Opinion: From Tasks to Meaning: How to Make Sure Reading Instruction Goes Deeper

The lesson for the day had the students reading One Giant Leap, which narrates the Apollo 11 moon landing. Yet two third-grade teachers — using the same lesson, in the same district, with similar students — produced completely different learning experiences.

In one classroom, students identified literal and nonliteral language: an exercise in labeling text features. Students defined the types of language and carefully annotated the text with examples of both kinds, concluding with a perfunctory discussion.

In the other classroom, students identified literal and nonliteral language, but went further, grappling with what Neil Armstrong meant by “one giant leap for mankind” and connecting the famous phrase to the broader significance of the moon landing. The teacher engaged students by asking them if they, third graders firmly located on planet Earth, were part of the “mankind” of whom Armstrong spoke as he stepped onto the moon. The power of the text and the instruction echoed through that classroom.

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Both teachers used the same high quality instructional materials. Only one truly supported students in building meaning. Across classrooms and districts, this pattern repeats, according to a learning brief from SRI Education.

In nearly two-thirds of 111 observed comprehension lessons, the work that students did supported only surface-level comprehension — a literal or task-oriented, partial understanding of the text that stops short of the deeper and fuller comprehension work readers need to engage in to succeed in later grades and beyond. Only 24% of lessons fostered robust comprehension, the kind that integrates literal and inferential understanding into a cohesive mental model of the text.

In other words: the curriculum is there. The materials are being used. But, in many classrooms, the meaning-making is missing.

SRI’s research focused on four large school districts that have implemented high quality curricula — including Core Knowledge Language Arts, Wit & Wisdom, and EL Education — for several years. Researchers surveyed 539 teachers who reported near-daily use of their district-adopted curriculum.

Students in these districts are reading and discussing knowledge-rich texts. On paper, this is what policymakers hoped for when states began recommending adoption of such curriculum.

But SRI also sent observers into classrooms in those four districts. The observations showed that teachers spent high proportions of class time on comprehension instruction, and that lessons featured many opportunities for student participation and highly engaged students. These findings represent the notable successes of the districts’ comprehension-focused curriculum implementation. But the comprehension instruction often stopped with the task — finding details, answering literal questions, naming text structures — without guiding students toward the bigger ideas and themes that define deep comprehension.

High quality instructional materials can lay the foundation for robust comprehension instruction. But they cannot deliver it on their own.

This is not just an instruction problem; it’s a systems problem. Curriculum designers, district leaders and instructional coaches may be unaware of the extent to which systemic practices determine the depth of comprehension instruction. SRI’s findings point to multiple well-meaning school and district forces that unintentionally nudge instruction toward the shallow end.

SRI researchers found narrow “standards-aligned,” “data-driven” approaches guiding teachers to focus on discrete skills and individual standards, despite the reality that comprehension standards are not individually measurable. There’s also insufficient teacher time spent discussing, analyzing and mastering the texts — and their content — as they prepare to teach knowledge-rich curriculum

Administrator classroom walkthrough observation rubrics and checklists often reward the most visible aspects of a comprehension lesson — posted objectives, student participation andx curricular materials in use — rather than what actually matters: Are students making meaning?

In short, well-intentioned systems may be signaling to teachers that addressing standards, completing tasks and tests, and simply using curriculum materials are the most important goals. But SRI’s findings suggest that these efforts might distract teachers from the true goal of teaching students to understand texts.  

SRI’s analysis of the 24% of observed lessons that did foster robust comprehension points to six teaching practices that matter. These practices include engaging students in text-specific analysis, modeling meaning-making, leveraging prior knowledge, providing instructive feedback, creating opportunities for text-based reasoning and structuring peer learning. These practices were more tightly correlated with robust comprehension — suggesting they could be steps toward how teachers might shift their practice toward that goal.

None of these are new ideas. Educators have talked for years about modeling, text-based evidence, and rich peer-to-peer discussion. What is new is the clarity with which we observed how these practices must be oriented toward the big ideas of a text — not merely toward a task — to move instruction from surface to substance.

For example, in one lesson, a teacher used strong instructional modeling to show students how to collect key details and paraphrase a main idea. Then, she showed students how to do it in a history text about how new navigational technologies facilitated European exploration of the New World, truly unlocking robust comprehension.

For policymakers and system leaders who championed high quality materials as a lever for literacy improvement, these findings offer both a warning and a roadmap. Fortunately, the districts involved have the literacy leadership and professional learning infrastructure to make key shifts toward robust comprehension instruction. Three next steps for literacy leaders stand out:

1. Define and communicate a clear vision for robust comprehension instruction. Districts must go beyond “fidelity” to curriculum and articulate what deep understanding looks like for students and what it demands from instruction. Discussion, writing, knowledge-building, and standards are all part of the story, but ultimately, robust comprehension must be the target.

2. Reorient professional learning around the knowledge-building texts and their meaning. Teachers need structured opportunities to build the historical, literary, and scientific content knowledge necessary to facilitate robust understandings of the knowledge-building texts. Their professional learning should require deep, collective unpacking of all the nuances in the texts. .

3. Align observation and assessment systems to priorities for instruction. If tools and interim assessments measure only surface features, surface-level instruction will persist. Systems must adopt tools that can discern whether instruction leads students toward robust comprehension and use that data transparently to support improvement.

These changes are not small lifts, but they are essential.

Perhaps the most hopeful finding in the study is this: Lessons that supported robust comprehension didn’t just deepen learning, they increased student motivation and engagement. Students liked these lessons more. The students in the robust One Giant Leap lesson could see themselves in the Apollo mission — and on the moon.

In short, the path to better literacy outcomes is also a path to more joyful teaching and learning.

SRI Education and The 74 both receive financial support from the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies