Power Plan

Learning Forward

Equity and excellence in teaching and learning.

Power Plan

High school fine-tunes instruction to build reading strength and stamina.

“There’s still a question on the table. How can we get our students to read more and better? I mean, they read what they have to, and they’re doing OK. But how do we ensure that they are ready for what comes after high school?” This comment, made by an English teacher at Health Sciences High & Middle College in San Diego, California, focused the conversation that a group of teachers were having as part of a whole-school professional development session in February 2012. Health Sciences High students performed adequately for the school to meet accountability demands, but, as a history teacher noted, “We don’t get breakthrough results. It’s not like they’re blowing us away with their understanding or their performance on assessments.” Over the

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Authors

Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey

Douglas Fisher ([email protected]) and Nancy Frey ([email protected]) are professors of educational leadership at San Diego State University and teacher leaders at Health Sciences High & Middle College in San Diego, California.

References

Boyles, N. (2013). Closing in on close reading. Educational Leadership, 70(4), 36-41.

Duffy, G. (2014). Explaining reading: A resource for explicit teaching of the Common Core standards (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Guilford.

Fisher, D., Ross, D., & Grant, M. (2010). Building background knowledge: Improving student achievement through wide reading. The Science Teacher, 77(1), 23-26.

Frey, N. & Fisher, D. (2013). Rigorous reading: 5 access points for comprehending complex texts. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.