November 22, 2025 • 17 mins
This episode explores how to select rich texts for comprehension instruction by moving beyond traditional levelling systems. Jocelyn introduces four dimensions of text demand to help teachers find the "Goldilocks spot" - texts that challenge students without overwhelming them. She discusses four common reading scenarios and emphasises matching text complexity to students' abilities while considering cognitive load.
For teachers wanting to dive deeper into these frameworks and learn practical strategies for upper primary reading instruction, Jocelyn is offering a new Teach Along course: "Reading Success in the Upper Primary Years" starting Term 1, 2026. Details are available in the Professional Learning section of the website.
Has something in this episode resonated with you? Get in touch!
Are your students good readers, but poor spellers? If so, you are not alone. Spelling Success in Action addresses phonics, orthography, and morphology to give students a well-rounded understanding of how our language system works.
Find out how you can help your students move beyond guessing and memorisation at https://www.jocelynseamereducation.com/spelling2
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jocelyn (01:16):
Hi there, it's Jocelyn here, and today we're diving
into a topic that is going tomake it so much easier for you
to make instructional decisionswhen choosing rich texts.
We're talking today about textcomplexity, and trust me, it's
way more nuanced than simplyfinding a text at a student's
level.
(01:36):
For so many years, comprehensionwork was about teaching
strategies, with the belief thatonce we're taught a strategy,
students would apply it to anytext.
We now know that comprehensioninstruction is not a checklist
of strategies we tick off.
It's not about mechanicallyapplying things like making
connections and summarising andhoping for the best.
(01:58):
Comprehension is built as weteach morphology, vocabulary,
syntax, text structure, languagefeatures, and genre elements.
When we read, we put all ofthis together to help not just
get what the text is saying, butto look beyond the
surface-level words and go tothe deeper understandings.
(02:20):
More and more of us are becomingaware of the limitations of
levelling for our text levelwork.
We know that finding a levelfor the student and matching a
book to them isn't the best wayto go about building their
reading skills.
Research is consistently clearon that point.
But other than use a complextext at grade level, there isn't
(02:43):
much guidance out there to helpus make important decisions
about which text to use.
This episode is going to giveyou some starting information to
change that.
You might be familiar with theidea of the five plagues of the
reader from readingreconsidered.
This is five ideas, fivefeatures of text that can make
(03:04):
it tricky for kids to read.
The five plagues are (03:06):
archaic language, nonlinear time
sequences, narrative complexitysuch as multiple perspectives,
figurative and symbolic texts,and resistant texts.
But today we're going to dig alittle deeper and explore text
complexity from a couple ofdifferent angles.
Before we get to that, we needto chat about cognitive load,
(03:31):
that mental energy that studentsexpend when they're reading and
they're learning.
Managing cognitive load is notjust about simple understanding,
it's about finding the sweetspot of challenge that promotes
learning without overwhelmingworking memory.
A simple way to think of thisis that we're looking for that
(03:52):
Goldilocks spot.
We want the learning to be nottoo easy and not too hard.
We need it to be just right.
Let's also clarify what I meanwhen I'm talking about text
difficulty.
I'm not talking in thisinstance about decoding.
I'm talking about the abilityto be able to understand what's
(04:13):
happening in a text and focus onthe meaning of the thing we're
reading.
You will have students in yourYear 3 to 8 classrooms who
struggle with decoding, but canabsolutely engage deeply with
characters, events, and themesin an age-appropriate text.
We shouldn't be denyingstudents access to those
(04:34):
age-appropriate texts in thatliterature and language element
of instruction.
Yes, we might need to supportdecoding and fluency practice
with adjusted text, but when itcomes to developing the top of
the reading rope, it's aboutlanguage development.
When we look at readingexperiences, there's four
(04:57):
typical patterns that a lessoncan fall into or reflect.
The first one is that thecomplexity of the text is just
too high for the students.
They're completely overwhelmed.
They're struggling withdecoding or they're experiencing
no meaningful comprehensionbecause all of the bits of the
(05:19):
text are just too hard, and thisleads to a high level of
frustration.
It also leads to shallowreading and a poor learning
experience.
The intrinsic load of thelesson, and of the task in this
case, is simply too high for thestudents to be able to engage.
(05:40):
The second scenario is one oftwo sweet spots.
Now, this involves a complextext, but the text is within the
student's ability to access itso they can engage with close
reading.
So what we've got here ischallenging content,
sophisticated analysis, and highengagement.
