To offer every student in our classroom the best chance for success, we've found it necessary to offer them reading passages that are differentiated to match their skills and vocabulary. By offering some students slightly simpler texts, it allows them to engage with the very difficult assignments we do in our classroom. If we can help a student by simplifying a text, and it allows them to publish an amazing, authentic website based on their learning, it is a victory.

Examples of Leveled Texts:

When students are assigned a leveled passage based on their ability, it's done covertly, through Google Classroom, or they find the passages waiting for them in the supply folders at their group tables. 

From our Unconscious Bias Unit

"How do we overcome our biases? By walking boldly toward them," by ​Verna Myers

• Full-Length English Text
• Full-Length Bilingual Text
• Shortened English Text
• ​Shortened Bilingual Text
• Emerging and Transitioning ENL
• Entering ENL

From our Food Chains Unit

• Full-Length English Text (Students use copies of the book itself and are expected to choose 2-3 chapters per week to use as research sources.)
• Full-Length Bilingual Text (Students have access to both English and Spanish versions of the book and choose 1-2 chapters per week to use as research sources.)
• Transitioning and Expanding ENL: Chapter 2
• Entering and Emerging ENL: Chapter 2

"Climb the stairs" to the next level of text difficulty, and enjoy the view as new texts expand your perspective.

Descriptions of Leveled  Texts:

Full-Length Texts

Targeted Students

English

If you're reading at grade level, we don't modify the text you use in any way. Our texts are selected to be rigorous and authentic (usually about issues that exist in our world right now.) The close read tools you use with these texts have no additional supports, and they're usually full of tier-two [academic] and tier-three [domain specific] vocabulary.

Bilingual

Full-length, bilingual texts have the full-length text with two modifications: it is available in both English and Spanish, and it is chunked into smaller paragraphs. By chunking the text in this way, it allows for students to use the Spanish words to orient themselves in the English text. This allows students to read and comprehend en Espanol, but respond to questions using English. ​For this level of differentiation, students still use a selection of our standard reading tools.

STAR Reading Score: 6.0-9.0 Grade Equivalent

These texts, because they're completely unmodified, are intended for students performing approximately at grade level. Differentiation for students who are performing above grade level doesn't come in the reading process, but in the writing process, and the differentiated writing assignments with which the students will work.

Our full-length texts are used for most of our kids, most of the time. Eventually I'll get dorky enough to include an approximate percentage of students assigned each level of text, but I'm not there yet.

Shortened Texts

​Targeted Students

English

Our shortened texts have a few modifications. The most obvious is that they're shorter. We eliminate redundant examples. We shorten embedded stories into anecdotes. We remove sentences with incredibly difficult or confusing language. The goal with our shortened texts is to help struggling students to learn what they need to learn from the text. For this level of differentiation, students still use a selection of our standard reading tools.

Bilingual

Our shortened, bilingual texts use the same chunking methods as the full-length texts as well as the shortening methods described above so that students have access to a clearly chunked text written in clear, plain text to enhance understanding and eliminate confusion. ​For this level of differentiation, students still use a selection of our standard reading tools.

STAR Reading Score: 4.0-5.9 Grade Equivalent

Sometimes, students have slowly developed a gap in their reading skills over time. Usually, those students  can catch up if they're offered access to slightly-modified texts. The changes we make to our texts at this level are meant to maintain the "big ideas" and the ways that our unit texts interconnect, but to remove some of the nebulous language and specific, complex points that some of these authors make.

English Language Learner and Special Education Specific Modifications:

Transitioning and Expanding

These texts are heavily modified (sometimes a twelve-page chapter is winnowed down to the front and back of a single page). Besides all the modifications above, these texts also include targeted questions to help focus on the most important parts of a text, and often, intentional bold, underlined, or italicized text features to assist students in finding the answer. For this level of differentiation, students do not use our standard reading tools, because they require deep thought and diverse language skills that represent unrealistic expectations for students who are learning English. 

Targeted Students

STAR Reading Score: Irrelevant due to SIFE or language barriers.

Transitioning and Expanding ENL students are a tricky population, because often, when you talk to students at this level of English proficiency, it sounds like they shouldn't need any special modifications, and that the shortened, bilingual text above should be enough. We've found that by including these more intensive tools, and pared down text with enhanced features, that usually, Transitioning and Expanding ENL students are able to complete a final essay or project at the same level as their English-speaking peers.

Entering and Emerging

For our earliest language learners, we heavily modify both the text with which students interact, and the task they complete to demonstrate their understanding. Texts are simplified and shortened even more than they are for the Transitioning and Expanding students, and the questions we ask to structure the learning provide students with sentence strips to begin the answer for the students, or might even leave out single words or phrases so that students can read through and pick the single word that they need. For this level of differentiation, students do not use our standard reading tools, because they require deep thought and diverse language skills that represent unrealistic expectations for students who are learning English. ​

Targeted Students

STAR Reading Score: Irrelevant due to SIFE or language barriers.

Entering and Emerging ENL students are the hardest for most teachers to work with. There is such a language barrier that it seems difficult to bridge the gap. By using the differentiation shared to the left, it's possible to allow students who barely speak English to begin to engage in class in a way that allows them to succeed. Unlike the level above, usually, students at this level will also need a simplified task at the end of the unit, and again, you can see those levels of task on our writing differentiation page.