[Listen Again]: Ep. 157: Science of Reading Beyond Phonics: Reading Comprehension Blueprint with Nancy Hennessy

For many , many years , I was a decoding queen , but recognized and realized that I wasn't paying enough attention to comprehension , and so that's really been my focus for the last several years comprehension , and so that's really been my focus for the last several years .

So I want to invite your listeners immediately to start thinking about how do they define comprehension so that they can make connections as we have this conversation this morning .

When I think about comprehension , of course I turn to the literature , I turn to the research , to the science , and one of the individuals whose work I greatly admire is Hugh Katz , and recently he has spoken to this issue in terms of its complexity , and he and colleagues have described it as one of the most complex behaviors that we engage in as human beings .

So I think that's important to keep in mind and then to move from there and to be thinking about well , how does the literature really describe comprehension ? You know , when I work with educators , oftentimes what they surface for me is something that they're teaching . For instance , finding the main idea , that's what comprehension is .

That's a product of comprehension . Main idea that's what comprehension is . That's a product of comprehension . But I think we need to go broader than that , because comprehension is not just a single skill or strategy . It really is the result of multiple skills and knowledge .

So I would like to share , then , the fact that the reading study group described it as extracting and constructing meaning , and I think that's the focus , but it's much more than that . I think as well . But did you want to ask me something ? Looked like you wanted to ask me something .

I think it's something you can help students think about , right Like constructing that meaning . So I'm just wondering if you want to react to that or say more .

It doesn't feel as if it takes a great deal of energy and thought , we just automatically move through the text , but the reality is it is quite effortful for many of our readers . And in terms of the complexity and teaching comprehension , I think in order to do that , we have to understand . You know what does it entail , right ?

And I turn to Castle's and colleagues' description of comprehension . It really guides most of my work and thinking . And they talk about the fact that it's not a single entity . So we have to think about the fact that there are multiple models that we can turn to that identify the multiple contributors to comprehension . That's the first piece , I think .

And then , secondly , they talk about the fact that it's the orchestrated product . Right , and we'll talk some more about product in a moment . I think it's the orchestrated product of multiple , multiple linguistic and cognitive processes and skills , right ? So there's a great deal that's going into comprehension .

And then , lastly , they speak to the fact that when we are working with text and when we're teaching our students to work with text , we have to keep in mind that there's this interaction that goes on between the features of the text and what the reader is bringing and what the purpose is that we're setting . So that's a lot , right .

It's sort of like whew , you know . All of that needs to go into our thinking about comprehension , and I don't think we can teach comprehension per se .

It's not a skill , right but we can teach our students and help them develop the contributors to comprehension , particularly the language comprehension contributors that are necessary to make meaning , particularly the language comprehension contributors that are necessary to make meaning .

So I hope that helped or clarified maybe the perspective that I'm using , using what the science is telling us about comprehension and its complexity .

But then also there's that end product of I have comprehended what I've read as a teacher . It's hard to think about it in both of those ways . Do you want to dig into that ?

It's really what is it that the reader is taking away from the reading of the text , or multiple texts ?

All right , if we think a little bit about the oral response that we expect from students when we ask them a question , or the written response , so if they're listening to , for instance , or the written response , so if they're listening to , for instance , if they're listening to read aloud early on , like Stand Up , molly Woo Mellon .

Some of you may know that little book which is about a little character who has many , many differences and her grandmother is really her advocate , and so if we ask a question like what was her grandmother's message , the response is the product .

It indicates whether or not the student , the reader , is walking away with an understanding of what that text was conveying . That's a little different than processes , because when we have a product , if we think even about a production line , how do we get the product ? Well , you get it through multiple processes or contributors to that product .

So what are the processes ? We're talking here about ? Multiple language and cognitive processes . Respond to oh , even if we were asking students something about why did the founding fathers have to compromise ? If we were reading , let's say , a middle school text about American democracy , right ? So how do we get there ?

Well , kane and Oak will tell us that in order to get there , we have to process the language of the text . So first of all , we want our students to be able to read the words Word recognition important . But now let's think a little bit about language comprehension . So we want them to be able to do what Access the meaning of the words .

So there's our vocabulary . We want them to be able to work out the syntactic sense of the sentence . That's sentence comprehension .

