[00:00:05] Kate Winn: Hello to all you travellers out there on the road to evidence-based literacy instruction. I'm Kate Winn, classroom teacher and host of IDA Ontario's podcast Reading Road Trip. Welcome to the third episode of season four.
Before we get started, we would like to acknowledge that we are recording this podcast from the traditional land of the Mississauga Anishinaabe. We are grateful to live here and thank the generations of First Nations people for their care for and teachings about the Earth. We also recognize the contributions of Métis, Inuit and other Indigenous peoples in shaping our community and country.
Along with this acknowledgment and in the spirit of truth and reconciliation, we'd like to amplify the work of an Indigenous artist and today we are sharing the picture book On the Trapline written by David A. Robertson and illustrated by Julie Flett.
A picture book celebrating Indigenous culture and traditions. The Governor General Award-winning team behind When We Were Alone shares a story that honours our connections to our past and our grandfathers and fathers.
A boy and Mosham, his grandpa, take a trip together to visit a place of great meaning to Mosham. A trapline is where people hunt and live off the land, and it was where Mosham grew up. As they embark on their northern journey, the child repeatedly asks his grandfather, is this your trapline?
Along the way, the boy finds himself imagining what life was like two generations ago, a life that appears to be both different from and similar to his life now. This is a heartfelt story about memory, imagination, and intergenerational connection that perfectly captures the experience of a young child's wonder as he is introduced to places and stories that hold meaning for his family.
Add this title to your home or classroom library today.
And now on with the show.
[00:01:57] Kate Winn: I am so excited to introduce our guest this week here on Reading Road Trip. Dr. Sarah Lupo is an associate professor of Literacy Education in the Middle Secondary and Mathematics Department at James Madison University.
She has extensive teaching experience as an ESL teacher, English teacher, reading specialist, and literacy coach in grades K to 12 in Washington, D.C.; Istanbul, Turkey; Phoenix, Arizona; and Charlottesville, Virginia. Dr. Lupo has published dozens of articles and chapters in publications such as Review and Educational Research, Journal of Teacher Education, Reading Research Quarterly, Reading Teacher, Journal of Adult and Adolescent Literacy and Literacy Today, as well as three books including Tackling Tough Texts: A Strengths-Based Guide to Supporting Comprehension for Adolescents Grades 6 to 12 from Guilford, and that is what we're going to be talking about today. Her work focuses on translating research into practice to support all readers’ ability to read and understand challenging Texts across the disciplines. Her work strives to position all learners as capable and bringing cultural and linguistic assets to the reading experience.
Thank you so much for being here with us this week, Dr. Lupo.
[00:03:07] Dr. Sarah Lupo: Thanks for having me.
[00:03:09] Kate Winn: All right, so let's get to this book because you and your co authors, Dan Reynolds and Christine Hardigree wrote this. I read it early in 2025. I did a great big long Twitter thread with all of my takeaways. But I'm not going to give anything away yet because I think listeners want to hear about from you. So I'm going to start by just asking why? Did you see a need for this book?
[00:03:28] Dr. Sarah Lupo: Yeah, this is a book where I didn't really have like a, oh, I'm going to use this in a class or like I'm, you know, I'm writing this for this reason. This was really, I know a lot of teachers and they were really frustrated and struggling and were like, we don't know what to do. Like, we don't understand what we're supposed to do as teachers to help our kids with reading. And we're being told all these messages and they wanted to know more about the science of reading, but what did that actually mean for secondary? And so I really just saw a need to explain what reading can look like in the secondary spaces, what it could look like not just in ELA, but across all the subjects. Because I feel like reading impacts everything and how we could translate some of the science of reading really, into what would make sense for older readers.
[00:04:17] Kate Winn: And I think, you know, you're absolutely right. A lot of the science of reading, let's call it initiatives, have focused so much on the early years. And, you know, when terms of that word recognition piece, I know here in Ontario we had the Right to Read Inquiry, which told us that we were getting that piece wrong in a lot of ways. And so there has been, you know, good reason for some of that focus. And then, you know, a lot of the questions from those teachers of older grades, like, okay, but what about us? Because I know there's still some catch-up with the word reading piece, you know, with some kids who weren't given the instruction, perhaps they should have been in the early years. But, you know, even if kids did get what they needed in the early years, you still need to continue to teach them in those grades, right? So how, how's that supposed to look? Who would you say this book for specifically?
