Supporting Productive Struggle in Reading
- Dr. Wendy Wells
- 5 hours ago
- 3 min read
by Dr. Wendy Wells
Meeting Students Where They Are; Supporting Reading Without Lowering the Bar
In classrooms everywhere, teachers face a tough decision: when students struggle with a text, should we lower the Lexile level to “meet them where they are”? On the surface, it feels compassionate. But lowering the text too far risks keeping students from the very experiences that build reading strength.
✅ The challenge is not whether students can access grade-level texts. The challenge is how we help them get there.
The Case Against Lowering the Lexile
📑 Research shows that access matters.
In TNTP’s landmark report, The Opportunity Myth (2018), students who engaged with grade-level assignments made significantly greater learning gains, even when they started below grade level.
John Hattie’s Visible Learning identifies “challenge with support,” as one of the most impactful influences on learning.
Brown & Witte (2020), in the Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, found that students actually grew more when scaffolded into complexity than when given simplified texts.
⚠️ When we lower the Lexile, students miss opportunities to engage with complex syntax, academic vocabulary, and nuanced ideas. These are the very building blocks of stronger reading.
The Power of Productive Struggle
💡 Productive struggle is not about leaving students to flounder, nor about rescuing them too quickly. It is about providing the right supports so that the effort feels challenging, not defeating. This framework shifts the teacher’s role from “rescuer” to “guide.”
Framework for Supporting Productive Struggle in Reading (Wells, 2025).
(Free Download Below)
How to Respond to Different Reading Struggles
📝 When students are engaged and annotating → Give them space. Monitor silently and let them work.
🙋 When students are trying but not understanding → Prompt deeper thinking with open-ended questions (“What makes you think that?” “Can you find evidence?” “What’s another way to look at this?”).
⚠️ When frustration sets in → Validate the struggle, reframe the task, or provide alternative entry points (for example, visual support or guided reread).
🧩 When confusion persists → Model a strategy, pause, and break the task into smaller, manageable chunks.
“Struggle is not failure; it is evidence of learning in motion.” |
Scaffolds That Build Strength
So how do we support students without lowering expectations? Research and practice point to several high-impact scaffolds:
📖 Chunk the text → Break long passages into smaller sections and process them together.
💭 Model thinking aloud → Show how experienced readers pause, reread, or annotate.
🎭 Offer multiple modalities → Encourage students to sketch, verbalize, or act out their understanding.
🧠Normalize confusion → Frame difficulty as a natural part of growth: “This is the kind of text real readers wrestle with.”
⚓ Anchor with evidence → Always point back to the text, teaching students how to justify their thinking.
Holding the Bar Steady
The temptation to lower text levels is understandable. But doing so can unintentionally cap student growth. Our responsibility is to hold the bar steady while building the scaffolds that help students climb toward it.
When students succeed with grade-level texts, their confidence and stamina grow. And as literacy leaders remind us: equity means access. Every student deserves the chance to grapple with rich, challenging, grade-level reading that is supported, not simplified.
“I believe you can do hard things.” That message may be the most important scaffold of all. |
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