The Instructional Level Myth

Have you heard?

The efficacy of teaching reading in small groups with leveled texts is a myth. Students learn just as well or better during whole class instruction using a frustration level text.

This seems to be a fairly new concept in education, but when you dive into the research it suggests the use of instruction using a grade-level or above grade-level text for all students.

For educators, including ourselves, who have advocated for and used homogeneous small group instruction for reading our whole careers this can be a hard pill to swallow! Let’s take a closer look at what research can teach us about small group instruction using leveled readers.  

The Misuse of Theory

In his book, Leveled Reading Leveled Lives, Dr. Timothy Shanahan, professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at  Chicago, describes what he calls the misuse of theory when we look at the historical research that supposedly advocates the use of dividing students into different leveled reading groups and instructing them with books that are at their instructional level – not too easy, not to hard.

One such popular psychological theory is Lev Vygotsky’s, Zone of Proximal Development, or ZPD. The ZPD is a model for social learning. Vygotsky describes three levels:

• Independent developmental level - the learner can perform a task without any assistance
• Potential developmental level - the learner can perform a task with help
• Zone of proximal development is the area in between - the learner can perform tasks and learn skills through social interaction and instruction.

Generations of educators have used the ZPD theory to justify leveling their reading groups homogenously. Shanahan points out that the idea of the instructional level has been around since the 1940’s, and by the 1990’s became a staple in all our classrooms as the norm for reading instruction.

But Vygotsky’s research wasn’t conducted until the 1960’s and he wasn’t even talking about reading instruction. His focus was social learning. 

If we look at the work of Vygotsky more closely, the idea of the instructional level actually goes against ideas he advocates. The premise of the ZPD theory is that rather than instructing at an easier level, adults should instruct at higher levels and help children reach those levels. Today we call that scaffolding.

When we look at research specifically about using leveled groupings, we find that it doesn’t provide any benefits and in some cases is holding students back. 

Why do we want to instruct using texts that students can already read fairly well?

Rather, let’s move students reading ability forward by using grade-level text for everyone and then providing support and scaffolding to help them read it.

Frustration can be useful. Learners need to struggle with a concept or skill in order for the brain to make the new pathways that will embed and make easier and more fluid that concept or skill.

Keeping kids in instructional level books and making sure they never feel frustrated means we are unwittingly taking away the kids’ opportunity to learn.

What do you do when the student can’t read a text well enough to foster comprehension?

One of the scaffolds we can provide for students who struggle with grade-level text is fluency practice. Repeated reading will improve automaticity and fluency of reading that will lead to reading comprehension.

Is there a place for putting students in ‘just right’ books? Sure – for independent reading practice. But when it comes to instruction that is teacher supported, it’s starting to become clear that using complex text at grade-level is the way to go.

Let’s be clear, Project GLAD® advocates are not saying that we never use small groups for instruction. The Project GLAD® model has been a long-time champion for the use of flexible groups – groups are formed and disbanded based on student need and students move fluidly in and out of them.

One day a teacher might pull a group of English learners to pre-teach vocabulary or a verb tense they are likely to see in the lesson that day. The next day the small group might be a group of students who need more practice with a concept they hadn’t quite mastered based on formative assessment. 

Even the small group reading strategies we model in the GLAD® Foundations training are differentiated based on student need, not text level. For example, the strategy called Emergent Readers Group with the Cooperative Strip Paragraph (say that 10 times fast!) uses text that is student generated with grade-level content and text structures. We differentiate the teaching for different groups, not the curriculum. 

Does the Project GLAD® model offer a whole group reading strategy?

I’m sure that readers of this blog can anticipate the answer to that question – of course there is!

Project GLAD® Strategy – DRTA

There are some strategies in the GLAD® model that are hidden gems – strategies not often taught during a Project GLAD® training but ones we usually show teachers during a follow up opportunity. It’s called Directed Reading Thinking Activity, or DRTA

If you’re familiar with the GLAD® strategy, Clunkers and Links, then you’re half-way there. DRTA is very similar, but we use it whole class.

D = Direct:

The teacher shows the class the title of the text and directs student table teams to talk and make predictions what they think the text will be about. What words they think they might encounter as the author is describing the topic?

R = Read:

The class reads up to the first pre-selected stopping point. There are a variety of ways to proceed with the reading part of the text. The teacher might consider an additional small group, prior to or following the whole class lesson, for the students who need fluency practice. 

The teacher will prompt students with questions about specific information and ask them to go back to their predictions and refine them, if necessary. Continue until students have read each section.

During this time the teacher can also teach words, phrases, or sentence structures they think might trip up students in understanding the text.

This requires the teacher to pre-read the selection and pick out the parts that make the text challenging.

• Are there literary devices the author uses, idioms or metaphors?
• Are there sentences with long or tedious structures?
• Is the theme or thesis easily understood?
• What about the cohesion between ideas?

Anticipate where scaffolding will be needed. Continue until students have read each section.

T = Thinking:

At the end of each section, students go back through the text and think about their predictions, students should verify or modify their predictions by finding supporting statement in the text. Ask questions such as:

• What do you think about your predictions now?
• What did you find in the text to prove your predictions?
• What did you read in the text that made you change your predictions?
• Did the skills we learned about how to navigate this text change you thinking?

Thanks for reading,

Jody and Sara

Sources:

Shanahan, T. (2025). Leveled reading, leveled lives: how students’ reading achievement has been held back and what we can do about it. Harvard Education Press.

Lambert, Susan. (Host). (July 29, 2025). Science of Reading: The Podcast. [Audio podcast episode].

For support with your Project GLAD® implementation, or to sign up for GLAD® training, please visit us at nextstepsprojectglad.com