Selecting Books and Integrating Proper Instruction

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Exemplification of various readability formulas

"Readability formulas usually give a numerical score to rank books or other

 reading matter in an order of difficulty...Leveling is more modern and is similar 

to readability in that it employs various systems for determining the 

difficulty of books or reading material, but is more subjective and is used mostly

 at the beginning reading levels" (Fry 286)

"The analysis of the observation data revealed four distinct

teacher moves as they scaffolded student understanding, 

including using questions to check for understanding, prompting

cognitive and metacognitive work, cues to focus the learner's 

attention, and direct explanations or modeling when the 

learner continued to struggle" (Frey 86)

Teachers encounter a variety of academic decisions during their career, and many aspects of teaching have yet to be perfected, or follow two trains of thought. One such area of research is leveling, a more subjective system of rating books then readability, based on content, illustrations, length, curriculum, language structure, judgement, and format. It asks important questions like "How do the illustrations contribute to the understanding of the passage" or "What background knowledge would a student have to know to understand this passage" that are essential to gauging student understanding. This system is especially prevalent for me since I am focused on early education, and leveling is geared exclusively toward the lower grade levels. However, although leveling is valuable, it should always be paired with the more scientific readability scales, often based on number of syllables, word and sentence length, and presence of common words in a passage.

The other article offers some tips for instructing said books effectively in the classroom. Under the four categories listed above, the article explores and touches upon various techniques that effective teachers were, either consciously or unconsciously, doing. I found it especially noteworthy that the teachers only rarely offered direct explanation and modeling, and instead preferred to preemptively exhaust all other avenues. The teachers recognized the value of having the students experience that "Ah ha!" moment of coming to a conclusion on their own, even if partially facilitated by an instructor or by classroom discussion. They employed all types of tactics, ranging from touch, to a print rich environment, to a variety of questions, to outward gestures. The teachers remained a mobile, oral, and knowledgable presence in their classroom, despite it's makeup.

A couple great questions directly form the article:

"Novice teachers sometimes focus on the physical arrangement of guided instruction at the expense of the cognitive purposes. Why do you think this is so?" (Frey 85)

"Why is it important to ask a range of robust questions (divergent, inventive, heuristic) during guided instruction?" (Frey 85)

Frey, Nancy and Douglas Fisher. Identifying Instructional Moves During Guided Learning. 

Fry, Edward. Readability versus Leveling.