Literacy Talks

Can We End “the Reading Wars?” Part Four—Comprehension Takes Center Stage

• Reading Horizons • Season 4 • Episode 10

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With this episode of Literacy Talks, our literacy experts wrap up a four-part mini-series exploring the article Ending the Reading Wars: Reading Acquisition from Novice to Expert by Anne Castles, Kathleen Rastle, and Kate Nation. The trio shines a spotlight on the complex, multi-faceted nature of reading comprehension and how both decoding and linguistic comprehension come together as students learn to understand written language. Listeners will gain helpful insight into the layers of skills students need to know and master so they can construct meaning from text. And, of course, there’s a lively conversation about how to apply this information in the classroom so student reading proficiency soars. Don’t miss this opportunity to understand more about the critical path to comprehension.  



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Narrator:

Hello literacy leaders and champions. Welcome to literacy talks, a podcast series for Reading Horizons dedicated to exploring the ideas, trends, insights and practical issues that will help us all improve our professional practice knowledge and confidence in teaching reading. Our host is Stacy Hurst, professor at Southern Utah University and Chief Academic Advisor at Reading Horizons where reading momentum begins. Joining Stacy are Donell Pons, a recognized expert in literacy and special education. And Lindsay Kemeny, an author, speaker and a first grade elementary reading teacher. Today's episode is part four of our four part mini series and focuses on the last pages of the article ending the reading wars reading acquisition from novice to expert by castles wrestle and nation, the focus is comprehension, a topic of critical importance and amazing complexity. Our hosts will explore the simple view of reading and the in depth layers of skills and knowledge required to construct meaning from text. They'll also dive into implications for the classroom with a focus on what teachers need to know and do to help learners build lasting comprehension skills. It's an eye opening wrap up for this in depth review of a critical work in reading science. Let's get started.

Stacy Hurst:

Welcome to this episode of Literacy Talks, I'm your host, Stacy Hurst, and I'm joined by Donell Pons and Lindsay Kemeny. And this is part four of a very long article that is very worthwhile lots to talk about right guys. So if you put together all the hours, we've talked about this one research article, I think I've gained a lot from it. So I hope you guys have and I hope our listeners have. So today, for those of you don't know, we are talking about ending the reading words Reading acquisition from novice to expert, by Anne Castles, Kathleen Rastle. And Kate Nation, I'd like to thank them for writing this article, and also for making it to be available freely. So it's free access, anybody can download it. And academics don't always have to do that. So I really appreciate that they did. So today we're going to talk about part three, we talked about part one, and the takeaway there you you can go back and listen to these episodes, but was about alphabetic skills. And the writing system matters. Part Two was all about print exposure and fluency and the takeaway there was experience matters. And then today, we're going to talk about reading comprehension. The authors of this article define the goal of reading as being able to understand a text, a task of immense complexity, which is what we will talk about today.

Lindsay Kemeny:

I'm excited to dig in this is as it kind of reiterates, this is a so multifaceted, so complex, there's a million things that go into comprehension. And we can sum it up by saying that and saying, you know, there's like a whole bunch of things that could be going wrong when a student is struggling with comprehension. So

Stacy Hurst:

absolutely. Donell, anything to add?

Donell Pons:

I hope that was the biggest takeaway. So we might be referencing the simple view of reading, which gives us a nice framework. But then as we dive into this section, it's anything but simple. Right? So that's the takeaway from me.

Stacy Hurst:

Yeah, I love that. So we're on pages 26 through the end of the article, and again, the title is learning to comprehend text. And Donell just like you said, it starts out with a reference to the simple view of reading and saying exactly what you said to Lindsay, it requires a lot of complex processes to be able to comprehend text. And then starting on page 27, box five, this simple view of reading, I thought that they really made that simple view very concise. One thing I underlined was the end that first part of the box, this simple framework has had influence, both within and beyond the scientific community, its clarity is appreciated by practitioners, and it has formed the basis of national reading reforms in England. When did you guys first learn about this simple view of reading?

Lindsay Kemeny:

I'm trying to think of like the first time that's been a few years

Donell Pons:

you know, I think for me the first time somebody actually explained it well not only referenced it, but then explained it well would have been for me Kilpatrick, Dr. Kilpatrick and the work that he did. So that's about 2015.

Stacy Hurst:

Yeah. And you know, I asked that question because I think I I'm not sure either, Lindsay. I'm kind of you like, I don't remember. But this has been around Since 1986, I am 100%. Certain I did not learn about it in my pre service education. So it is a very important construct.

Lindsay Kemeny:

Yeah. And I should clarify, it would have been, you know, the latest like, five, six years ago, right, because we know it was when my son was diagnosed with dyslexia, then I started learning about all this. So I say, Can't remember not because I learned about it in college, because I know I didn't, but it was in the last five years.

Stacy Hurst:

Yeah, and it does make, it communicates in a simple way, the complexity that is involved in reading, and we won't spend a ton of time going into it, I think these authors do a good job of concisely explaining it, they refer to it throughout this section. But I recommend if you're not familiar with it, to research it and learn more, it is highly tested. When we say there that science can be reliable. This is one thing we're talking about. It's been since 1986. And the nature of research is to try to prove things wrong. And so far, this has not been proven to be incorrect. So we start with on page 28, they talk about comprehension in general, is there anything in this section 3.1 that you guys highlighted or, or thought was worth mentioning?

Lindsay Kemeny:

Yes, I think in this section is one of the most beautiful explanations of reading comprehension. And you've probably heard this quoted before, and maybe you wondered where it came from. It's from this article, it says reading comprehension is not a single entity that can be explained by a unified cognitive model, instead, and here is like, the big part, I think it is the orchestrated product of a set of linguistic and cognitive processes, operating on text and interacting with background knowledge, features of the text, and the purpose and goals of the reading situation. So I love that part. It's the orchestrated product of a set of linguistic and cognitive processes. I mean, that just shows it's not one thing. There's so many things that go into comprehension.

Stacy Hurst:

We have orchestrated, I love that word to like, poetic. Yeah, it is. It is really pretty. I think. Maryanne wolf comes to mind, she might be really happy with definition and the way you described it, Lindsey, Donnell, anything that stood out to

Donell Pons:

you here. Yeah, so I think words, a word that we're going to hear over and over again, is dynamic. I think that's really important, because that is comprehension is very dynamic. And dynamic, to me means lots of forces coming together movement building. And that is very much a part of comprehension.

Stacy Hurst:

And you know, one thing we think of when we talk about comprehension, this term always comes up background knowledge, right? What I really loved about this section, in fact, I've read, I don't know how many times I've read this article, I'd say at least for this has never stood out to me in the way it did this time. But I they talk about the definition of background knowledge. And they say knowledge is broadly conceived, and may include information such as the meanings of words, rules of grammar, knowledge of events, and temporal relations, episodes, scenarios, emotions and characters. So background knowledge is complex. There's a lot that goes into

Donell Pons:

that, think about all the connections that are having to be made, right. And they've already talked about the fact that that's even on a time continuum. So even relevant to is this current, was it past? Is it pre what can I anticipate all of that? Because what we're talking about in the body of comprehension?

Stacy Hurst:

Yeah, and these sections, they talk about that. There are three things that comprehension depends on Lindsay you mentioned that it's multifaceted linguistic and cognitive processes. But they talked about the importance of children's knowledge, features of the text and the purpose and goals of the reading situation. So in this first section, they do refer to the situation model, which is that active process is your reading of creating a scenario in your mind of what is happening.

Donell Pons:

And here's where you can see that oral language right coming into play. In that very first paragraph, it says, it also leans into as we shall see oral language sets of vital foundation for reading comprehension and its development, that oral storytelling being exposed to narrative verbally.

Stacy Hurst:

Yeah. And that we're we're never not attending to comprehension if we're focusing on oral language even before somebody can read right?

Lindsay Kemeny:

Yeah. And it talks about that just working on the oral language before they can even read is going to impact in a positive way their reading comprehension. So you can be working on these kinds of things from the time they're very little through oral language.

Stacy Hurst:

And then something else I underlined we talked about inference. Also when we talked about comprehension. Good evidence suggests that important aspects of reading comprehension and inference Generation happen automatically. But readers can also deploy strategies to support comprehension. And I think that means once you have that foundation of language, they're also really clear to say that you need to be able to decode if we're talking about reading comprehension, right. But it does make it seem that if you have those two things in place, then they can happen automatically. So they talk also, again, flexibility, as mentioned here, because those strategies that they refer to need to be adapted according to the properties of the text, and like its difficulty and the goals for reading anything else to add to that, I thought that was a good setup. And they do talk about it's a view from skilled reading that a lot of studies done, refer to skilled readers, so we learn what goes into it. And then 3.2 factors influencing development of reading comprehension in children, what stood out to you guys in that section?

Lindsay Kemeny:

Well, what this section is going to do is it's going to divide up into three different parts, right, the importance of just the three constructs that cause them that underpin reading comprehension, knowledge, processes, and then cognitive resources. So are we going to take

Stacy Hurst:

each one of those or are we going to Yeah, we'll take each one. So in that first introductory section, anything else to mention there?

Donell Pons:

One thing that stood out to me is, she says here, perfetti and 1994 notes, there was room for lots of things to go wrong when comprehension fails. The same part? Yeah.

Stacy Hurst:

That would make sense, right? They also note that even those these three things that they're going to talk about, they're intertwined. They're easy to identify separately, but hard to separate when you're trying to identify what's going wrong, because they're so interactive with each other. Yeah. To your point, there is a lot that can go wrong. Okay, so you know what else I thought it was interesting, that they do call out that not only is comprehension, multifaceted, it is also complex developmentally. So they're going to refer to the reading systems framework here by perfetti, and Stouffer in 2014. And if we haven't mentioned already, the resources and the references in this document are, you probably earn a honorary doctorate just by studying all of some great things. So we start with knowledge. And they say knowledge is fundamental to comprehension. So they're talking about the types of knowledge they're talking about orthographic linguistic and general knowledge. And they also highlight here reading comprehension cannot happen without adequate levels of word reading skill. So they asked the question, what types of linguistic knowledge are important? And how would you guys answer that question? That sounds like a quiz question. It's not.

Lindsay Kemeny:

Let's start with vocabulary, right? And talking about how you need to know the meaning of the words, the majority of the words in the text that you're reading.

Donell Pons:

I thought that was interesting. Lindsay, too, when they make that point about vocabulary, and they just bring up the example of how well a child knows a word influences how efficiently it is processed. And this in turn influences the demands placed on general resources, such as working memory. So right there, that entanglement that Stacy, you were talking about begins, right, just the load that I've got to carry based on the definition I have, the definition is weak and shaky, I'm doing a lot more work to get to meaning for that word, and to have it fit within the context of what's going on. Whereas a student who may have a better working knowledge of that word isn't having to work like that. And again, all of that's happening underneath the surface, right?

Stacy Hurst:

Yeah, and they call this out later, but that's the lexical quality hypothesis, I think, which is, who's also perfetti. And then they talk about that vocabulary rich vocabulary, subsumes not only how well the meaning of those words are known, but how flexibly they can be used in a given context. And then they use a fun vocabulary word polysemous, meaning that words can have more than one meaning interesting.

Lindsay Kemeny:

And then besides just knowing the words, it points out that children have to know how the words in the sentence are operating or working together. And, you know, it talks about those cohesive ties, you know, and like connecting, you know, so he she, what, what are those words referring to what is it referring to and tying it back into other parts of the

Stacy Hurst:

text? Yeah, I love that because they also talk they call it multiword utterances, but they talk about phrases like by the way, and they also refer to idioms of course and figurative expressions, which are especially important to teach explicitly for students who are learning English. We have a lot of those fun things in our language.

Donell Pons:

And again, they make that connection between oral language and reading right so there's yet another reference there likewise, poor comprehend errs have weaknesses in oral language that predate the onset of reading.

Lindsay Kemeny:

I liked that it pointed out how written language is different from spoken language. And so even in like young children's literature, there's, you know, big differences with the formality and the tone. And it just shows how, yes, we need to be having these rich conversations with our students and children, but also reading to them from text because they're going to hear a whole different component of language that way. Yeah. And

Stacy Hurst:

that is really important, because they do say, they do highlight again, how important oral language is, even when we're talking about things like novels and films. And they compared movie scripts to the novels that they're based on. And there's no comparison, the vocabulary is richer and higher in a book than it is in those scripts, no substitute for reading the novel, they say, and the learning about the differences between spoken and written language starts early. And I think that's important to point out as well.

Donell Pons:

It's really interesting, because it makes me think of an experience I had with one of my children, we were reading a book that was well above his reading level, it's my son who struggled with reading. And it was a book well above most of the readers in my household, but we chose to read it because of the subject matter. And it's a classic. And it was interesting, because towards the end of the novel, he's the only one who's still with me, right? It's over summer reading. And it was kind of by choice air quotes. And so some had already decided to flee the room, but he stayed and hung in there to the bitter end. But what's interesting is we had watched the black and white version of this book. And the nuance of the conversation in the courtroom is lost in the movie. I mean, even though they do a fine job and love all the actors that were in the film, it was very good. But you lose a lot of the nuance that happens that you can get out of the book. So as I'm reading the book, to my son, we get to that courtroom drama, and I was amazed at being able to ask him just a question about why do you think everybody in the room wants him to be guilty? And my son, bam, gives the right answer right off the bat. And he had caught up all of that information that he was receiving through that dialogue exchange. And I thought that was really interesting, which would have been, as I say, lost, having watched a very good movie version, but but very different.

Lindsay Kemeny:

Yeah. And imagine Donell if you were only exposing him to books, he could actually decode look at what he's missing out on that he's totally capable of comprehending and discussing why we have multiple texts experiences in our classrooms. The authors

Stacy Hurst:

are very clear, they call out that they're talking about how reading comprehension typically develops. But they frequently mentioned things about poor comprehenders. And one of them they say, they have weaknesses in oral language that predate the onset of reading. So these are something we can absolutely attend to and keep track of. So when you're doing a read aloud with your child or your students pay attention, like you did Donell, to how your student is processing that information. A really important outcome they also mentioned is background knowledge, and how the adding that long term memory is only going to help in the future. When situation models vary, right. I don't know if any of you appreciated this, but I read that paragraph that they're quoting Willingham that used in his book. And it goes like this I just as a listener, just read and see what you can comprehend. Based on your background knowledge. Carol Harris was a problem child from birth, she was wild, stubborn and violent. By the time Carol turned eight, she was still unmanageable. Her parents were very concerned about her mental health. There was no good institution for her problem in her state, her parents finally decided to take some action and they hired a private teacher. Now as I read this, I was creating a situation model in my head. But based on my background knowledge, I made a connection. What were you guys thinking as you read this? Obviously, it's Helen Keller, but we were able to come to that conclusion. That's an inference, right? Because they actually stated he did this on purpose. He said the wrong name. Based on the background knowledge that we have we not only were putting together okay, they're getting help for this child. And why are they so unmanageable maybe the questions that come up, but we were able to connect Oh, they're talking about Helen Keller, or at best saying this sounds like Helen Keller, right making those connections across text. So background knowledge and long term memory helps comprehend future texts.

