Featured Post
Presenting Multisyllabic Strategies for Adolescent Readers
April 28, 2026
As students move into middle and high school, challenges with multisyllabic words come to the fore. Freddy asks how corpus linguistics could pinpoint the multisyllabic words most worth teaching.
Knowing Word Parts Isn’t the Same as Knowing Words
April 7, 2026
Morphology teaching frequently stops at the pieces — students drill prefixes and suffixes in isolation, fill in charts, match roots to definitions — without ever encountering those element in real texts. What learners also need is sustained engagement with texts where morphologically rich vocabulary appears in context. It’s the combination — explicit guidance and meaningful reading — that lets students move from recognizing pieces to actually using the system.
Middle Schoolers Deserve Stories, Not Worksheets
March 24, 2026
Middle schoolers don’t need more scaffolding and exercises. They need stories that treat them as the thinking, feeling, aware human beings they actually are.
Guest Post: Motivation Isn’t About Lowering the Bar
March 23, 2026
In our efforts to motivate students to engage in reading instruction–– particularly in middle and high school–– we’ve often responded by trying to make reading feel easier. These instincts are rooted in good intentions, but are our efforts unintentionally undermining our students’ opportunities for success?
Climbing the Staircase of Automaticity: Why Volume and Design Matter in Adolescent Reading
March 11, 2026
Automaticity is built through volume. But volume alone is not enough. Volume must be designed. At TextProject, we have built a coherent Staircase of Automaticity in Reading.
Not Zero: Why Adolescent Reading Interventions Should Start Where Students Are
March 10, 2026
Too many reading interventions send adolescents back to the beginning—as if a thirteen- or seventeen-year-old were encountering print for the first time. But adolescent readers who score below Proficient are not at zero. When we begin where students actually are, we align practice with theory—and give adolescents the forward momentum they deserve.
When Aspirational Benchmarks Become Public Verdicts: Revisiting NAEP Proficiency
March 6, 2026
What does NAEP Proficiency actually represent? Is it intended to describe what is developmentally appropriate for most eighth graders, or does it represent a more ambitious target? Ambitious goals are essential—they push systems forward. But when aspirational benchmarks are misread as diagnostic norms, high expectations become public condemnation.
From Reluctant to Engaged: Open-Access Text Sets That Transform Adolescent Readers
March 3, 2026
While pundits paint dire pictures of 2024 NAEP results for 8th and 12th grades, the reality is more nuanced: many teens simply haven’t read enough to develop automatic, proficient reading. Current interventions mistakenly attribute problems to decodingRead More »From Reluctant to Engaged: Open-Access Text Sets That Transform Adolescent Readers
Flattening the Developmental Staircase: Lexical Complexity in Elementary Reading Texts Across Six Decades
February 18, 2026
This study examined how the lexical complexity of elementary reading textbooks has changed over six decades, finding that the issue is not declining rigor, but rather compressed progression.
Finding the Extraordinary in the Ordinary: Reviving Freddy’s Favorites
February 10, 2026
At TextProject, we believe that literacy is the gateway to agency. But beyond the mechanics of reading lies the why: the stories that stay with us, the books that make us look at a common bird or a quiet hobby and see something profound. I amRead More »Finding the Extraordinary in the Ordinary: Reviving Freddy’s Favorites