Arts & Letters: Research in Action

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Arts & Letters™ is a knowledge-building English language arts (ELA) curriculum for grade levels K–8 that ignites a passion for reading, writing, speaking, listening, and lifelong learning in every student. It engages students through authentic, grade-appropriate, knowledge-rich texts as they weave together knowledge and skills in their literacy block.

Read on to learn more about the foundational research behind Arts & Letters.

Take a closer look at Arts & Letters—access our Digital Review Kit.

Knowledge-Building Topics

What the Research Says

“[K]nowledge begets comprehension begets knowledge.” (Pearson and Liben)

“Simply stated, the more readers know about the topics of texts, the better their comprehension and learning from texts. ... This is probably the best researched and least controversial statement we could make about reading. ” (Cervetti and Hiebert 499)

“[A]ctivating knowledge has limitations. First, knowledge activation activities are not particularly helpful for the students who do not have relevant background knowledge. ” (Cervetti and Hiebert 500)

What Arts & Letters Does

Each Arts & Letters module centers around a high-interest topic from literature and the arts, social studies, or science. Students build knowledge about the module topic through deep engagement with a carefully curated collection of texts. Rather than aiming simply to “activate” prior knowledge, Arts & Letters creates a learning environment that invites all students to build new knowledge together and then draw on this shared knowledge when unlocking meaning in new texts.

Students have regular opportunities to synthesize the knowledge they are building and attach their new learning to existing understandings. Across grade levels K–8, some module topics strategically reoccur and are explored from new angles, strengthening students’ foundation of content knowledge.

High-Quality Texts

What the Research Says

“Reading worthwhile texts that enrich vocabulary and stimulate deep thinking about important ideas is a critical component of any English language arts program.” (Moats 257)

“[P]erformance on complex texts is the clearest differentiator in reading between students who are likely to be ready for college and those who are not.” (ACT 16–17)

“There is only one way to acquire the language of literacy, and that is through literacy itself. Why? Because the only place students are likely to encounter these structures and patterns is in the materials they read. And that is possible only if the texts they read in school are written in such language. Complex texts provide school-age learners reliable access to this language, and interacting with such texts allows them to discover how academic language works.” (Fillmore and Fillmore 2)

What Arts & Letters Does

Texts are of supreme importance in Arts & Letters. The program’s texts across grade levels are

complex, exemplifying the appropriate grade-level complexity outlined by college- and career-readiness standards;
varied in type, genre, medium, purpose, and perspective;
beautiful, with rich language and eye-catching illustrations; and
knowledge building, selected for their ability to help students deepen their understanding of the module topic from multiple angles.

Constructs of Reading Comprehension

What the Research Says

According to Scarborough, skilled reading results from the successful integration of “strands” related to higher-level language comprehension processes and lower-level word-recognition processes.

Language comprehension strands:
- background knowledge
- vocabulary
- language structures
- verbal reasoning
- literacy knowledge
Word recognition strands:
- phonological awareness
- decoding
- sight recognition

What Arts & Letters Does

Arts & Letters offers an integrated approach to learning that enables students to deepen content and vocabulary knowledge while they learn literacy skills essential for comprehending complex texts In a single Arts & Letters instructional arc, students are likely to do all or most of the following:

craft a knowledge statement to express new knowledge built about the module topic;
use relevant language structures, such as coordinating conjunctions or introductory clauses, to expand and strengthen knowledge statements;
participate in the Vocabulary Exploration routine to deepen semantic, phonological, morphological, and orthographic knowledge of a word that is critical for making sense of a text;
use textual evidence to interpret, analyze, and react to important ideas and language in the text;
engage with multiple texts that contain a range of features and structures; and
demonstrate and enhance decoding and word recognition abilities through a fluency performance.

Frameworks for Reading Instruction

What the Research Says

Repeatedly progressing through a sequence of purposeful, predictable close-reading stages creates skilled readers. (Adler and Van Doren; Liben)

According to Adler and Van Doren (46), “There are four main questions you must ask about any book”:

What is the book about as a whole?
What is being said in detail, and how?
Is the book true, in whole or in part?
What of it?

