As teachers, our goal is to prepare our students for the world beyond our classroom doors.
Cognitive scientists have long recognized that to effectively solve real-world problems, we need to integrate multiple perspectives and types of reading tasks.
Their research underscores the importance of giving students opportunities to engage critically with information across multiple types of text—enter text sets.
What is a Text Set?
A text set is a carefully curated collection of texts, usually centered around a common theme, topic, or concept. These texts can encompass a wide range of formats, including articles, essays, poems, short stories, videos, podcasts, infographics, and more.
The primary purpose of a text set is to provide readers with a multifaceted exploration of a concept, allowing them to gain a deeper and more comprehensive understanding.
Our blog will discuss the benefits of teaching with text sets, how to create text sets, and ideas for how to use text sets in your classroom.
Benefits of Teaching With Text Sets
Research has demonstrated that the use of text sets improves learning outcomes. Results show that students have more Knowledge of the concepts in the texts, increased understanding of vocabulary, and better recall skills compared to students who read unrelated texts.
Text sets offer benefits for all students in all content areas. They increase the following:
Background Knowledge
Strong background knowledge makes learning easier. It helps students to better comprehend what they’re reading, aids critical thinking, and improves their retention of what they’ve learned. When teaching vocabulary, background knowledge can help students understand and remember new words more effectively.
An effective text set builds students’ background knowledge about a specific topic or concept.
Critical Thinking Skills
By comparing and contrasting texts within a set, students can develop their critical thinking skills. You can use text sets with current events to help students analyze different perspectives and create their own well-informed opinions.
Engagement
Text sets can be designed to accommodate different learning styles and interests. Some students may prefer to read articles, while others may prefer visual content like infographics or videos. By incorporating a variety of formats, you can differentiate for your students’ learning needs and ensure that all students are engaged in learning.
Language Skills
Not only do students develop content knowledge through the use of text sets, but they also build important language and literacy skills.
Text sets help students develop background and contextual knowledge as well as increase text-to-text connections— all of which strengthen their reading comprehension skills. As students increase their breadth of knowledge of a topic, they develop a more authoritative voice in their writing. As they become more knowledgeable, their confidence to participate in discussions can also grow.
How to Create Text Sets
Creating effective text sets for your classroom requires thorough planning, as well as a bit of research.
Planning Your Text Set
Consider the following steps as you begin to create a text set.
- Start with your objective. Think about what your students need to know and use that to determine the common theme for your text set.
- Find an anchor text. It’s often helpful to select an “anchor text” to serve as the cornerstone for your text set. Anchor texts are grade-level, rich, and complex.
- Consider your students. While it’s great to have text sets that can be used from year to year, it’s also important to tailor some text sets to your students. Consider their interests— are there any specific topics that students are interested in this year? Think about their needs— do you have English learners or students who need accommodations? Make sure you include texts that will engage all of your students.
- Gather diverse texts. Effective text sets include a variety of sources that will support your learning objectives. Your texts must be authentic, credible, and accurate.
- Plan for interaction. Plan activities and discussion questions that will encourage students to interact meaningfully with the texts as well as their peers.
Text Set Resources
Finding quality texts for your text set is important— and time-consuming.
Consider reaching out to your colleagues for ideas and resources as you build your text sets. Find teachers who teach the same grade or class and ask them for their favorite texts. Your school librarian is an excellent resource as well.
We’ve compiled a list of some of our top picks for building text sets below. As always, be sure to preview any resources before sharing them with students.
Books and Poems
American Library Association: ALSC
Age level: Birth through age 14
Why we love it: The Associations for Library Service to Children’s annual list of notable children’s books, digital media, and recordings includes books of information, poetry, and pictures to make searching for quality text a breeze.
The American Library Association: Teen Bookfinder
Age level: Ages 12-18
Why we love it: Find award-winning books for your teens in this database compiled by librarians and educators.
Lit2Go
Age level: Grades K–12
Why we love it: This free platform contains stories and poems in audiobook format. Download any title as a PDF so that students can follow along with the text.
Academy of American Poets
Age level: Grades 3–12
Why we love it: Search over 10,000 poems by occasion, theme, form, or author on this extensive poetry site.
