Reading Stamina and Dividing Reading Texts for Classroom Discussion

  • stamina
  • 10 July, 2021
  • 15 Comments

Blast from the Past: This entry first appeared on July 10, 2021, and it was re-issued on July 15, 2023. Questions about this issue come up from time to time, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to re-release this blog entry. I know of no new research on this matter, though there are some dissertation studies that suggest kids aren't getting enough reading opportunity in class. Their solution seems to be that stamina is best built by having kids read self-selected books independently with a minimum of teacher guidance. They report that kids like this more than having traditional instruction. My problems with that include (1) research has not been particularly positive about those approaches and their impacts on reading achievement (enabling kids to read for longer but at lower levels of proficiency seems like a bad compromise); and (2) stamina is not always generalizable (some adults can immerse themselves in schlock novels for hours, but then struggle to concentrate and stay on task when told to read a 10-page science report for work). The point here is to do more than just encourage reading, but to encourage the types and amounts of reading that will allow students to gain power over their lives. 

Teacher question: I’m curious. What does the research say about the lengths of text segments in a guided reading lesson? How many pages should kids read prior to our discussions? I teach third grade.

Shanahan response: 

Great question. Unfortunately, in this era of the “science of reading” there is no research-based answer. No one, as far as I can tell, has bothered to study the question though it has been an issue for at least a century.

What do we know?

Studies of how kids do on reading tests show that there are real differences in the reading stamina they exhibit. Some readers start out fine, but as a test goes on, they wear down. They simply can’t sustain the attention and energy required to read well for the full length of the test. Kids from different countries differ in their psychological endurance during reading (Borgonovi & Biecek, 2016). Another study found that text complexity and length interacted to impact reading comprehension – longer texts were harder than shorter texts and length multiplied the impact of complexity factors (Mesmer & Hiebert, 2012). 

Why would that be?

Apparently, longer stretches of text can be more complex linguistically. For example, the longer a written argument the more elaborate can be its premises and the interconnections among its parts. Linguistic studies have looked at longer versus shorter texts and there is a tendency for greater linguistic sophistication, complexity, and subtlety in the longer ones.

That’s cool. But it doesn’t really help. The reason is that it has nothing to do with the role that length may take in teaching. It provides no clue about how best to chunk those instructional texts. A long text that is cut into three pieces wouldn’t be linguistically simpler than it was originally, but such dividing might play an important role in learning.

There are also those studies showing that length impacts reading comprehension itself – how well the students understand the texts. All things being equal, comprehending a long text poses greater psychological demands on readers than shorter texts. Text length may affect memory, reasoning, inferencing, and even motivation.

But again, that doesn’t help. That text length affects comprehension says nothing about how to enable students to do better with longer texts.

Back in the 1920s, when basal readers introduced teacher’s editions with prefabbed lesson plans for the first time, the idea of dividing stories for discussion became a thing.

They didn’t rely much on research in those days. I found a couple of old studies on dividing texts for discussion, and they reported conflicting results. One study said that asking questions throughout led to higher comprehension and another said it was better to group the questions at the end. The differences weren’t great either way. Nevertheless, the basals broke stories into parts – with kids reading longer segments of text as they proceeded up the grades.  

First grade stories were shorter than those aimed at older kids. And, the discussion segments were graduated, too. Beginners would read a page (perhaps 1 or 2 sentences) and then discuss. Older students might be asked to read 2-4 pages at a time, with considerably more words on each page.

Does that “gradual increase” approach work? Does it “stretch” kids out?

I suspect that it does and that we could do that better but could find no evidence either way.

Some authorities claim it is best to have kids read books rather than selections because of the need to build stamina. There is no question that reading 100 pages instead of 10 should increase the stamina building opportunity. However, it is kind of like working on somebody’s running by starting with a marathon. The well-developed runners may love the challenge, but the beginners may be intimidated.

The idea here – as with other well-known endurance tasks – is that stamina is learned, and rarely results without intentional effort. The focus of the advice provided here is on the silent reading of students in Grades 2-3 and up.

Consistency 

If you want kids to build reading stamina, they must read.

They must read pretty much every day.

However, this need be “accountable” reading. Developing the ability to sustain reading focus depends on more than just reading a lot of words. Here, I’m not talking so much about kids reading on their own as I am about having kids read in reading class, social studies, science, and so on.

Start with rather short sections of text: a sentence, a paragraph, a page. Monitor student success with these brief reads (I encourage kids to write answers to questions so I can determine who is comprehending well and who is not).

I often visit classrooms where kids aren’t expected to read. Text is there, but it is read aloud round robin fashion with the teacher telling kids what it means. Or, even when a text is read silently by the kids, there may be little real effort to determine how well they understood what the text said or what barriers to understanding they may have confronted. Such reading is a task, it gets completed, but it probably contributes little to learning.

