Choosing Classroom Texts

The TextProject Teacher Development Series on Text Complexity provides valuable insights on choosing appropriate texts for the classroom. The series consists of five modular lessons, each with guidance for teacher leaders, teacher educators or staff development leaders as well as activities for teachers.

Each module’s theme is developed through three categories of activities:

• Read and Learn: Foundational readings and purpose-setting questions to provide essential knowledge and guide further exploration
• Reflect and Respond: Activities that facilitate an in-depth understanding of the core material, by answering purpose-setting questions and working with colleagues to discover nuances in the concepts presented in the foundational readings
• Analyze and Apply: Hands-on activities that enable teachers to work directly with texts, including exemplars proposed in the CCSS, to analyze aspects of text complexity and gain confidence examining other texts for text complexity

Developed by veteran teacher educators Dana L. Grisham and Thomas DeVere Wolsey in conjunction with TextProject’s Elfrieda H. Hiebert, the TextProject Teacher Development Series in Text Complexity includes modules for teacher educators and teacher candidates, plus foundational and supplemental readings, all available for free download from the TextProject website.

Note: The instructor edition for each module features margin notes of special interest to instructors (with additional content or activity notes), but is otherwise identical to the participant edition.