Provide Access to Challenging Text
Kids learn from engaging with academic texts.
About this practice...
Social studies texts are challenging for most students, but especially for ELs, because they are packed with complex sentences, abstract ideas, and difficult vocabulary. However, research shows that ELs and struggling readers benefit from engaging with text with appropriate supports for comprehension. Supporting students in reading challenging text involves connecting the text to the unit’s big ideas, including visuals to aid in understanding key ideas, accommodating a range of reading levels, and including prompts that engage students in peer discourse. Two text-reading strategies are illustrated here: Foregrounding Content and Paired Reading.
In foregrounding key ideas and vocabulary, effective teachers intentionally structure reading tasks that lead students to make connections with the unit’s big ideas, with built-in scaffolds to support varied reading levels. As students read text with peers in manageable chunks, teachers guide students to discuss the key ideas. Likewise, activities that highlight academic vocabulary support students’ use of oral and written language to demonstrate their content knowledge.
Options for Providing Access to Challenging Text
Foregrounding Content: Comprehension Canopy
Effective teachers create ways to make connections between what they are reading and the unit’s big ideas, while also making it engaging for a range of students. Foregrounding content activates and builds background knowledge prior to reading. In the WorldGen curriculum, we use a routine developed through extensive research, called
The Comprehension Canopy that explicitly connects new concepts and vocabulary to prior learning. At the start of each unit, the Comprehension Canopy activates and builds students’ background knowledge, enhances motivation and establishes a clear purpose for reading. Also in the Comprehension Canopy, teachers introduce key vocabulary and assist students in making connections to the words’ meaning and how they are used in this social studies context. The main emphasis is to prepare and motivate students to read the social studies text by making transparent connections between the historical topics and their lives.
How it Works:
Note: these activities can be used separately or in combination. For example, a paired reading might involve finding text evidence.
Create a central comprehension question that will guide students as they read and discuss the text. Find a short video or create a collection of interesting images to display when introducing the topic.
Introduce the reading and activate prior knowledge. Briefly explain the topic of the reading and why it is important. Ask a few guiding questions to gauge students’ background knowledge.
Present the video or photo collection to deepen students’ background knowledge in preparation for reading. These visual images provide a backdrop for reading about the topic in more detail. Pose a question that enables students to make a personal connection with the topic and direct students to Turn and Talk with a partner for a brief discussion.
Pose a critical question that will guide students’ thinking as they read. Explain that they use this question as a guide for the oral or written activity that will follow the reading.
Paired Reading
Paired reading has been used effectively by teachers across ages and subject areas. This evidence-based strategy pairs a stronger reader with a less proficient reader to take turns reading aloud, encouraging each other, and engaging in an oral or written activity. In the WorldGen curriculum, paired reading activities occur as a follow-up to a whole-class reading of a difficult passage. In this way, as students read with a partner, they are familiar with the topic and vocabulary, making the accompanying knowledge application activity easier. The focus of rereading a passage with a partner is to further engage ELs in using key ideas and words in oral and written text-focused follow-up activities. Teachers present a question or written activity that is accomplished by rereading a passage of text and finding pieces of text evidence to support arguments. By engaging with a supportive peer, ELs are more comfortable in using oral and written language to demonstrate their understanding.
An important aim for teachers is teaching students to find relevant text evidence and apply it to deepening understanding of content. Activities that accompany a paired reading should involve identifying and analyzing text evidence. Relevant peer reading knowledge-application activities include such tasks as identifying evidence and rank ordering it in terms of relevance to an argument and making lists of pros and cons that support or refute an argument. Graphic organizers are another means of requiring students to apply text evidence to answering a question or solving a dilemma.
How it Works:
Establish reading partners. If possible, pair less competent readers with more competent students to foster peer support. As you monitor pairs over time, it may be necessary to regroup any pairs that are not supportive or productive.
Explicitly teach a paired reading routine. It may be helpful to post guidelines in the classroom.
Select a manageable chunk of text that can be read aloud in 5-10 minutes. This activity should entail rereading content that has already been covered in whole-class instruction. Make sure the passage is content-rich, focuses on a key concept, and includes essential vocabulary words that are highlighted in the unit or lesson.
Briefly explain the oral or written activity that will follow the read-aloud. Teachers may write a focus question on the board for an oral discussion or provide a graphic organizer or prompt for a written response. The format for the activity should be read and talk; read and write; or read, talk and write. Point out any key vocabulary terms they will encounter.
Direct students to read the passage aloud, taking turns reading aloud by paragraph. Students take turns in the roles of Reader and Listener. When the designated reader reads, the listener provides support by providing positive feedback (e.g., “You read that smoothly.”) and offering corrections of any missed words. Then partners switch roles.
Following the reading, students summarize what they read before completing the activity.
Teachers should circulate among the pairs to provide praise, encouragement, clarification or feedback, taking note of any particular difficulties.
Why is Providing Access to Challenging Text Effective?
There is ample evidence that reading and writing enhances social studies content knowledge as well as disciplinary literacy skills. However, rigorous social studies texts, especially primary source documents, pose particular challenges for ELs who may struggle with the language of a historical period, complex sentence structures and vocabulary in these texts. ELs face the dual challenge of learning academic content in English while also developing language proficiency. Social studies teachers often avoid the use of texts so that ELs do not experience frustration. However, this practice fails to nurture essential disciplinary literacy and language competency. Instead, it is important to teach students how to successfully engage with academic texts by creating scaffolded ways for students to delve deeply into selected chunks of content-rich text.
- Strong evidence supports making explicit connections between language development and literacy in tandem with content-rich instruction. Providing systematic instruction in conceptual and discipline-specific vocabulary and connecting it to content area text solidifies content learning (Baker et al., 2013; Capin et al., 2026; Hall et al., 2017; Lee et al., 2023).
- Using content-rich text in a discourse-rich environment with heterogeneous grouping of students enables students to use oral and written language to build academic language and communicate about discipline-specific ideas. (Martinez et al., 2024; Snow & Ucelli, 2009; Valdés, 2015)
- The comprehension canopy activates and builds background knowledge and pre-teaches key vocabulary prior to reading the text. The foregrounding activities, including posing a central question to be answered by the text, lead students to read with purpose. (Vaughn, et al., 2015; Vaughn & Wanzek, 2024)
- Foregrounding content, including vocabulary and discourse opportunities, reduces linguistic barriers for ELs. (Hogan et al., 2024; August, et al., 2014)
Citations
August, D, et al. (2014). Helping ELLs meet the Common Core State Standards for literacy in science: The impact of an instructional intervention focused on academic language. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 7(1), 54-82.
Hogan, E., Fishstrom, S., Andress, T. T., Martinez, L., & Vaughn, S. (2024). Instructional practices for secondary social studies teachers: Describing a curricular program designed to improve language, content knowledge and literacy outcomes for emergent bilinguals. TESOL Journal, 15(4), 1–20. https://doi-org.ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/10.1002/tesj.866
Vaughn, S., & Wanzek, J. (2024). Promoting Adolescents’ Comprehension of Text: Efficacy and Effectiveness. Remedial and Special Education, 45(1), 58-67.
Vaughn, S., Swanson, E. A., Fall, A.-M., Roberts, G., & Stillman-Spisak, S. J. (2015). Improving middle-school students’ knowledge and comprehension in social studies: A replication. Educational Psychology Review, 27(1), 31–50.