Reading

The middle grades are an essential period in the life of a reader. As the adolescent brain enters a phase of rapid growth, students are asked to draw on developing abilities to plan, coordinate, and consider intellectual interactions. Across subjects, students must learn to use their reading skills to build knowledge, solve problems, synthesize material, identify multiple perspectives, and analyze information. Students enter the middle grades with a wide range of reading abilities, making it even more important to develop these skills carefully.

To build these crucial capacities, readers at this age require deliberate practice with critical analysis. They need to access a purposeful sequence of text types and perspectives, gather evidence from the text, develop interpretations, consider the range of interpretations in the classroom community, and refine their understandings of both literal and figurative meaning. At the same time, texts are becoming increasingly complex, and most readers need support to continue to develop their reading fluency in the face of new vocabulary and unfamiliar syntax.