With the recent release of America’s NAEP Report Card for Reading Assessment, we learned there has been a decline in middle school reading scores. Two years after navigating pandemic-induced remote learning, educators are again in the spotlight and now under more pressure to find effective teaching strategies to boost reading comprehension and proficiency.
So, how can educators support every student in making reading gains?
Literacy development in all classrooms and subjects is an important part of the solution. But research has shown that “although most students manage to master basic and even intermediate literacy skills, many never gain proficiency … that would enable them to read challenging texts in science, history, literature, mathematics or technology ’” (Shanahan and Shanahan 2008, 45). Educators of all subjects can benefit from teaching general literacy skills to help students better understand course material.
Building literacy in your classroom doesn’t have to be a daunting task! An easy way to get started is to incorporate daily reading practice into your instruction.
Research has shown that daily reading practice supports reading achievement. The Juice provides students with opportunities to interact daily with short, engaging articles about current events and assessments that build their reading confidence and background knowledge.
How The Juice Scales Student Success
Take a closer look at how educators are using daily content in The Juice to scale student success.
Engagement: With five daily article topics that include breaking news, STEM, politics, arts and entertainment, and sports, teachers can quickly find content that resonates with their students’ interests, which is paramount in getting young learners excited about reading. Teachers are also empowered to enrich and extend their lessons with real-world examples.
Common text: It can be challenging and time-consuming for educators to find quality content that all students can access, regardless of reading level or native language. That’s why The Juice publishes every story at four progressively complex reading levels. We strive to promote equity by resourcing teachers with texts that enable every student to absorb the material and participate in classroom discussions with their peers. Teachers can also assign content through the search feature to differentiate instruction or support intervention.
Short-form content: Our short-form content (250-275 words per article) is accessible and builds reading confidence—no more students complaining about long articles and pretending to read.
Vocabulary support: We know that understanding vocabulary is fundamental to reading comprehension, so every article contains vocabulary words with clickable, pop-up definitions. We also help students develop domain-specific and academic vocabulary to support comprehension across subject areas.
Background knowledge: Especially important for Multilingual Learners and striving readers, background knowledge helps students activate prior knowledge to access more complex texts across all disciplines.
Point-of-use scaffolding: Supplemental “Extra Juices,” multimedia, and read-alouds are a few of the supports built into our platform to help all students as they read our content.
Monitoring growth: The Juice helps make each student’s learning visible by providing timely, standards-aligned, formative assessments to help them practice their informational text skills. Teachers can access student data in their teacher portal to plan for instruction and support interventions.
Extend Student Learning with The Juice
Looking for practical ways to extend student learning with The Juice? Here are some activities that support reading comprehension:
- Have students practice close reading with an article in The Juice
- Use The Juice to support reading comprehension in writing with text-dependant analysis and constructed responses
- Use the vocabulary words in the Juice to create a dictionary with your English Language Learners
- Have students gather evidence from the text to support a debate on a topic presented in an article
Ready to bring The Juice’s reading comprehension resources to your classroom?