT IS “ACTIVATING KNOWLEDGE”?

  • Activating knowledge is “helping students bring relevant prior experiential knowledge to the foreground”
  • The goal of activating knowledge is to make it “more likely that [students] will use that knowledge to understand the text”

Cervetti and Hiebert, “Knowledge at the Center of ELA Instruction”

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HOW TO ACTIVATE KNOWLEDGE

Effective Opportunities to Activate Knowledge…

  • Are brief
  • Are tightly connected to the purpose for reading and the text’s big ideas
  • Facilitate discussion amongst students

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ACTIVATING KNOWLEDGE: EXAMPLES

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“KNOWLEDGE” AS A SUPPORT

Building Knowledge

Activating Knowledge

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CONCEPTUALLY COHERENT TEXT SETS

Conceptually coherent text sets should represent diversity of authors and genres while also providing coherence among the texts so that students systematically build knowledge of substantive texts and topics.

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CONCEPTUALLY COHERENT TEXT SETS ARE…

  • Closely connected around a single topic or concept�
  • A combination of literary, informational, and nonprint texts

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  • Intentionally sequenced to build knowledge and vocabulary

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THINK

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SHARE

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What is your key takeaway from today’s session?

What is your charge as a literacy tutor?

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ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

HERE