(06:01):
This is the dream.
We're talking about desirabledifficulty where students are
stretched, but they're notbroken.
All learning requires stretch.
If there's no stretch, there'sno learning.
If the texts are too easy ortoo hard, it just doesn't work.
In this second scenario,students have learned what they
need in order to access thetext, and we are going to guide
(06:26):
them to engage with the text ata deeper level.
So it's a little bit harderthan they could manage
themselves, and we're providingthem with the skill and
knowledge and the guidance tounpack meaning from this text.
The third scenario is the secondsweet spot in this model that
involves a simple text but withclose reading.
(06:49):
Now, here we're usingaccessible text to build skills
in understanding languagefeatures, vocabulary, syntactic
structures, and structuralelements.
We could think of these as thepractical application for the
concepts that we're learning.
Students practice close readingtechniques, develop analytical
(07:10):
habits, and they buildconfidence.
We can think of this experienceas riding with the training
wheels.
Once we've built thefoundations around understanding
syntactic structures,vocabulary, understanding
language features, and devices,we can then take that knowledge
and apply it in more complextexts.
(07:33):
The fourth scenario is, again,not a great one.
It's about simple text withshallow reading.
Now, this is a danger zonehere, and it's a danger zone of
disengagement for a differentreason than scenario one.
No challenge in this case leadsto tuning out, which leads to
(07:54):
minimal comprehension, orperhaps there's not
comprehension to gain.
So we might understand what'sin the text, but there's no
deeper meaning for us to tapinto.
This level of text leads to thestudents switching into task
mode and they just cruise.
There's no stretch andtherefore no learning.
The intrinsic load of thisscenario is too low.
(08:18):
So the million-dollar questionis: how do we make text
selection a part of the processof engineering for success if
length isn't the only factor?
Well, today I have some otherpoints for you to consider.
So we can broaden ourunderstanding of text complexity
with a model involving four keydimensions of demand.
(08:40):
There's linguistic demand,conceptual demand, structural
demand, and cognitive demand.
And rather than identifyingjust one reason a text is
complex or has demand, we canevaluate a text against all four
of these elements and create abit of a profile.
(09:02):
But we're not creating a levellike a lexile or some other
reading level.
We're thinking about this textin relation to our students.
So in linguistic demand, we'retalking about things like
vocabulary, sentence structuresthat twist and turn or present
some challenge, advancedgrammatical constructions, and
(09:24):
specialised or technicallanguage.
The second type of demand isconceptual demand, and that can
be abstract ideas that challengeour thinking, moral ambiguity,
and metaphorical or symboliccontent.
The third area to consider isstructural demand.
So nonlinear narratives, andsome of these are a factor in
(09:47):
those five plagues of thereader.
So they may be familiar to you,but structural demand can be
nonlinear narratives, so we'vegot flash forwards and
flashbacks and all sorts ofthings.
There can be multipleperspectives, complex text
organisation, and implicitconnections between ideas that
just aren't directly stated.
(10:09):
The fourth area of demand wecan think about is cognitive
demand.
So texts that have cognitivedemand require a whole bunch of
inferential thinking.
They demand critical analysis.
We need significant backgroundknowledge, and they could
challenge our existing mentalmodels.
Decoding difficulty or decodingdemand could be a factor here,
(10:35):
as well as length and thestamina that we have to read a
text.
So the text could be in theGoldilocks spot for linguistic,
conceptual, and structuraldemands, but be three times as
long as our reading stamina.
And I'm not suggesting that wesay, well, these students can't
read a long text, so I guess wewon't do that.
(10:57):
What I'm suggesting is that weconsider the demand and adjust
what we do so that we're helpingto engineer an opportunity for
stretch, not overwhelm.
Another critical considerationfor teachers and curriculum
designers is if you're planningwriting instruction alongside
(11:21):
reading, which I think I'veshared enough information on
this podcast for me simply tosay, "we should be," because
when we teach these thingstogether, we strengthen both,
when we're connecting readingand writing, we need to be even
more strategic.
The decisions we would makearound a text if we were only
using it for comprehension aredifferent from the ones we would
(11:43):
make if we're connectingreading and writing.
So if the writing expectationsare already stretching students,
then a highly complex text thathas a high load or a high
demand load across multiplefactors could just push them
over the cognitive edge.
And remember, we wantchallenge, not overload.
(12:06):
So when we're planning forinstruction, it's important that
we read the text carefully andevaluate the level of demand
posed by the four categories asthey relate to your students.
