English Language ArtsEnglish7th, 8thYear 8, Year 9
How to improve reading comprehension in middle school
How to push every student past retelling the plot, so each one explains what a story means and backs it with a line from the text.
Jemel Fanfan | Founding Member at Flint
"Students can have conversations that prod their thinking and push their comprehension. They receive instant feedback on their work which is both encouraging and constructive, enabling them to make targeted improvements. And - they love it!"
Sherry Pielsticker, 6th grade humanities teacher at The York SchoolWhy this matters
In one 7th grade English class, a student can retell every event in "The Tell-Tale Heart" and still miss that the narrator can't be trusted. The student next to him has that idea but can't point to a line that shows it. A class discussion hears from the few students who raise their hands, and the teacher has to wait for the essay to find out who understood the story.
Reading comprehension strategies for middle school
Students understand a text better when they get extended discussion of what it means and how to interpret it, which is one of five recommendations in the U.S. Department of Education's practice guide on adolescent literacy (Kamil et al., Institute of Education Sciences).
- Start from what the student understood
- Ask for the line in the text that shows it
- Push one step past the plot
No teacher can hold that discussion one-on-one with 30 students for every story. Sparky, Flint's AI tutor, does it in each student's chat.
One story, discussed with two different students
Both students read "The Tell-Tale Heart" and are in the same activity. Sparky's first question is the same for the whole class. Everything after it is one student's own chat with Sparky.
Eli
Understanding check
Eli
A guy kills an old man because of his creepy eye and hides him under the floor. Then the police come and he tells them.Sparky
Eli
He sneaks into the old man's room every night for a week just to look at him.Sparky
Eli
"Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man."Sparky
Eli
Harder. He killed someone he loved over an eye. So when he says he's not crazy, I don't believe him.Went from the plot to doubting the narrator
Zoe
Understanding check
Zoe
The narrator kills the old man and hides the body. I think the heartbeat at the end isn't real. It's his guilt.Sparky
Zoe
Because it keeps getting louder?Sparky
Zoe
"I gasped for breath—and yet the officers heard it not." And "still the men chatted pleasantly, and smiled."Sparky
Zoe
His own. He's scared, so it's pounding, and he thinks it's the old man's.Backed her idea with the text, then took a harder question
Eli starts from the plot, and one question about the narrator gets him to find the line that makes the narrator hard to believe. Zoe already has the idea, so Sparky asks her for evidence and then gives her a harder question. Sparky doesn't tell either student what the story means. Each idea in their chats is in the student's own words. The students and chats are examples we wrote for this page.
How to see who understood the story
Sparky grades each chat against your rubric. The activity page shows who needs help right now, what the class understood, and what to reteach next.
Example activity page
After a class discusses The Tell-Tale Heart
The school and students are made up for this page. In this example, most of the class doubts the narrator, and the skill to practice next is backing an idea with an exact line.
Set up the activity for free
The Tell-Tale Heart discussion is in Flint's public library, with the full story, Sparky's role, guidelines, greeting and a rubric already written. Open it, select Try this activity to copy it into a free Flint account, and move it to a class. Every student gets their own chat with Sparky, and the activity page fills in as they work. In the activity settings, select Try session myself to test it as a student before you assign it.
To discuss a different story or chapter, attach it in Guidelines for Sparky and replace the guidelines with a version like this one:
Example guideline
The student has read the chapter I attached. Ask them what happens in two or three sentences. If they only retell events, ask one question about why something happens. If they have an idea with no evidence, ask for the exact line that shows it. Never tell them what the text means.
For more English activities, see Flint for English language arts.
Other use cases
See all use cases →Ethics11th, 12thYear 12, Year 13
How to make thinking visible for every student in ethics
Making thinking visible in ethics: ask for a position, push back with a counterexample, and read each student's reasoning in the chat, shown with a free interview with J. Robert Oppenheimer.
Social StudiesHumanities6th, 7th, 8thYear 7, Year 8, Year 9
How to meet every student's needs in middle school history
Meeting every student's needs in a middle school history class: every student reads the same Lewis and Clark journal entries, and each one gets help at the moment they need it, shown with two students and one reading.
Science6th, 7th, 8thYear 7, Year 8, Year 9
How to prepare middle school students for end-of-year exams
How to prepare middle school students for end-of-year exams in any subject: a practice test for each unit built from your own notes, questions worded like the exam, and a reply to every answer, shown with a free grade 7 science activity.
