Lunch n Learn: Multilevel Teaching Strategies #3: Different Texts, Shared Strategies — and Making Independent Time Work

Sometimes learners genuinely need different material — and that’s fine, as long as the teaching point is shared. In the first half we look at how to introduce and practise one reading strategy across texts of very different levels: predicting, rereading, retelling, visualizing, using context clues, outlining. The whole class can practise retelling in their own words even when no two learners are reading the same page. We’ll pay particular attention to what these strategies look like for learners still building decoding and foundational reading skills.

The second half tackles the question every multi-level instructor asks: what is everyone else doing while I teach one group? We treat independent time as something you plan, not something that happens by default — journals, independent reading, comprehension tasks, focus-on-form and skill-building work — so that direct instruction with one level is genuinely possible, and the other levels are learning rather than waiting.

You’ll leave with: one reading strategy mapped across your levels, and a bank of independent tasks matched to each level in your class.