Building & Extracting Arguments

Utilizing Fables

When introducing a new strategy to students, application to simple text first, like fables, is a deliberate pedagogical choice rooted in Cognitive Load Theory (CLT). The primary goal is to ensure that a student’s limited working memory is used for mastering the strategy itself rather than struggling to understand a text’s complexity.

Key Benefits of Initially Utilizing a Simple Text Followed by an incorporation of Increasingly Complex Text

1. Complex text may include text barriers and jargon that act as “noise.” Initially removing these distractors, followed by an incorporation of increasingly complex texts that returns to Tier 1 instruction, minimizes the mental energy students waste on deciphering complex text language, allowing them to focus on the core “lightbulb moments” of the new strategy.

2. Research indicates that initially utilizing a simple text, followed by an incorporation of increasingly complex texts that returns to Tier 1 instruction, can increase strategy and concept retention by up to 40%. This is called “Staircase Complexity”. Staircase Complexity is an instructional model, granting access for all, in which students engage with increasingly difficult texts within and across grade levels to build the stamina and skills Tier 1 instruction and college and career readiness requires.

3. Staircase Complexity bridges the gap for diverse learners, including those with cognitive disabilities, English Language Learners (ELLs), or students reading below grade level. It ensures that all students—not just those with high academic literacy—have immediate access to the new strategy. It is an equitable accommodation, designed to bridge the unexperienced learning gap, because it intentionally applies the strategy to increasingly complex text that returns to Tier 1 instruction.

4. Creates a “Safe Space” for risk taking by using approachable language that makes a new strategy feel less like a formal mandate and more like an innate, inborn, and natural tool. This is  self-efficacy, which is the belief in one’s own ability to succeed. Self-efficacy encourages students to utilize the strategy and apply across curriculum and genres.