We want them to be able to integrate the meanings within and between the sentences all right , that's a special type of inference and we want them to be able to incorporate their background knowledge so that they can arrive at what's not explicitly stated in the text .

So the overall goal here is for the student to have that product and it could be different types of products , but an overall goal , the ultimate goal , is a mental construction of meaning , a mental model , an overall understanding that we take away with us . Right , I can go . I don't want to keep going .

If you want to ask me a question , I was going to go a little further , but I'll stop .

The other thing I want to say about this is in terms of what's going on in their mind , because when we talk about processes , we're talking about these language processes and skills , but we're talking about you know what's happening cognitively ? Well , they're identifying idea units .

So they're looking at the meaning of the words , they're looking at the sentences , they're figuring out the who and the do , right ? What does this sentence tell me ? At the same time , what do they have to do ? They have to integrate the information within and between the sentences .

So if I'm talking about dinosaurs and then in the next sentence I say it and it referenced back to a specific type of dinosaur , I have to understand that , that I'm still talking about the dinosaurs . So there are clue words . And then , of course , we want the reader to be monitoring and thinking about . Does this make sense to me ? Right ?

And if it doesn't , what are the strategies ? What are the fix-up strategies I can use to kind of get over that hurdle . And then , of course , the incorporation of background knowledge . So you know , processing on a larger level .

Here , you know we talk about integrative , we talk about now elaborative processing , in which the reader is , you know , incorporating that background knowledge and then finally arriving where , at that mental model .

So this is quite complex , but an understanding of this gives us a kind of a bird's eye view into that brain , into what's actually happening in the mind of the reader and what might go wrong . And there is research that supports that when they have difficulty with the product , oftentimes it's not the product , it's the processes that are faulty .

Yeah , yeah , what am I asking them to do ?

The student has an opportunity to show that product . But it could be a guess . They could guess , right , we don't know , Like there's so many invisible things . We don't know their prior knowledge about dinosaurs , or you know , or is dinosaurs a familiar term to them that they're even being able to connect it and a dinosaur , or is that confusing to them ?

And many other factors as well . Right , the ? I just keep thinking about the five pillars and how in the pillars it seems so neat and clean in terms of like these are the five things they need , but comprehension really seeps over into all of the other ones .

So it's almost like it should be a foundation instead of a pillar , Like I want to put it at the bottom of the building .

And certainly I mean , when you think about the reading rope , I mean , if you just think about that reading rope and you think about those strands of word recognition and then the strands of language comprehension , they all do need to come together in order for the reader to be able to not only read the words but make meaning simultaneously .

So , yes , I think it's you , Kat , in the article on rethinking comprehension that spoke to this very topic . You know it's not a skill and why have we been thinking about it as a skill and that separation out ?

Certainly the work of the National Reading Panel was incredibly important , but everything evolves and we have to continue to be thinking about the fact that comprehension is not equal to or the same as , vocabulary or those other pillars that are represented . It is the end goal , yeah .

I think one of the things that we've not paid enough attention to is this language base for comprehension , the fact that , really , what we're doing when we're working with our students in terms of comprehension is helping them move from this oral language base and we're translating for them what it looks like in writing .

Right , and it's all dependent upon what it is that they're bringing and how we continue to develop their language competencies .

It's all about learning , it's about acquiring knowledge , right ? So I think it's Susan Newman who wrote an article talking about knowledge and that , you know , it's comprehension in disguise . So I think so so important that we keep our eye on the ball .

I mean , in the blueprint I have asked teachers to think about content goals as well as literacy , skills goals and objectives . I think certainly many of the new curricula that have come out that are focused on knowledge are doing that . But I don't think that's something that we've typically done in the past .

You know , we've been very focused on the skills and strategies and kind of mixed up those two terms as well .

And if there is so much research for strategies which we know there's research for strategies then why aren't they the focus right ? Like , why is the focus keeping the text at the center and using the strategies to access that ?

If we think about the fact , skilled readers come to text and they're fairly automatic about making meaning , reading words and making meaning .

It's not to say they don't sometimes encounter a hurdle that they have to overcome , but oftentimes those who are struggling with reading , or less skilled , do need a strategy , do need a way to interact with the text , or even us , occasionally , perhaps reading a text that's very unfamiliar for us . We have to access . I think about reading scientific journals .

Right , we have to access .

I mean they are intended to get the student to a place where they have skill , which is automatic , so that we can just come to text and read , all right . However , they are a fallback when , in fact , we are having difficulty with the text . I think the other thing we have to be doing is thinking through how we differentiate strategies .

All right , I think there's been a major focus on strategies for product and not so much strategies for process or what I would consider language skills , right . So if I think about strategies for product , certainly main idea is one that pops into my mind , and there's an old , old strategy called RAP .

Read the paragraph , ask yourself these questions , put it in your own words . I think a newer version of that is getting the gist .

All right , that's very focused on product and for the student who really doesn't have that skill , all right , it would be important to be giving them a strategy to help them get through the text , but the purpose here is that that will become automatic .

I think it's Danielle McNamara that talks about strategies made automatic , or skills all right , and I think that's important to keep in mind , versus thinking about strategies for process all right , okay , being able to figure out the meaning of a word , for instance , using an independent word .

Learning strategy like morphology all right is really more focused on developing a language skill or process right it's . If we're not there , we can't give the student the meaning of or remind them of . The student needs to independently do that , and so we can model that and hope that that will become .

Student needs to independently do that , and so we can model that and hope that that will become . The other differentiation I would make here is strategies we use as teachers , instructional routines , and I think this has gotten muddied . All right . I think that sometimes we don't make those differentiations and keep in mind what the purpose is .

So teacher strategies , instructional routines , activities different than those we're teaching our students in order to make their way through the text . I always think the focus has to be on the text . It's always about what am I taking away from this text ?

How can I develop the capability of working through that text right and one by one , aggregating right those idea units so that I have a big picture idea of what happened in that text . Yeah , I hope that helped . Oh , and , by the way , I did listen to Dr Peter Affler-Back talk about this differentiation and also Tim Shanahan , so I'm on board with that .

There's a difference between how we get there and that ultimate product , and so we have to keep that in mind .

And so I kept thinking how can I represent this in a way that makes sense to teachers ?

And I have to tell you that the origin of the blueprint really was my work with Louisa Motz when I was a national trainer , one of the first trainers for language essentials for teachers of reading and spelling , and then she and I worked oh it was a phenomenal , wonderful opportunity and she gave me the opportunity to work with her on the second edition , module

six , which was all about comprehension . So really this thinking grew out of that and then work with teachers . I developed , actually a blueprint , training , and people kept saying , wow , blueprint , what does that look like ? So I want to say up front the blueprint is not cast in concrete . It continues to evolve based on the science . So what is it ?

It's a master plan , it's a framework . You know , if you're going to construct a comprehension house , you need a blueprint . Right , it's not a lesson plan , it's not a unit organizer , it's a big picture and you can derive your unit organizer and your lesson plans from it . All right , it does align with the science .

It is flexible from the perspective of you know , the teacher has to be thinking about the students they're working with . Laurie said this earlier , and so did you , melissa . You know kiddos are different .

So it's flexible in terms of the students you're working with , the texts you're working with and so on , and it asks teachers to think about with and so on , and it asks teachers to think about . All right , if I need to include vocabulary , well , what questions should I be asking myself about how I design vocabulary instruction , right .

So that's big picture on it , okay . So it begins by asking teachers to think about planning or preparing for instruction , by identifying what are the big ideas you want your students to take away , what are the critical understandings ? So the question that the teachers are asked to respond to is what do you want your students to know and understand ?

Right , and that then moves into OK , if that's what you want your students taking away , all right . Then what do your goals look like ? What's your purpose for teaching ? What are your content goals and objectives ? Right , and then what are your literacy skills ? Those goals and objectives .

So , as Tim Shanahan said , double outcomes for reading , him said double outcomes for reading , okay , both knowledge and content , as well as skill , right . And then it also inherent within that and we can talk a little bit more about this is the types of readings that your students would be using , right , and then you move into the actual reading .

The blueprint then moves into those contributors , all right , that really align with , again , the models , particularly the reading rope . And so you know , it's about text reading . What do you have to have in place in order to understand the text ? So vocabulary , right Sentence comprehension you have to understand text structure .

By the way , a specialized type of background knowledge , you have to have background knowledge and then you need to be thinking about expression of understanding , levels of understanding . How do you move your students from you know a literal to inferential understanding ? And , coupled with each one of those contributors , there are questions .

