Jacob's Ladder Reading Comprehension Program

Nonfiction Grade 5

Joyce VanTassel-Baska, Tamra Stambaugh

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000494044
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The Jacob's Ladder Reading Comprehension Program: Nonfiction targets reading comprehension skills in high-ability learners by moving students through an inquiry process from basic understanding to critical analyses of texts using a field-tested method developed by the Center for Gifted Education at William & Mary. Students in grade 5 will be able to comprehend and analyze any nonfiction reading passage after completing the activities in this book.

Using skill ladders connected to individual readings related to essays, articles, comparison documents, infographics, and other nonfiction texts, students move from lower order, concrete thinking skills to higher order, critical thinking skills. All of the books, geared to increasing grade levels, include high-interest readings, ladders to increase reading skill development, and easy-to-implement instructions. The ladders include multiple skills necessary for academic success, covering language arts standards such as sequencing, cause and effect, classification, making generalizations, inference, understanding emotion, using and thinking about words, and recognizing themes and concepts.

Optional Student Workbook Packs

In addition to this teacher's guide, companion student workbooks are available for Science and Math, Social Studies, and Fiction/Nonfiction Comparisons. The student workbooks feature ample room for student responses and notes, make reviewing and providing feedback on student work easier than ever, provide students with an easy-to-use reference to use during discussions, and save time, as there is no need to reproduce student handouts.Grade 5

Part I
Teachers’ Guide to Jacob’s Ladder Reading Comprehension Program

DOI: 10.4324/9781003236061-1

Rationale

Decoding and constructing meaning of the written word are two of the earliest tasks required of students in schools. These skills occupy the central place in the curriculum at the elementary level. Yet approaches to teaching reading comprehension often are “skill and drill,” using work-sheets on low-level reading material. As a result, students frequently are unable to transfer these skills from exercise pages and apply them to new, higher level reading material.

The time expended to ensure that students become autonomous and advanced readers would suggest the need for a methodology that deliberately moves students from simple to complex reading skills with texts matched to reading level as determined by Lexile and other approaches to ensure appropriate reading challenges. Such a learning approach to reading skill development ensures that students can traverse easily from basic comprehension skills to higher level critical reading skills, while using the same reading stimulus to navigate this transition. Reading comprehension and knowledge acquisition are enhanced by instructional scaffolding, using strategies and processes to help students analyze passages (Villaume & Brabham, 2002). In addition, teachers who emphasize higher order thinking through questions and tasks (like those applied in this program) promote greater reading growth (Taylor, Pearson, Peterson, & Rodriguez, 2003), especially when this instruction is presented through inquiry and discussion as opposed to isolated worksheet-like activities. Cognitive science suggests that students need to have purpose and direction for discussions of text to yield meaningful learning and that scaffolding is a necessary part of enhancing critical reading behavior and developing expertise (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000).

The Jacob’s Ladder Reading Comprehension Program: Nonfiction series was written in response to teacher findings that students have a deep curiosity to learn more about the world around them, but need more developmentally appropriate materials and scaffolding to process and accurately interpret informational texts (Duke, Bennett-Armistead, & Roberts, 2003; VanTassel-Baska & Stambaugh, 2006a). Tivnan and Hemphill (2005) studied reading reform curricula in Title I schools and found that few of the reading programs emphasized skills beyond basic phonemic awareness, fluency, or limited comprehension. To compound this, many popularized reading curricula include less than 20% informational reading selections (Duke et al., 2003). For students who are in the lowest SES schools, even less access to informational texts is available (Duke et al., 2003; Moss, 2005). Therefore, supplementary curriculum at the elementary level that is focused on higher level thinking skills with access to engaging informational texts is greatly needed.

With the onset of Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and other curriculum reform initiatives, there has been an increased emphasis on nonfiction reading. Advocates suggest that by fourth grade students should be reading 50% literacy texts and 50% informational texts as part of their repertoire. The number of nonfiction texts to be read increases to 70% of all readings for graduating, college-ready seniors (Calkins, Ehrenworth, & Lehman, 2012). The incorporation of engaging nonfiction texts into an already rigorous reading curriculum is found to motivate students—especially reluctant readers and those with innate curiosity and precocity in a specific content domain. Moreover, the use of nonfiction increases knowledge and access to information beyond the classroom walls and encourages engagement in the practice of becoming lifelong learners (Moss, 2005).

Jacob’s Ladder Reading Comprehension Program: Nonfiction (Jacob’s Ladder: Nonfiction) is a compilation of the instructional scaffolding and reading exercises necessary to aid students in their journey toward becoming critical and inquisitive readers. Students learn concept development skills through generalizing, predicting and forecasting skills through delineating implications of events/perspectives/situations, comparative analysis skills through discerning textual meaning and author’s purpose, and creative analysis skills through synthesizing information and producing new products or ideas (VanTassel-Baska & Stambaugh, 2006a). The questions and tasks for each reading are open-ended, allowing for multiple responses that ultimately improve performance on comprehension tests (Guthrie, Schafer, & Huang, 2001). Progressing through the hierarchy of skills also requires students to reread the text, thereby improving meta-comprehension accuracy (Rawson, Dunlosky, & Thiede, 2000). As many gifted students are able to assimilate information more quickly and make connections within and across disciplines, a comparative analysis of a variety of nonfiction texts supports their development and content acquisition (Rogers, 2007). In addition, the more diverse works students have accessible to read, the more likely they are to show higher achievement gains in addition to reading engagement (Brozo, Shiel, & Topping, 2007).

