Tiered texts: Supporting knowledge and language learning for English learners and struggling readers

Moss, Barbara, Lapp, Diane, & O’Shea, Mary. (2011). Tiered texts: Supporting knowledge and language learning for English learners and struggling readers. English Journal, 100(5), 54-60.

This article felt like a primer on scaffolding—that is, on scaffolding high school students’ reading of complex content area texts (in this case, literary texts). Such texts can be difficult for many students today, but especially for English Language Learners and other struggling readers. The authors describe a three-step framework for scaffolding which involves using progressively more challenging texts (“tiered texts”). They gathered various kinds of tiered texts that could support literary texts typically covered in high school English classes. The tiered text sets were designed to provide students with background knowledge they needed to comprehend the “target text”—the most complex text (Tier 3). One notable aspect here was the broad definition of what a “text” is, which is in keeping with current literacy theory. “Tier 1” and “Tier 2” texts often are not print texts, or if they are, they are in genres more accessible to high school students than the typical academic genres.

The detailed example described here was for Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. At Tier 1, the teacher (the article’s third author) used a picture book, a brief plot summary (shades of Cliff’s Notes?), and a film version of the play. At Tier 2, the students read a graphic novel and read (and later performed) a rap based on Romeo and Juliet. They built a graphic organizer—a sociogram of the characters in the play—to help them keep track of who was who in the play. Vocabulary instruction and providing of background knowledge were carefully woven around the texts at Tiers 1 and 2, with an explicit, “gradual release of responsibility” framework involving input, modeling, guided practice, and independent practice being employed. In many ways, this approach follows basic principles for working with struggling learners, including discovering and activating prior knowledge, starting at levels where students can succeed and gradually building on those successes, the aforementioned gradual release of responsibility in small steps, the use of multiple texts and multiple modalities of both instructional input and student output, and collaborative/cooperative learning.

The authors provide a table outlining three additional text sets for three texts commonly taught in high school: To Kill a Mockingbird, The Grapes of Wrath, and Great Expectations. For other text sets not given here, a good deal of research and teacher effort would be required. This would be a satisfying, interesting kind of teacher work, especially if the students responded well. It also would require a high level of teacher engagement and an intense period of work time. The best way to build such a text set would be collaboratively, with a team of teachers devising, implementing, evaluating, and refining the approach together. Although I love this approach, I found myself wondering how it would play out practically in the pressure cookers that today’s high schools have become. Would there be time to devise and implement this kind of exemplary instruction? How would real-world students actually respond? It would have to beat the usual dry routine, but did it really reach all students? As the authors state, this approach is still “largely untested” (p. 60), but it does make sense intuitively.