Teaching Strategies: How to Effectively Use Paired Passages in Your Classroom

Teaching with paired passages can be a powerful tool in helping students improve their reading, writing, and critical thinking skills. However, it can also be challenging to implement in the classroom. This article will provide practical tips and strategies for using paired texts effectively and offer free resources to help you get started.

Teach Reading Strategies As Needed

Before diving into paired passages, it's essential to assess your students' reading skills and provide targeted instruction as needed. This may include strategies such as making notes on the main ideas, breaking down words through phonics, and improving recall and comprehension. 

Ideally, students would learn their phonics and phonemic awareness before working on more advanced skills. Unfortunately, in the upper grades, some students will need support in both areas. Your instruction will be most effective if you assess the needs of each student and match their instruction to those skills in small groups and centers.

Start Small

Building skills incrementally is key to success. Instead of having students begin with a practice essay, start with just writing a topic or thesis sentence. Once they master that targeted skill, teach the next step, such as writing the introductory paragraph. Gradually add more complex tasks as students demonstrate mastery.

This approach will not only help students build confidence, but it will also prevent them from producing ineffective work and reduce your grading workload.

Model, Model, Model

Modeling the skills you want your students to develop can be highly effective. It helps students understand what is expected of them and how to achieve it. Be sure to model your thinking at each stage, explaining how you decided which facts were important, why you selected the topic, and how you made those decisions.

Providing student exemplars is another way to model expectations. Teachers can now use AI, such as ChatGPT, to help create writing samples for each rubric level. An effective way to introduce students to the rubric is to provide the exemplars and have students score them, then discuss the scores as a class.

Practice Early and Often

The more practice students have with paired passages, the better they will become at synthesizing information and answering complex questions. Start practicing early in the year and integrate reading and writing skills into your content areas. Breaking essay writing into smaller parts, such as a sentence or paragraph, will help you manage your workload and maximize student learning.

To help you get started with teaching paired passages, I’ve provided a set of free resources, including paired passages and evidence-based essay prompts. These resources are suitable for students at various skill levels, and they cover a range of topics. Download them today to start using paired passages in your classroom!

By following these strategies, you'll be able to help your students build strong reading and writing skills, while providing them with the tools they need to succeed. Try them out and watch your students flourish!