The Knowledge Matters Podcast

Have you ever read something and then realized you didn’t totally understand it? That’s the hallmark of a challenging text, and it’s something students encounter all the time.In this episode, David and Meredith Liben discuss three ways to connect students with sophisticated texts, even if they can’t yet read or comprehend them on their own: juicy sentences, explain your answer, and structured journaling.First, linguist and language scholar Lily Wong Fillmore shares the origin story of her “juicy sentences” strategy, where teachers divide content-rich sentences into “chunks” and help students build vocabulary and knowledge through focused instruction and discussion. The Libens then share personal examples of two other instructional techniques that foster reading comprehension and the metacognition that supports its growth: explaining the answer and structured journaling.Explaining the answer is just that: asking students to answer a question and explain their response using evidence from the text. The magic lies in choosing questions based on a careful pre-read of the text at hand, not a learning standard. Students learn to identify what they do and don’t understand, and then practice returning to the text to re-read. Finally, the Libens discuss structured journaling, where a teacher chooses an important section of the text and students respond to four questions:  What are the most important ideas here? What don't I understand? How does this connect to what we've been discussing in class - or other texts that we've been reading? Do you have any reflection (aka ‘I wonder’) questions? These techniques focus students on the text while also helping them expand their thinking about what they have read. For example, David recalls how a second-grade student wondered why the author of The Tale of Despereaux described certain settings as light and dark, which sparked a class wide discussion about symbolism. The discussion probes connections between these classroom techniques and cognitive science. Rachel Stack, a former teacher at the school the Libens started and now at Great Minds, shares a compelling story about how she worried her students would get tired of explaining their answers, but they never did.For more information about this episode, visit the Knowledge Matters Podcast website. The research, studies and artifacts mentioned are posted on the Knowledge Matters Campaign curriculum review tool.This podcast is produced by the Knowledge Matters Campaign and StandardsWork. Follow the Knowledge Matters Campaign on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Search #knowledgematters and join this important conversation. If you'd like to get in touch with David and Meredith, you can contact them through their website, readingdoneright.org.Production by Tressa Versteeg. Original music and sound engineering by Aidan Shea. Narration recorded at Bamboo Recording Studios.

How do actual teachers and students “center the text” in reading classrooms? In this episode, David and Meredith Liben get specific with teachers and experts about how read alouds and close reading can connect students of all ages and literacy levels to a text—and to one another.Two ideas animate the discussion. First, theory is not terribly helpful without practice. And second, learning to read is (and should be!) a social experience.First, the Libens explore the power of read alouds with three guests, who share real-life examples of interactive ways to engage students with a variety of needs:Inclusive classrooms: Patty Collins teaches third and fourth graders reading from the 1st to the 99th percentile. She uses several models of read alouds to give all of her students access to grade-level text, including whole-class, mixed and leveled small groups, and audiobook technology.Early learners: Reading and vocabulary expert Margaret McKeown focuses young students on words—not pictures—during read alouds, and avoids leading questions. Teachers can read short passages without showing pictures and ask students “What's going on there?” or “What was that all about?”Multilingual students: Desiree Garcia teaches in a bilingual kindergarten classroom where read alouds have fueled an explosion in her students’ vocabulary in both languages. They are excited to share their own ideas and figure out answers by themselves. Then, the Libens talk through close reading, where students read a passage multiple times and carefully find the connections and structure that move a text forward. This starts with teachers reading the text themselves, finding what Meredith calls the “sticky parts,” leading a focused discussion on why these passages are particularly important.Two guests share their experience with close reading: Kyair Butts, a former Baltimore City teacher of the year, uses close reading to give his middle-school students multiple “at bats” that build knowledge and improve vocabulary. He has students annotate the text to leave tracks of their thinking and see how their thinking evolves. Upper elementary teacher Katie Scotti says close reading is “leveling the playing field” between her higher- and lower-achieving students. Reading a text multiple times, and ensuring all students are familiar with the relevant vocabulary and background knowledge, gives every student the chance to understand and talk about a text, including higher-order ideas. While she was worried her students would be bored by close reading, she’s found just the opposite. Kids love it!Key quote: “Every student has that access to that same text. They might have different levels of questions, they might be doing some noticing and wondering while other students are doing a deeper level of analysis. But they're all experiencing the same characters, the same plot. They’re all experiencing the same reactions. . . and all students deserve to have that experience. Reading is a social experience.” (Scotti) For more information about this episode, visit the Knowledge Matters Podcast website. The research, studies and artifacts mentioned are posted on the Knowledge Matters Campaign curriculum review tool.This podcast is produced by the Knowledge Matters Campaign and StandardsWork. Follow the Knowledge Matters Campaign on Twitter, 