It’s great if you can get kids to read on their own beyond this sanctioned reading. Have kids keep a book available for any down time in the classroom, such as when an assignment has been completed and they must wait for the others. Certainly, encourage and support kids’ reading at home, too, making it a regular part of their own personal lives.

Increasing Demands

The amounts of text that students are asked to read should increase gradually.

This increase should take place in two ways. First, the text segments that students are asked to read prior to any discussion or other activity should be lengthened. Second, the amount of classroom reading expected each week should go up, too.

I’d suggest having a spring goal for second graders of about 400 words per segment. Early in the year, you might start out having kids read a paragraph and then discuss. Over the following 30 weeks you’d increase, a little at the time, the amounts of text that students would be expected to read.

My goal for Grade 3 would be 500-600 words at a time, and for Grade 4 perhaps 700 or 750.

Those would be good targets since they would enable most students to meet the demands of accountability testing (think of those text lengths as your end of year goals).

Remember the students must comprehend well. Let’s say that your students read one paragraph at a time, and they’ve nailed it with good comprehension. It would make sense to increase the segments to 2-3 paragraphs. If they comprehend those, terrific. But if they don’t, then you might have to drop back a bit and increase more slowly.

I would also strongly recommend that you let the kids in on what you are up to and talk about the importance of sustained concentration. Give them some guidance (it can help to say the words in your head, or it can help if you stop at the end of each sentence/paragraph and think about what that meant, then read some more). Encourage the students to talk about issues like mind wandering and how to resist that or what to do when they are not understanding.

Lengthening the segments doesn’t change the amount of reading. A separate consideration is how to increase the amounts of reading expected each week.

Marathon runners in training increase their distances about 5-10% each week. Increasing the amounts of reading by 4-5% weekly across a school year would be almost imperceptible initially, but like compound interest, it would pay off in the long run. If students are in school 30 hours each week, then expecting 1-2 hours per week of real accountable reading doesn’t seem onerous or out of line, even in the primary grades. (In fact, it sounds like too little!)

Harder Shorter Sprints

Another trick of endurance runners is that they punctuate their longer, easier runs with shorter more demanding ones. These sprints make them stronger.

Speed isn’t our training issue in reading (though it can be a valuable outcome of this practice), but text difficulty levels are.

Let’s say your third graders are reading off and on throughout their school day and in reading class they can handle 300-word grade-level text segments as well. I’d suggest once or twice a week having an exercise in which the students read one or two 50–100-word text segments from a fourth- or fifth-grade book.

I wouldn’t just spring this on the kids, I’d tell them what I’m up to. Their speed is not the issue, but high comprehension is, so they should slow down as much as they need to and work hard to make sense of the text.

These “crunches” provide wonderful opportunities for learning. I’m certain the kids will want to talk about new vocabulary, or the sentences that really slowed them down, and what to do about those.

The challenge level of these exercises will provide students with a renewed confidence when they get back to more appropriately leveled texts.

There are lots of ways to organize these challenge exercises, but however you do it, think of the marathoner’s mantra, “longer/easier, shorter/harder.” When you are going to do a distance run or a long read, you want the workload to be relatively easy. Conversely, when you are trying to build strength – like taking on a much harder text – you want the amount of sustained work to be lessened.

Take a Break

If you want to build stamina in your students, then you must create an environment in which pressure and maximum effort is intermittent, not constant. Runners and cyclists work hard, but they also do cross training and take days off. The body can only take so much punishment.

What is true for the body is true for the mind.

Students need to be expected to work hard – sometimes. But they also need breaks and opportunities to engage less intensely.

There are lots of ways of organizing a school day. One that I would suggest is to look for those periods of time in the day that take the kids’ heads a whole different direction – like art, music, or physical education. If your students are going to play active games in the gymnasium at 11:00AM, then why not schedule an intensive reading session just before that?

Or, after several weeks of increasingly demanding text segments punctuated with challenge drills, what if you just did a week in which kids were expected to manage their own reading with few external educational demands?

Good readers can read significantly lengthy texts while sustaining attention and holding key information in memory. They manage to do this not just with texts that they find easy or that they enjoy reading, but with those they will need to read to succeed academically and in other social and professional venues. Teachers should operate more like strength and conditioning coaches, helping students not only to know more, but to develop the stamina needed for success. Researchers also need to come up with better ways of accomplishing the stamina goal than the suggestions provided here.   

References

Borgonovi, F., & Biecek, P. (2016). An international comparison of students' ability to endure fatigue and maintain motivation during a low-stakes test. Learning and Individual Differences, 49, 128–137. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2016.06.001

Mesmer, H. A., & Hiebert, E. H. (2015). Third graders’ reading proficiency reading texts varying in complexity and length: Responses of students in an urban, high-needs school. Journal of Literacy Research, 47(4), 473–504. https://doi.org/10.1177/1086296X16631923

Comments

See what others have to say about this topic.

