One of the biggest buzz words in education right now is The Science of Reading. And while it’s often framed as an elementary initiative, the truth is: the research behind skilled reading matters just as much in secondary classrooms.

Reading is one of the most complex skills the human brain learns to master. It requires far more than just decoding words on a page. Thanks to decades of research, we know the intricate processes that our brains go through. We don’t just decode, we also draw on our background knowledge, vocabulary, language structures and reasoning skills to construct meaning. It’s not just about learning letters and sounds in our early years. Reading continues to grow and evolve throughout our entire lives.

Learning to read never truly ends. As we encounter more complex texts, specialized vocabulary, and abstract concepts, we continue refining and expanding our reading abilities. This isn’t just true for students in the early grades; it’s true for everyone—including secondary students and even adults.

That’s why the science of reading isn’t just for elementary teachers. Secondary teachers play a huge role in helping students strengthen their reading skills. This is especially true as students engage with challenging content in subjects like history, science, and literature.

For more information on how content area teachers can utilize the Science of Reading research, go read this blog post.

For now, though, let’s explore how secondary ELA teachers can integrate the components of the science of reading research into ONE single lesson. That sounds like a dream, right? How can we possibly do ALL of the things in one lesson? The key thing that you need in order to be able to do this is… (drum roll, please) …a really good poem!

One short poem, paired with intentional instruction, gives you the perfect opportunity to address every strand of skilled reading in one class period. Whether you teach middle or high school, this approach will empower you to meet your students where they are and guide them toward deeper understanding and success.

So let’s get started.

Step 1: Choose a Poem

For this example, I’m going to use Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost.

I often teach this poem alongside The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton because Ponyboy and Johnny discuss it at length. It also works as a standalone text, though, because it is perfect for discussing the changing of the seasons, something of which happens regularly throughout the school year. =)

Step 2: Choose a Method for Teaching Poetry

There are several acronyms that secondary teachers use to analyze poems with their students. If you already have one that you like, great. Use it. However, I really like using TP-CASTT, which stands for:

• Title
• Paraphrase
• Connotation
• Attitude/Tone
• Shift
• Title(Again)
• Theme

I learned about the TP-CASTT method from ReadWriteThink many years ago and have been using it to help my students comprehend poems ever since. It is wonderful! It also supports comprehension while naturally creating opportunities to address the components of skilled reading in Scarborough’s Reading Rope.

Step 3: Plan with the Reading Rope in Mind

Scarborough’s Reading Rope (2001) tells us that we need to hit on the following components to ensure that our students are able to become skilled readers.

• Background Knowledge
• Vocabulary
• Language Structure
• Verbal Reasoning (or Inferential Thinking)
• Literacy Knowledge

And a poem is a bite-sized chunk of literacy so let’s take a look at how we can hit all of these in Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost.

Background Knowledge:

There are two points in this poem that are great opportunities to point out, and potentially teach, background knowledge.

First, students need an understanding of how seasons work and change to be able to understand the poem.

And secondly, there is an allusion to Eden in line 6 of the poem. Without the background knowledge of the Garden of Eden, this allusion doesn’t make sense.

Vocabulary:

There are several words in this poem that your students will likely not know. Rather than pre-teaching everything, this is an ideal place to model a crucial reading behavior: noticing when their understanding breaks down.

We cannot teach all of the vocabulary that students will encounter when they read. We CAN, and should, teach them to stop when they need to though.

Language Structure:

Poetry is uniquely powerful for teaching syntax and sentence structure because it disrupts conventional word order. Poems don’t necessarily follow traditional language structure. They’re more like how we talk than how we write formally.

Have students paraphrase the poem in relation to complete thoughts instead of line by line. Then, TEACH the idea of complete thoughts as parts of sentences. Seriously, teaching grammar through poetry is THE BEST! In fact, it is how I sell my students on caring about grammar in the first place. Ha!

Verbal Reasoning (or Inferential Thinking):

This poem has opportunities for teaching local inferences and global inferences.

First, students have to infer who the “her” is in lines 2 and 3.

Then, making an inference about the allusion to Eden in line 6 is so important to the theme of the poem. The Garden of Eden represents perfection to a lot of people so if nothing gold can stay, does that also mean that nothing perfect can stay?

Literacy Knowledge:

Because the poem is so brief, punctuation and structure become especially visible.

Using the TP-CASTT method, as I do, the Shift step highlights how the meaning changes in line 4. This is a natural place to talk about transition words.

Other poems can provide even more lessons about literacy knowledge. A narrative poem is clearly going to follow a beginning, middle and end structure. Longer poems might include more stanzas and, even, columns. These are all things that we need to explicitly teach in order for our students to comprehend fully.

Get the Lesson for Yourself

This lesson usually takes me one day but, in that short amount of time, students engage with knowledge activation, vocabulary problem-solving, syntax awareness, inference and text structure. In other words, all of the components of skilled reading! How amazing is that!?

That is the power of intentional text selection paired with the Science of Reading research.

If you’d like to use this exact lesson with your students, you can get it for free here. And if you love teaching reading through poetry, be sure explore my other poetry resources.

Happy Reading!