The ELA/literacy standards highlight the growing complexity of the texts students must read to be ready for the demands of college, career, and life. The standards call for a staircase of increasing complexity as students ascend through the grades. The factors used to measure text complexity are qualitative (levels of meaning, structure, language conventionality, and knowledge demands), quantitative (word frequency, sentence length, and text cohesion), and reader and task considerations (background knowledge of reader, academic task involved, and teacher professional judgment). Reflect on the sorts of texts that your students have encountered in previous grades and the kinds of texts you can provide that will best prepare them to succeed in later grades.

Very much connected to reading comprehension is a focus on academic vocabulary—words that appear in a variety of content areas, such as exchange and estimate.  To increase their academic vocabulary, students need a mix of conversation, direct instruction, and reading. Think about the vocabulary-building activities (either specific to your content area or in general) that you use in your class.