Remember, the important thinghere, and I'm saying it again, I
know, but it is reallyimportant to understand, we're
(12:27):
not levelling the text.
If we say that a text iscomplex, the question is,
complex for who?
Intrinsic load is determined bythe level of difficulty of the
task based on the existingknowledge and skill of the
learner.
We aren't asking what level isthis text?
We're asking, what will mystudents' learning experience be
(12:50):
like so that we can plan forinstruction that creates
desirable difficulty?
And when we're saying, "whatwill my students' learning
experience be like?" we'rethinking back to those four
scenarios.
Will this be a highly complextext that the students can't
engage with, so we've got a veryshallow engagement?
(13:11):
Will this be a scenario wherethis text is too easy or there's
no depth here, So all we'regoing to get is shallow reading
and cruising?
Are we using this text topractice skill development and
applying new knowledge?
Or are we ready to dive in withall of these complex things
into a beautiful rich text?
(13:32):
We're evaluating the sweet spotwhen we're thinking about
instruction.
Once we've evaluated thedifficulty of the text for your
students, it's time to make aplan for how we'll run our
lessons and how we're going tosupport learning.
So we actually don't have timeto do that in this episode
(13:55):
today.
It's a big topic, but I do wantto let you know that I am
running a new Teach Along inTerm 1 of 2026, Reading Success
in the Upper Primary Years.
And it's in this course that wepick up where Build the
Foundations for Your UpperPrimary Literacy Block left off.
I'm walking teachers through arange of frameworks and models
(14:16):
for understanding upper primaryreading so that you can make
really sound instructionaldecisions for fluency and for
comprehension.
You can find out more aboutthat course on our website in
the Professional Learningsection.
We all know that the ultimategoal of reading instruction is
for students to understand andbe able to engage at a deep
(14:40):
level with what they're reading.
That always has been the goalof reading instruction and
always will be.
And I have to say, there's nobetter feeling than being in the
classroom and feeling thatsense of having hooked the
students intellectually andthrough their interest, that
(15:00):
they're leaning forwards intheir seats, that they're
itching to say, "but what'sgoing to happen?" And I love it
when we end the reading in alesson on a cliffhanger to cries
of, "oh, but what happensnext?" Well, we're going to have
to read that next time.
That's what we're looking for.
We're looking for the interest,we're looking for the
(15:23):
engagement.
But remember, engagementwithout learning is just
entertainment.
So what we want is engagementwith learning and optimising
instruction so that theintrinsic load is right for our
students is a key part of that.
I hope that today's episode hasgiven you some pointers about
how to think about textselection and pitching
(15:46):
instruction at the Goldilocksspot for your students.
Until next time, happyteaching, everyone.
Bye.
Hi there, it's Jocelyn here, and today we're diving
into a topic that is going tomake it so much easier for you
to make instructional decisionswhen choosing rich texts.
We're talking today about textcomplexity, and trust me, it's
way more nuanced than simplyfinding a text at a student's
level.
(01:36):
For so many years, comprehensionwork was about teaching
strategies, with the belief thatonce we're taught a strategy,
students would apply it to anytext.
We now know that comprehensioninstruction is not a checklist
of strategies we tick off.
It's not about mechanicallyapplying things like making
connections and summarising andhoping for the best.
(01:58):
Comprehension is built as weteach morphology, vocabulary,
syntax, text structure, languagefeatures, and genre elements.
When we read, we put all ofthis together to help not just
get what the text is saying, butto look beyond the
surface-level words and go tothe deeper understandings.
(02:20):
More and more of us are becomingaware of the limitations of
levelling for our text levelwork.
We know that finding a levelfor the student and matching a
book to them isn't the best wayto go about building their
reading skills.
Research is consistently clearon that point.
But other than use a complextext at grade level, there isn't
(02:43):
much guidance out there to helpus make important decisions
about which text to use.
This episode is going to giveyou some starting information to
change that.
You might be familiar with theidea of the five plagues of the
reader from readingreconsidered.
This is five ideas, fivefeatures of text that can make
(03:04):
it tricky for kids to read.
The five plagues are (03:06):
archaic language, nonlinear time
sequences, narrative complexitysuch as multiple perspectives,
figurative and symbolic texts,and resistant texts.
But today we're going to dig alittle deeper and explore text
complexity from a couple ofdifferent angles.
Before we get to that, we needto chat about cognitive load,
(03:31):
that mental energy that studentsexpend when they're reading and
they're learning.
