The complexity, type, format, and diversity of texts matter for young readers of all proficiency levels.

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Over the last half-century, education researchers have devoted enormous amounts of effort to the goal of helping all students become proficient readers. Often, they’ve captured the public’s attention, as well. Most recently, the “science of reading” movement (Castles, Rastle, & Nation, 2018) has garnered considerable interest from the news media, prompted legislation in several states, and induced many teachers and districts to rethink their pedagogy and curricula. This movement, which draws from the research about reading acquisition in several disciplines, has largely focused on the development of foundational skills, and the resulting attention has led some states to enact policies that require teachers to provide more explicit and systematic instruction in decoding.

This attention to reading proficiency is certainly warranted, given that the ability to read underpins most kinds of academic achievement (Stanovich, 1986). However, while this groundswell of research into the how of reading instruction is deserved, we also need to understand the what of reading instruction — specifically, we need to learn more about the texts teachers use in the classroom. Texts are, after all, at the center of any reading activity.

Generations of scholars, beginning with Jeanne Chall (1967), have looked into this topic, asking which types of texts are best for beginning readers, but they’ve arrived at few definitive conclusions (e.g., Cheatham & Allor, 2012). And because researchers have focused so much of their attention on early reading instruction, they’ve reached even fewer conclusions about the features of text — such as complexity, text type (i.e., narrative or informational), format, and diversity of perspectives — that support readers who’ve moved beyond a beginning level of proficiency. Yet, as we describe here, each of these text features has been a focus of recent research, and the emerging work in this area can help educators provide better instruction to all students, of all ages and reading levels.

Text complexity

When it comes to the texts that are used for reading instruction, few topics have received as much attention as text complexity (Valencia, Wixson, & Pearson, 2014), which has to do with the inherent properties of the text — such as word length, sentence length, vocabulary, and cohesion — that contribute to its readability and consequent difficulty for readers.

New insights from research

One resounding conclusion from the research is that reading comprehension depends on recognizing the vast majority of the words in texts automatically and meaningfully (Amendum, Conradi, & Hiebert, 2018). Students who do not automatically recognize the majority of words in texts typically experience comprehension difficulties (Kieffer & Christodoulou, 2020). And once students become automatic in recognizing the majority of words in a text, they should move on to progressively more challenging texts (Adams, 2009) that provide new vocabulary and ideas, which are the basis for the background knowledge that underlies proficient reading (Harmon & Wood, 2018).

One resounding conclusion from the research is that reading comprehension depends on recognizing the vast majority of the words in texts automatically and meaningfully.

Over a decade ago, the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) brought some attention to this issue by calling for increased complexity in student texts (National Governors Association [NGA] Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers [CCSSO], 2010), but it was unclear as to precisely how much more challenging those texts should be, and why. The CCSS asserted that U.S. schoolbooks had declined in text complexity from 1960 to 2010, suggesting a need to return to earlier levels, at least. However, the studies referenced to support this conclusion were conducted in the 1970s and 1980s (e.g., Chall, Jacobs, & Baldwin, 1990), leaving open the question of whether more recent texts really were less complex. Schoolbooks can change substantially over time, as David Gamson, Xiaofel Lu, and Sarah Anne Eckert (2013) showed in an analysis of school texts over the 20th century. Over the last 75 years of the century, they found, 3rd-grade texts actually showed a slight increase in complexity, not a decline. An analysis that attended only to texts for beginning readers showed that the increase in the complexity of texts for beginning readers was especially great from the 1960s to the mid-2010s (Fitzgerald et al., 2016). During that time,  the number of challenge words in 1st-grade readers, which Jill Fitzgerald and colleagues (2016) defined as words that are predicted to occur after age seven in the oral-language environments of children, went from 1.5 per 1,000 words in 1962 to 46.9 per 1,000 words in the mid-2010s.

What research means for practice

Ensuring that students receive both accessible and challenging texts depends on attention to text diets — that is, all texts given to students over a school year and across the school years. Texts that support the automatic word recognition that underlies comprehension are especially important in the text diets of beginning and struggling readers who are unlikely to persevere when the challenge is too great. Challenging texts should consume an increasing portion of students’ text diets as their proficiency increases.

One way to expose students to more complex texts is to organize instruction around topically connected texts. Texts on the same topic are likely to share vocabulary, and the familiarity with terms that students have acquired from simpler texts will enable them to read increasingly challenging texts. For example, in the storybook Mummies in the Morning (Osborne, 2000), students will encounter words such as “sarcophagus,” “mummification,” and “funeral.” Familiarity with these words will mean that students can attend to learning more technical words, such as “natron,” “embalming,” and “canopic,” in the more complex informational text Mummies Made in Egypt (Aliki, 1985).

