Pop quiz: What do the following texts have to do with each other?
- “What Happens When it Rains”
- “Shasta Dam”
- “Water Main Break in Downtown New York City”
- “Penguins: Up Close and Personal”
- “Pythons Invade the Florida Everglades”
- “Who Wants a Spiny Snack?”
If you answered that they all have some connection to water, you’re right—but there’s no prize.
These texts are posted on ReadWorks’s website, on a page devoted to “K-12 Articles Related to Water.” As the intro wisely states, “Research says that reading or listening to several articles related to the same topic can help students build knowledge, acquire and reinforce important vocabulary, and make connections.”
That’s true. But ReadWorks didn’t follow its own advice.
The texts listed above are its set on water for 4th grade (that spiny one is on pufferfish). Technically all of these texts are related to water, but none is actually about water. Even the first one, which you might assume is about rain or perhaps the water cycle, is really about dirt turning to mud.
That one may not be worth a text set, but all the other texts in this collection are. Instead of pretending that these are all about water, it would be far more productive to create text sets on the actual topics: dams, city water infrastructure, penguins (and possibly other animals in Antarctica), the Everglades, and oceanic fish. Only by having multiple texts on these focused topics will students have a chance to “build knowledge, acquire and reinforce important vocabulary, and make connections.”
When constructing a text set, the key is for words and ideas to repeat across the set. A well-designed text set will start with an introductory text on a specific topic that provides basic concepts and essential vocabulary; the set will progress to more and more complex texts that provide multiple exposures to the words and ideas that students need to master.
ReadWorks’s texts on water don’t do that. Since water is only tangentially related to these texts’ topics, the text set provides almost no repetition of words or ideas. Students don’t have a chance to build knowledge or vocabulary, and there are very few connections to make (but please let me know if you ever see penguins and pythons hanging out at the Shasta Dam).
Pretty much all of ReadWorks’s text sets on water are like this—not about water. But there is one exception. Five of the six texts it pulled together for third grade are coherent:
- “What’s the Big Idea about Water? : Living Things & Ecosystems Need Water”
- “What’s the Big Idea about Water? : Water’s Impact on the Earth”
- “What’s the Big Idea about Water? : Protecting Out Water”
- “What’s the Big Idea about Marine Biology? : Life in the Ocean”
- “What’s the Big Idea about Marine Biology? : Creatures and Ecosystems of the Ocean”
- “Li Bing and the Flooding”
The five truly about water were provided by OLogy, a website for children by the American Museum of Natural History. They are informative and engaging—as is the whole Ology site.
ReadWorks could dramatically improve its text sets if it took these five as a model. Even just using the texts listed on its water page, coherent text sets (on topics such as the Everglades) that provide the repetition needed for learning could be created by mixing easier texts for children to read with harder texts for teachers to read aloud.
Of course, old habits are hard to break. Teachers have long been told to create theme-based units. It sounds like a great idea, but much like these texts vaguely related to water, themes tend to be far too broad to support learning. As E. D. Hirsch explained in “A Wealth of Words,” vocabulary is learned through multiple exposures in multiple contexts—it’s also the key to increasing equity.