If you have been around here for any length of time, you know how I feel about Scarborough’s Reading Rope. It’s the best thing since sliced bread, friends. Seriously, I love it because it provides us with a framework for actually teaching comprehension.
You might wonder how you can actually use it in a secondary ELA classroom full of teenagers, though. Most of our teacher training programs told us that we can assume decoding and fluency are elementary-level concerns. (Not in so many words, of course, but by ignoring these things, they told us that we didn’t have to teach them.)
Our job is to “teach literature,” not “teach reading.” Right?
…Wrong.
Here’s the truth: when our students struggle with comprehension, it’s almost always because one or more strands of that rope are fraying, so to speak. Instead of just assigning more and more reading and hoping that it will finally stick, we can actually teach the strands.
That is the backbone for these five structural ideas that I would love for you to try out in your classroom. These structural shifts will help to embed the strands of the Reading Rope into your daily and weekly routines, allowing you to teach literature WHILE also teaching comprehension, without sacrificing the depth or complexity of our favorite ELA content.
1. Incorporate Weekly Tier 2 Vocabulary Instruction
Choose 5 high-utility Tier 2 words each week and give students structured opportunities to really work with them, not just memorize them. One effective routine starts with students using sentence-level context to make an educated guess about each word’s meaning. Then, through matching, fill-in-the-blank practice, and sentence creation, they move from exposure to ownership. Finally, they place all five words into a mentor text paragraph, reinforcing cohesion and usage in context.
This is the routine that I have been using for the last several years and it is HARD when we start the year, but by the end… EVERY SINGLE YEAR… my students have it down and, the best part is, that they are learning new words. Check out my Vocabulary Routine with this free six week version. I have three levels currently published, with one on the way, and a spelling rules bundle that follows the same general format. These are designed to be simple, scaffolded, and quick in our secondary classrooms. In all, I spend about 15 minutes of class time a week on the entire chapter.
This routine gives students repeated, meaningful exposure to vocabulary without overwhelming them. You’re embedding instruction that builds both vocabulary knowledge and syntactic awareness, all in less than 15 minutes a week.
Level 3 – not middle school specific
2. Syntax and Grammar in Sentence Work
Devote 10–15 minutes a few times a week to explicit instruction at the sentence level. Focus on how syntax shapes meaning, not just identifying and labeling the things that you’re working on like parts of speech. Use mentor sentences that model structures like appositive phrases, prepositional phrases, or complex clauses, and guide students to analyze, imitate, and revise. Have students think about how an appositive adds clarity, or how a dependent clause shapes the author’s tone.
Want to make it meaningful? Use sentences drawn from your class texts or, even better, original sentences that summarize or explore the literature you’re teaching. I am working on a line of syntax resources around this idea. Each resource uses literature-connected examples to teach appositives, prepositional phrases, and more. You can explore the list of the sets that I have available here if you’re looking for structured practice that still feels authentic to ELA. And please let me know what text you would like for me to write my next resource about in the comments.
Another opportunity to make grammar a daily structure could be to incorporate it into your daily independent reading routine. If you are using independent reading (you absolutely should do that, too!), have students WRITE using the grammar topics that you’ve been studying. For example, “Write two simple sentences about your main character. Then, combine them with a conjunction.” You can do this every single day!
Whatever you do, you need to be explicitly teaching grammar. Instead of treating grammar as a checklist or a standalone unit, using an approach that connects syntax directly to reading and writing makes it more meaningful for students. Students improve both fluency and comprehension when they understand how authors build meaning one phrase at a time.
3. Mini-Texts for Maximum Impact
I am positive that I am going to be in the minority here but I am all about teaching short texts. I want students to choose what they’re reading. They’re not choosing the whole-class novels that we drill and kill for months at a time. Reading whole books is for independent reading time so I am an advocate for teaching reading through short texts, articles and excerpts. I won’t try to convince you of that in this post, though.
One way that you can use mini-texts for maximum impact AND teach those novel units that you love is to use micro mentor texts. Think, like, a paragraph, a stanza, even a single rich sentence. These can do a lot of heavy lifting in a secondary ELA classroom. Use them as daily bell ringers, weekly focus texts, or small-group work. The goal is not to replace extended reading but to zoom in on specific reading rope strands in a manageable, focused way.
These texts are great for targeting: syntax, vocabulary in context, author’s craft and structure, or even building background knowledge to preview a novel.
If this is something that you would like to try out, I recommend the following structure:
- Introduce the mini-text with a quick read and discuss
- Annotate together or in small groups based on a specific focus, like: What is the main verb? Which words are unfamiliar? Why does the author use repetition here?