Liben suggests a phase-based framework for supporting close reading in the classroom:

Phase 1: Build a basic understanding of the text.
Phase 2: Deepen student understanding of narrative or informational elements.
Phase 3: “Go after the deepest learnings the text offers. ” (5)

What Arts & Letters Does

Arts & Letters students across grade levels access meaning in complex texts through an inquiry framework based on five Content Stages:

Wonder: Students explore a new text and log initial observations and questions about the text.
Organize: Students develop a literal understanding of what is happening in the text.
Reveal: Students narrow their attention to a specific element of the text that is particularly challenging, meaningful, or artful. Through a focused analysis of this text element, students deepen their understanding of the text as a whole.
Distill: Students discuss the text’s most essential themes, ideas, and messages.
Know: Students synthesize the new knowledge gained from the text and draw connections to other texts and topics.

Integrated Vocabulary Instruction

What the Research Says

“[I]f your students were to read a little of this and a little of that, without rereading anything or dwelling on any topic, then the likelihood of their encountering any given information-bearing word would be quite small. In contrast, if your students read several texts on a single topic, they would encounter a number of domain-specific, information-bearing words. In such texts, the words that rise to the top are those most useful for describing the concepts and relationships that are central to that topic.” (Adams 9)

“Knowing a word indeed means knowing as much as possible about it semantically, but also phonologically, morphologically, and orthographically. The greater students’ knowledge in each of these areas, the greater their reading comprehension and the greater their ability to learn new words rapidly and to retain them.” (Pearson and Liben)

Both vocabulary breadth (the number of words one knows) and depth (how much is known about those words) are essential for reading comprehension. (Binder et al. 333)

What Arts & Letters Does

The conceptually connected knowledge-building text sets in Arts & Letters accelerate vocabulary gains and expand vocabulary breadth and depth.

In each Arts & Letters module, a list of words is explicitly taught and integrated into lesson discussions and activities. These words are selected for their relevance to the module topic, their usefulness in broadening understanding of the English language arts discipline as a whole (e g , theme), or their importance in unlocking meaning of a specific module text. In grade levels 3–8, these words are listed in Word Analysis Charts, which provide additional phonological, morphological, orthographic, and etymological information for each word. Teachers use these charts during the Vocabulary Exploration routine to enhance students’ knowledge of each word.

Reading Fluency

What the Research Says

Reading fluency has several components, including accuracy, pacing, and prosody/expression. (Liben and Paige, “What Is Reading Fluency?”)

“Being a fluent reader with narrative text in third grade does not ensure the reader will be fluent several years later. Developing adequate reading fluency is a growth process that must be monitored as students progress across grades.” (Liben and Paige, “Determining Reading Fluency”)

“The WCPM (words read correctly per minute) score “has 30 years of validation research conducted over three decades, indicating it is a robust indicator of overall reading development.” (Hasbrouck and Tindal 1)

What Arts & Letters Does

Fluency is a core practice in Arts & Letters. Reading fluency is built through explicit instruction, repeated readings, and daily practice. Beginning in grade level 2, students use a short text or an excerpt to explicitly practice fluency at the beginning of each module, focusing on accuracy, phrasing, expression, and rate. Vocabulary instruction throughout Arts & Letters also supports fluency goals.

Fluency is assessed on each Reading Comprehension Assessment in grade levels 2–8, giving teachers an opportunity to formally track students’ fluency gains over time. Students read aloud an unpracticed excerpt of a new assessment text for one minute and earn a WCPM score.

Integrated Writing Instruction

What the Research Says

Hochman and Wexler’s The Writing Revolution presents a writing-instruction method based on six principles:

“Students need explicit instruction in writing, beginning in the early elementary grades.”
“Sentences are the building blocks of all writing.”
“When embedded in the content of the curriculum, writing instruction is a powerful teaching tool.”
“The content of the curriculum drives the rigor of the writing activities.”
“Grammar is best taught in the context of student writing.
“The two most important phases of the writing process are planning and revising.” (8)

“In short, we have found in our work with our students at all grade levels—both low-achieving and high-achieving—that in order to write effectively about anything, students need depth of knowledge in the topic about which they will be writing. ” (Vermont Writing Collaborative 12)

“Models and graphic organizers of various types are helpful ways of supplying students with a sense of how to structure, or build, a piece of writing that makes sense. ” (Vermont Writing Collaborative 121)

What Arts & Letters Does

In Arts & Letters, writing builds on a foundation of content knowledge developed through the close reading of texts about important topics.

Some key elements of the writing approach featured in Arts & Letters include

explicit writing instruction at sentence, paragraph, and essay levels;
the strategic use of writing models and transferrable structures, such as the Painted Essay®;
integrated grammar instruction, emphasizing language structures that directly support students’ expression of ideas and purposes for writing; and
iterative cycles of planning, drafting, revising, and editing.

Academic Discussions

What the Research Says

According to Zwiers and Hamerla, an effective discussion prompt

highlights the most important or interesting ideas of a text or topic,
draws on students’ knowledge about the topic,
has purposes that engage students’ interests,
provides a clear focus that helps students generate ideas, and
facilitates the use of new vocabulary and the sharing of new ideas.

According to Zwiers and Crawford, academic conversations strengthen a speaker’s

academic language and vocabulary,
literacy skills,
oral language and communication skills,
critical-thinking skills,
empathy toward alternate perspectives,
creativity, confidence, and engagement,
ability to negotiate meaning and focus one’s ideas, and
understanding of content.

“Conversation helps readers develop vocabulary, syntax, background knowledge, and thinking skills that authors of texts expect readers to have. ” (Zwiers and Crawford 13)

What Arts & Letters Does

All students regularly participate in text-based academic conversations, contributing their ideas about content and developing their use of language.

Two types of academic discussions at the heart of Arts & Letters are

Distill discussions, during which students discuss the most important messages and ideas of a literary or informational text and
Socratic seminars, which take place in the culminating lessons of each module and during which students synthesize their learning across texts.

Before participating in a Distill discussion or Socratic seminar, students receive direct instruction toward one or more of the speaking and listening goals named as a focus for that module. To support teachers in monitoring student progress toward mastery of these goals, a Speaking and Listening Goal Tracker is provided for each module.

Oral Language Development

What the Research Says

“Oral language is a cornerstone on which we build our literacy and learning throughout life. ” (Zwiers and Crawford 7)

“Research has consistently found that teaching grammar rules in isolation doesn’t work. … As we’ve seen over the years, what does work is to teach writing conventions and grammar in the context of students’ own writing. ” (Hochman and Wexler 14–15)

“Oral language production of sentences can result in sentences with fewer grammatical or syntactic errors compared to sentences that are written without oral rehearsal. … This is a practice that can additionally support written production for second language learners who may be more fluent in speaking the language than writing it. ” (Traga-Philippakos and Secora 293)

What Arts & Letters Does

Arts & Letters instruction provides regular and ongoing opportunities for students to learn and practice oral sentence work and make explicit connections to writing. For example, before crafting knowledge statements or drafting module tasks or End-of-Module Tasks, many Arts & Letters lessons prompt students to orally rehearse their ideas.

Grammar instruction in Arts & Letters is integrated into students’ reading, writing, and speaking, rather than taught in isolation. Students engage in explicit sentence formation and expansion work to meet expectations of language standards while also communicating what they learn about the module topics. For example, when students generate knowledge statements to express new understandings about a text or topic, they receive explicit instruction about specific grammatical structures that directly support the expression of their ideas, and they use these structures to modify or expand their statements.

Content-Based Assessments

What the Research Says

“An alternative approach would be to teach children using an integrated literacy and content-rich curriculum and to test their ability to read and comprehend passages covered in that curriculum. In other words, offer a better match between instruction and assessment. Don’t just test the skills and strategies that have been taught; test the specific content-area topics that have been taught. Such an approach would be fairer and more equitable for all involved. ” (Catts)

“Assessments enhance learning when the ‘end’ learning goals are known in advance, as are the assessments for them, [and when] the criteria for success are presented and explained at the beginning. ” (McTighe and Ferrara 2)

“The multiple measures principle suggests that we think of classroom assessments akin to the assembly of a photo album containing a variety of pictures taken at different times with different lenses, backgrounds, and compositions. Such an album offers a richer, fairer, and more complete picture of student achievement than any single snapshot can provide. ” (McTighe and Ferrara 2)

What Arts & Letters Does

Assessments are tightly aligned to Arts & Letters instruction and reflect the essential role of knowledge in the curriculum.

Assessments center on knowledge-rich texts related to module content, provide a multifaceted picture of student learning at specific points within the module, and occur at strategic points across the module to inform and strengthen instruction.

Arts & Letters assessments promote equity in a variety of ways; for example, formal Listening and Reading Comprehension Assessments feature “warm read” texts that are new to students but closely related in subject to the module topic. The nature of this design means that when making meaning of the new assessment text, each student can draw on the same pool of background knowledge, which they have built together across the module.

Opportunities to assess student performance in Arts & Letters are varied and ongoing. In a single module, students will

develop multiple formal writing tasks that grow in complexity and culminate in an End-of-Module Task;
complete two formal Listening or Reading Comprehension Assessments;
demonstrate mastery of module-level speaking and listening goals through participation in multiple formalized academic discussions; and
show ongoing development and progress through lesson-level learning tasks.

Multilingual Learner Supports

What the Research Says

“[W]ell-developed oral proficiency in English is associated with English reading comprehension and writing skills for [multilingual learners]. Specifically, English vocabulary knowledge, listening comprehension, syntactic skills, and the ability to handle metalinguistic aspects of language, such as providing definitions of words, are linked to English reading and writing proficiency. ” (August and Shanahan 4)

“Effective teachers are characterized by their attempts to develop ELLs’ awareness of the features of academic language and to engage ELLs in using the academic language of the disciplines, providing opportunities for ELLs to talk and write the language of a particular discipline. ” (Turkan et al.)

What Arts & Letters Does

Approximately one-third of each module’s lessons have a corresponding Prologue lesson—a pre-teaching companion to the core lesson that offers students with language needs additional support targeting vocabulary, syntax, and oral language practice. Prologue lessons aim specifically to support multilingual learners and students with language-based disorders or disabilities.

Prologue lessons provide explicit instruction to help students deconstruct and understand the syntax in module texts and the disciplinary expectations in grade-level writing and speaking tasks.

Prologue lessons explicitly teach key vocabulary from the module and provide structured practice with this vocabulary.

Prologue lessons prioritize time for students to engage in purposeful speaking and listening interactions with a teacher and their peers.

Differentiated Instruction Guidance

What the Research Says

“Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn. ” (CAST)

The UDL Framework includes the following components:

Engagement: “Affect represents a crucial element to learning, and learners differ markedly in the ways in which they can be engaged or motivated to learn.”
Representation: “Learners differ in the ways that they perceive and comprehend information that is presented to them.”
Action and Expression: “Learners differ in the ways that they can navigate a learning environment and express what they know. ” (CAST)

What Arts & Letters Does

Arts & Letters uses principles of inclusive design and UDL to reduce barriers and provide access to as many learners as possible.

Arts & Letters lessons include three types of support notes to both scaffold and extend student learning:

Language Supports, notes about language-based scaffolds that support students’ language use and development
Differentiation Supports, notes about scaffolds that assist students in meeting grade-level expectations
Differentiation Challenges, notes that suggest ways to advance students who would benefit from an additional challenge or extension

Foundational Skills Instruction

What the Research Says

Moats recommends several principles and practices of foundational literacy instruction, including the following:

“Explicit teaching of phonological skills, sound-symbol correspondences (phonics), fluent word recognition and text reading, vocabulary, text comprehension, and literature appreciation is necessary from when children begin school until they become proficient readers and writers.”
“Phoneme awareness instruction, when linked to systematic decoding and spelling instruction, is a key to preventing reading failure in children who come to school without these prerequisite skills.”
“It is better to teach the code of written English systematically and explicitly than it is to teach it randomly, indirectly, or incidentally.”
“The most effective programs include daily exposure to a variety of texts and incentives for students to read independently and with others.”
“Vocabulary is best taught with a variety of complementary methods designed to explore the relationships among words and the relationships among word structure, origin, and meaning. ” (20–21)

What Arts & Letters Does

Arts & Letters at grade levels K–2 is intentionally designed to be implemented alongside a high-quality, evidence-based foundational skills program.

