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Ep. 212: Beyond the Science of Reading with Natalie Wexler

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Phonics alone won’t solve the literacy crisis.

Natalie Wexler's new book: Beyond the Science of Reading: Connecting Literacy Instruction to the Science of Learning advocates, which connects the science of reading to the broader science of learning.

Key Points:

  • The current reading crisis is fundamentally a learning crisis.
  • Cognitive science principles, such as retrieval practice, should apply to all learning.
  • Advocating for a knowledge-building curriculum supports all students, particularly those who struggle. 
  • Writing instruction should start with explicit techniques.
  • All teachers should integrate literacy within their content.

Beyond the Science of Reading advocates for an integrated approach to literacy that combines cognitive science principles with literacy instruction, emphasizing content knowledge, explicit writing instruction, and cross-disciplinary teaching to boost student success.

Resources


We answer your questions about teaching reading in The Literacy 50-A Q&A Handbook for Teachers: Real-World Answers to Questions About Reading That Keep You Up at Night.

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Melissa:

Teachers are always short on time. Efficient and effective strategies are essential for teaching. Today, we'll discuss how the science of reading connects to the science of learning and how you can integrate both into your classroom.

Lori:

What's more efficient and effective than that? Author Natalie Wexler is here to discuss her new book Beyond the Science of Reading Connecting Literacy Instruction to the Science of Learning. Hi teacher friends. I'm Lori and I'm Melissa. We are two educators who want the best for all kids, and we know you do too.

Melissa:

We worked together in Baltimore when the district adopted a new literacy curriculum.

Lori:

We realized there was so much more to learn about how to teach reading and writing, lori and I can't wait to keep learning with you today.

Melissa:

Hi, natalie, we are so excited to have you back on the podcast.

Natalie Wexler:

Well, I am thrilled to be here. It's what? Is it? My third time, oh. Fifth time? Oh, you're kidding. Fifth time we counted for you. It's fifth time, oh you're kidding. Fifth time we counted for you, it's, you know, it's always a pleasure.

Melissa:

Absolutely, and today we're talking about your new book, which is really exciting, and how the science of reading connects to the science of learning.

Natalie Wexler:

Right, yes.

Lori:

Yeah, okay, so I'll jump in. The science of reading we know is a comprehensive body of research that tells us how to best teach reading, based on really solid scientific findings. We are at a pretty pivotal point where we are transitioning to use like research-backed practices to teach reading across the nation and even in the world. Natalie, in your new book you propose that our current reading crisis is actually a learning crisis, and I know I was really intrigued by that. Can you say more?

Natalie Wexler:

Yeah, and I'll say that, you know, one of the arguments is that we have to look beyond reading, to reading and writing as literacy, and that the science of literacy, or all of the scientific evidence relating to reading and writing, is sort of a subset of all of the science related to how we learn, and there is a lot of scientific evidence on that that really has been treated as kind of separate from the evidence on reading, and the evidence on writing has been treated as separate from the evidence on reading and it's all connected. I mean, if you think about reading specifically, let's say reading comprehension and certainly learning how to recognize words is also a part of learning. But everything that we are able to understand as readers draws on everything we've ever learned. You know, that is the vocabulary, the concepts. The more of that knowledge you have, the easier it is to understand pretty much any text you read.

Natalie Wexler:

And at the same time and I think this is more widely recognized reading is a way of learning, it's a way of acquiring knowledge. So that relationship goes both ways. And similarly with writing, I mean, first of all I'll say writing is inextricably linked with reading and they should not be treated as separate, but again, writing what we can write draws on everything we've been able to learn, and it is itself ideally a way of deepening and reinforcing that knowledge and maybe coming to some new understandings as we write. So you know, the basic idea is it is all connected and we need to stop putting these things in silos because it's making them more difficult for kids.

Lori:

Yeah, I totally agree that makes so much sense.

Melissa:

So, as we've mentioned, your book is all about the science of learning and you just kind of touched on it a little bit, but you also refer to it as cognitive science in your book, back and forth with those two terms. Can you just very clearly define what those two terms mean?

Natalie Wexler:

Yeah, and I think science of learning is a term that is more sort of layperson friendly than cognitive science. I mean, really, cognitive science is the study of cognition, and one branch of it is certainly just studying. You know, how do people learn? What is the best way to teach to enable people to learn to their maximum potential? And so there's been a lot of research, especially, I don't know, in the last few decades, on how people learn, and there's been some pretty clear evidence about certain practices teaching or studying learning practices that are tremendously helpful to learning. For example, there's one called retrieval practice, and the idea there is that the more you practice retrieving an item of information that you have stored in long-term memory somewhere, maybe slightly forgotten, the more you practice retrieving that item, the more likely you are to be able to retrieve it when you need it, and that is the basis of a lot of learning, although obviously not the end of it. But there's another practice or principle that's been studied, which is elaboration, which is basically explaining things to someone else in your own words, maybe giving examples, and that is tremendously powerful for boosting comprehension. So we have these principles that are really, you know, have a lot of evidence behind them and they are now.

Natalie Wexler:

You know they've been kind of separate from the way teachers have been trained. These principles have generally not penetrated like schools of education, but there is now a movement that's sometimes called the science of learning movement. There are directed at teachers. It's certainly not as big a deal yet as the science of reading. It's growing more slowly and I think one reason is it's more complicated than you know, like we need to do a better job of teaching phonics, and I think it also goes against a lot of what teachers. Not only have they not learned about these principles of cognitive science during their training, they've learned a lot of what teachers. Not only have they not learned about these principles of cognitive science during their training, they've learned a lot of things that actually contradict those principles of cognitive science.

Lori:

Yeah, that's actually a really good point, Natalie. That's what I wrote down really quickly while you were talking. Is there, are there any thing that like? Are there any things that you learned as you were writing this book that surprised you or that, like you said, went against what teachers were trained in there, or supposedly trained right? Because it's so wild to me that we're talking about the science of learning and in colleges of education, which focus on learning, this is not a part of it traditionally and you know, hopefully we're going to make some changes there. But I was just wondering, as you were doing the research for the book, or reading for the book or learning for the book, is there anything that surprised you, Anything that you were like, oh, that was that's tricky.

Natalie Wexler:

Yeah, well, I mean, you know, as opposed to the knowledge gap where I was learning a whole lot of stuff Well, I was. I mean, I had a tremendously steep learning curve when I was writing that book, this book. There weren't so many surprises because it was drawing on a lot of stuff I'd already been thinking about and writing about. But I mean, I'd say that the surprising thing that I've been encountering for quite a while now is how how little teachers do learn about what actually could make their jobs easier, like how it is that kids learn. I mean, I came across, I quoted it in the new book, I actually ended up meeting him, but an educator who had written for an education publication I can't remember now which one, I think it was the Hechinger Report saying that the thing that surprised him about his teacher training was how little he learned about how kids learn, you know, and he subsequently sought out that information. In fact, he organized a research ed conference that I spoke at and when he contacted me I said, oh, I just read something you wrote and I'm quoting it in my book, you know. So there's this.

Natalie Wexler:

I think some teachers, you know the word is gradually spreading, I think it's a surprise often to them, and they often I mean as with learning about phonics and systematic phonics instruction or foundational skills instruction. You know that Facebook group what I should have learned in college and you know people are appalled, aghast often, that the stuff they were told was going to work. Just keep kids engaged, just, you know, focus on the skills. You don't need to worry about them actually retaining any particular information that all of that actually made their jobs harder and made it harder for their students to learn. And I think a number of them see this really as an equity issue, because there are some kids out there who are going to thrive no matter what, pretty much, and they're thriving in our system, often not because of the system but despite it. But most kids they're struggling, they're ending up feeling like failures because of these I mean well-intentioned but deeply ingrained beliefs that really go against what science can tell us about. You know how to enable these kids to learn and reach their full potential.

