Grades 6-12

Grades 6-12 for Teachers

What types of knowledge and skill must students acquire, or continue to develop, after third grade in order to maintain and accelerate their development of proficiency in academic literacy? We begin by identifying areas of student knowledge and skill that must continue to grow from 4th to 12th grades in order to maintain at least grade level reading skills across that developmental span. Instructional improvements that affect most of these areas may be required to help many students maintain grade-level reading skills through 12th grade, and will almost certainly be required in order to increase overall proficiency levels in grade-level and above-grade-level students. While some students with serious reading difficulties will probably require instructional support in areas (e.g., word-identification strategies), they will also require high quality instruction and significant practice in essential areas if they are to close the gap toward grade-level reading skills. The six essential areas of growth in knowledge, reading, and thinking skills for grades 4 to 12 are reading fluency, vocabulary knowledge, content knowledge, higher-level reasoning thinking skills, cognitive strategies specific to reading comprehension, and motivation and engagement. Center on Instruction