We hear that there is research to support teaching comprehension strategies , but not to teach them in isolation . What does that actually mean and what does it look like in practice ?
Melissa , when I taught second grade , I had a book with short paragraph passages where students could practice finding the main idea or locating cause and effect , and it was in total isolation . They had zero connection to anything else they were doing throughout the day .
I thought students were going to improve on their comprehension skills if they practiced over and , over and over again .
I can relate to that . But good news we found a great article called no More Strategy of the Week Considerations for Connecting Comprehension Instruction Back to the Book .
So in this episode we talk to the authors , professors Kristen Conradi-Smith and Tammy Williams , and Reading Specialist Ellen Freckleton , and they connect research to practice on comprehension strategies and answer what to do in our classrooms .
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 .
We worked together in Baltimore when the district adopted a new literacy curriculum .
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 , lori , and I can't wait to keep learning with you today .
Kristen and Tammy , we are so thrilled to have you back on the podcast , and Ellen welcome .
Thank you so much . We're happy to be here .
Great to be back , all right , so let's jump right into the content here . Let's start by discussing what not to do for teaching comprehension .
From your article we learned that we should not teach comprehension strategy instruction in isolation so no more strategy of the week , and I know I was guilty of that in my early career days and we also should not build knowledge without comprehension strategy instruction , and I know I'm particularly interested to know more about that one .
So I'm going to hand it off to Kristen , because she's right next to me on the screen . So go ahead , kristen .
Well , I think you just hit the nail on the head with it . We are all former teachers ourselves and we're in classrooms a lot , and we just noticed that we tended to teach comprehension strategies in this very isolated way where we picked a strategy and then that was the focus for the week or even the month sometimes .
And what we try to hit home in the article is not to do that at all . There's no evidence that that works . There's no evidence that that transfers .
If we think about ourselves as real readers , we don't pick up a book and go you know hot diggity I'm going to visualize right now and so we're trying to sort of pivot the way we think about comprehension instruction to be a little bit more organic or , as the National Reading Panel says , just a naturalistic setting .
So we don't want to throw them away , but we just want to do it very differently .
Tamir Ellen , do you all want to add on ?
I would just say , you know , I feel like we've all at least the three of us we all kind of did what not to do in our classrooms . And one of the things that really got us thinking about this and I'll speak for Tammy is like when we realized like the instruction wasn't paying off with our kids .
So , yes , we spent a week on predicting , let's say , but then in two months , when we might have circled back to it our kids we had to start all over again . It felt like , right , the kids weren't able to use what the instruction that they received . So that really started us kind of thinking , well , how can we do this differently ?
How can we make this so that it's not okay ? You know it's week four and marking period two check , we did prediction and then we don't need to worry about it again . How do we make it so that we constantly are using these strategies in the hope and in the effort of understanding and gaining meaning from text ?
And I think , just to piggyback on that , we made strategies be the focus and instead of strategies being the tool , we made texts be sort of secondary to it all . They were just like what text or passage can I use in service of the strategy , when that's like completely not what we should have done ?
And again all three of us want to share that we did this ourselves . This is something we are guilty of doing because we thought we were doing the right thing . We thought like we had to , you know , increase achievement and this was the way to do it .
I was just going to also add I've told this story before and , laurie , you mentioned , you know , what not to do is to not bring strategy instruction in and kind of let that pendulum swing all the way to just doing background knowledge .
And I , you know , we sort of again fell into that hole and the school that I was with , where we thought , OK , maybe we don't need to necessarily , you know , use strategies , let's just teach a lot of background knowledge and that type of thing . And again , as Ellen just said , what we realized is it didn't pay off with our students in comprehension .
Yes , it's an important part , but it's sort of not a and or it's a both , both and and .
So I think we learned that the students still need to have some academic knowledge , academic language , and , and it is important for us to model those things , so building the background and showing how you can make those connections or make those inferences Right , so that that we learned that the hard way and and and made those corrections in our teaching .
Yeah , and Lori and I can say we are also guilty . So we have all five of us on this podcast today are guilty of teaching that strategies only or strategies first as the focus way of teaching comprehension . I look back I'm like , oh , why did I do that ?
I wish I could change the way I did that and I think often I think it's it was a lot of assessment driven I that's my own take on it was it was heavy on data driven instruction and that was a way to really , you know , like we're focused on this standard or this you know thing that's going to be on the assessment when they get that assessment .
And and that was like we felt like we were doing the right thing because we were focusing on what would be tested and we were practicing it and checking it off when they mastered it . Did you all see that too , that it might be focused on or related to assessment ?
Oh , I think 100% Right , like it was very much related to assessments .
Oh , I think 100% right , like it was very much you know , kristen talks about this a lot right when you taught predicting for a week or a month or whatever it was , and then at the end of it you gave them some type of passage with predicting questions and we were able to say , oh , kristen got four out of 10 , right , and Lori got eight out of 10 .
So Kristen needs you know she doesn't understand predicting yet so we need to go and pull her for predicting intervention groups and write and kind of double down on more instruction . That didn't work the first time . And then , you know , our students who may be like Lori got eight out of 10 on that one passage .
We kind of thought , okay , she's got it and she's good to go . But if it was a different passage with a different , you know , text , structure or topic or vocabulary , right , then Lori would not have been able to do as well . So I think it kind of gave us .
It gave us a false , false sense of security , right , that some kids either A could do it and then some kids needed extra help when really there were other factors that went into them not being able to demonstrate their ability to predict on that text , but I think 100% it came from the good intention of making data-driven decisions .
And I also do think it came from some of the core reading programs that were popularized in the late 90s and certainly into the 2000s , and those drove a lot of how we taught and we can't ignore the effect of those .
And I think if there are people that have done content analyses of different reading programs and again I'm talking about the ones from the 2000s , not necessarily the ones that are just now coming out , but a lot of them showed multiple comprehension strategies but not as much explicit instruction , not necessarily opportunities for feedback , not kind of the full , gradual
release that's necessary . And so I think you pair those twin things . On the one hand , we had no child left behind reminding us accountability , accountability and making sure things were grounded in evidence . Then , on the other hand , we then had these boxes that we all got in our classrooms , that you sort of opened up and you go .
If I follow this , I'm going to do what I'm supposed to , but they didn't do a service to our kids and to the comprehension learning that's needed .
Yeah , that's such a good point . In fact , I feel like they really muddied the waters a lot . I remember myself having a checklist of main idea and these were the kids , like you said , ellen , who got 8 out of 10 or higher . Ok , then they don't need more intervention , but the other kids do , and I was like cause and effect .
But the things that I was giving to assess them were isolated passages geared for those strategies , and in real life that's just not how reading works , you know .
So I'd love to switch gears a little now to what to do , right , we don't spend too much time on the what not to do and what we did wrong , but let's switch to letting the teachers know what should be happening in their classrooms .
And our understanding is that you should still teach these strategies , like I think that sometimes is you know , a myth that's out there right now of , well , we don't need to teach these strategies at all , and I think we don't want to just throw them away , right , but at the same time , we don't want to do it in the same way that we've just been discussing .
So in your article , you all actually said as we think about how to teach reading comprehension . It's important to be as text centered as possible , and I'm wondering if you could start by explaining what that means for comprehension instruction to be text centered .
I think the first thing I want to refer back to is when I said for the what not to do , the strategy became the focus and the text was the tool .
And so if we think about that and flip it instead and say we want the text to be the focus and any strategy or any other sort of instructional activity or technique we employ , that's really just in service of the text .
And so we just want to come back to this notion that we're in school either to sort of read literature or to learn information and so whatever vehicle we use for that , whatever text for that , that should be the focus . We're using great books in the classroom .
In the article we wrote , we really talked about the wild robot a lot , but there's obviously hundreds and thousands of phenomenal children's books out there that we think should be the focus of the comprehension lesson .
And if comprehension is really thinking about what we're reading , then we make the text the center and then we figure out what structures needed and what supports are needed to ensure that students can really be successful with that text . I don't know if that answers or if you want to add anything , tammy or Ellen .
I'll just piggyback . I think you said it perfectly , kristen , and I think that's when Ellen and I were working with our teachers . It was quite a big shift because we had been for so long , you know , going through and checking off Yep , we did that standard . Yep , we did that standard .
And so it was looking at the book in a different way and saying , you know , to ourselves in our planning meetings , like what does this book , you know , demand of the reader ?
And so it was making that shift and really being able to dig in and saying , oh well , here being actually being metacognitive ourselves , right , and being able to say , well , here's where I am having to really infer , or here's where I oh , you know , I'm having to monitor something that's going on . I need to go back and look again .
And so , as a teacher , then , sort of making that shift to the text is the center and we're being metacognitive and now we're going to show students to how to do that .
I will say it was a . It was a bit of a scary jump for a lot of teachers to make that shift Right , because you do have your standards Right and as teachers you want to make sure that you are addressing your standards and you're doing your job for you know , for your kids at each grade level .
So one thing that Tammy and I both did when we were working with teams of teachers is we took our texts and we kind of had our standards there and when we addressed them we kind of checked them off right . And I remember I had this huge Excel document and it ended up being really powerful because teachers were .