Melissa:

I'm so curious. Do you have an example of something that teachers may have learned that contradicts the science of learning?

Natalie Wexler:

Oh yeah, I mean, for one thing, there's the idea that I have sat in on, you know, ed school classes when I was doing the research for the book, and I heard a professor who you know she was I don't mean to criticize any individual, so this is really systemic and she was a well-liked, you know good instructor, but she had told me ahead of time when I talked to her oh yes, I really believe that we need to build kids' knowledge, yeah. But then I heard her actually say you don't have to worry about kids remembering names and dates and all that stuff, because they can just Google it. And that is something that I think a lot of people inside and outside the education world believe. But in fact it is way more efficient if you have factual information stored in long-term memory and you can just withdraw it when you need it than if you have to go Google it or just even think about you know like what does that mean? That's imposing an added burden on your working memory capacity and limiting your ability to learn.

Natalie Wexler:

And I think that the basic thrust of most of these cognitive science principles they're designed to enable kids to retain information in long-term memory and be able to retrieve it easily. They're, in other words, at reinforcing, building and reinforcing knowledge, and I think a lot of the thrust of sort of educational orthodoxy is that's not important we want. We want to focus on skills, you know, whether it's reading, comprehension skills or critical thinking skills or communication skills, as though those things could be divorced from actual knowledge. It's not that the skills are unimportant, it's just that they grow alongside knowledge and actually, through acquiring more and more knowledge, you acquire more and more ability to think critically and all of those things.

Melissa:

Yeah, this might be getting to one of the points that I really loved in your book, which you talked about. These you said the artificial walls that are between literacy learning and basically all other learning. Is that kind of getting to the point that you're talking about here?

Natalie Wexler:

Yeah, I mean, I think that it's. It's both in research and practice. And I think you know, in practice we've separated out reading from writing there's a writing block there and and also reading from the content areas, and so most of the reading block has been spent, you know, practicing comprehension skills and strategies, and it doesn't really matter whether kids are acquiring any particular knowledge as long as they're supposedly mastering the skills. But if comprehension doesn't work like that, and so those content areas have been given short shrift when in fact they have a lot of potential to build the kind of knowledge and vocabulary that enables reading, comprehension. But also on the research side, I know one thing I've kind of. I think one reason I wrote this book is I've kind of had a foot in each of these worlds the sort of literacy, science of reading world and the science of learning world. And when I've gone to these research ed conferences and other conferences and designed to acquaint teachers with these principles of cognitive science, they've been great. But I've noticed there's, like this, something that is being overlooked, which is the way we teach reading, comprehension and the way we teach writing. A lot of the research in cognitive science has been done either on math or science or maybe history, but the content areas and math is a favorite because it's very standardized, sort of easy to do experiments. And I would love to reach cognitive scientists and encourage them to take a look at this through the lens of cognitive science, at the way we are trying to teach reading, comprehension, the way we are trying to teach writing, and do some research on what might work better.

Natalie Wexler:

Because I think if you look at those things through the lens of cognitive science, you see we've been making reading and writing much harder for kids than they need to be. For one thing, we've been asking them to try to apply these skills to topics they may not know much about, read about. You know, we're just practicing determining the author's purpose. So you may not know anything about the solar system, but here, read this book about the solar system, determine the author's purpose. And it's going to be really hard to do that if you don't have that background knowledge. And it may be hard to read about a topic you don't have much background knowledge about. But trying to write about a topic you don't have much background knowledge about, but trying to write about a topic you don't have much background knowledge about, is virtually impossible, and you know there are these writing curricula out there that have their own topics and kids might get very limited information about them. So that's one thing that I really hope cognitive scientists will take a look at. The other thing I'd love them to take a look at and I think this is really important for teachers to learn about as well is how writing can enhance learning.

Natalie Wexler:

We have some evidence of that. There are these studies that are often called write-to-learn studies that have been going on since the 1970s and they generally so. What is the effect of learning of writing on learning in science, in social studies, in math not just ELA or English and the findings are generally there's a positive effect, but sometimes there's a negative effect. Sometimes it's ambiguous, and I think the problem here is that the negative effects may come about when we ask these kids in a study to write at length when they don't know how to write no one has taught them to write and sometimes there's a negative effect because if you're cognitively overwhelmed, you don't have the capacity to retain any information from what you're writing about information from what you're writing about.

Natalie Wexler:

Meanwhile, there are some cognitive science studies, like retrieval practice studies, that have found really significant effects generally done with college students. But if you look at what they asked the college students to do, they were writing. So those studies really show if you're an experienced writer like at the college level let's hope they are experienced writers writing can have an enormous effect on your ability to retain and understand information. But we need to put all these pieces together so that those positive effects can be brought down to the K through 12 level, and I think what we need to do there is actually explicitly teach kids to write in a manageable way and that can unlock the potential of writing instruction to really make reading, comprehension and learning in general so much easier for kids and so much more powerful.

Lori:

I'll do a little plug here, natalie, for your book the Writing Revolution with Judith Hockman. I use it probably every week with my own child because the, the way that it is laid out, is just so easy to implement, like even as a parent, right, and I can implement it with whatever she's learning about. But the thing that I love the most, that I think has been the biggest game changer and this is so simple, but I want everyone to hear it because it's so simple is just the writing of. I feel like the trickiest, sometimes the trickiest part of writing for kids is the introduction and the conclusion. It's not like all the things you're going to say in the middle, like if you have enough to say you can get through those paragraphs or paragraph or sentence, whatever, wherever we are.

Lori:

But the introduction and the conclusion and the way that they it is explicitly taught in the writing revolution is so easy. It's like here's your thesis, here's your specific sentence about the topic, here's your general sentence about it, and then we invert that triangle and it's so clear and it gives a formula and that has I mean. I'm just giving this as one specific example of how it has helped us be really practical about putting introductions and conclusions into writing in a way that you know I'm a parent helping at home, I'm not teaching the content that it's you know. So if I'm a teacher in a classroom, oh my gosh like the benefit of having these specific strategies and skills for writing are just priceless.

Natalie Wexler:

Yeah, and I think actually so. I will mention as a footnote you know, judy and I came out with a revised version, a second edition, just this past summer of the writing revolution, and it introduces an alternative to that. General statement, specific statement, thesis statement.

Natalie Wexler:

I'm going to have to go by that one. Okay, because that is difficult for some students and some teachers to come up with a general statement, a specific statement. So there's a transition outline for multiple paragraph essays where you just need to come up with an introductory statement or two, you know one or two sentences and then a conclusion with one or two sentences. But your point about it helping kids get started is right on point, because we were actually I was just presenting at the NCT conference with someone from the Writing Revolution and she made the point. Kids often have trouble getting started and to teach them there are three good ways, three strategies to construct a topic sentence you could use in a positive, you could use one of the sentence types, you could use a subordinating conjunction. It's not like you have to use one of those things, but I think what many kids need is just like a way to get started and that gives them a way to get started. I think the other thing about writing is that for many teachers who might be like a little skeptical of all this science of stuff, I think many of them realize that their kids are struggling with writing and that they themselves haven't gotten good training in teaching writing. They could use some help in teaching writing. I mean, I think you know I don't want to present this as okay you've got the science of reading. You need to master all of those principles and figure out how to apply them in your classroom. And then there's the science of writing, and you need to do those principles. And then there's the science of learning, and I can just imagine teachers going screaming from a room. But I think if you say, look, here's a way to help your students become better writers, I think that there'll be more, maybe some more receptivity to that. And if they try it, I mean they don't even have to know they're doing the science of learning. You know, I think they start to see and I've seen this myself what's going on in classrooms.

Natalie Wexler:

One of the things I did for the book was to visit a district in Louisiana, a high poverty district, monroe, that had been working with the writing revolution to adapt writing revolution activities to the curriculum that they were using, which was a content rich and you do need rich content in order to teach writing but a content rich curriculum that just it didn't have good support for writing and they knew that this writing was something that they needed help with. But what they saw as they I mean district-wide started implementing the writing revolution, was that kids' oral language became better. Their reading comprehension became better. One special ed teacher told me you know, before it was just a bunch of words, now they enjoy reading.

Natalie Wexler:

I think you know, teaching kids how to use the syntax, the complex sentence structure of written language, in their own writing really helps with reading comprehension. So all of these things, it enables kids not just to write at a higher level but also to read more easily and and to think in more complex ways. Because if you're writing in more complex ways, that's reflecting, it's an, it's a two-way street. It also means you're thinking in more complex ways.

Melissa:

So I'm wondering if we can dig into a little bit of an example I'm thinking of. I've had in my mind what if my standard, that I'm teaching, is summarizing right, summarizing the text. And we know, we've learned along the years. We've learned that, you know, what we thought we should do is explicitly teach that, you know, teach them how to summarize right, and that's how, that's how this should happen, and then they'll be able to summarize anything. And we've learned along with you, natalie, that is not the way to go, that's not necessarily the case that they'll be able to then summarize anything. But I'm wondering if that is something I need to teach as a reading teacher, a literacy teacher. How do I, how would science of learning help me to teach that?

Natalie Wexler:

Yeah, I think. Well, I have to say this is coming mostly from me rather than from things I have read. I've been thinking about skills and strategies like summarizing, and I think that, first of all, there's a lot of evidence behind summarizing. It is useful to know how to summarize, that's clear. It doesn't mean, though, we can just tell kids this is often the case just put in the important stuff and leave out the unimportant stuff, because they don't necessarily know what the important stuff is, especially if they lack background knowledge about the topic at all of these things that we try to get at through reading, comprehension skills and strategy instruction, and I think summarizing is an excellent example of that, because it is a combination, I would say, of not exactly wholly transferable skill, but semi-transferable skill and knowledge. And so one thing the writing revolution does that, I think, lines up with what cognitive science says. But you know, it's not that Judy Hockman read cognitive science and then decided to do this. It was really sort of intuitive, but it lines up with cognitive science.

Natalie Wexler:

When you're introducing a writing strategy like summarizing, you want to start with from doing that in the context of familiar material, maybe a holiday everybody knows about, or curriculum content you've already covered, because you don't want to have kids trying to juggle in working memory new content, unfamiliar content, along with this new concept like summarizing. But then, very quickly, after you've summarized you know, thanksgiving or whatever you want to apply that to content you're actually teaching because it is, you know, tremendously helpful to kids retaining and understanding that information and that's the knowledge we want to reinforce. But rather than just saying just put it, okay, I'm going to model this skill in five, 10 minutes and then you're going to go off and apply it to some different content. First of all, start with common content we're all learning about, you know, the human digestive system or whatever text we've just read. And and then providing them with a series of question words that guide them to focusing on that important, the important stuff. Who are we talking about? What did they, what did they do, when, why, how? So they have notes now that answers to those question words. And then you guide them to put those notes together into a summary sentence and you want to do this repeatedly before you expect kids to be able to do it on their own. And then you know, rather than just saying OK, write a paragraph summarizing this text, when, when they're ready to learn to do that. You first teach them how to outline a paragraph, and that summary sentence could serve as a topic sentence for this outline, and then you have notes for the details and a concluding sentence.

Natalie Wexler:

So it is a much more explicit approach to this very, very complex skill that really needs to be broken down into manageable chunks for kids, and I would say that's different from some of the other reading comprehension skills and strategies that we spend so much time on, for example, like making inferences.

Natalie Wexler:

Without a doubt, it is absolutely necessary for readers to be able to make inferences when they read a text, but making an inference, it's not something that we need to teach as explicitly and break down into chunks and practice, because making the basic skill of making an inference is something that we acquire naturally. Babies make inferences, toddlers make inferences. The key is being able to make an inference about a specific text, and for that, oh yes, kids do need to be guided to make inferences, but it should be that the text should be in the foreground or the topic should be in the foreground and you don't need to keep saying, okay, now we're going to make an inference. You can ask questions about the text that implicitly require kids to make inferences and they will get in the habit of making inferences. They should know what the word inference means, but it's not like we have to practice over and over making inferences in general for kids to be able to do it.

Lori:

It's a really helpful distinction, yeah, and I think as kids learn more, as their knowledge deepens, then their inferences become richer, and I mean essentially, you're going to inference on a much deeper level, the more knowledge that you have about the topic Right.

Natalie Wexler:

And what I've heard from teachers over and over again is that when they use a knowledge building curriculum or they're building kids knowledge, kids are making inferences right and left unprompted knowledge. Kids are making inferences right and left unprompted. They're just naturally doing it because it makes life more interesting to you know to do those kinds of things and they get into that habit and that's what we want. It's not like just because you are able to make an inference about one text, you're going to then be able to make an inference about another. But you should try. You know, and similarly I'd say the summarizing. It's going to be easier to summarize a text on a topic you have a lot of knowledge about than one that's unfamiliar. But you'll be in a better position to summarize a topic that's unfamiliar if you already know how to go through the steps of summarizing.

Lori:

Yeah, I mean, an inferencing in general is really like that having a knowledge base of something and then noticing something about it or noticing something about something else. That makes you think something or wonder something about the thing that you're learning. Right, I mean, you're really just noticing what's going on and trying to put that into words and the more that you know, then the better you can notice and call that out. And I just in a in classroom, when we're building that knowledge, I think kids can hear other kids making and then they're going to naturally do that. Oh, I'm not, I I noticed this, I I'm wondering that and it happens. I mean, kids are curious, we know that.

Natalie Wexler:

Absolutely. And, and you know there's especially when they're there at those lower grade levels where we we haven't been giving them the raw material for them to make all these inferences. And they love it. You know, they like acquiring knowledge of the world and feeling like they know stuff and they're experts on rocks or whatever. So we've just been wasting these golden opportunities at lower grade levels. And then when we get, when kids get to higher grade levels, if they've got that basic knowledge of the world under their belt, then they can access, you know, then the knowledge that's in the curriculum they'll be able to access at the level that's expected, because they'll have a lot of prior knowledge to draw on, knowledge that's often assumed by the curriculum but which, in our current system, many kids don't actually have.

Melissa:

Yeah, I'm wondering do you have any other examples? Do you want to share any other examples? I'm thinking of like retrieval practice that you brought up a few times and the first thing I think of with retrieval practice is our foundational skills and the sounds with the letters and like that kind of thing. But I'm wondering if there are other examples of it could be retrieval practice or any of the other science of learning strategies.

Natalie Wexler:

Well, I mean, one thing I did in the book is I happened to be at a conference in Santiago, chile actually, with some people from other parts of the world, and one of them was a teacher from the UK who had written a book on retrieval practice that and she gave me a copy of it and it was full of these great ideas, games you can use, like, for example, she had various examples that were sort of peculiar to England, like learning about Henry VIII. So I used that in the book and I said, okay, so like, imagine you're a social studies teacher and you're teaching about Henry VIII. So imagine you're in England, because I don't think too many American social studies teachers spend a lot of time on Henry VIII. But she had these great games of like you know. So it doesn't. It's not necessarily a chore to just you know, you can give quizzes, but you can also have kids play these various games with kind of relay races or you know whatever, but we're calling factual information about Henry VIII and then that can serve as the basis for higher order analytical thinking about Henry VIII and then various other aspects of history. So there are lots of ways to do things like retrieval practice in a way that's fun, as with you know, phonics instruction. I've seen phonics relay races. I've seen phonics scavenger hunts. You know kids are having a good time, but it's the same idea they're retrieving information and reinforcing their ability to do that.

Natalie Wexler:

What struck me is suppose you're an elementary reading teacher and you're trying to teach, you know, comprehension. What do you have kids retrieve? There is no common content you're trying to teach, so they're not going to be able to do any retrieval practice with that. You're trying to teach this skill, but the skills are really, you know, something like, I don't know, determining the author's purpose. They could retrieve the definition of author's purpose, but that's not going to get them very far because it's not really a transferable skill like decoding. And it struck me that everything that's been written about retrieval practice and there are things like spaced practice, distributed practice etc. It assumes so the unspoken assumption is that you are either teaching a transferable skill like math or like decoding and math of course has conceptual components as well. But let's say, like decoding, or I don't know, playing tennis, or you're teaching something substantive. And if you're, but if you're not teaching either of those things, if you're trying to teach a non-transferable skill. There's no way to apply these findings from cognitive science.

Lori:

That's really interesting.

Natalie Wexler:

Yeah, I guess maybe that's like. Maybe, as I was writing the book that occurred to me, wait a minute, how can you do this if you're not teaching? One of the book titles one of the books about cognitive science that has been written for teachers is called Make it Stick. But, as I say in the book, well, what if there's no it to stick?

Lori:

Right, that's so funny. My neighbor actually. Just I was over her house the other night and she had that book and she was like you should read this. I'm like I've seen that, yeah, I should read that, and then she's a math teacher. So, seen that, yeah, I should read that. And then she's a math teacher. So I was like, well, how do you use, how do you use these principles? And she was explaining to me in math how she uses them. But you're right, if it could have been a totally different conversation, if it was not math right, which is more skills-based, I would.

Natalie Wexler:

I would kind of categorize it yes, I mean you know, I think it's a combination of skills and conceptual knowledge, but there are, you know, sort of the math facts, learning those things and retrieving those things are. That's hugely helpful to being able to do higher math, say like decoding and things like morphology. You know what a prefix is, what a suffix is. There are aspects of reading that you can use retrieval practice for, but that's not, you know, what we spend most of our time trying to teach in ELA reading. You know, even I would say that these principles of cognitive science, they're going to look different depending on the subject matter and the context. I don't think you would apply them in an English literature class the same way you would apply them in a math class evil practice of facts. But you need some kind of, you know, rich piece of literature to sink your teeth into, not just a one or two paragraph excerpt, and then you can really have a good discussion of.

Natalie Wexler:

You know, like I was in a third grade classroom that had been reading Charlotte's Web when I went to Monroe, louisiana, and they were talking about why is Wilbur different from the other animals on Zuckerman's farm, you know, after he's left Fern, and there was really something to talk about there. Well, he was the only pig on the farm, but he's the only animal who'd been treated like a human baby, you know. And what does that mean for Wilbur? Or how does that affect how he sees this farm? You know, those are not exactly retrieval practice questions, but I think you want kids to first get a literal understanding. Yeah, he's the only pig right, and then what does that mean?

Natalie Wexler:

So you know, I wouldn't get too hung up on like, how do you apply retrieval practice to teaching Charlotte's Web? It's different, but the basic principles are the same. You want to make sure that kids can. You know they know who Wilbur was, they know you know who Fern is, and then you want them to elaborate. So it's a combination of retrieval practice to some extent, but also that elaboration. And one point I may have made this point, but I want to. If so, I want to reiterate it but part of the power of writing is it combines those two things. When we write, we are retrieving information that we have stored in long-term memory I mean hopefully and we're putting it in our own words, elaborating on it, giving examples, counterexamples, making inferences, all of those things. The combination of those two things is partly what makes writing so difficult, but it's also what gives writing its power.

Lori:

Yeah, and I think too, like going back to that Charlotte's Web example just to kind of stamp it and make it really concrete, the retrieval practice is coming in, like you said, with the characters, with the setting, even with the example from the text being able to pull out an example. Oh well, when Charlotte spun the web that said some pig, I think that might be one of the examples, right, and that to me is retrieval practice. But then being able to elaborate and explain orally and then in writing or writing and then orally, like oh, this is really important to the story because kind of saving Wilbur's life every time this thing happens and wow, you know, and just making the connections that require the retrieval at the start, is that right?