Timothy Shanahan Jul 25, 2021 01:18 PM

Lauren--

Good point -- no direct evidence, but evidence from similar phenomena. Yep!

thanks.

tim

Wiliam Conrad Jul 10, 2021 05:03 PM

As usual, Tim provides practitioners with very practical advice to improve student reading comprehension. He also includes the research supporting his recommendations. Tim is a reading treasure. Thank you.

Lisa Darlene Stade Jul 10, 2021 05:18 PM

I agree that purposeful reading builds skill and checks for comprehension. I discuss the difference between reading quickly and accurately (fluency) compared to comprehension. Without fluency there is little comprehension but the pace of reading does need to adjust depending upon text complexity. I give students graphic organizers or sentence frames so that as they read they can have their mind be thinking of ways to answer the question. Students from fifth grade on are expected to read inon fiction text as much as fiction. To stress students thinking about the topic. I frame questions is an easy format for students to answer. Such as "What is the topic of this ___(article/paragraph/section)? What is this ___ mainly about? This _____ is mainly about ____. What does the author focus on? In this ____ the author focuses on ____. By providing sentence frames this allows the student to focus on what the text means and doesn't overly tax the student on how to write a complete sentences. This builds understanding for accurate explanations for third graders. If the focus of reading is on key ideas and claims questions can be asked such as: What is the author's key idea/main point? The author's key idea is _____. What is the author's claim regarding _____ is that ____. Goals, targets, accountability, monitoring and discussion build stamina and comprehension for reading non fictional works which is often less familiar to students than their first choice of reading fictional text. Learning how to adjust for types of text with scaffolding builds comprehension and supports stamina.

Lynn Smolen Jul 10, 2021 07:11 PM

This information is very helpful for native English speakers. What about English learners at the intermediate proficiency level in reading? I assume that the same advice would apply, but there would need to be modifications. If so, what kinds of modifications would you recommend?

Paul Zavitkovsky Jul 10, 2021 07:42 PM

Thanks for this really engaging piece on endurance-building. It feels like a great companion piece for two earlier posts that explain why breaking down teaching for comprehension into sub-skills (e.g. main idea, supporting details, author's purpose, etc.) doesn't produce stronger comprehension. Those posts are, "Should We Grade Students on the Individual Reading Standards?" (September 2019) and "How to Analyze or Assess Reading Comprehension" (November 2019).

In my view, what makes this information so important . . . and so timely . . . is that it offers a powerful alternative to the avalanche of poor guidance about teaching that is built into the reporting systems of most interim assessment programs (MAP, Fast Bridge, etc.). Building bad guidance into the woodwork of district-wide policy and practice is exactly what Zaretta Hammond had in mind when she described structural racialization as "as series of seemingly benign and supposedly well-intended policies [that] actually create a negative, cumulative and reinforcing effect that supports rather than dismantles the status quo." (Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, 2015, p. 29)

Over the past decade, many school districts have chosen to link large-scale interim assessment systems either directly or indirectly to high-stakes accountability measures. As a result, administrative and peer pressure to use interim test reports to support data-driven instruction can often be pretty intense. This is especially disheartening . . . and ironic . . . since there is no independent evidence that standardized interim assessments make any contribution at all to improved student achievement (see Slavin 2019 at https://robertslavinsblog.wordpress.com/2019/04/11/benchmark-assessments-weighing-the-pig-more-often/).

In anything, the drumbeat is getting louder for increased use of standardized interim assessment to inform instruction and to address post-pandemic learning loss (see, for example, Marion, 2019 "It Might Just Be a Pile of Bricks" https://www.nciea.org/blog/balanced-assessment/it-might-just-be-pile-bricks). Your focus on strategies that build endurance is a refreshing counterpoint to the noise produced by interim assessment systems that actively promulgate assessment illiteracy in the name of instructional support (see, for example, Gong, 2019, "Why Has It Been So Difficult to Design a Viable Through Year Assessment?" https://www.nciea.org/blog/state-testing/why-has-it-been-so-difficult-develop-viable-through-year-assessment)

Thanks again for the reminder that improving comprehension over time is a sense-making marathon that requires a deeper range of teaching strategies than one-skill-at-a-time instruction.