Donell Pons:

And even if you're not making the connection to Helen Keller, per se, if you're not really familiar, and that didn't resonate with you, you're also you could be creating your own image of maybe there's something in the past that reminded you of something, again, that's rich and deep being able to connect it to something else. And then when it's revealed, oh, it's Helen Keller, then it depends on Oh, I've heard that story. It was read to me. And then another connection is made, which is really interesting. So all of that so rich, that text.

Stacy Hurst:

And I know we've talked about this before, but when I taught first grade, and I learned this in my balance literacy instruction, so again, I might have been the episode, we were talking about not overturning the boat. But really teaching explicitly those connections between text to self text to text and text to world early on, will help facilitate that kind of thinking. Lindsay,

Lindsay Kemeny:

well, you know, it just said in there, it just more and more, it reminds me how important it is for students to have access to audiobooks with all of this, especially those who are struggling or can't read yet, you know, says poor readers tend to have less background knowledge and are less likely to draw on it as they read. And it's this whole Matthew effect, the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer, because they're not able to read as much then they learn last through text, which is why we also need to give them the opportunity to you know, do read aloud text with them, let them listen to or, you know, let them listen to audiobooks, help them through complex texts, all in addition to if they still need those decodable texts,

Stacy Hurst:

great points. And you know, they do say obviously, that background knowledge needs to be activated while reading and that moves us into the next section. We're talking about processing. Cognitively what happens during the course of reading. And in this section, they just focus on three they said several processes are engaged as people read, but they're gonna focus on meaning activation, inference generation and comprehension monitoring. What did you guys think about those anything to note?

Lindsay Kemeny:

Oh, you know, it said poor comprehenders, find it difficult to integrate ideas across a text, and are less skilled at answering questions that require an inference to be made. And you it's like, you kind of realize, oh, yeah, that is kind of hard, if that doesn't like happen naturally for you. And also, side note, did any of you think about all this stuff while you were reading it? As I'm trying to comprehend this difficult research article, I was thinking all these yeah, see, I'm having to integrate ideas across all these different paragraphs that they're telling me, I couldn't stop thinking about that.

Stacy Hurst:

Actually love that you brought that up in several places I wrote in my notes relate to professional learning relate to professional learning, because that we've talked about this frequently on this podcast for the especially for those people who are newer to learning about the constructs in the science of reading, just keep learning, right, you're gonna build a bigger and bigger bank of background knowledge. And pretty soon, the cognitive demands on a text like this are fewer and fewer, right? Because you already have that to draw from.

Donell Pons:

And you know, I think it's interesting, because I say it over and over again, we'll probably say it many different ways, comprehension is fundamentally about making inferences. That was really just one sentence to say it clearly, comprehension is fundamentally about making inferences. And this leads me to and I think about this all the time, making sure we're having rich conversations with students, before asking them to do anything that's which I think is really something we all ought to get down and have to help is if I want them to read, what do they know about what I want them to read? And what understanding do they have? And what should I provide? Right? So I think about that all the time, when I'm working with students is what should they have at hand in order to get a rich experience out of this? And the same with writing, I wouldn't have a student sit down and cold write, although we do that to students all the time. But really, there should be rich conversation around what what should happen with this writing project or task that I'm having to do. And right here that just says it for me. So well, comprehension is fundamentally about making inferences.

Stacy Hurst:

Yeah, that was a true or false question on one of the quizzes for my students, by the way, they also mentioned, which I think is important, the ability to kind of prune information that isn't essential. And that can be related to inference, it can interfere, if you don't do that it can interfere with inferring. I don't know, if you've had the opportunity to question somebody who didn't really understand what they read. I know, my first graders would do this. And they call out just a random thing, a totally random unessential thing to the meaning of what they read. They weren't able to prune that out of their monitoring as they were monitoring their comprehension. So that I think is interesting as well. And then Donald to your point, inference generation, they say is a predictor of reading comprehension, so we can't overlook it for sure.

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Donell Pons:

I thought it was really interesting moving into at last skill, because they're all so interrelated. That another skill that has been implicated in reading comprehension is comprehension monitoring. And that's along with your pruning, Stacy, that pruning ideas that comprehension monitoring? What do I know so far, being able to take a quick survey of what you understand, boy, is that important in reading? Yeah. And

Lindsay Kemeny:

realizing when you don't understand you do that, right. We're like, wait, I just read that whole page. I'm no idea what I just read, go back and reread, but you're gonna have some students that just keep reading and don't really consciously go, oh, wait a second, I don't know what I'm reading about, I should go back and really think about that.