Natalie Wexler:

Yeah, I mean you're not going to be able to talk about how Wilbur's life was saved unless you know what Charlotte did, who Wilbur was, what their relationship was, you know.

Natalie Wexler:

So it all it comes together in a sort of mushier way than math maybe, but I do think these principles apply to any learning and any learner. Yes, every child is different, but what cognitive science tells us is we all learn in basically the same way, so we don't need to do as much sort of tailoring of education to each individual child as maybe we think. Yeah, I mean, some kids are going to be better writers or pick up on things faster and there's going to have to be some differentiation. But one of the things that I've heard I mean I'm not an expert in actually teaching this because I have never done it is that maybe 80% of the time should be common instruction, common classroom discussion and learning with common content, and then 20% is differentiated so that the kids who need more support, you give them more support. The kids who need more challenge, you give them more challenge. But we've kind of flipped that so that we spend the bulk of the time maybe trying to differentiate rather than giving kids the same, a similar experience.

Lori:

Yeah, which I feel like makes it really really hard to teach.

Natalie Wexler:

Oh, absolutely. I mean, what a burden for teachers to try to do all that differentiation or, or you know, um, just sometimes completely different content. For you know, I mean this is one of the limitations really of the of leveled reading. Or you know, every kid, 25 kids reading 25 different books. How can the teacher support all of those kids in learning whatever is in each of those books? And I mean assuming you want kids to learn something from them rather than just practicing their skills.

Lori:

OK, well, I feel like it's a really good time to ask you is there anything else that you want to share about this topic, about the science of learning and how it intersects with the science of reading and writing?

Natalie Wexler:

Before we go, Well, I'm just saying I mean there is more in the book, because I'm sort of. You know, if you start from the premise that kids need common content to get a meaningful education, well then we have to figure out what common content they're going to get, not maybe as a country as a whole, but at least within a school district or even a school building. We have to try to agree on what that content should be building. We have to try to agree on what that content should be, and you know the equity aspects of it. There are lots of sort of ramifications, but the bottom line is, you know, we as adults need to figure out, we need to make compromises, we need to also be open to new ideas, especially if we're teachers, and maybe we've just gotten a lot of.

Natalie Wexler:

You know, I hate some misinformation really about how learning works. It's nobody's fault Again, it's systemic. But it can be hard to shed some of those deeply ingrained beliefs, or question them at least. But I think we have to take a look at what is really going to work best for kids, especially for the kids who struggle the most in our current system.

Melissa:

Well, we can't wait to read your full book in January. It comes out in January.

Natalie Wexler:

Yes, the latest date I've gotten is January 21st.

Melissa:

All right, anything else you want to share about the books? Any specifics?

Natalie Wexler:

Well, I will say that one big relief was I asked, you know, a bunch of different people for endorsements, but some of those people were cognitive scientists and I was a bit nervous about that, because I'm just applying these. You know, nobody's really no cognitive scientist has really said what I'm saying. I'm just applying these. You know, nobody's really no cognitive scientist has really said what I'm saying. I'm just sort of extending, but I was very relieved and gratified to get some enthusiastic endorsements from actual cognitive scientists who are big names in the field, including John Sweller, who may not be a household name among educators name among educators but in the cognitive science world he is. He's very well respected and he's considered to be the father of something called cognitive load theory, which I draw on a lot. So, that's all to say, very relieved about that. I'm pretty sure we cited him in our book, didn't we?

Melissa:

I think we did.

Natalie Wexler:

Oh, very good.

Lori:

And we're just so grateful that you took so much time to talk with us today. We cannot wait to read your new book.

Melissa:

Oh, thank you so much, and this is a total pleasure, as always, to stay connected with us, sign up for our email list at literacypodcastcom, join our Facebook group and follow us on Instagram and Twitter.

Lori:

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Melissa:

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Lori:

We appreciate you so much and we're so glad you're here to learn with us.