Jennifer Serravallo - Understanding Texts & Readers: Responsive Comprehension Instruction with Leveled Texts

Goals help guide my thinking about readers skills within each level of text complexity, and a leveling system helps my understanding of readers development from level to level.

-Jennifer Serravallo

Understanding Texts & Readers 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 The Reading Strategies Book to fourteen text levels and shares sample responses that show what to expect from readers at each.

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:

Even if you havent read the book your reader is responding to, youll have the background necessary to make great teaching decisions for all your readers. Understanding subtle shifts and increases in demands from level to level, writes Jennifer Serravallo, can guide what a teacher asks a student, what the teacher expects of the student, and what the teacher, therefore, teaches the student.

Want to become a master of matching kids to books? Looking to take the difficult out of differentiation? Or do you want to dramatically increase the power and responsiveness of Jens Reading Strategies Book? Understanding Texts & Readers shows you how to move forward when students need to make progress.