Stacy Hurst:

Or to be able to identify where it broke down, right? I learned about the word anaphor. When we were talking about pronouns referring to the person who was named before. And I actually read over that the first time I heard that word, I got a general idea of what it meant I knew what it was referring to. But I looked it up ana- meaning before and -phor meaning something that bears so somebody that bears the meaning before, right. So I when I realized, Wait, I'm not understanding this on the level that I probably need to, then I knew what to do. That was a vocabulary strategy, morphology, specifically, I could figure it out. So yeah, I think that's all important. They do call out to plausibility, and a standard of coherence. When you're monitoring your comprehension, you need to be able to understand that. So I made a note here, that that is critical, even with decodable text. And I would say be sure I know it decodable text is a kind of a thing, right? Hard to write. I know I've written it before. But we need to make sure that our syntax and the situation model that are being presented to children makes sense to them.

Lindsay Kemeny:

And we need to make on the other side as students read it, where we attend to meaning. This is not our big comprehension focus of the Decodable texts, but you can still ask, you know, text dependent questions at the end to make sure they understood what was happening, or have them retell the story to make sure they're comprehending it,

Stacy Hurst:

you can also really extend it right. I remember one situation where I was actually modeling a lesson. And it was in a small group, they just read decodable texts, and we had been talking about synonyms. So we took a very decodable word like big, and we created a lot of synonyms we created we didn't create them we named we're not making up our own language here. But we were able, at least verbally to talk about ginormous and you know, talking about the range of those words related to it. So decodable text needs to also make sense, that's really important. And they also mentioned, a reason why that is important because it early on in a student's reading development, kindergarten through second grade, especially the ability to decode words makes the biggest difference for comprehension. But they still need to be able to make sense of what they're reading, obviously. But then going forward vocabulary and background knowledge. And all these things we're talking about are assuming they can decode the words accurately. Those are the things that interfere with comprehension. So we're always attending to those in one way or another. And then the next section we're going to talk about are those general cognitive resources. So they're talking about working memory here. And Donell, I know that you have been recently kind of learning and expressing a lot more about this. Anything in this section that made you really want to emphasize it.

Donell Pons:

I don't think we spend enough time really going over how hard the student is working and how all of that plays into the ability to pull out information right that you may I have available to you. I think this is a really important and underserved area. And we've talked about that before, obviously, we've had conversations about it. And so the more load that I'm carrying, the more difficult it is for me to be able to reach in and access, right, those things that maybe I have learned, and maybe it is in there. But it's difficult for me to have that available to me, because of how hard I'm working with everything else. And that, to me, sometimes has really helped teachers to understand Oh, that's why we examine all of the pieces to make sure the student really does have this down with odd automaticity. Right. And there's a level of fluency there. Because if I'm really struggling at any of those levels, that can impact my ability to have access to, as you say, this memory, right, I thought it was interesting, too. They talk about regulation, even in the ability to be able to access memory.

Lindsay Kemeny:

I thought that was really interesting, because, okay, yes, executive functioning skills, you know, my son, that's a huge deficit, especially with working memory. And so I just their definition of working memory, I really appreciate it. And I felt like it was kind of different than maybe how I first thought of it. And Donell, I think it is because it includes that regulation peace. And honestly, when I first read their little definition, I just started laughing because I'm like, What is this even talking about? Like, this is a great example of like, all these words, and you're like, I can't comprehend this. And then I just go back and read it again. I'm like, No, I understand this. And oh, yeah, that is a great definition. So let me read it. It's working memory can be defined as the mechanisms or processes involved in the control, regulation, and active maintenance of task relevant information in the service of complex cognition. I mean, there's a lot there. But I don't know, to me, I just had never, I'd hadn't heard a definition like that, for working memory,

Stacy Hurst:

that it was interesting. And they kind of make reference to this, they do bring it up later, citing the research. And there was a meta analysis, I believe, on this to the working memory training, has not actually showed gains,

Lindsay Kemeny:

right? That in the

Stacy Hurst:

implication, but that's where I think that lexical quality comes in, you can really help facilitate getting that in long term memory, if you're really examining that and creating word recognition, high quality lexical information about words. So, okay, the My favorite part is to talk about the implications for the classroom. So is there anything before that that we need to mention?

Lindsay Kemeny:

No, I just appreciate I think there just a little bit of humor in this sometimes where they're like, Well, it's obvious comprehension will suffer if a child cannot read the words in a text, right? Like, we know that.

Stacy Hurst:

Yeah, especially given the title of this, which is about reading wars. And that's constantly a battle that is mentioned, as we've brought up before. I also like how they are very specific in saying in skilled readers, the correlation between listening comprehension and reading comprehension is almost perfect. So again, anytime we spend focusing on comprehension, whether it's verbal or with text is well worth it.