Managing cognitive load is notjust about simple understanding,
it's about finding the sweetspot of challenge that promotes
learning without overwhelmingworking memory.
A simple way to think of thisis that we're looking for that
(03:52):
Goldilocks spot.
We want the learning to be nottoo easy and not too hard.
We need it to be just right.
Let's also clarify what I meanwhen I'm talking about text
difficulty.
I'm not talking in thisinstance about decoding.
I'm talking about the abilityto be able to understand what's
(04:13):
happening in a text and focus onthe meaning of the thing we're
reading.
You will have students in yourYear 3 to 8 classrooms who
struggle with decoding, but canabsolutely engage deeply with
characters, events, and themesin an age-appropriate text.
We shouldn't be denyingstudents access to those
(04:34):
age-appropriate texts in thatliterature and language element
of instruction.
Yes, we might need to supportdecoding and fluency practice
with adjusted text, but when itcomes to developing the top of
the reading rope, it's aboutlanguage development.
When we look at readingexperiences, there's four
(04:57):
typical patterns that a lessoncan fall into or reflect.
The first one is that thecomplexity of the text is just
too high for the students.
They're completely overwhelmed.
They're struggling withdecoding or they're experiencing
no meaningful comprehensionbecause all of the bits of the
(05:19):
text are just too hard, and thisleads to a high level of
frustration.
It also leads to shallowreading and a poor learning
experience.
The intrinsic load of thelesson, and of the task in this
case, is simply too high for thestudents to be able to engage.
(05:40):
The second scenario is one oftwo sweet spots.
Now, this involves a complextext, but the text is within the
student's ability to access itso they can engage with close
reading.
So what we've got here ischallenging content,
sophisticated analysis, and highengagement.
(06:01):
This is the dream.
We're talking about desirabledifficulty where students are
stretched, but they're notbroken.
All learning requires stretch.
If there's no stretch, there'sno learning.
If the texts are too easy ortoo hard, it just doesn't work.
In this second scenario,students have learned what they
need in order to access thetext, and we are going to guide
(06:26):
them to engage with the text ata deeper level.
So it's a little bit harderthan they could manage
themselves, and we're providingthem with the skill and
knowledge and the guidance tounpack meaning from this text.
The third scenario is the secondsweet spot in this model that
involves a simple text but withclose reading.
(06:49):
Now, here we're usingaccessible text to build skills
in understanding languagefeatures, vocabulary, syntactic
structures, and structuralelements.
We could think of these as thepractical application for the
concepts that we're learning.
Students practice close readingtechniques, develop analytical
(07:10):
habits, and they buildconfidence.
We can think of this experienceas riding with the training
wheels.
Once we've built thefoundations around understanding
syntactic structures,vocabulary, understanding
language features, and devices,we can then take that knowledge
and apply it in more complextexts.
(07:33):
The fourth scenario is, again,not a great one.
It's about simple text withshallow reading.
Now, this is a danger zonehere, and it's a danger zone of
disengagement for a differentreason than scenario one.
No challenge in this case leadsto tuning out, which leads to
(07:54):
minimal comprehension, orperhaps there's not
comprehension to gain.
So we might understand what'sin the text, but there's no
deeper meaning for us to tapinto.
This level of text leads to thestudents switching into task
mode and they just cruise.
There's no stretch andtherefore no learning.
The intrinsic load of thisscenario is too low.
(08:18):
So the million-dollar questionis: how do we make text
selection a part of the processof engineering for success if
length isn't the only factor?
Well, today I have some otherpoints for you to consider.
So we can broaden ourunderstanding of text complexity
with a model involving four keydimensions of demand.
(08:40):
There's linguistic demand,conceptual demand, structural
demand, and cognitive demand.
And rather than identifyingjust one reason a text is
complex or has demand, we canevaluate a text against all four
of these elements and create abit of a profile.
(09:02):
But we're not creating a levellike a lexile or some other
reading level.
We're thinking about this textin relation to our students.
So in linguistic demand, we'retalking about things like
vocabulary, sentence structuresthat twist and turn or present
some challenge, advancedgrammatical constructions, and
(09:24):
specialised or technicallanguage.
The second type of demand isconceptual demand, and that can
be abstract ideas that challengeour thinking, moral ambiguity,
and metaphorical or symboliccontent.
The third area to consider isstructural demand.
So nonlinear narratives, andsome of these are a factor in
(09:47):
those five plagues of thereader.