Articles and Magazines
Smithsonian Magazine
Age level: Grades 6–12
Why we love it: Find articles for nearly any topic, ranging from science to the arts to current events on the Smithsonian Magazine site.
Newsela
Age level: Grades 3–12
Why we love it: Create an account to search for text sets created by other teachers or build your own using Newsela’s text set feature.
Scholastic Magazines
Age level: Grades PreK–12, subscription required
Why we love it: Magazines feature a variety of topics from health and life skills to math with engaging images and educational articles.
Infographics
Kids Discover
Age level: Grades K–12
Why we love it: Find free downloadable infographics on a range of nonfiction topics– beautifully designed and written by subject experts.
Videos and Websites
PBS
Age level: Grades PreK–12
Why we love it: Search for pre-made, timely video collections centered on your learning objectives. Videos cover a wide range of content areas and topics.
TED Talks
Age level: Grades 3–12
Why we love it: Discover informative videos that engage students with a variety of concepts.
Biography
Age level: Grades 6–12
Why we love it: Explore biographical accounts of famous historical figures– from Ponce de Leon to Maya Angelou.
History at Home
Age level: Grades 6–12
Why we love it: Investigate core history topics with infographics, articles, and videos from the History Channel.
3 Ideas for Teaching With Text Sets
There are many different ways that you can use text sets in the classroom— whether you’re teaching kindergarteners or high schoolers (or anyone in between).
Below are a few fresh ideas on how you can incorporate text sets in your classroom.
Student-Created Text Sets
This project is ideal for the end of the school year and can be adapted for elementary students as well as high school.
Using books that they’ve read through the year, have students create their own text sets based on the theme or concept of their choice. This is a great way to give students more agency over their learning.
By creating thoughtful prompts, you can help students develop their critical thinking skills as they compare and contrast, analyze, determine, and cite pieces of text evidence to explain their rationale.
As a bonus, you’ll have a collection of recommendations for next year from your target audience— the students!
Jillian Heise outlines how she uses student-created text sets with her middle school students in this article from Choice Literacy.
Rolling Text Sets
The concept of rolling text sets is simple— throughout a unit, provide students with your selection of texts gradually. Over time, the texts should increase in length and complexity.
Essentially, a rolling text set is a way to scaffold text sets for your students. By introducing students to the concepts in an incremental, sequential method, you can help them build their knowledge in a more manageable way.
Christine Boatman explains how she uses rolling text sets in her middle school classroom in this article from Edutopia.
Cross-Curricular Text Sets
Text sets are a natural component of language arts, but how can they be used in other content areas like science or math? Here’s where collaborating with your co-teachers and colleagues will come in handy.
After you’ve determined your common theme, talk to language arts teachers and librarians to see if they have any suggestions. In an example from Middle Web, a preservice science teacher used the novel Wonder by R.J. Palacio as an anchor text for a collection about genetics. By working with teachers in other content areas, you can help students see the connections in what they’re learning.
If you’re new to creating text sets, book pairings are a great place to start. Jill Richardson writes, “Pairing fiction and nonfiction texts is an authentic way to integrate Language Arts, Science, and Social Studies…It is a great way to build vocabulary and show children the same words in different genres.”
Amanda Wall provides other text set examples for content areas in this blog from Middle Web.
What does the Science of Reading say about comprehension?
Science of Reading research has identified text comprehension as one of the five pillars of literacy.
While there are many factors that contribute to a student’s ability to comprehend what they read, evidence supports that explicit instruction in comprehension strategies is effective in improving comprehension skills.
A 2021 study by the International Literacy Association underscores the role of vocabulary and background knowledge in reading comprehension. According to the study, “Many effective approaches to comprehension strategy instruction are set in the context of content knowledge building, suggesting the efficacy, and perhaps synergy, of simultaneously building content knowledge and improving students’ metacognition.”
Using text sets with comprehension instruction is an effective way to build contextual content knowledge and strong comprehension skills.
Want to expand your students’ perspectives, grow their vocabulary, and build their background knowledge? Text sets might be just the tool you need.
These project-based reading and writing tools are designed for students in the primary grades as each set pairs a Seedling reader and a Sprouts booklet based on theme, vocabulary, and level.
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