Donell Pons:

And Stacy I don't know if you're gonna mention it or not. But assessing reading comprehension, they just have a quick section there. And I love that they acknowledge how difficult it is to really accurately measure comprehension. Right? There are different ones that we use and things but because of the complexity, just in our discussion here about what goes into comprehension, how difficult it is to measure really,

Stacy Hurst:

yeah, and they bring that up in the next section where they talk about implications for the classroom. One of the first things they say is the appreciation that reading comprehension is a complex construct leads quickly to the realization that improving reading comprehension is unlikely to be simple.

Lindsay Kemeny:

I like to the the part it says it is not talking about an assessment, talking about comprehension, it is not a single entity that can be cleanly and reliably captured by a gold standard test. I mean, how many of us want to go yes. Can I go show this to someone at the district? And can I show this to you know,

Stacy Hurst:

oh, yeah, and you know, I think I yeah, I don't want to give any, we should have Stephanie Stoller on here, I'm talking about Acadians, specifically, because they added that measure, right where they're supposed to be measuring comprehension, but it explains why that is such a hard thing to measure. And that it's going to be hard, especially in a screener like that to really adequately measure what you need to know. But my history of learning about that test is limited, but I do remember that the creator's saying they had a hard time with that particular measure. One thing I want to call out is that at the bottom of page 34, and going on to 35, the author's reference the some literature that has been expertly synthesized into accessible accounts and practical guides, and then they list including recent books by and they list those, I circled those in the references, I'm going to be looking them up and saving money to order them, because I'm curious to see what they're recommending there. But I just thought I'd mention that in case any of you are interested in doing that as well. And then they do list some resources in a table, box seven on page 39. They list a whole bunch of books. And I think that's probably for reading development in general, but lots of great things listed there. So yeah, Lindsay, you talked about assessing reading comprehension, then it goes into

Lindsay Kemeny:

like some strategy instruction, right. And so it talks about how the national reading panel recommended reciprocal teaching, which I am a fan of reciprocal teaching, I have done that. It's kind of a scaffolded discussion technique. And the students are taught four main strategies. So it's clarifying, summarizing, predicting, and question generating. So they're generating the questions from the text, which is really great, because they really, they've got to understand the the answer in order to come up with a question. And so I liked that it talked about that. And then that it also went into what Daniel Willingham has found about, you know, that there's not a lot of evidence that we need to spend tons of time on this strategy instruction. I think that's really interesting. Every time I read his stuff, it's just interesting to me that, you know, there's good effects for less time spent on those strategy instructions.

Stacy Hurst:

Yeah, and with reciprocal teaching, I think the main thing there is what they call out as increasing the level of engagement with the text active engagement with text as they're reading, we leaned into that hard in my district, even 15 years ago, and saw that it students got a lot out of that kind of instruction, Donell.

Donell Pons:

So I think there are some takeaways that I'm paying attention to. And that is, with all this great information, know your students, and what's the best way to know your student than to listen to and spend time hearing your student read, and what their responses are to that. Right. So that was really important. I think that message received. And the likewise, even though we have strategies in there, excellent. And to be thinking about them, nothing replaces being in text, right, having experiences with tech. So I think we're hearing those things as well.

Lindsay Kemeny:

Yeah, he said, Willingham suggested just five or six sessions for that explicit strategy instruction. And he's did say, larger effects for the upper grades. Right?

Stacy Hurst:

Yeah. They need to know when to apply those strategies as well. Yeah. And I think that's a bigger conversation. But in education, we frequently get the word skill and strategy confused, right. So I think that's important to know, too. I was really encouraged by that, that explicit strategy instruction is effective, and it can be short. So yeah, and it works best when we're reading fluency is in place when you're talking about reading strategies. They also say here, too, no amount of strategy instruction can bring about successful comprehension if the text cannot be understood, because of limitations in the knowledge or difficulties with activating knowledge in the service of comprehension. So you need to comprehend enough to get information out of it. Right? And to be able to recognize if you don't comprehend it, right, like we talked about before,

Lindsay Kemeny:

that vocabulary and knowledge which we go into vocabulary in the next section.

Stacy Hurst:

Yeah. And they talked about how vocabulary instruction specifically led to significant improvements, and on custom made comprehension passages containing those taught words, right. So they really talk about vocabulary instruction. Donell, I think you mentioned before to is really effective when it's related to the text when it's text centric, they're going to be more likely to be able to transfer that, but the real effects are seen within the context of a text. And the part

Lindsay Kemeny:

I thought was so exciting. It's talking about, you know, teaching those vocabulary words before they read the text, and how much the number of minutes per word that's necessary. And guess what, less than one minute per word in some studies. So they were saying even just a brief little opportunity to introduce the word before you read the text is helpful. And that's nice as teachers when we have like a gazillion things that we have to teach every day.

