Teaching literacy is an ongoing task. It isn’t a wham-bam-and-you’re-done one-shot lesson where kids can show their learning and you move on. Teaching literacy is as much about creating a culture of reading as it is about using targeted strategies to ensure that students are interacting with texts, sometimes really challenging ones that make them stretch far beyond their reach.

That productive struggle is also a part of a PBL mindset. It’s vital to stretch and push these students so they don't fear brain sweat in the future. But we must, all of us, use scaffolds to teach literacy behind every door.