So the questions for vocabulary are which words will you teach ? Which ones will you intentionally teach ? You can't teach them all . How and when ? Which words will you , incidentally , on purpose teach ? Because you need to continue to develop the oral language for your students all right , as well as develop vocabulary through reading . How and when will you do that ?

How about independent word learning strategies like morphology and context ? How and when will you teach those ? And then how will you do that ? How about independent word learning strategies , like morphology and context ? How and when will you teach those ? And then , how will you develop word consciousness as kind of overall interest in word ?

Now , I didn't arrive at those questions by myself . I read the literature on vocabulary , I read the experts on vocabulary . So every one of those contributors which reflect those levels of language processing or language comprehension have similar questions .

And then , running throughout the blueprint is a bidirectional arrow that calls attention to the fact that you have to teach your kids to monitor comprehension if they're not doing that , and you need to give them , by the way , strategies all right , for getting over the hurdles .

So , for instance , the strategy for vocabulary is to use independent word learning strategies . All right , not just reread , all right , that's not enough . Use what you know about words .

Oh , I can use my knowledge of more themes , or maybe the context will give me the meaning , and so on , and also some flexibility in terms of before , during and after instruction . That's up to the teacher . It's determined by the reader , the text and the task you're asking them to do . So , again , it's a framework , it's an overall look at comprehension .

It's a lot , and when I work with teachers , I say to them one bite at a time and be thinking about what is it that you need to do for the reader that you're working with ? Yeah , so that's the blueprint .

I was thinking very much in that like before , during and after space , and I think in my teacher brain I associated that with very skill-based instruction and I really appreciate you calling out that it is not something that is one time we do it before , one time we do it during , we do it after .

It is just kind of happening all throughout and maybe we're going back into text and we know this as adult readers . But I think sometimes , as we try to make it very concrete and kind of like Melissa said in the beginning , I think or maybe you said it , nancy very black and white .

It's not , and I just appreciate you calling out before , during and after there , because that , I know , made such a difference for me when I was reading the blueprint .

I was like , oh yeah , I'm going to go back to you know , what I know is true , which is more than one thing can be true at once , and we're we're always going before , during and after and we're building knowledge all the time and we're building vocabulary in all of those places before , during and after , like it's not just during .

And yes , sometimes we need to be very directed and explicit about certain aspects of reading , all right , but the reality is all of these contributions to comprehension are integrated and they're working together with one another , and so it's really hard to tease out .

You know , how do you tease out vocabulary from background knowledge Very difficult to do , right , so tough . So how do you tease out syntax , syntactical knowledge , this ability to work with sentence , the order of word and sentence from word meaning ? The word meaning changes dependent upon where it is in the sentence .

So this understanding that , yes , we can think about these contributors individually , but the reality is they're all working together and we need to be flexible in our approach to working with the text . Yeah , that's a great point , lori . Yeah , I'm glad that helped .

There are some things I would add to the blueprint and I'm thinking about that for the future specific to , for instance , disciplinary literacy .

Right , because as students move up through the grades , you know when we think about text structure , for instance , you know there are some characteristics of science texts , social studies texts and so on , and we know Tim Shanahan and some others have done some work in this area , as well as others .

So for those who are listening and interested in the blueprint know that that's on the horizon .

Let's just think about fifth graders . I'm a fifth grade teacher . I'm planning for a reading lesson . What should I be thinking about ? I have a fifth grade text in front of me . Melissa , you want to name a fifth grade text for us ?

I think , when we step back , the first thing that I would encourage people to do is take a look at the blueprint , look at those questions and then begin to think about either unit organizers or lesson organizers that can align and I've provided those all right and organizers that can align and I've provided those all right .

So I always , always , want to start with the critical understanding . So why are we reading that text ? You know what's the big idea , what's the critical understanding that I want my student to walk away with . So that's the content goal . You know , really , I can pull the content goal from that critical understanding .

Maybe there's some essential questions I would develop , right . And then I already have identified my reading and I'm hoping that this reading does the following things for me That'll help me develop the academic language that I want my fifth graders to have . An academic language has everything to do with a little bit more sophisticated vocabulary .

You just referenced a word that would be a little bit more sophisticated . The sentences are going to be a bit more complex and complicated , all right . The discourse structure you know it's going to vary . There's going to be increasing nuance as we move through the grade and so on .

So I'd want to be certain , I'd also want to be certain that there's opportunities to develop all those contributors I just talked about , and that really connects back to academic language .

