MATCHING STUDENTS WITH TEXT

Links to Related Posts:
A "JUST RIGHT" BEGINNING NOT "JUST RIGHT" BOOKS

Overview of this Page
 Matching students with text has emerged in Oakland Unified as a one of the most important tools in building the reading life of all students and of English Language Learners in

particular. In fact, one possible definition of a vibrant reading life might be: engagement with and comprehension of books that are "just right" in terms of difficulty. A mature reader, given freedom to choose, will select something that is neither too hard, nor too easy, and that she finds truly interesting. A mature reader also has ways of determining whether the book is "just right," though these criteria might not be conscious. A "just right" book allows the reader to feel generally comfortable and reasonably challenged in roughly the following three areas:

1. Vocabulary and background knowledge
2. Sentence structure and other language demands (including decoding demands for younger readers)
3. Complexity of meaning and overall text structure and text features, including graphics and other text feature supports

Of course, if a reader is motivated to read a text, she will be generally more open to struggling with the text until she achieves the comprehension she desires. 

For an English Language Learner, areas 1 and 2 on the list above can often stop their comprehension of text in ways that prevent them from grappling effectively with area 3. It is true that this foreclosure of meaning-making can happen with any reader, but ELLs seem more vulnerable to a text mismatch that keeps their reading from being productive, even when an assessment has apparently matched them with a book at their level. And too often we see ELLs passively accept a lack of meaning in texts they can decode or "get through" without meaningful understanding.
 
Generally, teachers use three resources to get students hooked into a "just right" book:

• Formative assessments such as running records to determine a student's level
• Leveled libraries that help students ball park a "just right" book for themselves or allow a teacher to provide students with an appropriate level text
• Direct teaching of strategies that students can employ to effectively choose texts for themselves

The links below will bring you to blog posts that address these three areas of text-to-student matching. You will see ambiguity and disagreement: welcome to the conversation.