We began to see that we were doing a much better job actually teaching our standards about these strategies because we were doing them multiple times throughout multiple techs throughout the year . Right , it was never what we were talking about earlier of okay , check , we're done with main idea in detail .
We continue to teach main idea in detail as needed across this year and across multiple texts . But it is scary , right , the first time you start looking at a text this way and start thinking about instruction , where it's not necessarily driven by either the standard or the strategy themselves .
I would imagine it would feel so much more purposeful for the students too , though , when they're seeing we're using it because it's necessary or helpful while we're reading this text versus we're doing it because it's October and that's when we do this standard Yep definitely yeah , and you don't have kids like coming home and they're at the dinner table and mom and
dad go you know what did you do today ?
And they're not going to say I was finding the main idea all day and instead it's like oh , let me tell you about what we're reading or what I'm learning about and the other parts there , but it's just all the time and to me , like that is at least with my own child , like that is the most important thing , like that she tells me about school .
you know , like , what did you do today ? What did you learn ? What was exciting , what was fun ? It's usually a content area , but if it's reading , it's the , it's the topic or the content . Like she's never said like well , I'm using these post-its to closely read for this character analysis , you know what I mean .
Like she'll ask me for help with that , but the things that they're excited about are those . You are going to give us some really practical ideas .
In your article , you wrote about what we can do before , during and after reading to access these texts , right , these complex texts with these comprehension strategies , and I bet that you have some thoughts that didn't make in the article too , so feel free to disclose anything that you want to on this podcast . This is yours for the taking .
So what does comprehension strategy instruction actually look like in the classroom , with complex text worthy of study , keeping the text at the center ? Again , I'm going to pass it to Kristen because she's to my right , and then , kristen , if you could just pass it on , that'd be awesome .
Okay . So I'll thank you for the opportunity to do this , by the way , because it's so often that you can just sort of talk about things , but then , when you're a teacher , you want to know , give me it right now so that I can try it tomorrow .
And so what we're trying to make a case for again is no more strategy of the week , but there is so much evidence to say that students still need comprehension instruction . There's still there's dozens of meta-analyses out there that comprehension strategies are still effective . Have we been doing it wrong ? Have we been doing it too much ?
All of that , yes , yes , yes , but we still have lots of sort of evidence to suggest there's a different way to look at this . So the way that we like to think about it is very simply in terms of what are we going to do before reading , and so that's before a read aloud , or before our whole class is reading a book together .
What we're going to do during and then after . So that's been a framework that's been around for a long time . It's nothing revolutionary , but it helps us both in sort of planning what we're going to do , but also just thinking about the structure of any reading lesson . And again , elle and Tammy feel free to jump in if I drop .
Something I do want to share my colleague , gail LeVette , who's at UVA .
She and I like to think about analogies as much as possible because it sort of helps us and we have them for before reading , during reading and after , and the before reading one that I like to just sort of remember as I talk about this is that we should not let the warmup be longer than the workout .
And so when I talk about before reading and I talk about the things we want to do to set up students for success when they read themselves , I have to be mindful of time , because I've watched far too many teachers who have 45 minutes for what they're about to do and for the before reading they spend 25 of the minutes on sort of setting the stage , and so
we don't want that warmup part to be longer than the workout .
But I'll jump in and kind of share some of the things for before reading , and Tammy already said , we obviously have to read the text ourselves to be mindful of what are some of the challenges that are going to be present in this text that I should either signal for my students or just sort of give them a heads up for them .
So the things that I like to focus on before reading is , first of all , background knowledge . We have plenty of evidence that background knowledge matters . Our students come to school with varying different types of knowledge , and any text sort of has demands of background knowledge , whether it's cultural knowledge or other types of knowledge .
And so one of the things I like to do is just to say is there knowledge in this text that I'm going to have my students read , that I either need to activate or build ?
And so whatever that is , say , the text takes place and there's a 4th of July parade , maybe I want to sort of tell my students about that beforehand , show them a picture if possible , but just explain what's going on so they're set up . If they do not have the requisite knowledge for the text , no strategy is going to get them out of that .
They're going to sort of flounder . If you throw me into a text about deserts in wherever , I might not necessarily have the knowledge necessary to sort of work my way through the text .
And so we really want to focus on what background knowledge is there and how can I sort of either activate it or build it , remembering to do this very quickly and then sort of very connected to that is are there a couple of vocabulary words that if the students don't understand them before reading they're really going to struggle ?
And so we try to keep that to a minimum , to two to three , not eight , vocabulary words , because then we're sort of pulling students off of the text right . And so we want to kind of think of are there some that are so salient to this text that if my students don't know this word they're really really going to struggle ?
Then I want to pre-teach those words . The more connected they can be , the better . We know from research that if there are networks of words , if the words are sort of semantically related , that's really going to support students .
But I want to do the background knowledge and the vocabulary often go hand in hand right , because maybe it's about deserts in whatever part of the world , and maybe this one vocabulary word is actually connected to that . So I can sort of marry those together as much as I do .
I think there's a lot of compelling evidence that suggests we should be mindful of text structure and how the text is organized , and so also a before reading thing I'm going to do is I'm going to kind of look at how the text my students are going to read is organized and either explicitly point that out to them or provide them a graphic organizer to kind of
show them how it's organized . I'm going to do something to sort of attend to it . If I think it's a problem , if it's a narrative text that I know my students are very familiar with , we're not addressing it then , in the same way that if I don't think background knowledge is going to be an issue , we're not going to necessarily address it .
But those three factors background knowledge , vocab and text structure are the three that I want to be mindful of as I prepare my students for reading . Then , right before we sort of launch off , I want to set a purpose for reading .
Way too often when I was a teacher , you know I would just go okay , now start reading , or now we're going to read , and I didn't necessarily say when we read . This time I want you to pay attention to X , y , z , or the reason why we're reading this book is blah , blah , blah . Or yesterday we found out this happened .
Today , when we read , I want you to pay attention to what more we learn about it . But that one little guidepost . It's going to be helpful for some of our students All the while .
While I'm doing this , I don't want my warmup to be longer than the workout , because it's really the during part where I want them to sort of the main amount of time that I have for reading . I want it to be the kids actually doing the reading . So that's before Ellen Tammy . Is there anything I missed there ? Because I know I threw a lot out there .
No , I think you , I think you did a great job right . Those were all things that we worked with our teams and our teachers with when we started looking about , you know , started looking at implementing more of a text-based approach .
I will say one of the things is , both Tammy and I work really well with routines , right , and these all the things that kind of Kristen mentioned . We put routines in place that we use K-5 in our buildings with read aloud right In our in primary classrooms .
And then also again when all students were kind of reading the same text at the same time , and also again when all students were kind of reading the same text at the same time .
And I have a , I have a good anecdote I was , I was helping out in a fourth grade room and we were reading a book together , right , and I did , I did my background knowledge with a couple of visuals and I did my explicit vocabulary instruction and then we started reading and I had a fourth grader .
He raised his hand and he goes Miss Rackleton , you didn't tell us what to pay attention to and I was like you're right , they need to do when we're asking them to gain meaning from text , either by listening to it if the teacher's reading or if they're reading it themselves . So I love that example of you .
Know he knew I skipped a step right and he helped me remember .
That's great . I love that . What really is striking to me is just how the teacher really needs to know the text and just be really familiar with it , having read it more than one time , being able to see where it fits in the bigger scope of all the other texts that students are reading and how it connects and what vocabulary might be rich to pull out .
And if you don't have a curriculum to do this for you that's a really quality thing . Then I even think if you have a curriculum , you probably want to make it , you know , add some of your own special stuff to it . So this is all really helpful , I think , whether or not you have quality resources or not .
But especially if you don't right what instructional routines are really helpful , what that looks like in your classroom , what that looks like in your grade band , right , so 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , k , you know K1 , 2 , how this looks not just within your space but within the space of your school , and just making sure that you're knowing that those texts and
that you're teaching really , really intimately . That's just a big standout to me right here .
And can I just add to that , Lori , also the students right , Because you have to know what they need to access that text , because two classrooms could be teaching the same exact text but it could look very different based on what those students need in each of those classrooms .
Well , listen , Lori , those are both great points , and the only thing I was going to say about core reading programs is it's wonderful that they've done some of that work for you with before reading , but sometimes they've pulled out seven vocabulary words and three different aspects of background knowledge .
And then that's where you can say I know my students and I know that we already read this book where they already learned this aspect of background knowledge , and I don't necessarily have to do everything that this program has for the front end part of it .
Tammy . No , I was just going to sort of summarize to you know , basically you guys all hit on it , but I know for when I was working with my teams , just as Ellen said , those routines were really important for the students .
They were really important for the teacher too , because before we would sit down together , right , and each teacher's bringing sort of their knowledge of what their students need , and I mean the pay attention to statement it's gold , like that is the gold statement .
We put that in all of our plans and it just helped us know , okay , how are we going to facilitate comprehension ? You know ? Know , okay , how are we going to facilitate comprehension , you know , in this lesson .
And so just having that routine , even for teachers and planning , was so important and it really focused us and helped us not get again off task or off text which we had in the past .
Great , so we've been talking all about before reading and I think , tammy , I think you're gonna tell us about during reading , is that right ?
Yes , yes , I don't know . Kristen , you want to put your little quote , you and Gail's analogy focus in , and then I can go from there .
Sure . So just to carry the exercise kind of analogy there , for the before reading it's don't let the warm out be longer than the workout . For during reading , we want to pay attention to who's actually doing the lifting , and so , for during reading , we want to ensure that we're not doing the heavy lifting .
Our students are actually doing it and we're putting things in place to make that happen .
So , as I was thinking of Kristen's and Gail's analogy about this , you know , I don't know , but I'm one of those nerds that when I work out I look at my zones on my app . I don't know if you've ever seen , you know , the little zones . Are you the blue zone , the red zone , the orange zone ?
And so I sort of think of what Kristen is saying is like that blue zone , right , you're not doing anything , and so we don't want our kids to be in the blue zone .
We also don't want them to be in the red zone , where it's too much , and so we want to be able to think about whether we're reading aloud or reading with our students , that we are providing scaffolds for them and that we are again having them stay in the text and do most of the work . And so what does that look like ?
There's a couple of different things that we and Ellen and I , when we would plan with our teachers , that we and Ellen and I , when we would plan with our teachers , that we would focus on , and the first would be to decide and to look at the text and kind of decide where would the most challenging parts be ?
Where are the red zone types of thinking that they have to do , and then provide explicit teaching and strategies through the vehicle of a think aloud , and so that was really powerful for us to say , hey , this might be an area that could be confusing , whether we're doing a read aloud or reading together .
Where I want to stop and Ellen always talks about pulling the curtain back on our brain , you know so kind of stopping . Or now , if we keep this analogy going , the coach , you know , showing you how to do those lifts or whatnot .
And so think this came through the work of Duffy and she had just three easy statements that she used , and so it was perfect for our teachers . But basically it was stopping at a point in the text where you wanted to model that strategy and first just kind of naming the strategy .
So this sort of gets back at that academic language , right , like , oh , I need to stop here and self-monitor . You know I need to stop and my thinking is kind of clunking and I need to make sure that I'm understanding . So just naming the strategy , and then the second thing would be modeling how you might use that .
You know the author here gave me a lot of information , and so I need to kind of make sure that I am understanding that information and knowing how that's affecting the character .
I'm kind of making it up and blah blah but then sort of modeling how are you actually utilizing that strategy to make sense of the text and then following up with a hey , here's a time when you could try this out .
So the next time we get to a place where a lot is happening , we might want to stop and monitor to be sure that we are understanding and we don't have some misconceptions .
So that's the first big thing when we're planning and thinking about reading you know , either again aloud or with our students , is to make this explicit teaching of the strategy through a think aloud . So that's one thing that we do during reading . A second time is to sort of you know , offer some opportunities for students to stop and sort of discuss .
So we often think of places where we would have turn and talks and give you know , give an opportunity for the student either to you know , try that strategy , or to just make sure that there's no misconceptions . So , and again , it's got to be brief and quick and we want to facilitate those in such a way that they still stay in the text .
And then finally , we often think of times , places where we might even just stop and have the students jot and even write a gist or have a response to something that's in the text .
So , again , giving us times and opportunities to make sure that there's no misconceptions happening , that the students aren't just going through , maybe not getting the most essential components of what is happening during the reading .
And so , when we think of those three key ideas , the explicit strategy , instruction through the vehicle of a think aloud , offering opportunities to stop and talk , but making sure that those are opportunities you know that demands the inside the text , thinking .
But that's again keeping the kids in the text and putting the workload on them and , as the teacher , as the facilitator of that , no , I think you did a great job , tammy , kind of talking through all of it .
One of the things that we talk a lot about again with our teachers and this goes back to when I was a graduate student and Kristen was my professor and was my professor and really just learning about think alouds was when you first start doing these and even after years of doing them , we found that our teachers and when I do them , we're much more successful
if we almost rip them out ahead of time , right , they're really really hard to do kind of on the fly , in front of kids , on the spot . So that's one of the things too , as Lori , you were saying , how important it is for teachers to know this text and kind of be planned out .
That's a place where it's really important that you do think through OK , what is my declarative statement , what is my procedural statement , what's my conditional statement ?
Right , and we do script them out in planning with our teachers not saying that every teacher reads that script exactly , but we ensure that way that we do kind of have all of those pieces in place before we get in front of kids and doing that .
So that's something that we found really supported our instruction is when we were planned at kind of that level that it helped our kids understand right how to apply the strategies . When we were that explicit with our instruction .
And Molly Ness , who's been on your podcast before , has a great book about think alouds and she also refers to it in her read aloud book too . So there's some great resources out there for you . I do want to just reiterate something .
I'm not sure it was said , but when Tammy talked about stopping and modeling a comprehension strategy , it wasn't because the teacher looked at the pacing guide and said , oh , october 20th this week , I need to make sure I'm focusing on this strategy . It was what are the strategies that are necessary to make sense of the text ?
And so we're really letting the text sort of drive the strategy instruction rather than the other way around . And then the other thing I just wanted to say is so we'd only do it if it was necessary for that text and because we thought our students needed to sort of get that extra instruction .
And the other thing I was just going to say is I'm sometimes surprised when I'm in classrooms where students can read at this point , so not necessarily beginning reading classrooms , but I'm sometimes surprised in classrooms when kids aren't doing the bulk of the reading in a reading instruction lesson .
And so I would say , the more we can just make sure that it's the kids that are actually doing the reading and the during part . Obviously a read aloud , the teacher's reading , but it's surprising , even in middle school , the number of times I see a teacher reading aloud when the students are more capable than they're capable to do it .
Yeah , and we know , in order to get better at something , you need to practice it . So that goes along with our analogies here . Going on right , pay attention to who's doing the heavy lifting . Practice is part of that right , and practice is often messy . So that's , I think , important to name too .
It's not not always easy , and when we're learning something or doing something for I don't know , even maybe the 15th time , it's not easy . So it takes a lot of practice and thank you for that good reminder , ellen . I want to finish us out here with the after reading . So can you tell ?
us about what comprehension strategy instruction looks like after reading . Sure , so I'm going to actually let Kristen do her . You know , since we've started this analogy , let's see it through Right , so I'll let Kristen . What does Gail say about after reading ?
don't skip the cool down . It's actually the most important part , and so I don't know if you're guilty , as I am . Sometimes I run and then I sit down and I reward myself with a piece of cheesecake , but really what I'm supposed to do is actually do a cool down .
And for the reading analogy part of this this is when we're actually discussing the book , consolidating our learning , really reflecting on how what we read in this text connects to other things .
And so I think too , this is really where you kind of circle back to all those things that we did either before reading or during reading as well . So one of the things that we always do is we kind of refer back to why did we ask the kids to pay attention ?
What was our pay attention to statement first , and that's normally kind of how we start our whole class discussion about what we just read and that really helps kids . A pay attention to whatever the pay attention to statement was , because they know that that's kind of going to be where we start .
And then from there students benefit , as kind of I think Kristen was saying , students benefit from hearing their peers think through a text . So having an opportunity to kind of have a whole group discussion where you might be asking questions , the students might be asking questions that they have about the text .
One of the things that we try to do is we try to make sure that we're doing a mix of both literal questions , so questions that are directly in the text , to kind of make sure that that level of understanding is there for our students , but then also going into more higher level thinking and inferential questions .
Again , a quick kind of practical tip for if you are trying to write inferential questions , an easy way to do it is start with a how or a why , right . So those level of questions are going to help our kids kind of have a deeper understanding of that text as well .
Another thing that we do is we write about our reading a lot in our classrooms and giving students the opportunity to write really helps kind of consolidate and solidify their thinking about that text .
One of the strategies that we use really K-5 , just depending on if it's a read aloud or again , kind of this kind of whole class shared reading experience is the Writing Revolution Summary Scaffold , summary Maker . That's a really we found a really powerful tool with that . Yes , exactly Right .
And it really helps kids understand what information needs to be included in a summary . Right . And if we don't , if we can't answer one of those questions , then we know we need to go back into that text and do a little bit more digging and a little bit more text .
We also do a lot , especially in third , fourth and fifth , where we're giving kids again an inferential type question , so a higher level question , and kids are doing a constructed response through writing about whatever that question is Another thing with those is really getting the kids to go back into the text and find evidence that supports their thinking .
So really helping kids understand that comprehension is built with their thinking and the text and they work together to really understand and comprehend that text . So really after reading is your time to kind of bring kids together and work on that oral language through discussions but then work on supporting reading comprehension through writing .
So those are kind of the big things that we found success with in our schools and in our classes .
And everything you're talking about , ellen , is a reminder that reading is a social activity , that it's collaborative , that we're there and this was a meaningful text that was chosen for this lesson right , and now we have something to really talk about , think about , write about , and so I really appreciate that , and I also want to highlight the importance of bringing
back the vocabulary that we presented before reading and now , if we're going to talk about it , if we're going to write about it , now , let's have opportunities to use those words again , because people aren't going to learn a word if I just did it as explicit instruction before reading .
They have to encounter it in the text and then have opportunities to use it and , ideally , see it again in future texts as well .
And I wanted to add too I think one of the things working with teachers when we were planning these after reading writing activities is also to just create responses , where again students have to and Ellen sort of said this have to stay in that text .
I know that sometimes you know we want to have them , oh , make a connection to something and then they go way outside of the text and it's a beautiful little question . But we really want them to be back in that text , extending what the author was trying to say or teach .
So crafting those responses that really , again , always with the text at the center , keeping that text as the main thing .
Yeah , the whole time you all have been talking . I've had this story in my mind from my mom . Actually works with a fourth grade class and at the beginning of the year the teacher was very hesitant to let the students talk after reading and so she would make worksheets with the questions and the students would answer the questions on the worksheets .
And it was a little rough , it was tough to get them to do this , and then she finally got them to talk as they were done reading and now they were talking and my mom said that she was blown away by the level of conversation the students were having , the way they were answering those questions and , like you said , Ellen , then their writing improved so much
after having those conversations and she was just like this is beautiful .
They're so important and it's so silly if I think back and go . What was I doing in the classroom when I was just like talk wasn't a part of it , it wasn't really meaningful , writing it was . We had some great worksheets right , and I had some great data that I could just sort of eight out of 10 . I had all this kind of stuff .
I do want to pivot to one thing . I think you you both in your podcast are always so practical , and so one thing all three of us have encountered with teachers is what does this mean for grades ? If I move away from this idea of four out of 10 , eight out of 10 kind of assessment scores for comprehension , what would a model like this mean for grades ?
And Ellen and Tammy , you all will be able to answer things like you did yesterday , kind of in the classroom .
One thing I've recommended to teachers is if they take the written responses of students and if we write every day , that's five pieces of writing every week , right that we could have , and I've even suggested telling kids pick three out of those five that you want to be scored , and so then kids have some sort of choice in the matter too .
But something like that can work , certainly . Obviously , we have to build writing fluency too , or else some students are really at sort of a handicap , because if they don't have the automaticity needed to sort of get their thoughts out , it's going to be a struggle . But that's certainly one of them .
I don't know , tammy and Ellen , if you have another one that you want to share .
That's exactly what we did , Ellen and I . We utilized a graphic organizer and so the students would usually have some type of reading response and a graphic organizer .
And the way we talked about it with teachers is they filled out those graphic organizers , but maybe they chose one or two that they were really feeling confident about and then they took that to full writing . We usually had a rubric on there . So again , we were giving some student choice .
They were able to write but , like you said , Kristen , sometimes it took a long time to get to that full product .
So then , by picking one or two of the graphic organizers , taking that through the writing process to really deliver a good product about it , then students got that self-choice and then we had a rubric and we use the teachers utilize that for grades . Then we had a rubric and we use the teachers utilize that for grades .
So and I must admit , like I still get texts today from teachers who are sending me the kids writing and they're like look at this , you know and and some of these are kids , are our students that we know because they were struggling maybe or they were in intervention and now you're seeing the excitement because , just like you said Melissa .
They're hearing their peers talk about that . That's giving them ideas . It's helping them get deeper into the text , and then they're being able to communicate that through writing . They feel very proud of themselves , and the teachers are so proud of them too . So , yeah , it is amazing .
And not to pivot onto a new topic , but this also reinforces all the instruction that we're doing in writing right Now . Kids are writing for an authentic purpose , so when we're talking about you know we can , you need to have transition words right Like that is a piece that gets reinforced when we are working on these constructive responses to text .
Responses to text is now we can tie in and help kids see that it's not writing and then reading kind of in their silos . All of this comes together to help them , you know , formulate their ideas and communicate clearly .
And it's just a really powerful thing when there's this intentional planning right of how we are supporting our writing through our reading and our reading through our writing .
Yeah , I think it does provide , too , a lot of opportunity for things like mini lessons , like oh , okay , I'm noticing this group of kids in responding to texts . They're not including enough evidence , right , and that's a great place to spend your time as a teacher to .
Okay , if the majority of kids are doing it , oh , then I need to do that whole group again , because we've got to continue to go over that . One of the things , too , that is really resonating with me is this idea of having the kids choose what they feel proud of , and I was almost wondering if it might . I loved doing this when I was .
Especially , I had I had the kids create portfolios so that they could really see their growth , and I feel like somehow we've gotten away from that .
Like the , I think it's just so powerful to have that reflection , like at over time , like here's where we were in quarter one , two , and you can see , I mean especially writing , right , if this is something that teachers listening or thinking , what can I do really practically ? I love this idea of choice .
I love this idea of , you know , creating portfolios and having students write and then reflect on that writing and keep it as prior evidence of where they were where they are , you know . I think it's also a really helpful communication tool for families and caregivers just helpful all around . I do have a quick question , though we didn't plan this .
So standards-based grading I want to talk about it because it's like I can't help but not think about it right here . It's something that in Melissa and I , in our book , we don't recommend doing for many reasons , but this is one of them .
