Magnetic Reading Overview

Magnetic Reading (Grades 3–5) is a reading comprehension series that draws all students to the center of learning.

Drawing Students to the Center of Learning

About Magnetic Reading Grades 3–5

Magnetic Reading’s goal is to help every student become a skilled and confident reader.

Drawing Students to the Center of Learning

Magnetic Reading is a reading comprehension program that draws all students to the center of learning and presents compelling, culturally relevant texts that immerse students in sustained knowledge development. With insights from i-Ready and strategic scaffolds, Magnetic Reading ensures all students will confidently access rich, relevant grade-level content.

On the path to skilled, confident reading, Magnetic Reading plays a critical role in your work to ensure every student feels validated—as a learner and as a member of your school community.

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Four Pillars on the Path to Confident, Validated Readers

Knowledge-Rich Learning

A content-rich curriculum encourages students to build a store of knowledge and vocabulary they can activate when reading future texts.

Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Pedagogy

Culturally and Linguistically Responsive teaching and texts validate and affirm diverse backgrounds and perspectives so all students may see themselves as part of a rich, thriving community of cultures and ideas.

Scaffolds to Support Learner Variability

Built on the principles of the Universal Design for Learning (UDL), Magnetic Reading opens access for all students to engage with high-quality, grade-level texts.

Data to Inform Instruction

i-Ready lesson-level data and reporting give teachers valuable strategies for individual students, groups, and impactful pairings.

Pillar 1: Knowledge-Rich Learning

A content-rich curriculum encourages students to build a store of knowledge and vocabulary they can activate when reading future texts.

Knowledge-Rich Learning in Magnetic Reading

Magnetic Reading builds prior knowledge, giving students the background and pathway to make connections and become more persistent readers.

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Drawing Together Ideas to Build Knowledge

All texts in Magnetic Reading build systematically so students create stores of knowledge that open doors to deeper learning, exploration, and knowledge.

Continuous Knowledge Development

Focus Questions guide knowledge building throughout each lesson and provide an overarching anchor question from text to text.

Building Knowledge across Content Areas

Texts include content from a wide range of topics including social studies, science, and the arts.

Creating Compassionate Classrooms

Students build empathy and awareness while reading and discussing Magnetic Reading’s rich fiction.

Integrating Vocabulary to Build Knowledge

Wide vocabulary leads to better reading comprehension. Magnetic Reading integrates word learning into reading, writing, and discussion.

New Words in Real-World Conversations

Students have ample opportunity to learn new, conceptually connected words through multiple exposures across lessons and units, academic discussions, and writing activities.

Good Reading Produces Good Writing

Students apply concept vocabulary through rigorous speaking and writing tasks.

Point-of-Use Support

Embedded definitions support fluent reading and allow students to access ideas.

Vocabulary Help & Go

Scaffolds guide students to use morphology and context clues to determine word meanings, building knowledge of domain-specific words and Tier 2 words encountered broadly across content areas.

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Pillar 2: Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Pedagogy

Culturally and Linguistically Responsive teaching and texts validate and affirm diverse backgrounds and perspectives so all students may see themselves as part of a rich, thriving community of cultures and ideas.

Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Pedagogy

Compelling Content That Draws Students into Reading

Magnetic Reading gives students the opportunity to bring their backgrounds and experiences to the text and connect ideas from the texts to what they know and have experienced in their own lives. Students get to share their cultures and languages, providing classmates with a window into the wide range of backgrounds and experiences with which they may be unfamiliar.

Authentic Voices, Stories, and Perspectives

Informational and literary texts mirror many cultural backgrounds and experiences. Students see themselves reflected in texts and learn more about themselves, their classmates, and people they have yet to meet.

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Providing Opportunities for Maximum Student Engagement

What students read is important, but how they interact with content and the classroom as a community is too. Culturally and linguistically responsive teaching gives teachers flexible strategies to:

Support and value all cultural and linguistic backgrounds
Discover and build on the ways that students show their brilliance
Plan instruction that validates and affirms all backgrounds and experiences
Leverage students' backgrounds and experiences as opportunities for cross-cultural connection and understandings

Instructional Strategies That Validate and Affirm All Students

Magnetic Reading’s engagement protocols:

Structure activities for engagement
Promote equitable thinking, talking, and collaborating
Positively leverage students' cultural behaviors
Validate and affirm learners

Pillar 3: Scaffolds to Support Learner Variability

Built on the principles of the UDL, Magnetic Reading opens access for all students to engage with high-quality, grade-level texts.

Scaffolds to Support Learner Variability

Magnetic Reading's scaffolded supports can help propel all students toward grade-level reading proficiency.

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Student Access to Grade-Level Texts

Magnetic Reading opens access for all students to engage with high-quality, grade-level texts. Magnetic Reading includes four important types of scaffolds: background knowledge and vocabulary, embedded routines, student pairings for reading fluency, and point-of-use scaffolds for teachers.

Background-Building Scaffolds

Essential Concepts Activity provides opportunities to build background knowledge and key concept vocabulary.
Scaffolds for in-the-moment support: Listen Fors and Help & Go scaffolds provide quick, formative guidance to help teachers get students back on track in a lesson.
Strategic scaffolds for English Learners are embedded throughout the Teacher’s Guide and are identified by EL abbreviations.

Whitepaper: Reading Scaffolds: Instructional Tools for Our Focus toward Grade-Level Reading

Curriculum Associates National Director Kandra James explores how scaffolding can help all students reach grade-level reading proficiency.

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Stop & Discuss

These activities build academic discourse by providing opportunities for students to grapple with what they are reading in the moment with their classmates.

Text “Chunking” for Reading Stamina

Every text in Magnetic Reading is broken into segments to make reading digestible for students to read grade-level texts more confidently.

Pillar 4: Data to Inform Instruction

i-Ready lesson-level data and reporting give teachers valuable strategies for individual students, groups, and impactful pairings.

Data to Inform Instruction

Magnetic Reading works seamlessly with the i-Ready Diagnostic to bring data-driven insights to the classroom. The Magnetic Reading Grade-Level Scaffolding report, available for every Magnetic Reading lesson, helps teachers understand each student’s reading strengths and challenges, how to pair students for Buddy Reading, and which students are ready for the next standards versus who will need additional support.

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Reliable, Lesson-Level Insights

The custom Grade-Level Scaffolding report delivers reliable, lesson-level insights for each student to determine and recommend the level of support they need to access grade-level texts.

Building on Background Knowledge

The Grade-Level Scaffolding report pinpoints the background knowledge to set students up for success before they read.

Student Groups

The Grade-Level Scaffolding report provides student groupings at the lesson level to ensure their individual needs are met.

Reading Buddies: The Grade-Level Scaffolding Report

Students are strategically placed in well-matched, mixed-level pairs. This research-based scaffold provides an opportunity for readers to gain fluency as they move toward reading independence.

The Research behind Our Reading Pairs

The Grade-Level Scaffolding report leverages students' Lexile® Reading measure to create well-matched, mixed-level pairings. This research-proven scaffold helps both partners improve. The lower reader benefits from hearing the higher reader read fluently while also being in close enough proximity to the higher reader to keep up. Students who are ready to read are shown in dark blue, students who need additional support are in light blue, and students who need teacher support are in red.

Putting the Reading Experience in the Right Hands—Your Students’!

The Grade-Level Scaffolding report lets buddies connect to the reading together, freeing up teachers to give students small group decoding support.

Program Components

Magnetic Reading includes all of the tools you need to support grade-level instruction!

Print Components

Teacher's Guide

Everything you need in one book, including standards-aligned curriculum, content roadmap, scaffolded activities, and assessments.

Student Book

The perfect resource for students to become better readers. Scaffolded supports throughout help students build stamina to read grade-level content.

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Digital Access for Magnetic Reading (through the Teacher Toolbox)

Additional Instructional Materials:

Teacher’s Guide
Student Book
Language Handbook
Unit Assessments
Lesson Slides
Lesson 0
Interactive Tutorials
Tools for Instruction
Unit Progression Charts

Tools for Scaffolding Comprehension
Prerequisite Magnetic Reading Lessons (Grades 4 and 5)
Discourse Cards and Support
Supplementation Documents

Lesson slides allow teachers to display instructional guides for each Magnetic Reading lesson.

Tools for Scaffolding Comprehension–available in the Digital Access for Magnetic Reading (through the Teacher Toolbox)–provide resources to help prepare students for grade-level instruction.

i-Ready Assessment

The i-Ready Diagnostic empowers you to make data-driven decisions with Magnetic Reading instruction. Consult the Grade-Level Scaffolding report before teaching each Magnetic Reading lesson to plan reading and standards-based instructional scaffolds with students’ individual needs in mind.

Within each lesson, Magnetic Reading provides ongoing opportunities to monitor comprehension and track student progress.
Each Magnetic Reading Unit Assessment targets the standards covered within a unit. Alternatively, you can also assess the standards taught in each unit using i-Ready Standards Mastery. Standards Mastery provides insight into the skills students struggle with and those they have mastered, providing ongoing data to inform planning for remediation and enrichment.

Grade-Level
Scaffolding report

A Deeper Look at Magnetic Reading's Program Structure

Sharpen Skills and Build Knowledge with Focus Lessons

Each Focus lesson follows a six-session structure:

Session 1: Scaffold Reading

Build background knowledge, explore conceptual vocabulary, and Read/discuss Text 1.

Session 2: Practice the Focus Standard

Discuss the Focus Standard, and apply the Focus Standard to analyze Text 1.

Session 3: Scaffold Reading

Read/discuss Text 2 and build knowledge of the lesson topic.

Session 4: Practice the Focus Standard

Revisit the Focus Standard, and apply the Focus Standard to analyze Text 2.

Session 5: Independent Reading and Practice

Read Text 3, build knowledge of the lesson topic, and independently apply the Focus Standard.

Session 6: Respond to the Focus Question

Synthesize knowledge from Texts 1, 2, and 3.

A Deeper Look at Magnetic Reading's Program Structure

Synthesize Learning with Connect It Lessons

These lessons offer a culminating experience to the unit. Each Connect It lesson follows a four-session structure:

Session 1: Connect Concepts, Build Background

Build on key unit concepts and explore vocabulary to build background knowledge for the culminating text.

Session 2: Read a Culminating Text

Students read a longer, culminating text that builds on knowledge gained in previous lessons.

Session 3: Practice the Focus Standards

Students work independently to complete tasks that integrate practice of previously taught Focus Standards.

Session 4: Synthesize Knowledge across Unit Texts

Students “put it all together” in an activity that explores the unit topic and requires students to make connections between the Connect It text and other unit texts.