When’s the last time you finished a chapter of a book and thought, “Hmmm, what was the main idea?” Competent readers don’t ask themselves this question. They’re too busy focusing on the text itself, not the component strategies that help us understand them. But that’s not how traditional curriculum and instructional practices work. Instead, they teach reading through a strategy-first approach that focuses on skills like making inferences and predictions, not the text itself.In this episode, David and Meredith Liben explore what Meredith calls “the tail wagging the dog” in reading comprehension, including examples from personal experience, insights from research, and stories of how they learned to do things differently. The Libens also highlight the costs of a strategy-first approach: missed opportunities for students to engage deeply with the ideas and implications of a text, and activity prompts that ask kids to check their brains at the door as they complete inauthentic exercises. Two guests join the conversation:Literacy expert Margaret McKeown discusses how strategy-focused instruction  is still all too common in classrooms. It’s tangible–and is doomed to fail.Fifth-grade teacher Sean Morrissey shares his firsthand experience piloting two ELA curriculums - one that centers on novels and read-alouds, and one that uses book excerpts on a common theme and tests on target strategies. The differences are stark. Finally, the conversation turns to a habit of mind the Libens will discuss later in the season: the standards of coherence. This is a habit of mind where a reader expects they will understand a text, and if it doesn’t make sense, they go back and do the mental work needed to make meaning from what they are reading.For more information about this episode, visit the Knowledge Matters Podcast website. The research, studies and artifacts mentioned are posted on the Knowledge Matters Campaign curriculum review tool.Key quote: “I want kids to know what a summary is, what an inference is. But I wouldn't say, ‘Hey, kids, today we're gonna learn to do a summary.’ What I would do is: in a discussion, if a student gave a summary of a piece of text, I would say, ‘Very nice, you gave us a good summary of that, and move on.” (McKeown)This podcast is produced by the Knowledge Matters Campaign and StandardsWork. Follow the Knowledge Matters Campaign on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Search #knowledgematters and join this important conversation. If you'd like to get in touch with David and Meredith, you can contact them through their website, readingdoneright.org.Production by Tressa Versteeg. Original music and sound engineering by Aidan Shea. Narration recorded at Bamboo Recording Studios.

Imagine reading a story about a trial, but not knowing the meaning of “indicted” or “exonerated.” Without a lot of determination and a dictionary, you’d be lost. The knowledge and vocabulary readers bring to a text substantially determine how readily they comprehend it–a fact that’s just as relevant in ELA as it is in social studies and science class.In this episode, David and Meredith Liben walk us through the relevant research and talk with three teachers whose innovative practices intentionally build vocabulary and knowledge across subjects:Erin Hanrahan, an 8th-grade ELA teacher who makes time for vocabulary-building exercises before students dive in to books on real-world issuesSean Morrisey, a 5th-grade teacher who includes vocabulary lessons that purposefully relate to multiple subjects throughout the school dayStaci McDougall, a 3rd-grade teacher who leads close reads of challenging texts, then uses students’ love of multimedia to put new vocabulary to useDavid and Meredith also discuss the difference between topics and themes. Many teachers may approach these as interchangeable opportunities to connect texts across a unit. But reading a series of texts on a single topic, such as immigration, the solar system, or sea mammals, yield greater Tier 2 vocabulary growth than reading texts connected by a shared theme, like friendship, loyalty, and survival.This episode talks about influential research regarding the longer-term benefits of reading and comprehension. In their article What Reading Does for the Mind, Anne E. Cunningham and Keith E. Stanovich report that all kids—no matter their reading level—benefit from a volume of reading. And cognitive psychologist Chuck Perfetti has shown that the more a reader knows about a word (its spelling, orthography, pronunciation), the more likely they are to be a successful comprehender.And finally, this episode talks joy! The teachers featured in this episode share specific examples linking better student comprehension with love for words and reading.The research and artifacts mentioned in this episode are all posted on the Knowledge Matters Podcast website. Key Quote: “If my students are learning ‘sh’ - like the ‘-tion’ sound, I'm purposely picking Tier 2 words like ‘ambition’ or picking words that come up in science, like ‘conservation,’ and in social studies, ‘segregation.’ . . It’s more of an efficient way for kids to learn.” (Morrisey)This podcast is produced by the Knowledge Matters Campaign and StandardsWork. Follow the Knowledge Matters Campaign on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Search #knowledgematters and join this important conversation. If you'd like to get in touch with David and Meredith, you can contact them through their website, readingdoneright.org.Production by Tressa Versteeg. Original music and sound engineering by Aidan Shea. Narration recorded at Bamboo Recording Studios.