- Connect the structure or vocabulary to a larger text or student writing later in the class/week
Mini-texts are also a great place to build fluency, especially if you reread them across several days and use them in oral reading practice.
Many students struggle with longer texts not because they can’t decode them, but because the cognitive load is just too high. There might be too much unfamiliar vocabulary, super complex sentence structures, or lack of context or background knowledge. Mini-texts allow us to isolate and teach the skills that make comprehension possible. Think of them as workout reps before the marathon of a full novel or article.
4. Fluency Fridays (or Whatever Day Works)
Fluency often gets overlooked in secondary ELA, not because it’s not important, but because we’ve assumed our students should already have it down. The truth is, that fluency is ever evolving just like reading ability, in general. I’m not even fluent in all reading. The last time I had to read a contract, I had to take my time and really concentrate. If someone had asked me to read it out loud with prosody, I would have had to attempt it several times.
Just like me reading a super technical contract, many of our adolescent readers still struggle with automaticity, expression, and decoding, especially when it comes to grade-level texts. Regular, purposeful fluency work helps students improve not just how quickly they read, but how much they understand.
You don’t need to do it daily. Just 10–15 minutes once or twice a week can make a difference. The key is to keep it structured and meaningful, and to protect student dignity by choosing texts that feel age-appropriate and interest-driven. I wrote another blog post all about it that you can find here.
If you’re not sure where to start, I also created a set of fluency book blurbs specifically for middle and high school students. Peruse the titles and themes included here. Each passage is written at a range of reading levels but features high-interest blurbs about popular middle grade and YA books. Students practice fluency while discovering books they might actually want to read. It’s a win-win.
Fluency is one of the strongest predictors of reading comprehension. When students aren’t fluent, they’re using all their brainpower to decode words and none of it to make meaning. But when fluency improves, so does confidence, stamina, and understanding. And when we connect fluency practice to real reading experiences (like books they want to check out), it stops feeling like a chore.
5. Knowledge-Building Units, Not Just Novel Units
Instead of organizing units around just the text, like a The Outsiders unit or Romeo and Juliet unit, shift your structure to center around essential themes or questions. The novel or play becomes a core text within the unit, not the entire unit itself.
Start with an essential question or theme (like, What does it mean to belong? or How does power shape justice?) Then, curate a list of texts that answer that question or relate to that theme. I really didn’t mean to try to convince you to use shorter texts again but here we are. I’m talking about short stories, poems, articles, visuals, speeches. These are going to build background knowledge and vocabulary around that theme. Teach the foundational concepts necessary for understanding the texts early on so students have something to attach new information to. And then, spiral back to the novel or anchor text at the end of the unit, now with stronger comprehension because the student isn’t starting from zero. My friend, Amanda from Mud and Ink Teaching, has a ton of information about using essential questions here.
Let’s look at an example: before jumping into Of Mice and Men, I’m going to have my students do a research project on the 1920s. We’ll really get to know the time frame and understand the American dream. Then we’ll do a museum exhibit with artifacts, images, and excerpts from historical documents. Next, we’ll look at some of those historical documents and some thematic poetry. By the time my students meet George and Lennie, they won’t be confused, they’ll be curious.
This is not just about content. It’s about making the cognitive load manageable. Students can’t make complex inferences about characters, symbolism, or theme if they’re still stuck figuring out the setting or the social norms of the time period.
Tips for implementation:
- Build a small library of short, diverse texts aligned to frequent ELA themes
- Use nonfiction to support fiction (and vice versa)
- Teach academic vocabulary before it appears in the novel — not during or after
- Reuse essential questions across multiple texts and genres
Comprehension doesn’t happen in a vacuum. When students don’t know what a text is about, they’re less likely to understand it, and far less likely to enjoy it. Knowledge-rich units level the playing field and give students a foundation for deep, meaningful reading.
The Rope for Structure
When you structure your classroom around the strands of the Reading Rope, you move from just assigning reading to actually teaching reading. And it doesn’t mean lowering expectations, it means raising the support. Your students can do hard things when they have the right tools.
It is proven that students can learn to read when given the support that they need. This applies to our secondary classrooms too. When we don’t skip over the foundational steps to understanding complex texts, every single student CAN comprehend. These five structures can help to get them there.
Let’s stop assuming comprehension will happen on its own. Let’s teach it, strand by strand. If you’re interested in learning more and actually practicing this method of planning, I go over all of this in my Planning with SoR in Mind course.
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