To improve adolescent literacy, the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) Practice Guide, Improving
Adolescent Literacy: Effective Classroom and Intervention Practices (Kamil, and others 2008), offers
five research-based recommendations:
- Provide direct and explicit comprehension strategy instruction
- Provide explicit vocabulary instruction
- Provide opportunities for extended discussion of text meaning and interpretation
- Increase motivation and engagement in literacy learning
- Make available intensive individualized interventions for struggling readers taught by qualified
specialists
These recommendations echo, in part, the themes and contexts of the CA CCSS for ELA/Literacy
and the CA ELD Standards and will be addressed in the discussions that follow.
Meaning Making
Meaning making is central in each of the strands of the
CA CCSS for ELA/Literacy in grades six through eight. Reading
standards for literature and informational text in English
language arts, as well as reading standards for literacy in
history/social studies, science, and technical subjects, require
students to understand ideas and information from a range of
types of texts and media formats that are increasingly complex.
Writing standards require students to convey meaningful content
as they use evidence from texts they have read to present
an argument, explain, and persuade. Speaking and listening
standards require students to share ideas and thoughts with
one another in text-based discussions, and language standards
require students to both clarify and interpret nuances of the
meaning of words they read. As students engage with specific
subject area disciplines, they are expected to learn from what they read as texts become increasingly
complex and academic. In other words, as in all prior grades, meaning making is central and cuts
across the strands of standards.
Meaning making is also emphasized in the CA ELD Standards, particularly in the standards for
the Interpretive mode in Part I: “Interacting in Meaningful Ways.” These standards focus on active
listening, close reading, critical viewing, and evaluation and analysis of writers’ and speakers’ language
use for specific purposes. The standards in Part II: “Learning
About How English Works” build students’ awareness and
understanding of the discourse patterns, grammatical
structures, and vocabulary of the English language necessary
for understanding complex academic texts.
By the end of grade five, students learned to quote
accurately from a text when explaining what it says
explicitly and when drawing inferences (RL/RI.5.1), as well
as to determine a theme or two or more main ideas and
summarize the text (RL/RI.5.2) and draw on specific details
to compare and contrast characters or events and explain
relationships between two or more individuals or events (RL/
RI.5.3). They learned to make sense of figurative language,
such as metaphors and similes, and determine the meaning
of general academic and domain-specific words (RL/RI.5.4),
Reading standards for
literature and informational
text in English language arts, as
well as reading standards for
literacy in history/social studies,
science, and technical subjects,
require students to understand
ideas and information from
a range of types of texts
and media formats that are
increasingly complex.512 | Chapter 6 Grades 6 to 8