For comprehension yeah , for comprehension specifically , thank you , because it really does kind of get at what we talked about in the very beginning of this conversation . It drives the isolated assessment of comprehension skills . So I wonder if I could just turn it over to you all and see what you would say about standards-based grading .
I know it's something that is out and about in the world .
So this is not my research area at all , so I don't know , and I actually grew up in a country where we didn't have grades in all of elementary school . In Norway there were no grades .
But I have liked the idea that some people have advanced where reading comprehension assessments in , say , third grade or fifth grade should actually be based on the content standard rather than the reading standards .
So in third grade in Virginia , if students are learning about X in social studies , those kinds of passages or passages around that topic should be what the reading comprehension assessments are on . I love that idea and I think that would sort of level the playing field a little bit where background knowledge isn't going to be a lever .
I agree with you completely , lori . I'm against standards-based because that is going to feed into this idea that we can sort of drill kids and get them to mastery and comprehension and then move on . And we talked about this in our first podcast when we talked about constrained skills theory , mastery and comprehension and then move on .
And we talked about this in our first podcast when we talked about constrained skills theory and comprehension . And language does not work in the same way that phonics , decoding , fluency does , and so it's just really tricky to say .
I've worked with Ellen and Ellen has now mastered X , y , z of comprehension , because it's going to be text dependent , context dependent and even Ellen's motivation dependent in so many ways .
Oh , such a good point . Yeah , ellen , if I give you a text on stem cell research that might be tricky . You might not be mastering your main idea and details in that one right .
Sharon Walpole and Mike McKenna are two researchers who we have learned a lot from , and they have a line in one of their books that we're never done supporting comprehension for kids Right , it's never . We're . We're never just like OK , tammy's got comprehension , so check , tammy can go do independent study as a fourth grader . Right , like we're never done .
Supporting kids building and understanding knowledge through tech . So that's another piece that I always kind of refer back to when there is the question of grading , right , like how do you ? It's how , like you were saying Laurie , right . Like if I got stem cell research , I would not , that I would not do well at a comprehension assessment , right .
So there's so much that goes into it .
Nope , you're right . See , we've got two halves of the same brain , but I think something . So I totally agree with Kristen and Ellen , and I think this was part of this was really tricky for us in our buildings because a lot of times too A teachers are , you know , again , they have to have grades , so they need to know how am I going to get a grade B ?
You know , administration wants to know how are kids doing on main idea and details , and so it's really hard to sort of say , well , let me tell you what the research says , or you know , it's you cat says it's multifaceted , you know , and that type of thing .
But on the on the same hand , I'll play a little devil's advocate in the sense that sometimes , well , the problem is is we have these end of year tests and and they do require students to draw conclusions and , you know , find the cause and effect .
And so I think that's where we really struggled as a team and as a school to sort of teach these unconstrained skills right , and , like you said , doing all the things that we just said and that was my answer we're just going to do , we're just going to keep teaching them to read .
Doesn't Shanahan say that it does wonders , right , we're just going to keep doing that . But that's where that strategy , instruction , that is explicit . That's where we put the academic language .
So I do think that that is one area that at least you can sort of have kids say , you know , oh , I'm making an inference , or you know , like they can learn some of that academic language so that when they do have to see that on that end of the year test , it's not , you know , it's not something that's a foreign language to them .
So I don't know , I don't have the answer either , but that was something that we tried and found successful a report card and at the end of the first quarter we had Tammy inferences mastery , because next week new text , different vocabulary and that's back to your thing , Lori .
I just think we have to rethink how we're doing this and maybe look for evidence that students are doing those things through their writing or discussion . But there isn't a ceiling here where we can go check You've got this , we're moving on .
Yeah , I feel like with everything else , with comprehension , it's just more complicated than a checklist . It's it's . We can't capture it on a checklist , you know , um , even though we might want to cause it's feels easier , um , but yeah , we , we just it's complicated , it's tricky , it's more than a checklist .
Yeah , and that's the next article . I love it .
Okay , there you go . Oh , I love that . Listen at the bottom . Just be like , lori named this one .
Well , we could talk to you all day about this specific topic because we love it so much , but just to close this out , we'll remind everybody the article that we discussed today that you all wrote is called no More Strategy of the Week Considerations for Connecting Comprehension Instruction Back to the Book .
It was published in the Reading Teacher and you can check our show notes We'll have the link in there and it's a good one , so check it out .
We just can't thank you enough for your time I mean just so generous and thank you for coming back again and thank you for Ellen for being a first time guest and thank you for talking about this really really confusing and important topic .
Thank you . Thank you for this podcast .
Thanks for having us . We really enjoy talking with you guys .
Yeah , we could talk all day about this too .
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