Tracy--

Indeed, difficulty and length multiply each other... hanging for an especially hard read is not bad for a short period, but may be too much for a long period. How to build stamina? Do the same kinds of things that I've recommended above but do in short doses (think in pages or numbers of word to be read). Start out with short texts or short pieces of text -- could be as short as a single sentence. When students show they can read the short piece well and maintain stamina, start increasing the length... 1 sentence, 2 sentences, 1 paragraph, 2 paragraphs, 25 words, 40 words, 70 words... keep doing that kind of exercise, stretching kids out for longer reads. Question them closely to make sure they are really reading it well. Don't make it a straight climb up... do 2-3 harder or longer reads, then drop back to some easier ones, and then ramp it up.

tim

Wilma--
Difficulty and complexity are different but related concepts. Difficulty has to do with how hard someone finds a text to be (as measured by how well they comprehended, how long it took them to read, or their own self judgment). Complexity has to do with a series of continua that exist across texts... vocabulary varies in terms of how common the words are, how abstract they are, their numbers of potential meanings, whether the words are in embedded in idiomatic expressions, etc.; syntax varies in terms of how long and complicated the sentences are, the amount of embedding, etc. We can go through that for pretty much every feature of text: cohesion, organization, relationship of text to graphics, including the content -- depth, level of detail, explicitness of the content.
More complexity overall tends to increase difficulty -- but that is not always the case. Fifth grade books are more complex than 2nd grade books and yet at your reading level, switching from one to the other is not a problem. Similarly, a student might find a book on a familiar topic to be quite readable, even if similarly complex texts on less familiar topics would not be.
I usually depend on readability formulas, like Lexiles, to give me a rough sense of the relative difficulty of a text. That will provide a reasonable approximation -- this text may be a little hard for 2nd graders. I'll give it a read myself looking to see what the potential barriers to understanding (those complexity features). That way I can focus some instruction on those features (or at least some comprehension questions to see which ones are problematic for my students).

In the example in this blog entry, I am really just looking for text difficult -- for these students -- since the way I'm going to try to get them to deal with the features isn't through direct feature instruction but through rereading. I only needed a text hard enough that my students wouldn't do well with it on a first read.

tim

Something else to think about also is how hard is too hard for a student? Frustrating texts, more frequently than not, are going to cause students to become frustrated and feel demoralized. Disengaging the learner like that is devastating to reading instruction.

Taylor--

That has been claimed for a long time, but research hasn't been able to find that kind of disaffection. In fact, placing kids in texts that we would have said would be frustrating are improving kids reading better than the easier texts. The idea that harder means frustrating, just isn't true.

tim

It is disappointing to me that this research is not more widely touted in teacher education, professional development, and among district curriculum decision makers. I visit many schools who use the workshop model or Fountas & Pinnell Guided Reading protocols that limit students’ reading to their “instructional level.” Many schools have totally abandoned the shared reading of rich, complex texts. When they do a shared reading of challenging text, it is often a short “close reading” exercise that is isolated from broader knowledge building or wrestling with complex issues. Thanks for explaining this so clearly with good examples. Hopefully, your broad influence will move the needle a bit on this issue.

How does this article inform the Balanced Reading Approach (aka Fountas and Pinnell) to learning to read? Balanced Reading is based on a theory of action that students can improve their reading ability and comprehension through an exposure to increasing levels of text complexity. In my view Balanced Reading is based on a failed theory of action that reading ability can be acquired in the same way that oral language is acquired through increased exposure. As you argue, reading must be taught. As Chomsky argues the ability to acquire oral language is hard-wired in the brain and requires minimal exposure to be acquired. Reading is different. It must be explicitly taught. What are your thoughts? Have you read The Fog of Education?

William --
For 150 years, reading educators have claimed that students had to read texts that they could read easily if they were to learn to read. For the past 70 years, the advice has been much more pointed-- with claims that there were particular ways to match kids to books that somehow improved reading achievement... Fountas & Pinnell's version of Guided Reading is a popular example of that. Over the past couple of decades, however, research has been accumulating that suggests that students (Grades 2-12) make greater learning progress when they work with relatively harder texts. Teaching kids with texts that they can read with 95% word reading accuracy and 75-89% reading comprehension on a cold read with no assistance simply gives them too little opportunity to figure anything out that would help them read better. My point here is that if teachers are going to follow the research -- and they should -- they should worry less about how well kids read on a first swing, and how they can help kids to improve on a second (figuring out what stumped you the first time contributes more to learning).

tim

Tim,

A reply to you from my earlier comment(Sorry I cannot directly reply on the thread!). I'm talking texts that are <90% and below for students to decode are too hard. Is this what you're referring to also that research is saying is okay for students to work on? It's been my own personal experience as a reading specialist that typically when students are given these too hard texts to try they want to just put them down.

-Taylor

Taylor--
Research studies have found that the kids who make the greatest learning gains in reading are working with texts that are considerably harder than that (80-85%). I don't believe that a particular level of difficulty will consistently result in the most learning, but suspect that the critical ratio is the difficulty of the text to the amount of support that teachers provide. The harder the text, the more instructional support that is necessary (rereading is one of those supports -- vocabulary instruction is another). Except with beginning readers, there is no good reason to protect kids from harder texts unless you expect the kids to do this reading on their own. Otherwise putting kids in easy texts limits the amount they can learn from that text.
tim

Tim,

Just curious. Clearly there are individuals differences in childrens abilities to comprehend just as there are in learning to read (i.e. phonemic awareness, etc.). Are you aware of anybody having tackled the question, "at a basic brain level what is to language comprehension that phonemic awareness is to decoding"? Said differently, what is the neurological code of comprehension that separates good comprehenders from tose who struggle to comprehend? I see many kids who haver excellent decoding skills and average or above vocabulary, no ADD/ADHD, who are not in an impoverished home or school environments, yet have seriously impaired oral and written language comprehension.

Paul--

I do not, but that is not surprising. For most of the history of those kinds of neurological study, they were only able to see what was going on during the reading of a single word (yes, most of the neurological study of reading is not reading in the sense of reading text but of reading single words). They can now do a bit better than that and we are seeing some studies of certain aspects of grammar, etc. It will likely be awhile before that kind of research will be the source of exciting hypotheses.

tim

It's just like physical exercise. Any given exercise is always hard at first but once done over but not repetively the growth of the muscle and the reason for exercise becomes clearer and has better outcomes of growth.

My question is not of particular intellectual challenge. Where can I retrieve a copy of the vintage-looking graphic of the woman reading - shown at the beginning of the blog? It reminds me of my mother when she was young, and she was an avid reader. I'd like to frame it and put it on my porch.

Thank you.

Rereading, or more specifically repeated readings, is something many of my students balk at. We already read that... Do you have any suggestions on how to model rereading especially for struggling readers? Any suggestions for strategies to each them in an intervention setting that would support what they might encounter in a content area class at grade level?

Sana--

There are two reasons to reread: (1) repeated reading refers to orally rereading text, this is done to develop fluency -- the ability to read text accurately, with automaticity, and with the ability to do some first level interpretation of a text, such as pausing in the meaningful places; and (2) to provide a deeper interpretation of a text (to identify information that wasn't noticed or appreciated the first time around). Depending on your students' needs either or both of those purposes may come into play.

For the second one of these, it is important that the texts be demanding enough that students will benefit from rereading (benefit in the sense of improving their comprehension). That means more demanding texts and more incisive questioning.

tim