I'd also be thinking about , in addition to the phantom tollbooth and the enduring understanding , am I using some other texts that are also focused on that knowledge base , what it is that I'm taking away from that particular book . I don't want to read that book in isolation and then move on to something totally different .

Right , and once I kind of get that in mind and oh , don't forget about access for the kiddos who can't read the book , yeah , that's really important . I want to identify the vocabulary words that I need to teach , and that's a little difficult . I think Maddie McCune calls that a stealthy process because we don't have an exact formula for identifying those words .

But we can think to ourselves what's critical to understanding the text and are there some words that we can generate , some other words , some growth in vocabulary ? So the importance of growth , the importance of understanding the text , and once I've done that , then I have to have a simple routine and a complex routine .

I have to be thinking through instructional strategies . I also want to look at the sentences in the text . Is there a sentence or two that I want to pull out beforehand to have some conversation about , because it's long or it's got a lot of embedded clauses , or it's written in passive voice versus active .

So I want to be thinking about that and helping students know how to deconstruct sentences . I want to be thinking about also the text structure . Are there any nuance in Phantom Tollbooth ? So it's narrative , right , is it ? Is it narrative ? Yeah , I thought it was narrative . I really haven't looked at it in a long time .

And then , of course , what's the background note , what's specific to that text that's going to help the student make meaning of that text , and how do we want them to express their understanding ?

So , um , and I think we have to be thinking through , we have to become the reader and we have to engage in the reading and be thinking through does the curriculum that we have , does the program that we have address all of these different things ? So do we have to begin to supplement for our students or elaborate on ? And no program is perfect .

There are many wonderful programs , but almost always I mean this is why we're teachers right , Almost always we have to be thinking about what else might I have to do , knowing my reader ? Yeah , was that helpful ? Yeah , I mean yeah .

Because her class was reading about dinosaurs , dinotopia and so on and kind of thinking through , her teacher was asking her to write a summary of what she was learning in that science museum about a specific dinosaur and she picked a specific one . Well , she had to understand the precise vocabulary . What did extinct mean ? What's prehistoric mean ?

You know she had to be thinking about , well , difference between meat eaters and plant eaters , you know . And then these long sentences and I gave you the example of the it sentence before Did she understand the it , you know ?

So all of that is going into the ability and every text is going to be a little bit different , but there are some general things we can be thinking about .

I'm thinking too , like , when you're thinking about texts , you know , I know we gave a book as an example , but also the surrounding texts for that book , or core text , or whatever we would want to call it , the text that we might use to build knowledge , or yes , yes Can be , they don't have to be a book , it could be a video , a song , articles , right .

I just I want to make sure we say that because it's so I think sometimes it's easy to get in that , that box again of , like you know , text . We need a whole nother book . Well , I mean the Phantom Tollbooth . If we're going back to that example , that's all about wordplay , like you know , I know the .

I've been in classrooms and I've seen kids watching Abbott and Costello's who's on First as a text to support their understanding of wordplay before they dive into the Phantom Tollbooth . Oh , that's cool , yeah , yeah , and it's really neat and they totally get it and that's a great way to , you know , prepare students to read , right .

So certainly , text sets , you know , books around a particular theme , very helpful , but authentic artifacts are helpful as well . And so you're bringing to mind an example that I often use . If you're reading about the bus boycott and we're reading about Rosa Parks and others and others , you know what is it that we can use ?

Pictures of the actual bus , you know , the seating on the bus , the arrest record , the fingerprint record . I mean these are really important . And videos can be critically important as well .

And I love the example of songs and raps and so on , because I've heard teachers say you know that they've used those , and kids immediately make these connections and it's sort of like , wow , I can't believe they just made that connection . So , but you know being purposeful about what we choose , yeah , yeah .

So there's no doubt that this takes a great deal of thinking and planning and again I'll come back to . Let's look at our curriculum , let's look at our program . Let's look at what we're doing well in terms of what the blueprint points out as contributors , and let's look at , maybe , what we haven't addressed and how can we go about supplementing .

You know that's what your administrator came around to check on and had to be aligned to a standard . And if I was doing that , it was often it became this you know , skill or really skill driven , you know like find the main idea because that's in a standard . So that becomes my learning goal . But you kind of brought up having this two goals . Can you ?

Can you dive into that a little bit more of like how teachers would go about finding goals ?

So , um , you can , you can take something like um , I'm working with a colleague right now on an activity book that will supplement the blueprint and there's lots of activities in it . Um , and in she's yeah , and she's in classroom . So good to have a teacher working with someone who hasn't been in classroom for a while .

Understand it , but I'm not having that day-to-day experience that she is . So you know , for instance , those enduring understandings , one of the ones that we've given an example of in the activity book is around personal identity . Who am I For ?

Kindergarten and eighth grade , we've contrasted how you can pull that through , all right , the various grades , and she's developed all the essential questions .

So the essential questions are always there , all right , and they're kind of guiding what it is that we're doing , and then the lesson plans will reference back to those , but maybe more specific in terms of developing the vocabulary , the sentence comprehension , you know the background knowledge and so on throughout .

So I think that's the way that we're thinking about goals and objectives . Now I've seen teachers do this grade by grade . In fact , one of the ways that I developed the blueprint , further developed the blueprint , was by working with teachers in a private school setting , all right , where , in fact , we had the freedom to develop our own curriculum , all right .

And we worked grade by grade , all right across the grade levels , identifying what was currently being taught in the ELA classes , what was being taught in science , what was being taught in social studies , what , and their social studies was .

We looked at state curriculum and then we identified , across the grade levels , what those big ideas would be , so that guided unit development then , all right . Now I realize teachers don't always have that freedom , but they do have the freedom of looking at what it is they're currently using and can they begin to collect ideas around .

What do we want our students to learn from this and what are some of the strategies and skills that we need to embed in order to develop those processes and skills ? Yeah , so , yeah , it's difficult because the standards do take over sometimes , don't they ?

And so trying to make a connection back to the standards , I want to acknowledge is important , but the standards aren't perfect either . Yeah , so I don't know if that helped or not . I hope it helped .

They would be critical to understanding what the big ideas and those essential questions are , all right , and then thinking through , how do I introduce the words ? So my objective might be to introduce the words using a simple routine . All right , and we can talk more about that .

But a simple routine should always , always contain definitional and contextual information , always . And then , secondly , all right , my objective on another day might be to further develop depth of knowledge about that particular word , because if you're intentionally teaching a word , then you're teaching it for depth , it's not like incidental , all right .

So , and what would that routine look like ? That routine would include processing and practice activities , so the development of word maps , or maybe using something in a sentence , or I mean there are a number of things we could answering questions about . You know , there are a number of things we could talk about in terms of a more complex routine .

So , understanding that you know , vocabulary , for instance , needs to be taught one , the introduction , but then two , the processing and practice and the objectives then could align with that . Yeah .

It's hard to say that a student has quote achieved this goal or mastered these skills when in a different context , they might struggle . But I think then , that's the key right is that we change the context on them . It's the same reader .

It's not about simply giving students a definition or asking them to just write a word in a sentence . It has everything to do with the active processing of the word and the activities that go along with that . If you haven't done that work , then they're not going to be able to take that word and transfer it , all right .

The other thing is with background knowledge . This whole idea of critical understandings in a mental model has to do exactly with what you just said .

It has to do with the fact that if I change the context , all right , and now I'm reading a text about something different , but the theme is the same or the critical understanding is the same , I'm able to make a connection , even though I recognize the difference . I'm able to make a connection .

So John Compton at FSU , laura Stacey , amy Elliman , who's at MTSU , a number of years ago but they just recently published a paper on this did a study at this private school , actually AIM Academy all right , outside Philadelphia , where they took a look at the fact that in the Humanities Club , that social studies based club , they were teaching students , of course ,

across the curriculum too , but they were focused on that teaching students about big ideas , that related to different time periods , and looking at innovation all right , and how innovation , the effects of innovation and how innovation can you know , change the way we think and do things , and so on .

Looking at the printing press as an innovation in a certain time period and then looking at Twitter and making the comparisons between and seeing whether or not students could actually transfer that knowledge . And they did , all right . So if we teach it , well , if we , if we use more than , as I said before , one source , all right .

If we're using multiple sources , whether that's text , video , whatever those sources are and we continue to build that over time . That's the other thing about background knowledge . When you look at the general principles for this , people like Susan Newman will say you need to review , you need to build over time , you need to revisit .