[00:04:58] Dr. Sarah Lupo: I mean, certainly ELA teachers would find it useful, but I also think science teachers, history teachers, I also think teachers who work with special children with special needs, so special educators, people who teach English language learners.
I've even had a few teachers who teach electives that use reading that have said they found some of the strategies helpful.
[00:05:23] Kate Winn: And that's what I loved, reading through it, thinking that, you know, like, of course, the language teacher, but in any of those other subjects where there's reading involved, those teachers are often like the science teacher, right, or the history teacher, doesn't often get a lot of information about this. And so I feel like it's a great book to hit all of those people. You have a really good chapter called What Do Adolescents Bring to Texts? So I'd like to ask you, what are some ways that we can connect to students’ identities, their communities and their home languages in terms of supporting literacy?
[00:05:54] Dr. Sarah Lupo: Yeah, I like how specific your question is, because sometimes we just talk about how we should do it and not what it looks like.
And I think that there's a few really simple ways that we can do it that I think are really helpful and are things that are very achievable for teachers. And so one thing that I love to do is I taught a lot of language learners in one of my positions. I worked at a school that had a refugee center. And so I had kids from all over the world, and I would give them the opportunity to write in whatever language they felt comfortable with some of the time.
And I loved going around and seeing their writing and having them explain to me some of the letters and characters in their languages which didn't use Roman Alphabet and just like, what their language meant. Oftentimes they would use a lot of English and then just sub in one or two words that they didn't know in English but they knew in their more comfortable language. And so I felt like it really, it was helping their English because they were able to actually get more out because they didn't have to worry about, like, oh, well, if I don't know that word, I'll just sub in my word instead.
And then I would come over and sometimes we would talk about what that word was in English. I felt like it was helping them learn English also.
And they would sort of explain to me, like, what that word meant in their language. And it was. It was really cool. So I think opportunities to speak or write in their home language speaking is always dependent on if there's someone they could speak with. And so sometimes I would have opportunities where I had multiple students with that language, and so I would give them a chance to chat together and then, you know, take away in English that they could share out for the whole class would work well.
And we know that it helps them process and learn the content better. So I found that helpful. I also think just like finding hook texts that show the relevance of that topic that you're covering in their communities. So I did a science unit in a community here in Virginia where there's just a lot of generational poverty.
Reading was not the thing for most of the kids in that school.
And they weren't really like, often treated as good readers. And they, you know, their test scores didn't show them as such.
But what we did for the science unit was we thought about like, what do they know? Like what can we connect to in their community? What knowledge do they have that we could bring in to connect to the science unit. And the unit was on the phase changes of matter. So like how matter changes phases at the particle level versus the in a more solid level and all of that. And so we thought about the idea of farming, which was big in that community, and how I found a local news article where a lot of people were getting sick from well water being contaminated because of poor farming practices.
And so we thought about, oh, that's like these changes of matter, you just, you can't see it in the water, but it's still there. Like that particle matter is actually in the water even though it's not visible anymore because now it's gotten mixed.
And the parents were so happy. They were like the kids were coming home and talking about the readings at dinner. They felt like they could bring their knowledge in. It was just fun.
And then I'd say along those lines, like doing a project with what they've learned that actually meets their community needs. So taking that subject and seeing how can they apply it in their community. So in that same, in that same unit, we had the kids then come up with solutions for the well water problem for the poor farming practices and then share them out and gave them some different ways they could share them with people in their community. So some of them made brochures, some of them did like a PSA that we could share at like a local celebration. And it was just really fun.
Great.
[00:09:28] Kate Winn: Those are all great ideas.
[00:09:30] Kate Winn: So before we get into all of your wonderful ideas for scaffolding texts, first I want to ask you about what the text should be, to start with.
What should students be reading in school? So we're talking about this grade 6 to 12 sort of range and what should we keep in mind when we're selecting texts for that age range of students?
[00:09:50] Dr. Sarah Lupo: Well, how much time do you have on the subject? I’m actually writing a chapter on this topic for a handbook on comprehension research, and so actually wrapping it up this week. So you're asking me at a time where I have a lot of thoughts on this, where I've really been thinking about this and actually have thought through some of it.
And I do think that, you know, thinking about the different challenges that texts present is one factor. So I want my students to read complex things.
Texts have present different challenges, which the book talks about. And so I want my students to be exposed to all these different kinds of challenges. So rather than, like, thinking about complexity in this very, like, it is or it isn't way, instead thinking about complexity in a nuanced way and, like, what is hard about it? And how can I make sure my students get exposure to all those challenges with good scaffolds?