Narrative versus informational text

Even as late as the end of the 20th century, narrative texts (stories) were the mainstay in elementary English language arts (ELA) classrooms, and informational texts had almost no role (Duke, 2000). Since then, however, increasing the place of informational texts at the elementary level has become a priority. Such texts not only convey information about the world but also expose readers to varied text structures and academic vocabulary.

New insights from research

The increased attention to informational texts in classrooms stems from research on background knowledge. For example, the studies in the recent federally funded Reading for Understanding Initiative show how knowledge is both a cause and a consequence of reading comprehension (Pearson et al., 2020). It is a cause in that what readers know about a text — insights about text structures, author styles and views, vocabulary, and topic — influences comprehension. It is a consequence in that readers extend their knowledge of their social and natural worlds through the texts they read. To be sure, videos and audio content may also be sources of knowledge but, for many topics, texts are the primary place to learn about social and natural phenomena, especially those that are distant in time and space.

The centrality of knowledge to comprehension, however, hardly means that schools should use informational texts exclusively. It turns out, in fact, that both narrative and informational texts contribute to knowledge-building (Biber & Conrad, 2019). In particular, narratives are a source of knowledge about the challenges and obstacles humans face and how they solve problems (Heath, Smith, & Young, 2017).

Increasingly, these findings about the crucial role of knowledge in comprehension have led to policies that put informational text on an equal status with narrative text (NGA Center for Best Practices & CCSSO, 2010; National Assessment Governing Board, 2008). Further, classroom observations indicate that, by and large, teachers have followed these recommendations, although these changes may not yet be evident in students’ reading outcomes (Li, Beecher, & Cho, 2018).

What research means for practice

Topic clusters in elementary classrooms can include both informational and narrative texts, with each type serving a complementary function. For example, from a story about mummies, such as Mummies in the Morning (Osborne, 2010), students will get a sense of what mummies are and where they were kept, as they follow the book’s characters through a time-travel adventure to ancient Egypt. More background on the mummification process will come from an informational book, such as Mummies Made in Egypt (Aliki, 1985).

Thematic clusterings can also emphasize one text type. For example, students might read biographies with the purpose of identifying ways in which real people have overcome challenges, and another theme might be devoted to folk tales from different cultures. Experiences with both narrative and informational texts ensure that students attain the deep and wide knowledge that characterizes proficient reading.

Text format

Format refers to whether students access texts via a traditional medium (paper) or via a screen (computer or tablet) or audio version. The format through which students access text has received considerable attention of late, particularly following stints of at-home learning caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

New insights from research

What is clear from research is that the formats used to access the text do matter for reading development and comprehension. Evidence broadly suggests that reading on paper, rather than on screen, promotes better comprehension (Clinton, 2019; Delgado et al., 2018; Halamish & Elbaz, 2020). Moreover, it appears that students’ quality of engagement is higher when reading on paper than with digital tablets (Martin-Beltrán et al., 2017). The reasons suggested for why comprehension suffers with screens vary, but most research seems to point to issues with meta-comprehension: When reading on a screen, particularly as texts get longer and denser, many students struggle to track what they’re reading. Attention may be an issue, too, as it has been suggested that students are more likely to engage in mind wandering when reading on screens (Delgado & Salmerón, 2021). Addressing these challenges might be a matter of helping children unlearn some digital reading habits. For example, the skimming and scanning techniques students might use in many online contexts would compromise their comprehension of more sustained texts (Støle, Mangen, & Schwippert, 2020).

What about other formats, like audio? Having the teacher read a text aloud, or making an audio version of the text available, is a regularly observed practice in classrooms (Brenner, Hiebert, & Tompkins, 2009). Unfortunately, though, audiobooks hold few benefits over print for most students (Singh & Alexander, 2022). That said, for students who struggle with reading and  students who are learning English, there appear to be some benefits to listening to an audio version, as long as it is presented alongside, rather than instead of, the printed version.

What research means for practice

We’re not saying to pull the plug on the tablets! Sometimes we have to use digital texts out of necessity, convenience, or affordability. However, when using digital texts in elementary classrooms, we may want to focus some of our energies on considering the contexts and instructional supports that might better facilitate comprehension and learning. If students are less likely to remember key details or are more likely to be distracted when reading, it would be advisable to anchor their screen-reading experiences with some learning supports.

One option is to pair a traditional support with a reading task on a tablet or screen. For example, for those concerned that their students might just skim through the material without thinking about details or events, a printed graphic organizer could help students track their reading. If the graphic organizer is aligned with the structure of the text (i.e., a story map for a narrative text or a concept web for key idea and details), readers can be prompted to stop and fill in the organizer as they read, which will lead to better comprehension.

Supports can also be embedded into the digital format, depending on what software is available to the teacher, and teachers might also consider embedding questions or metacognitive prompts into the reading assignment. Another idea is to capitalize on the benefits of peer learning by, for example, using social annotation tools (often embedded in text software programs) that enable readers to see each other’s comments. Or it could simply involve partners reading alongside one another on screens and stopping at designated points (a paragraph, section, or page) to summarize and discuss the text.

Diversity of texts

When we refer to diversity of texts, we’re referring to the degree to which the stories and information included in our books reflect the diversity of our students and society. For example, does the children’s literature available to students include complex characters of differing races, ethnicities, religions, abilities, sexes, genders, and sexual identities (see Crisp et al., 2016)?

New insights from research

There is broad consensus that diversity in school texts matters and that the texts used in the classroom can be tools for culturally sustaining pedagogies (see Flores, Vlach, & Lammert, 2019; Souto-Manning, 2009). Still, despite advances in the diversification of texts in the children’s book industry over the last decade, the texts many students encounter in school, overall, tend to lack diversity. This includes the texts teachers read aloud (Conradi Smith, Young, & Core Yatzeck, 2022), texts in classroom libraries (Crisp et al., 2016), and texts in curricula. And ensuring diversity is not enough — we should also examine how characters and people are represented in texts. One study of the texts used in a popular literacy intervention found that in 70% of the fiction, people of color were depicted in ways that could be characterized as inferior, whereas white characters were more often characterized in positive ways (Thomas & Dyches, 2019).

Research studies have found significant benefits to providing students with diverse texts, offering them opportunities to both see themselves (“mirrors”) and see the lives of others (“windows”) through reading.

This lack of diversity defies emerging research underscoring the value of more representative texts. Students prefer texts where they can identify with characters (Cartledge et al., 2016); they feel affirmed when their perspectives are considered in texts (Vehabovic, 2021); and they sometimes change their perceptions and beliefs when reading about cultures that are different from their own (Ginsberg & Glenn, 2020). In short, research studies have found significant benefits to providing students with diverse texts, offering them opportunities both to see themselves (“mirrors”) and see the lives of others (“windows”) through reading (Bishop, 1990).

What research means for practice

The use of more diverse texts in the classroom is consistent with what we know about good pedagogy. When teachers draw upon texts that relate to students, they’re not only tapping into aspects of relevance and motivation, but they’re also building on the cultural capital of what students already bring to the learning experience — their “funds of knowledge” (Moll, 2019).

A first step to ensuring the diversity of classroom texts is for teachers to take stock of the texts currently in use. When conducting diversity audits of their classroom libraries and their lesson plans, teachers evaluate whose stories are being told and whose identities might be missing or presented in problematic ways.

However, it’s important not just to ensure that schools have and use more diverse texts. Teachers also need to learn how to think critically about texts, a stance Gholdy Muhammad (2020) refers to as criticality, which involves reflecting on the story being told to understand the dominant ideologies and perspectives presented. For instance, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas (2016) suggests a series of questions readers can ask to critically analyze texts, including, “What (or whose) view of the world, or kinds of behaviors, are presented as normal by the text?” and “Whose interests might be best served by the text?” (p. 116). Careful analysis of texts and thoughtful consideration of their impact on students has the potential to improve learning environments for both students from marginalized identities and those in the majority.

Remember the what

Efforts to ensure that all students can read have captured a lot of attention of late, which is understandable. But what texts students read matters, too. The texts we choose to use play central roles in students’ development as readers and in their understanding of the world, as well as themselves. Text complexity, type, format, and diversity are important elements of reading instruction that we hope don’t get lost in the ongoing debates about how to help students learn to read.

 

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This article appears in the May 2022 issue of Kappan, Vol. 103, No. 8, pp. 8-13.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

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Elfrieda H. Hiebert

ELFRIEDA H. HIEBERT is president and CEO of TextProject. She is the author of Teaching Words and How They Work: Small Changes for Big Vocabulary Results .

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Kristin Conradi Smith

KRISTIN CONRADI SMITH is an associate professor of reading education at William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA.