Educators spend a lot of time talking about engagement. In curriculum meetings, professional development sessions, and product reviews, I often hear a version of the question: How can we make this more engaging? Proposed solutions often involve adding games, increasing student choice, incorporating technology, or creating more interactive experiences. In other words, increasing the entertainment factor. While there is certainly a place for all of those things, maybe we’re actually asking the...

The word is reconstruction . It appears in a sixth-grade social studies text, embedded in a paragraph about rebuilding a nation after war. The sentence is dense, the ideas unfamiliar. But the word itself is readable. A student reads it aloud without hesitation. Accurate, fluent, even automatic. When asked what it means, he pauses. “Construction again?” It’s a reasonable attempt. He recognizes a familiar base and applies what he knows. But something is missing, and the gap isn’t phonics. He...