But I think that, like, I think we've a little bit, as a society got into this idea of, like, complexity for complexity's sake. Like, I don't just want them to be exposed to all the different kinds of challenges in books just so they can be exposed to it. I want them to do it in these purposeful reading experiences. And so when I'm thinking about selecting my text, I think the first thing I think about is what is my purposeful learning experience? And it's not the literacy standards. As an ELA teacher, those are important, and those are good, but those are the vehicle, not the destination.
So, yeah, I think of it as, like, okay, well, if we're going to do a thematic unit on this topic, like, what are the texts that are going to get my students to think deeply about this topic? And then I'll go choose my standards later that will help us be able to understand and unpack that material, because the standards are what help us get there.
So I think that purposeful learning experience is really important.
I think building knowledge is important. I want my students to build relevant knowledge on topics. And so even as the ELA teacher, you know, I would often find myself when I taught, you know, middle and high school, like, reaching out to the science teacher and the history teacher and, like, what are you studying? How can I connect? What are some things that we can do to make this knowledge building relevant? Because for knowledge building, like, just picking any topic about science and history is not really knowledge building. Right? Like, we really need, we need to have things that you know, that students are supposed to be learning about that connect to other things that they're learning. And we also want to make sure that, like, the texts we pick for knowledge building, like, are good and quality texts on those topics.
So, you know, I think about, like, just including a text on George Washington that, you know, maybe, like, has some inaccuracies about his life and has some stories that, like, aren't really that relevant to, like, the actual standards about understanding his contributions isn't going to build their knowledge.
But something that has deep and interesting and nuanced information about some of the more complex things that he did to contribute to our society would actually build some knowledge. Sorry, that's a very American example.
[00:12:49] Kate Winn: That’s okay, I think Canadians know who George Washington is, too.
[00:12:51] Dr. Sarah Lupo: And then the last thing I've been thinking a lot about is critical thinking skills and just really wanting to develop that for my students.
The thing that I sort of have drawn a conclusion from in writing this chapter was that sometimes I think we confuse, like, just picking a topic where they can think critically versus a text that makes them use their critical thinking skills to understand the text. And so I found myself of late, like, really trying to seek texts that require more complex disciplinary thinking skills or texts that have multiple meanings that they're going to have to unpack so that they can do that. So that would be my last. My last thing.
[00:13:27] Kate Winn: No, that's great. And are you a supporter of text sets? Like reading more than one text on the same topic before kind of moving on?
[00:13:36] Dr. Sarah Lupo: I don't think we can read a single text on a topic. So I think, like, my underarching, under my overlying assumption is that we're going to read do thematic units where we can really go deep on a topic, connect to text. There might be different topics within that, but they connect to each other.
Because, you know, what the research tells us about comprehension is that we don't understand a text singularly. We understand it in context of the other things that we've read. And so I really want to make sure that my students can interpret a text in light of these other things that we've also read and make connections to that and things that contradict each other so that they read this and then read this and then have to, like, make sense of these two things that don't actually, you know, that are hard, you know, as middle and high school students, like, we need them to be learning how to do that.
[00:14:26] Kate Winn: Yeah, exactly. I know a lot of teachers can get hung up on the idea of like, a level.
But I think maybe the next question I'm going to go into will kind of help them a little bit - the rest of the book, or a lot of the book is all about five different considerations that can make texts tough. So in a minute, I'm going to ask you to give some examples for each. But for now, could you just list those five so listeners have an idea of where we're going?
[00:14:49] Dr. Sarah Lupo: Sure. So the challenges that students can face in text kind of fall into these, like, five, I call them like buckets. So, like, there's multiple things in each one, but I think of them as like a bucket that contains multiple things. So the first one is dense ideas. So just a text can have complex or abstract ideas that are hard to visualize, that multiple meanings that I was talking about, those are really like just hard text because the topic is hard and the concepts are hard. Knowledge demands is the next one. And so I'd say that sort of falls in two ways. Like, we want texts that actually require students to have to use their knowledge to make sense of the text, but we also want to help them, we want to activate what so they will actually use that knowledge to make sense of the text. So it sort of falls on both of those, and that knowledge demands. And the next is text structure. And so that's really how texts are organized. And at least here in the US I see a lot of folks get really good at teaching kids how to try to recognize the textual organization. So, like, cause effect for, like, expository texts or chronological order, problem solution. But really, like, we want to go a step further and we want to choose texts that have, that require understanding the structure to make sense of it. And just also understanding that, like, one text can contain multiple text structures, too.
Vocabulary and language, are they familiar with the words? I actually don't want them to be familiar with all the words because I want them to read text that they don't know all the words.
And then the last one really sits more with the reader, and it doesn't really apply to all of the readers that I've worked with in middle and high school, but it applies to a lot of them, and that's word reading. And so are they going to have trouble sounding out and reading the words accurately? And I'm okay if they do, I just need to know that so I can put a scaffold in place for them.
[00:16:34] Kate Winn: And I love. In the book, you've included a great text analysis tool which includes questions that teachers can ask themselves about each of these five features. Like, if they're considering a text, they can ask themselves these questions. There's like a chart. They can note their responses. You've got a couple of examples of what completed charts might look like, which is also great.
And am I understanding correctly that, you know, an eighth grade teacher, a grade eight, as we would say here, it's not so much like going to pick this text because it's at a grade 8 Lexile, according to this thing that I found. But instead, they could be looking at this in terms of those five different components of complexity and, and doing all of that to try to pick the best text for their students.
[00:17:12] Dr. Sarah Lupo: Yes, I would say yes to what you said, and I would add a little bit more to that. So, like, please, I would say, I would search for, in my thematic unit, in my connected text set, I would search for text that did contain all of those different kinds of challenges, just not all in the same text. I wouldn't worry so much about if the text is 8th grade or 9th grade or whatever. Those are quantitative features that give us, like, a ballpark of, like, how hard it is, but they only take into account, like, a few different things. So, like, quantitative features look at how long the words are, you know, with the assumption that, like, longer words make the text harder because they're bigger, people are less likely to know them, and shorter words make the text easier. Some of them look at word frequency or just the rareness of the word. And so those do play a play a role, but it's more nuanced than that, right, and I would look for, you know, texts that have longer and more complex sentences and syntax. I think one thing that I've noticed, you know, especially as I was a reading specialist in the secondary space, is that a lot of my kids could read fine and fluently, but when we got to these sentences that have multiple phrases and clauses, they got stuck because we spent all this time leveling the text and giving them, like, the newsELA version that was at this level. And they took out all the long sentences, and they never got exposure to these more complex sentences. And so I don't want to say I ignore reading levels altogether, but I don't put a lot of stock into it. Instead, I look more qualitatively at those challenges, and I think about who my students are, and I just make sure they exposure to all of those challenges. And I do it not just so they can have exposure to it, but for that purposeful reading experience, for that, developing that critical thinking skill around that topic for building that relevant knowledge. Like, I look for those things too. So that we're doing the complexity in service of these things that we know are factors of quality texts.
[00:19:11] Kate Winn: And when we're talking about these text choices, we're talking about something that we're going to have the kids read. Like, instructionally, we're doing something with it. We're not just handing them a text to go read.
[00:19:20] Dr. Sarah Lupo: Right.
[00:19:20] Kate Winn: And so talking about these five ways that texts can be complex, you have broken down scaffolds that the teachers can use when they are working with students on these texts. So I'd like to go through the five that you named, and for each one, if you could just give us a couple of, you know, practical. Try it tomorrow. What are a couple of ways you could scaffold when this is the factor, you know, making the text more complex?
So that idea of the textual density. First of all, what are a couple of things that teachers can do with scaffolds there?
[00:19:50] Dr. Sarah Lupo: Sure. And I'll just preface this to say that, well, two things, like, one, some of the scaffolds, you know, I put them into the buckets in the book. And I do think that is a helpful way to start thinking about it. Like, if my text is hard like this, I can use this one. If my text is hard like this, I can use this. But a lot of the scaffolds actually cover multiple challenges. And so some of my favourites are the ones that I think actually do cover that, because then I'm like, okay, well, if it's hard here and here, I can use this one scaffold.
And then the second thing I'll say is that I always think about that purpose for reading and what I want my students to get out of it as I'm choosing my scaffold. So if I know that, like, we're going to read about indigenous populations, and my students have a lot of myths about that, that the reading is going to correct or conflict with, I should say, whether they correct it or not is up to them, I hope that they will, then I might choose a scaffold that kind of lends itself to that.
And so for thinking about density, one of my favourites is anticipation guides, which I also think is a knowledge demand scaffold. I may have. I can't remember which place I landed with it in the book, but I think it actually helps with both. I like it for density because it gets students thinking about the deep ideas before we read. So you give students statements they decide if they agree or disagree before they read, and then they can go read, and then they come back and think about how their changing has either been affirmed or. Or changed as a result of the reading. And so it can really just kind of expose them to some of those, like, more abstract concepts, get them thinking about it. But it also is a great knowledge demand scaffold too. So I use it a lot for that.
I also like it because you can introduce a few key vocabulary words in the guide. So they're like, but what is that? Oh, great. Let me. Let me answer that question for you before we read. I also like reading guides for textual density because I feel like I can really target where does it slow down? Like, I feel like that's something that's really hard for a lot of my students. Like, when the text gets dense, this is where I want you to actually read pretty slowly and carefully with a really specific purpose. And so reading guides, you can kind of put these directions in, like stop here and read this part and think about this as you read, and it'll help them unpack it a little bit more deeply.
Mm.
[00:21:56] Kate Winn: And we can't possibly talk about all of the ideas in the book. I know some I jotted down for that one too. Like, chunking was a great idea, teacher think alouds was another good one, multiple readings. So many can do when you know, when you think that the density might be the challenge there. So the second one is knowledge demands. What are some ways we can scaffold that?
[00:22:16] Dr. Sarah Lupo: Yeah, so one way I love that - anticipation guides again. Another one of my favourite ones that I actually use a lot in my college courses that I teach is Carousel Brainstorm. And so what I do is, before we read around the classroom, I have posters. And then I put the students in groups for the same amount of posters I have. So if I have four posters, I put them in four groups. Or if I have six posters, they're in six groups. And on each poster, I usually have a question or a topic that relates to something in the text. So it's getting them to think about the knowledge that they already have around that topic that's going to relate to what we read. And I give each group a different colored marker, and they write some of their ideas down before they read on the chart. And then we carousel around. So they start with one poster and then they go to the next. They do what the other folks wrote and then add to it. And I have them use the same color marker on each. Each poster. So I'm like, oh, the blue group wrote all the blue things, or the green group wrote all the green things. And then after we, then we'll have a little discussion. Oftentimes when we get to the last poster, I'll say, don't add anything new. Just read it and think of like something really that stuck out to your group that you want to share out with everyone. So it'll kind of spark or like whole class discussion before you read. And then after reading, I'll often have them like on sticky notes, add some ideas, and then go put them onto the posters.
And so that's been a favourite one because I feel like it just helps them activate that knowledge that they have and connect to these other texts that we've read and get them like, kind of bringing that knowledge to the forefront of their mind before we read. But I also find that they build each other's knowledge a little bit about the text before we read because they're doing that in a group.
[00:23:47] Kate Winn: I also loved your idea about supporting the integration of the prior knowledge with the new knowledge. You gave the example of a double-entry journal. How would that work?
[00:23:55] Dr. Sarah Lupo: That's one of my favourites. I use that one all the time. So double entry journals, I usually think about why we're reading it, and I give them a specific prompt to look for quotes around that prompt. So, for example, I was teaching middle school English this spring. This is not something I get to do a lot lately, but I actually got to do it in an extended form and we were reading a book, and so I asked students as they looked through to look for quotes that talked about the setting and how the setting of the story, you know, towards the describe the setting of the story. And so I give them that specific purpose and so they write those quotes down. And then I would ask them to reflect in some particular way around that. So how did that quote about the setting, like, how did that impact the characters as they were reading, that setting that they were in? How would this have been different if they were reading, if they were in a different place that wasn't this place that quote had? And so it's asking to think about these specific quotes around your purpose for reading and then reflect on it in a purposeful way.
I love that one.
[00:24:51] Kate Winn: That one's great. And now what about the text structure challenges that can be posed to students?
[00:24:56] Dr. Sarah Lupo: Yeah. And I will just say that's my least favourite text demand.
Yeah, it's not as fun as the others, but it's so important and it's so necessary. My favourite go to strategy is ABC Summary Sentences.
I like this one because I think that it's like a jumping off point for some of the other more complex ones. Because I do think. I think what's hard about this one is this is a hard one. And so a lot of the scaffolds for it actually require a lot of training on the students’ part to be able to do well. And it's worth the while because they can then take those strategies. They can use them, they can apply them, they can use them when they go to college. It makes them better readers. But ABC Summaries Sentences is nice because it's like entry-level. And so once they master that, I can usually try some of the more complex ones. And so with ABC summary sentences, they name the author. And if there isn't a name for the author, they can say the author. But I actually make them go and find the author's name and name the author. And then I have them choose a verb. And in the beginning, I will scaffold that by giving them options. And so it might be the author explains or the author presents, or the author contrasts. And so they have to think about what the author's trying to do in that part of the text, which leads them to think about that structure, how it's structured. Like if it's compare, contrast, the author's comparing, you know, and so it sort of forces them to think about how that structure changes in each different section too. And then they have to finish the statement, and so the author compares, and then they have to finish it, or the author explains, and then they have to finish it. And what I like about that is my students, maybe you're so different, but they've like, really bad summarizers. They'll just like copy a couple sentences out of the text and they call that a summary. And this, like, forces them away from that because they have to name the author and the verb, and they have to kind of put in their own words. They can't just copy a sentence out of the text for that.
And I find that that's a great one for leading into like, the more complex complex ones like SQ3R, which I think is a really strong text structure scaffold, you know, which requires them to like, survey, ask questions, review, go back and so on. But if they can't do ABC summary sentences yet, I'm not going to have them do SQ3R. So it's a nice, like, kind of stepping stone.
[00:27:08] Kate Winn: Yeah. And you mentioned as well, providing support for subject specific text structures, because, you know, the English teacher has probably not taught them about what a lab report is going to look like or when you're reading that, or, you know, and then writing is a whole different story too. Right. But some things that are specific and those teachers, even though it's not an English course, they're still going to need to make sure their students understand the different structures that they're going to see in their subject as well, which is, I thought, a great point.
[00:27:37] Dr. Sarah Lupo:
[00:27:39] Kate Winn: Yeah, that makes sense. So how can we help scaffold when that's what's presenting the challenge and attack next?
[00:27:46] Dr. Sarah Lupo: Yeah, this is my favourite one. I think I like this one a lot because I just think there's so many fun things we can do with vocabulary and language. And the thing that I would preface it with is that I think whatever scaffolds we pick and the way that we're going to support our students in reading unfamiliar words in a text has to match how we learn words as humans, like our language understanding.
And so in the book, I talk about how, you know, we, our understanding of words is not black or white. It's not they know or don't know the words in the text. It's how deeply do they know the words? How many connections can they make? Is it a word that, like, if they saw it in context, they would know it, but, like, out of context, they wouldn't, or is it a word that they're regularly using? Like, those are two different ways of knowing the words. And so I've, as I approach it, I just, I don't think I have to have them, like, be able to use every hard word in this, this text in a sentence by the end of, you know, this lesson. Instead, I think, how can I just push them a little bit along that continuum? Because if it's going to be their first exposure to an unfamiliar word, I'm not going to, there's no way they're going to be able to use that word in the sentence, but I would expect them to start being able to recognize it in context by the end of that lesson. So I think about my scaffolds in terms of how can I engage my students with the words more organically. We also don't store words as definitions. So just scaffolds around definitions aren't really helpful. And just giving kids definitions is not really helpful, although I'll include that along with a lot of the scaffolds I do. But they have to do something else for it to really stick and become part of that. Those connections that they have in their brains.
So one of my favourite ones is probable passage. And I like it because it's fun and it does a lot of good things. It's one of those that, like, hits multiple buckets. I actually find that it really helps a lot of my students who have trouble with word reading, so they have trouble sounding out the big words. Well, great. I can pull those words out. Those can be the words we use for probable passage. We get a go and a practice at it before we read. And now they're more likely to actually be able to read those words accurately in the text.
And then they get a third exposure at the end. So it's building their automaticity and their vocab. And so the way it works is you give students 8 to 12 words, you know, approximately, you get them categories. And so for narrative text, it tends to be the same category. So I use, like, either characters or people, depending on if it's, you know, more nonfiction or fiction, setting or place, problem and then resolution, you know, or conflict and resolution, something like that. And students will categorize the words before they read. And then I either have them write or say, like, a gist statement, like, what do you think the text can be about based on where you put the words? And it gets them thinking about that, which is great. And then as they read, you know, they notice the words more, which is great. They're more likely to see them in context. I usually have them do that as a group prior, so they actually, like, give each other a little bit of ideas on the words, teaching each other some of the words. And I'm okay with them going in with partial understandings because I like to let the text be the teacher. But I'm like, kind of highlighting those words ahead of time and giving them a little bit of time to sort of activate what they know and think about that. And then after they read, they come back and they can move the words around based on where they saw them in the text. And I just like it because it does a lot for their comprehension, too. They're better able to, like, recall what the text is about because they've kind of got these, like, neat little boxes. And for science, I find that I can't use those categories. And there's not, like, one set I found that always works. For science texts, I use a variety of categories, like causes or solutions, not solution, but like, different kinds of, you know, chemical solutions, that kind of thing, just based on what the text is.
[00:31:21] Kate Winn: No, I love that idea. It's excellent.
I thought it was really interesting too in that chapter how you talked about, you know, the idea of direct vocabulary instruction using examples and non examples, things like that, because we're doing that in kindergarten.
[00:31:32] Kate Winn: Like you, you never need to stop doing that sort of thing because whatever grade they're going to be in, there's still going to be new vocabulary. There's still going to be a need for that. Which I thought was important to point out too.
And then your final one is word reading. So I thought it was interesting when I got to it that it was the last one because a lot of the stuff I read is so much more primary-focused. And so it's usually that's the first part we want to get out of the way is the word reading. And then we get into more of the comprehension stuff.
[00:32:01] Kate Winn: So I thought that was interesting. So I don't know if that was purposeful or, you know, why that one happened to be the last one in the book. But also curious about some ways we can scaffold when that's the biggest challenge or one of the challenges.
[00:32:14] Dr. Sarah Lupo: Yeah, now you're making me think about why I have it last. I mean, I think it's different than the other challenges because it sits with the reader.
And so I think like thinking about the challenges that sit with the text first and then thinking about that challenge that sits with the reader at the end, it actually makes more sense to me as a teacher. But I could see, I could see you flip-flopping it as well.
Yeah, I like this one a lot too. I just think there's so many good things we can do. And I really wanted to write this chapter and include it because I think it's not included in a lot of books for secondary. I think it's assumed that like students have this skill when they get there. And I personally have found that that's not the case. A lot of my students have really struggled with word reading in both middle and high school. I think that this is an important one and I think I wanted to empower teachers to realize that it's okay if they struggle with this. We just have to scaffold it. We have to recognize that this is something that can happen and we can do something about it. And so yeah, part of this is just empowering teachers to take it into their own hands to help scaffold it rather than just say they can't read, so I can't teach them. No, we can teach them. We're just going to put a support in place.
My favourite strategy that I love teaching teachers, when I have the opportunity to work with teachers in schools, this is one of the first ones I start with. And I like it because it does several things. It hits multiple challenges. It's super easy to implement. Some of them take a lot of planning, like, a reading guide is very extensive. This one, like, you can just pop it out and do it anytime without even really doing much planning. And it just, it's a lot of bang for the buck. Like, it really increases students' comprehension and their word reading really pretty quickly. And so what I do is I chunk the text. So I divide it into, like, more manageable pieces. And when I chunk, I don't think that chunks have to be equal in size. So I kind of pick, like, where are they going to get stuck? Like, where are they going to start to get frustrated? Or we should just stop so I can check in on their understanding.
And that's where I end my chunks. It might be two sentences. It might be three paragraphs. My chunks vary a lot. I ask students to read the text, the text chunk first, on their own, silently, with the sole purpose of underlining any words that they either don't know or can't read. And then what I'm doing as a teacher is I'm circulating, and I'm looking at the words that they're underlining now. And I'm picking a few words, not every single word that every kid has underlined, but I'm picking a few words, right, that I see multiple kids underlining. And then I'm deciding in the moment what the struggle might be. And then I'm doing something to help scaffold that. So if it's like, that's a word that they don't know, great. After everyone's finished that piece, I'm going to just give a couple quick, give a quick definition, an example, a non-example, like you said, which is so helpful. If that word is really hard to read because it's got a lot of syllables. And my students struggle with that. I might write it on the board and we might use the best strategy to figure out how to, like, divide it to chunks and sound it back out and read it so they get some practice with it. We might look at a root or an affix. You know the word chronicle. I see the word chron in there. Do you guys remember what cron means? Time. Good. So what might chronicle mean based on that? And just kind of get them to start paying attention to that. I make that part really brief so I don't spend a ton of time teaching those words. I try to do a minute or less and I try to do no more than five words in one chunk. And it doesn't have to be five, it could be up to five.
And then I ask them to now read it again a second time with their partner out loud. But now I give them a content specific purpose for reading. And I always think if we're going to ask kids to read things twice or more than twice, we should give them different purposes for each chunk. So that first chunk was just a read it and figure out the words that are hard in it. And a lot of times my students who struggle with word recognition reading words just kind of need a first read to kind of get over to the decoding part of it. And then they can read a second time for comprehension. And I always give them a text specific purpose. So like, if we're reading about the life cycle stage of the spider, like read this chunk and identify what's that first life cycle stage of the spider. And then they can talk about that with their partner when they're done. But they can read out loud. So they can help support each other. But also I'm walking around and I'm helping support them too. So when I hear them stumble on a word, I come and I help them and we practice sounding it out or I tell them how to say it, or I show them a root or something that will help them be able to say that word more accurately.
And then we move on to the next chunk and we repeat it.
[00:36:25] Kate Winn: That's amazing. I love that. And it's funny, you know, I heard you mention roots and affixes and even that idea of morphology, something we're starting in kindergarten. I mean, we know that when you add an -s or you can add an -s to make a word plural, right? Like those little tiny pieces. But the way they build and then the way you can still use that so much to help with understanding when they're in the older grades, which is great.
[00:36:46] Kate Winn: I want to point out to readers in the book something I really loved, you've got, it's called Menu of Contingent Instructional Moves.
So it's a list of 29 different scaffolds for scaffolding in action. And I actually shared this with the intermediate teachers at our school. So here in Ontario, intermediate is 7, 8, 9.
So the 7 and 8 teachers, I shared it with them. But I noted that some of them are ones also that I'm using in kindergarten. So an example was number 19, point to a pronoun and ask. What does this refer to? So we'll do that sometimes, you know, she gave it to them. Who's she? What was it? Who's them?
[00:37:25] Dr. Sarah Lupo: Right.
[00:37:25] Kate Winn: And we'll be doing something like that. So, I mean, you can start that so early yet again, still so important. And that's something that can really throw kids when they're, when they're reading is that piece. So that's a really, really great sort of one pager. I feel like people could just have that handy because when they realize they need to scaffold, you know, like this is what I'm trying to do. I want them to press them for evidence or I want them to analyze structure, I want them to connect ideas, I want them to unpack morphology, whatever it is. It's like, okay, here's something I try right there, which is, which is really handy. Before I let you go, this has been so amazing. Is there anything else that you want listeners to know? Anything I haven't asked you or any other work you want to direct them towards?
[00:38:01] Dr. Sarah Lupo: Sure, yeah, I have a new book coming out on assessment in the fall. So it's A K through 12 book on reading assessment and it's available pre-order on Amazon. So if you're interested in just looking at a nuanced way to approach assessment, K through 12, there's a great chapter for 4 through 8 in there.
Actually, it's a K through 8 book, so it does just end at middle school, but I used all the ideas for high school when I was a reading specialist too. So it's helpful for all of them. So I think that's helpful. And then if, if folks are interested in learning more about teaching foundational skills for older readers. And when I say foundational skills, I'm talking about, you know, the more like the word recognition skills like phonics and fluency, but also like part of that's vocabulary, I guest edited a special issue for the Journal of Adult and Adolescent Literacy that came out this past year, and there's some great articles in there about not just how to support our readers in phonics and fluency and all these other foundational skills, but how we can do it in culturally and linguistically sustaining ways that honour the humanity of adolescents that don't feel like it's elementary work that they're doing that it's, you know, feels like important work that honours their agencies and their literate identities. So that's available on JAL and most but not all of the articles in that are actually open access so anybody can download them.
Great.
[00:39:29] Kate Winn: Well, Dr. Sarah Lupo, thank you so much for being here with us on this episode of Reading Road Trip. I'm sure you have given me and listeners a lot to think about. We really appreciate it it.
[00:39:38] Dr. Sarah Lupo: Thanks for having me. It was fun.
[00:39:44] Kate Winn: Show notes for this episode with all the links and information you need can be
[email protected] and you have been listening to season four episode three with Dr. Sarah Lupo.
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Make sure you're following the Reading Road Trip podcast so you don't miss a single episode in this jam-packed season. New episodes will be released on Monday mornings all summer long. We couldn't bring Reading Road Trip to you without behind-the-scenes support from Brittany Haynes and Melinda Jones at IDA Ontario.
I'm Kate Winn and along with my co-producer Una Malcolm. We hope this episode of Reading Road Trip has made your path to evidence-based literacy instruction just a little bit clearer and a lot more fun.
