One question that I always asked when I was getting into SoR was “HOOOOOW do I incorporate these things in my SECONDARY classroom?”

I promise that I asked it just like that every single time too.

Because… like, this is all well and good but I’m not going to have my teenagers breaking down phonemes and reading every little thing out loud.

Before we get into other things that you CAN (and absolutely should want to) do, let’s recap what all is included in being able to comprehend, according to the SoR research because it is NOT just Word Knowledge.

1. Background Knowledge
2. Vocabulary
3. Language Structure
4. Inferential Thinking
5. Literacy Knowledge
6. Word Knowledge
   • Phonological Awareness
   • Decoding

(Scarborough, 2001)

Those first five things on the list are absolutely, positively things that we already know to do in our secondary ELA classrooms. I think one of the problems that we are facing is that we don’t have time for everything and start to eliminate lessons as ‘not quite as important’ as everything else. When we do that, though, we start eliminating the structures that help our students comprehend. This is a soapbox issue for me so I’m going to move on.

What can we really do? Let’s plan a SoR aligned unit, shall we?

Let’s go through it together. First, I want you to pick out a text or portion of a text that you’ll be reading with your students this year. I suggest looking at it with my SoRin2ndary Toolkit and Text Complexity Planner handy but it isn’t absolutely necessary. Just take a few minutes to reread the text and if you’re willing, comment the name of the text below.

Now, I want you to think about how you can support the reading of this text at a couple of different levels. We’re going to start at the word level. (Yes, I fully understand that I just complained about how all of the SoR stuff starts with phonemes but it IS important. Ha!)

Things that you can do to support your students at the word level.

• Choose a handful of words from the text to syllabicate with your students during the reading.
  • I suggest 3-5 for content area teachers and 5+ for ELA teachers (wait, did she just differentiate between content and ELA teachers? Yes, yes, I did because these are things that content area teachers can do too!)
  • You could do this activity one word at a time as a bellringer each day or as a jigsaw activity. Another option would be to put it all on one worksheet and use it as a way to preteach vocabulary — see below.
• Make a list of all of the words in the text that your students will need to know the meaning of in order to understand the text.
  • Decide which of these words you will have to teach ahead of time (could these be the ones that you syllabicate?)
  • Decide which words your students should be able to use context clues to figure out.
  • Plan to explicitly teach the words on the first list and point out the words on the second list.
  • Plan to teach/remind students how to use context clues too.

Things that you can do to support your students at the sentence level.

• Choose up to five sentences from the text that you can use as mentor sentences throughout the unit.
• Explicitly teach a grade appropriate grammar topic.
• Don’t get frustrated when students complain that they don’t remember basic grammar components. Just remember all of the passwords that you have to let Google save for you. We all forget things that we don’t use every day.
• Show the grammar concept in context by comparing the grade appropriate topic and the mentor sentence.

Things that you can do to support your students at the paragraph level.

• Identify at least one paragraph within the text that that has 3-5 opportunities to point out the use of pronouns, substitutions, homophones and/or synonyms.
  • Plan a time to model a close read of this paragraph.
  • Consider using a gradual release method for close reading other paragraphs with the same opportunities.
• Identify one paragraph that has the opportunity to point out text structure and transitions.
  • Plan to review the purpose of text structure.

Things that you can do to support your students at the whole text level.

• Identify 2-4 concepts that your students will need to understand before they can access the text.
  • Plan to build and activate this knowledge ahead of time.
• Plan a fun activity related to one of the concepts you identified above.
• Find and pair your text with 3-4 other texts on the same topic.
  • You can even ask an AI bot to write these for you! Make sure to tell it what grade level to write the text at.
• Use an AI bot to write a similar text at a reading level appropriate for your students (you might consider writing several versions). Plan for your students to spend time reading this out loud.

These are just a few ideas that have worked for me. Incorporating science of reading strategies into a secondary ELA classroom can revolutionize the way students engage with and comprehend the texts that we read.

The science of reading is rooted in decades of cognitive research. It offers evidence-based approaches that improve literacy skills. We, as secondary ELA teachers KNOW these things but really understanding the foundational principles helps us remember that ALL of the components are necessary. Whether you’re a seasoned teacher or new to the classroom, these strategies can provide valuable tools to support all learners in achieving literacy success.

I’m hosting a free planning challenge this August. It comes with prizes and everything! Join us!

Did you plan your unit? Share about it in the comments!