Designing quality content area instruction

Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2016). Designing quality content area instruction. The Reading Teacher, 69(5), 525-529.


Fisher and Frey are most known for their instructional frameworks for content area literacy instruction (e.g., their version of Gradual Release of Responsibility). Here, though, they discuss what happens before that. They take us through the planning process; they refer to it more as instructional design than as instructional planning, which is probably an important distinction. “Design” connotes a creative, higher-order decision process, versus “planning”, which seems less complex, less reflective, and less flexible.

The instructional design framework outlined here has three components: Enduring Understandings, Essential Questions, and Transfer Goals. Each of these components is concisely defined, and after each definition, a rubric is provided that describes the behavior of teachers who understand that component, or are just beginning to understand, or who do not yet understand. Each level of understanding is illustrated with an example of what a teacher at that level of understanding will be observed doing. Though pseudonyms are used, the examples clearly come from Fisher and Frey’s research with teachers in actual classrooms, which grounds and strengthens their claims.

The first two components, Enduring Understandings and Essential Questions, have to do with why students need to learn the things we teach. It is about intentionality—knowing why students need what we teach, and making that transparent for students. “Why do we need to learn this?” is a good question, according to Fisher and Frey, and the answer to that question should be the first step in instructional design. Identifying purpose to students, and also letting them know how they will know if they have learned it (transfer goals), are key elements in Fisher and Frey’s vision of effective instructional design. The “enduring” part of this component refers to important understandings and skills that “endure” and build through the grade levels, similar to the old notion of the “spiral curriculum”. At each grade level, these understandings become gradually more complex and sophisticated as learning evolves toward where it needs to be when learners finish their school careers.

In the heart of the article, the section on “Learning Intentions”, these ideas are broken down further. Both “content goals” and “language goals” (p. 527-529) are important in content area literacy instruction. Language goals include Vocabulary (Tier 2 and Tier 3), Language Structure (grammar and syntax used in the discipline), and Language Functions (how language is used in the discipline to do various kinds of communicating). The authors also discuss two kinds of relevance, the kind that helps learners connect learning to life outside the classroom (they explain why they don’t use the term “the real world”) and the kind that helps learners understand themselves as learners.

Finally, the component of Success Criteria, which relates to the assessment of learning, is briefly but pointedly discussed. The key idea here is that assessment needs to help both teachers and students know whether students are learning what we intend for them to learn. Have students met Transfer Goals? That is, can they use the knowledge and skills that were intended, and can they do that even when the teacher is not scaffolding their work?

Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey can be counted on for clear, accessible articles that provide teachers with a balance between theory and practice. The frameworks they provide have a grounding in theory and research, but they also have a practical emphasis that outlines things teachers can do tomorrow in their classrooms. Fisher and Frey don’t really tell us anything that we don’t already know are things good teachers do. However, they provide an update that considers the pressures teachers face today and provides a foundation that tells us why and how the things good teachers do help learners learn.