So they may be familiar to you,but structural demand can be
nonlinear narratives, so we'vegot flash forwards and
flashbacks and all sorts ofthings.
There can be multipleperspectives, complex text
organisation, and implicitconnections between ideas that
just aren't directly stated.
(10:09):
The fourth area of demand wecan think about is cognitive
demand.
So texts that have cognitivedemand require a whole bunch of
inferential thinking.
They demand critical analysis.
We need significant backgroundknowledge, and they could
challenge our existing mentalmodels.
Decoding difficulty or decodingdemand could be a factor here,
(10:35):
as well as length and thestamina that we have to read a
text.
So the text could be in theGoldilocks spot for linguistic,
conceptual, and structuraldemands, but be three times as
long as our reading stamina.
And I'm not suggesting that wesay, well, these students can't
read a long text, so I guess wewon't do that.
(10:57):
What I'm suggesting is that weconsider the demand and adjust
what we do so that we're helpingto engineer an opportunity for
stretch, not overwhelm.
Another critical considerationfor teachers and curriculum
designers is if you're planningwriting instruction alongside
(11:21):
reading, which I think I'veshared enough information on
this podcast for me simply tosay, "we should be," because
when we teach these thingstogether, we strengthen both,
when we're connecting readingand writing, we need to be even
more strategic.
The decisions we would makearound a text if we were only
using it for comprehension aredifferent from the ones we would
(11:43):
make if we're connectingreading and writing.
So if the writing expectationsare already stretching students,
then a highly complex text thathas a high load or a high
demand load across multiplefactors could just push them
over the cognitive edge.
And remember, we wantchallenge, not overload.
(12:06):
So when we're planning forinstruction, it's important that
we read the text carefully andevaluate the level of demand
posed by the four categories asthey relate to your students.
Remember, the important thinghere, and I'm saying it again, I
know, but it is reallyimportant to understand, we're
(12:27):
not levelling the text.
If we say that a text iscomplex, the question is,
complex for who?
Intrinsic load is determined bythe level of difficulty of the
task based on the existingknowledge and skill of the
learner.
We aren't asking what level isthis text?
We're asking, what will mystudents' learning experience be
(12:50):
like so that we can plan forinstruction that creates
desirable difficulty?
And when we're saying, "whatwill my students' learning
experience be like?" we'rethinking back to those four
scenarios.
Will this be a highly complextext that the students can't
engage with, so we've got a veryshallow engagement?
(13:11):
Will this be a scenario wherethis text is too easy or there's
no depth here, So all we'regoing to get is shallow reading
and cruising?
Are we using this text topractice skill development and
applying new knowledge?
Or are we ready to dive in withall of these complex things
into a beautiful rich text?
(13:32):
We're evaluating the sweet spotwhen we're thinking about
instruction.
Once we've evaluated thedifficulty of the text for your
students, it's time to make aplan for how we'll run our
lessons and how we're going tosupport learning.
So we actually don't have timeto do that in this episode
(13:55):
today.
It's a big topic, but I do wantto let you know that I am
running a new Teach Along inTerm 1 of 2026, Reading Success
in the Upper Primary Years.
And it's in this course that wepick up where Build the
Foundations for Your UpperPrimary Literacy Block left off.
I'm walking teachers through arange of frameworks and models
(14:16):
for understanding upper primaryreading so that you can make
really sound instructionaldecisions for fluency and for
comprehension.
You can find out more aboutthat course on our website in
the Professional Learningsection.
We all know that the ultimategoal of reading instruction is
for students to understand andbe able to engage at a deep
(14:40):
level with what they're reading.
That always has been the goalof reading instruction and
always will be.
And I have to say, there's nobetter feeling than being in the
classroom and feeling thatsense of having hooked the
students intellectually andthrough their interest, that
(15:00):
they're leaning forwards intheir seats, that they're
itching to say, "but what'sgoing to happen?" And I love it
when we end the reading in alesson on a cliffhanger to cries
of, "oh, but what happensnext?" Well, we're going to have
to read that next time.
That's what we're looking for.
We're looking for the interest,we're looking for the
(15:23):
engagement.
But remember, engagementwithout learning is just
entertainment.
So what we want is engagementwith learning and optimising
instruction so that theintrinsic load is right for our
students is a key part of that.
I hope that today's episode hasgiven you some pointers about
how to think about textselection and pitching
(15:46):
instruction at the Goldilocksspot for your students.
Until next time, happyteaching, everyone.
Bye.
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