Stacy Hurst:

Yeah, I think often, Anita Archer, she's very not only her perky pace, but the way that she addresses vocabulary is very efficient and quick. And so if you're a teacher and you're tempted to cut that out, because you don't have time, it takes less than a minute and the return on the investment is invaluable?

Lindsay Kemeny:

Yeah, if you don't have time to do the big thing on a word, just do that quick little thing that's going to help them comprehend the text that you're about to read.

Donell Pons:

Yeah, whenever I think of vocabulary, I always think use it or lose it. That's one of those things, you're using it, it's got to be in there somewhere relating to something in order to hang on to it right. So utility quickly.

Stacy Hurst:

And then again, we're calling out in this article, they call out that direct vocabulary instruction alone is inefficient. We know through research that once you can read, the best way to improve your vocabulary is through reading. But they also mentioned that they go back to again, knowing that word on many levels, that lexical quality, but then being able to be flexible with the meanings of the words, depending on the situation. So the next part, oh, yeah, I've one thing I also wanted to mention was that focusing on specific types of words, like those that are not yet known, but need to be known to comprehend a variety of texts. So those are tier two vocabulary words, right? And so in when we're choosing words for our instruction, that's a good place to focus. The other thing I thought was interesting, their the way they addressed Latin roots. And they said, they cited some research saying that students are able to learn after fairly minimal instruction. So even with that, they get the concept and like a little goes a long way, right?

Donell Pons:

And again, usage right, once you start using it. Absolutely.

Stacy Hurst:

Good point. Okay, so now let's talk about inferences, inferences, instruction was shown to benefit reading comprehension. Alongside this general effect performance on inferential aspects of comprehension also improved. So transferred to that literal comprehension was lower when we're talking about inferences. But again, you don't need a lot of time benefits seem to follow quickly and more practice was not associated with greater gains. They also talked about the use of graphic organizers, which helps students in that area as well, especially with background knowledge, and helping them to make connections between ideas in a text. Anything else that stood out to you guys in that section?

Donell Pons:

I thought it was interesting that there's they're acknowledged that we still need a lot of research in this area to see what is most effective in terms of inference? Oh, that's interesting.

Stacy Hurst:

Yeah, I like that. They do that throughout that they say this is we need future research here. I know, after teaching first grade developmentally, first graders are very literal thinkers. So you do have to scaffold their inference making abilities. And there are many ways to do that. I think we've talked about that in previous episodes. So you may want to revisit those conversations. But strategies are out there ways to present that to students. Anything dimension about inference instruction. Okay, now we're on to working memory. Again, we're talking this time about how it's applicable in the classroom in our instruction. So I actually put his frowny face in the notes here. Because it says if working memory resources, limit comprehension, is it possible to improve reading comprehension? By strengthening working memory? Question mark? The answer to this question seems to be no.

Lindsay Kemeny:

And you need to watch out because there's a lot of kind of like snake oil things out there, where they're like, Oh, we're going to do these little, you know, work on this memory, whatever brain thing program, it's going to improve their memory. But guess what, you know, maybe they'll do better at that certain tasks, but that not does not transfer over to the reading, it's not going to help the reading.

Stacy Hurst:

Yeah, I think that's important. I know, when my parents were getting help for my little brother, they had him in some interesting types of therapy that were making claims to increase things like working memory. So

Lindsay Kemeny:

And right now, we just don't have the evidence for that. And I like that it makes sense that very clearly. And it says, current working memory training programs do not improve reading comprehension. I just remember being really like saddened by when my son, you know, his working memory was like, off the charts. It was so low. And I'm like, What can I do to help this if it just seemed like, nothing? That's just how it is, you know what I mean? That's just like, it can be discouraging. And we never like, Okay, we never worked on working memory. You know, what we worked on all these other things? Yes, we worked on understanding the text. And guess what his working memory did improve.

Stacy Hurst:

It's a rising tide lifts all boats kind of thing. Donell.

Donell Pons:

So that's where the instructional practices that you find that explicit systematic teaching, right? That lend themselves to breaking down to taking it down to the basics, spending time really working on lead to mastery, being able to work on something to mastery, and then I take a lot of those same practices and apply them to other aspects of a student's learning who has the same challenges break things down how many times Have you heard this right with students who may be an ADHD, impacting working memory, break things down into smaller units, make sure you have a system for things keep it the same day to day. So you have to think about what's coming, right. So a lot of the practices that you find are very good in teaching skills can be very useful for students and other aspects of their learning. And they

Stacy Hurst:

do give us hope, they don't just leave us with us all right, working where where you can improve. Instead, they say instruction should focus on and we've heard this before, even multiple times in this episode on developing lexical quality at the word level. And this is my favorite word and optimizing children's knowledge and skills so that limited working memory resources can be used to the best effect. So I like the word optimize there, that lexical quality is really important, you might need to do a whole episode on that. Okay, and then you guys, we're on page 38, the reading comprehension in the classroom. The summary, I have a few notes here, but I'd like to hear what you guys noted.

