In my state, ELA standards transition sharply from foundational skills to analytical skills between the 6th and 7th grades. This aligns with the same shift in the common core standards. As students need to meet a variety of similar standards on both informational and literary texts, schools typically adopt one of three strategies.

The first strategy exclusively uses short stories, excerpts, and a variety of brief informational texts. The school will typically purchase a textbook that contains the passages, and the teacher sequences lessons around topics or themes. I recall going through a system like this myself in seventh through ninth grade. The advantage of this strategy is that both sets of standards (informational and literary) are covered.

The second strategy is a novel-baed approach. I recall doing this in tenth through twelfth grade. This strategy focuses primarily on literary standards, alongside the inclusion of a memoir or supplementing books with informational articles.

The last approach is a hybrid approach in which teachers teach one or two novels during the year while also tackling a series of shorter works. The advantage to this strategy is more flexibility, including more time that could be devoted to writing.

I have taught using all three approaches. Personally, I believe that novel-based instruction is great. Before my seventh grade year, I was homeschooled, and the vast majority of my curriculum was just going to the library and reading books. The constant, continued practice of reading developed my literacy skills. In college, I learned through experience that reading higher-level books became easier the more I read them. Being saturated in that environment helped me develop vocabulary knowledge, structural knowledge, and higher-order thinking within a specific domain. At first, I wouldn’t understand most of what I read, but a peer told me that was normal. “Just keep reading, even if you don’t comprehend it” was the advice I got. It worked. I got used to the difficulty level and was able to consume more of those texts with greater ease.

It reminds me of being homeschooled and experiencing the same breakthrough as I was reading my first chapter book. This also reminds me of how video games are played. Many players don’t bother sitting through tutorials and jump into a game without the appropriate skills. They try, fail, and keep going until they figure out how the mechanics of the game. The more video games that are played, the more likely the player is able to see patterns in different game styles and transfer skills to new games. The same is true for novels.

I have some more thoughts on novels, so this will be continued in the next post.