Understanding Texts & Readers: Responsive Comprehension Instruction with Leveled

<p><em>Goals help guide my thinking about reader's skills within each level of text complexity, and a leveling system helps my understanding of readers' development from level to level.</em></p> <p><strong>-Jennifer Serravallo </strong></p> <p><em> U</em><em>nderstanding Texts & Readers</em> makes comprehension make sense. In it, Jennifer Serravallo narrows the distance between assessment and instruction. She maps the four fiction and four nonfiction comprehension goals she presented in <em>The Reading Strategies Book</em> to fourteen text levels and shares sample responses that show what to expect from readers at each.</p> <p>Jen simplifies text complexity and clarifies comprehension instruction. She begins by untangling the many threads of comprehension: Levels, engagement, stamina, the relevance of texts, and much more. Then level by level she: </p> <ul> <li>calls out with precision how plot and setting, character, vocabulary and figurative language, and themes and ideas change as fiction across levels</li> <li>specifies how the complexity of main idea, key details, vocabulary, and text features increases in nonfiction texts</li> <li>points out what to expect from a reader as text characteristics change</li> <li>provides samples of student responses to texts at each level</li> <li>shares progressions across levels to support instructional planning. </li> </ul> <p>Even if you haven't read the book your reader is responding to, you'll have the background necessary to make g