Timothy Shanahan Jul 10, 2021 09:52 PM

Lynn--

As you suspect there is no research on this. However, my own take from reading in a foreign language, I would suggest the value of shorter chunks the more limited the English ability. When guiding reading it is important to provide sufficient support to allow for a reasonable degree of comprehension. Thus, with a very limited reader who is going to need to rely on a dictionary or peer/teacher support to help with words or complicated sentences, a paragraph (or even sentence) at a time makes sense. But as the students become more proficient, you still will need to stretch out the amount of text.
thanks.

tim

Mat Jul 10, 2021 10:27 PM

Great blog post Tim with lots of practical suggestions.

You said that you encourage kids to write answers to questions so you can determine who is comprehending well and who is not. Why not do this by asking students directly? Is it to save time or is it because speaking to the students is like conferencing, an approach which you have pointed out elsewhere is not research-based.

Rosemary West Jul 10, 2021 11:22 PM

This makes sense, and I understand the philosophy! "Coaching" students is our mission and I thank you for guidance. #SuccessComesWithIntentionalEfforts

Timothy Shanahan Jul 11, 2021 12:04 AM

Mat-

It is much more efficient to do this with a group or a class, than trying to do it serially with each student (you can go to a greater depth, and kids learn a lot from each other). But, if in a group situation, I ask a question and one student answers, I can't be certain whether the other kids knew that or not -- hence the writing.

thanks.
tim

Lauren Thompson Jul 25, 2021 01:07 PM

I appreciate the practicality of this post. I'd like clarification on one point. You describe how existing research offers little guidance on how best to teach so that students' reading stamina and comprehension improve. Then you move to the comparison of physical training to mental or cognitive training. This makes for powerful imagery that carries your point well. The comparison has intuitive appeal. But it seems you have left implicit any research support for the application of marathon training methods to reading training. I believe such research can be found in cognitive research on learning, which describes the efficacy of interleaved instruction, for example. It would be helpful if you could identify research that supports your marathon-runner-reader approach. Thanks.

J Jan 12, 2023 07:31 PM

I am a 6th grade ELA teacher. Stamina is a word that my department is being directed to address with our students. We have been told that all texts should be read silently by students first with a brief comprehension check (although we have been given no expectaion or example as to what this would look like), then teach a lesson and finally students can reread the text with their group to work on the activity from the lesson.

My questions are:
- Is it necessary for all texts to have a first read independently and in silence? Or should we select specific texts throughout the unit to practice this process?
- How do you suggest teachers manage the class when students take different lengths of time to read a text?

Timothy Shanahan Jan 12, 2023 08:19 PM

J-
The approach that you describe seems neither aimed at fostering stamina nor teaching it. It seems more like you are being directed to assume that students already have it -- and that therefore you should treat each text/each child identically. I would not have every child reading every text in its entirety silently prior to discussion, unless you are assigning relatively easy texts that all students will be able to concentrate on through the whole thing.

The actions that I suggest in this blog entry should help if you are trying to increase kids' stamina. The problem with the activity you describe is that it won't teach or increase anything. First, I would place kids in grade level texts (not texts at the students' supposed instructional levels". Second, I would have some idea as to how difficult these texts are for the various students. Third, if you have reason to believe that some kids can read those texts all the way through without support, discussion, etc., and with a high degree of comprehension, indeed, follow the prescription you describe. Fourth, if you have reason to believe that some kids cannot read it successfully that way, then I would start out with the silent reading of small sections of text followed by intensive questioning, if they do well with that... then increase the chunks they work with. If not, provide guidance and support so they read those portions of text well, and then increase it. For especially low readers, having them read those portions aloud initially can be helpful (not round robin style, but reading the whole chunk aloud either to a partner or even just to themselves). Remember you are there to teach -- reading stamina should increase -- just reading a text won't provide that.

tim

Grace Vyduna-Haskins Jul 15, 2023 02:56 PM

Reading this blog brought back memories and questions. Perhaps how long or how much they read are no more important that what they get from their reading, especially from content text (science, social studies, etc.). I'm reminded of one of my children's teachers who had a split 3/4 classroom -- not much time for individual attention. A standard assignment was "Read 3 pages, write 3 questions, and answer those questions." As trite as this assignment was, at least it insisted that the students reflect on what they had read. I do think it forced key child to pay attention to what he read. Perhaps a good research comprehension project would include assigning a length of text using either teacher generated or self generated questions as they read.

Janie Jul 15, 2023 03:24 PM

Question: what if 3rd, 4th or 5th graders are not all on grade level reading? Any suggestions?

Timothy Shanahan Jul 15, 2023 04:02 PM

Janie--

That depends. If they are reading like first graders, you need to teach them out of level and build up their decoding skills (in most cases). However, if they are just behind level, you should be teaching them mainly with grade level texts (see my blog entries and publications on this site for articles on teaching with complex text). Teaching students "at their level" tends to hold them back rather than to power them forward.

tim

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Reading Stamina and Dividing Reading Texts for Classroom Discussion

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