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If students are to interpret the meanings such complex sentence structures convey, they need to learn how to make sense of the conventions of text—phrasing, word order, punctuation, and language.

Students who are aware of the patterns authors use to communicate complex information have an advantage in making sense of text.

A final determinant of text difficulty, however, depends on the reader's prior knowledge.

Students' background knowledge, including developmental, experiential, and cognitive factors, influences their ability to understand the explicit and inferential qualities of a text.

building skills, establishing purpose, and fostering motivation.

even students who have basic decoding skills sometimes struggle to deploy these skills easily and accurately enough to get a purchase on challenging text. To help these students develop reading fluency, teachers should give them lots of practice with reading the same text, as well as instruction to help them develop a stronger sense of where to pause in sentences, how to group words, and how their voices should rise or fall at various junctures when reading aloud.

maintaining understanding across a text.

pair repeated readings of the same text with questions that require the student to read closely for detail and key ideas.

Ongoing, solid vocabulary instruction

also on general academic words.

also explore the connections among words,

In contrast, in reading history and literature, readers need to be concerned with not just the causes of events, but also the human intentions behind these causes.

teachers should not convey so much information that it spoils the reading or enables students to participate in class without completing the reading; rather, they should let students know what learning to expect from the reading.

Teachers may be tempted to try to make it easier for students by avoiding difficult texts. The problem is, easier work is less likely to make readers stronger.

You need to create successive successes.

Students experience success in the company of their teacher, who combines complex texts with effective instruction.