This is one of the reasons why in our activity book , we revisit . We give examples of revisiting the same theme or big idea in kindergarten and then in eighth grade . So I don't know if that was exactly the response you wanted .

Like , you know , if you're teaching about a particular period of history , like , let's teach that in social studies in third grade , we'll teach the books in third grade at the same time , so they're getting it all at the same time and we're always like , well , don't you want to like do what you just said , nancy , where it's like , yeah , they hear about it a

little bit in third grade and then they build on it when they hear about it more in social studies when they get to fifth grade , and they keep hearing it over and build on their knowledge , instead of just you get it once and it's done .

Well , I like the last time I've read about the great depression was I don't know six months ago , when I read the young adult book , but not buddy . And then , like before that was way before maybe I watched a documentary , but it wasn't like I didn't sit down and in three months , learn everything about the Great Depression and that it just it .

And also it gives me time , you know , just speaking for myself like it gives me time to like sit and reflect on what I've learned , make those authentic connections , reflect on what I've learned , make those authentic connections , use the vocabulary , use the knowledge , try it out in conversation . It just feels authentic .

Yeah , yeah .

You know , when they're two years old , three years old , five years old , 10 years old , 15 years old . Think about how that semantic network , which is really a knowledge network , keeps expanding over time because of our interactions and experience , and the same is true with , you know , with , let's say , these bigger ideas , all right .

So being introduced , for instance , early on , to the idea of activists , revolutionaries , I always think about the book Dear Benjamin Banneker it's one of my favorite books . All right , and he lived . I don't know if you know the book , but he lived at the same time as Thomas Jefferson .

He was a free African-American male , all right , he was an astronomer , he wrote an almanac and he challenged Thomas Jefferson . He wrote him a letter about the fact that he owned slaves . And yet what had he written ? All men are created equal and that idea of being an activist or revolutionary , you carry that through .

I mean , you can think about Rosa Parks and you can just keep going with that to current day . So that revisiting and that connection , I think , is really important . We can't learn it all at once . This is not how we learn , yeah . So it's incremental , bit by bit , and it becomes more and more multidimensional as a result . Yeah , yeah .

Not just big picture , main idea , but do you tell me all you know about this particular word ? I mean , if you go for a depth and I keep using vocabulary , but we could use other things but if you go for a depth of knowledge , what is it that you expect that student to be able to tell you back ?

Not just the definition , the synonyms , the antonyms , the figurative use , the phonology , the orthography of the language , perhaps the morphology . I mean , it's this depth that we want for our students to have , but it is acquired over time . We continue to work at it , yeah .

I also want to separate out this idea of everything we know knowledge everything we know all right , from background knowledge , which is really very specific to the text at hand .

At the same time , all we know all right in terms of text comprehension also includes our semantic , our syntactic right knowledge , our linguistic knowledge , and sometimes I think all of this gets muddied and I really want very much for teachers to be thinking about knowledge in a very broad way , in terms of you know everything we're acquiring , this is the purposeful

learning , and so on . You know everything we're acquiring , this is the purposeful learning , and so on .

But then also stepping back and saying there's linguistic knowledge that students need , the ability , the lexical knowledge , the semantic , the syntactic knowledge , as well as this background knowledge and these experiences that we've had , and all of that is important and needs to be integrated as we work with text . Yeah , so Wow , we couldn't agree more .

Well , I know , I know , I know you couldn't agree more , so anyway .

We will restrain ourselves because you've already very kindly given us a whole hour of your time and you know , I think listeners it's such a good time to pause and reflect , like if I were a listener right now and I'd be thinking about my curriculum in particular and how it helps students become , you know , complex comprehenders , Um , and I'd be thinking about the

texts and exactly what you said around , um , like what processes are happening and what , what skills right Are happening within and and trying to identify those I it's just such a great moment to pause and reflect on what materials do I have and what are they doing for my students .

And I know this isn't happening in the summer this episode's launching in the summer , so teachers , I think , have that time to hopefully do a little reflecting . So we're excited that you've given them so much to think about .

And , yes , I purposefully asked the listeners at the beginning to be thinking about what they surfaced in terms of their knowledge of comprehension , and so , hopefully , they're taking away something that is useful for them in terms of how they go about working with their students , because that's the bottom line being able to work with our students and move them along

in terms of their reading proficiency and their ability to learn , so that they take away knowledge .