Donell Pons:

More evidence is needed to identify which strategy should be taught when and for how long, it's a good thing to underline. While strategy instruction might be quick, the acquisition of knowledge is gradual, and continuous. This can be assisted by direct teaching and using structured materials that support the curriculum. Ultimately, however, it relies on rich input, much of which will come from reading experience itself.

Lindsay Kemeny:

And I just highlighted kind of the part right before that, again, talking about that oral language. And that even before children can read, we can give interventions that target oral language and it will lead to improvements in reading comprehension. Again, especially as a lower grade teacher, I think that's neat that we can you know, be attending to that.

Stacy Hurst:

And then this part I underlined too, while strategy instruction might be quick, the acquisition of knowledge is gradual, and continuous. It made me think of even something like Scarborough's reading rope. And Hollis Scarborough herself said she could do it all over again, she'd make sure at the bottom it said these processes happen over time. This is another section that I called out professional learning. Because as we build information and knowledge, I mean, all of that happens over time, you can't learn everything there is to learn about the science of reading, even in one school year, right. And not only learning but learning how to apply it, which again, is just one thing that I love the most about this article. And about other texts, I think of Christopher's such as book and Lindsey, your book, where it goes over the science and then talks directly about how to apply it, and you can read those books, but you're going to get the most out of it if you're applying those things in your own instruction. And your knowledge is going to even grow faster and more solid that way too. So that rich input and experience and they call that out for readers to this, we can affect that by direct teaching. And using those like you said, Donell, those materials that support the curriculum, teaching children to read and then providing opportunities for varied, extensive and successful reading experience is fundamental. And they end with that section by saying we repeat that message here. So I think that's very important to them. Okay, in the conclusion of the text, anything you guys want to call out there, I feel like they gave a good overview of the whole paper,

Donell Pons:

they just wrap it up quickly. It's a couple of paragraphs, because boy, have they laid it out? Well,

Lindsay Kemeny:

yeah. And I like that it kind of said in relation to teaching that the teacher training programs are going are doing future educators a huge disservice if they don't equip them with the knowledge of our writing system, and the broader language system it represents, which is kind of what they're talking all about in this great article.

Stacy Hurst:

And the end by saying, in our view, it would be valuable to reclaim a term such as balanced instruction. I know I reacted to that when I first read it because of the reading wars, right. But they say and recast it in a more nuanced way that is informed by a deep understanding of how reading develops a deep understanding of how reading develops, the guiding principle here would be the although there are many different aspects of reading that must be learned. This does not mean that instructional time should be devoted equally to all of them at all points in reading acquisition. They're talking about that essential combination of instruction at critical times in development. I love how

Lindsay Kemeny:

it said deepening our knowledge. And that's what we're doing. And that's if you've been listening to this whole series on this article, and reading along the article with us or even just skimming it a little bit and reading parts, that's what you're doing. You're deepening your knowledge which is going to be so beneficial for your students.

Donell Pons:

I'm just gonna say when we do deepen our knowledge then within our communities or learning communities as educators, we can have better conversations as well and help each other so we're elevating our profession and our skill by engaging in this kind of dialogue. And this kind of background when we ourselves are our reading,

Stacy Hurst:

which is kind of the whole point of even our podcast, right? Our podcast and our life's work and working with readers, I think that's great. So the author's started on page eight by saying our aim, they point that out right at the very beginning is to provide our readers with the scientific background they need. So we're talking about that depth of knowledge to promote best practices in the classroom. Why to minimize the proportion of children who struggle with reading as a result of non optimal teaching, or air quotes, instructional casualties, and their quoting rely on there. And then they end, their final sentence says, It is our hope that this review will contribute to ending these wars so that it further examination of the status of this debate, 15 years hence, will not be required. I'm hopeful that will be the case. How about you guys?

Lindsay Kemeny:

Please, can we stop fighting? And can we, you know, have good dialogue around evidence based instruction, we can have little debates within, that's fine. But let's stop with saying oh, it's not just about words, or doing these strawman arguments where we're like, we know, you know, I just wish we could rise above all that.

Stacy Hurst:

Yeah. And think about where each of us will be in 15 years in our career listener, think about where you will be, oh, man, I hope we're not having these debates still. And I think of the words optimized, right, Let's optimize instruction. Let's optimize our learning and Let's optimize our student's ability to read and comprehend. So with that, we will end this series as ever looking forward to hearing your input as you read this, thank you for listening along. And we will see you on the next episode of Literacy Talks.

Narrator:

Thanks for joining us today for Literacy Talks, the podcast series for literacy leaders and champions everywhere. We invite you to join the science of reading collective, our free community and resource hub so you can stay current with new ideas, free webinars, resources and more. And be sure to visit literacy talks online for resources, access to every season's episodes and more at readinghorizons.com/literacytalks. It's an exciting time to teach reading and ensure your students reach grade level proficiency this school year. Literacy Talks comes to you from Reading Horizons where reading momentum begins. Join us next time.