Arts & Letters takes a robust approach to foundational skills instruction in grade levels 3–5. By using a scaffold toward automatic recognition of syllabication patterns, teachers explicitly guide students to decode multisyllabic terms four to five times per module. Students are able to do this by applying knowledge of letter-sound correspondences and syllabication patterns to decode words. Students refer to a Syllable Types chart to decode each syllable before blending the term to read. Each module in grade levels 3–5 also features a Word Analysis Chart, a digital-only teacher resource that provides additional phonological, morphological, orthographic, and etymological information about module vocabulary terms.

Take a closer look at Arts & Letters—access our Digital Review Kit.

ACT. Reading Between the Lines: What the ACT Reveals About College Readiness in Reading. ACT, 2006.
Adams, Marilyn Jager. “Advancing Our Students’ Language and Literacy: The Challenge of Complex Texts.” American Educator, vol. 34, no. 4, Winter 2010–11.
Adler, Mortimer J., and Charles Van Doren. How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading. Touchstone, 1972.
August, Diane, and Timothy Shanahan. Developing Literacy in Second-Language Learners: Report of the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth. Center for Applied Linguistics, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2006.
Binder, Katherine S., et al. “Beyond Breadth: The Contributions of Vocabulary Depth to Reading Comprehension Among Skilled Readers.” Journal of Research in Reading, vol. 40, no. 3, 2017, pp. 333–43.
CAST. The UDL Guidelines. udlguidelines.cast.org. Accessed 6 Jun. 2024.
Catts, Hugh W. “Rethinking How to Promote Reading Comprehension.” American Educator, vol. 45, no. 4, Winter 2021–22.
Cervetti, Gina N., and Elfrieda H. Hiebert. “Knowledge at the Center of English Language Arts Instruction.” The Reading Teacher, vol. 72, no. 4, 2018, pp. 499–507.
Fillmore, Lily Wong, and Charles J. Fillmore. “What Does Text Complexity Mean for English Learners and Language Minority Students?” Understanding Language: Language, Literacy, and Learning in the Content Areas, Stanford Graduate School of Education, January 2012.
Hasbrouck, Jan, and Gerald Tindal. “An Update to Compiled ORF Norms (Technical Report No. 1702).” Behavioral Research and Teaching, 2017, files.eric.ed.gov.
Hochman, Judith C., and Natalie Wexler. The Writing Revolution: A Guide to Advancing Thinking Through Writing in All Subjects and Grades. Jossey-Bass, 2017.
Liben, David, and David D. Paige. “What Is Reading Fluency?” Achieve the Core, 21 Oct. 2016.
———. “Building Reading Fluency.” Achieve the Core, 28 Oct. 2016.
———. “Determining Reading Fluency.” Achieve the Core, 9 Nov. 2016.
McTighe, Jay, and Steve Ferrara. Assessing Student Learning by Design: Principles and Practices for Teachers and School Leaders. Teachers College Press, 2021.
Moats, Louisa. Speech to Print: Language Essentials for Teachers. 3rd ed., Paul H. Brookes Publishing, 2020.
Pearson, P. David, and David Liben. “The Progression of Reading Comprehension.” Achieve the Core, 13 Aug. 2013.
Scarborough, Hollis S. “Connecting Early Language and Literacy to Later Reading (Dis)Abilities: Evidence, Theory, and Practice.” Handbook of Early Literacy Research, edited by Susan B. Neuman and David K. Dickinson, The Guilford Press, 2001, pp. 97–110.
Traga-Philippakos, Zoi A., and Kristen Secora. “From Sounds to Letters to Words to Sentences to Genres.” The Reading Teacher, vol. 77, no. 3, 2023, pp. 290–99.
Turkan, Sultan, et al. “Proposing a Knowledge Base for Teaching Academic Content to English Language Learners: Disciplinary Linguistic Knowledge.” Teachers College Record, vol. 116, no. 3, 2014, pp. 1–30.
Vermont Writing Collaborative. Writing for Understanding: Using Backward Design to Help All Students Write Effectively. Authentic Education, 2011.
Zwiers, Jeff, and Marie Crawford. Academic Conversations: Classroom Talk That Fosters Critical Thinking and Content Understandings. Stenhouse, 2011.
Zwiers, Jeff, and Sara Hamerla. The K–3 Guide to Academic Conversations. Corwin Press, 2017.

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Topics: English Curriculum High-Quality Curriculum Arts & Letters