Introduction to Jacob’s Ladder: Nonfiction

Jacob’s Ladder: Nonfiction is a supplemental reading program that implements targeted readings adapted primarily from blogs, newspapers, speeches, scientific journals, and biography study. With this program, students engage in an inquiry process that moves from lower order to higher order thinking skills. Starting with basic textual understanding, students learn to critically analyze texts by determining implications and consequences, generalizations, main ideas, vocabulary of the discipline, emotional appeals, and/or creative synthesis. This book is suggested for gifted or high-achieving students in grade 5. It is used to enhance reading comprehension and critical thinking. Tasks are organized into six skill ladders, A–F, and each ladder focuses on a different set of skills. Students “climb” each ladder by answering lower level questions and then moving to higher level questions (or rungs) at the top of each ladder. As many gifted students are more conceptual and prefer whole to part learning (Rogers, 2007), it is also appropriate to begin at the highest rung and scaffold down as needed to ensure that students have mastered the necessary skills. However, each ladder may stand alone as it focuses on a separate critical thinking component in reading. The intent of the ladder design is that students spend more time discussing ideas at the top of the ladder rungs instead of the bottom rungs, although each rung is distinct in its purpose for skill development.

Ladder A focuses on implications and consequences at the highest and most abstract level. By leading students through sequencing and cause-and-effect activities, students learn to draw implications and consequences from readings. Ladder B focuses on making generalizations. Students first learn to provide details and examples and then move to classifying and organizing those details in order to move up to the highest level of making generalizations. Ladder C focuses on themes. Students begin by identifying key literary features or questions about a text and then make inferences about a given textually based situation. Ladder D focuses at the highest level on creative synthesis by leading students through paraphrasing and summarizing activities. Ladder E focuses on students’ emotional responses or reactions to the text as well as analyzing emotional appeals that may be evident in some informational readings by distinguishing emotion and fact, and then channeling the information productively. Ladder F provides an emphasis on word choice and vocabulary of the discipline by engaging learners in understanding, applying, and embedding new vocabulary or analyzing appropriate word choice in both their own and others’ writing. Ladders are carefully matched to each text based on the key thinking skills that are implicit or explicit within the readings.

Table 1 provides a visual representation of the six ladders and corresponding objectives for each ladder and rung.

TABLE 1 Goals and Objectives of Jacob’s Ladder Nonfiction Thinking Skills by Ladder and Rung

A3: Consequences and Implications	B3: Generalizations	C3: Theme/Concept	D3: Creative Synthesis	E3: Using Emotion	F3: Playing With Words
Students will be able to explain and predict the short-/long-term or positive/negative implications of an event, problem, solution, perspective, or passage.	Students will be able to write and/or justify generalized (conceptual) statements about a reading and/or an idea within or across readings, using data to support their suppositions.	Students will be able to identify a major idea or theme common throughout the text or series of texts.	Students will create something new using what they have learned from the reading (or series of readings) and their synopses.	Students will be able to analyze how emotion affects the passage and/or the reader.	Students will be able to accurately apply strategies to make an argument, express a point, or use domain-specific vocabulary in a different context or their own creation.
A2: Cause and Effect	B2: Classifications	C2: Inference	D2: Summarizing	E2: Expressing Emotion	F2: Thinking About Words
Students will be able to identify relationships between events, contexts, problems, solutions, or other phenomena.	Students will be able to categorize different aspects of the text or identify and sort categories from a list of topics or details.	Students will be able to use textual clues to make judgments about specific textual events, ideas, or the author’s purpose.	Students will be able to provide a synopsis of text sections.	Students will be able to articulate their feelings about a passage or concept expressed within a passage through a variety of media (e.g., song, art, poem, story, essay, speech).	Students will be able to analyze the use of words or devices used to craft a message as related to the theme or idea of a text.
A1: Sequencing	B1: Details	C1: Textual Elements and Understanding	D1: Paraphrasing	E1: Understanding Emotion	F1: Understanding Words
Students will be able to list, in order of importance or occurrence in the text, specific events or perspectives.	Students will be able to list specific details or recall facts related to the text or generate a list of ideas about a specific topic or event given evidence.	Students will be able to identify and explain specific elements, such as context, organization, and general understanding of discipline-specific ideas within a given source.	Students will be able to restate lines read using their own words.	Students will be able to explain how emotion and feeling are conveyed in a text and how that may or may not be linked to their personal experience.	Students will be able to identify and define new vocabulary or ideas within the context of a selected passage through the use of context clues.
Ladder A	Ladder B	Ladder C	Ladder D	Ladder E	Ladder F

Ladder A: Focus on Implications and Consequences

The goal of Ladder A is to develop prediction and forecast...