Ep. 159: Back to School: Science of Reading or Snake Oil with Holly Lane

Ever wonder how to decipher the Science of Reading or how to evaluate a curriculum that claims to be founded on it? We've got an episode just for you. Today, we're thrilled to welcome Holly Lane, a leading expert in the field, who will help us unlock this complex topic. Holly does an incredible job of breaking down the differences between research and evidence-based approaches, and she reveals what the terms 'explicit' and 'systematic' really mean.

Holly delves into the world of research design, the challenges of conducting these trials, and why correlation isn’t always causation. She shares firsthand experiences from her journey creating UFLI Foundations and the significance of field testing and teacher input in program evaluation. 

Holly shares her perspective on the importance of practice in education, providing practical strategies to promote automaticity in foundational skills. She also offers pointers on how to interpret research and reports from publishers without getting swayed by the hype. As we all know, not all that glitters is gold – and this is particularly true in the world of educational research. After listening to this episode, you'll have a deeper understanding of the Science of Reading. Trust us - it's an episode you don't want to miss.

Resources

• Science of Reading or Snake Oil webinar with Holly Lane
• UFLI Foundations 
• ESSA’s Review of LLI

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Transcript

Understanding the Science of Reading

Melissa 0:01

You're listening to Melissa and Lori Love Literacy . Today we'll be talking to Holly Lane . She is an author of the YouFly Foundations program and recently presented a webinar titled Science of Reading or Snake Oil . In the webinar , holly explained how to determine if a curriculum or program is science of reading aligned or not . Today , she will share what features to look out for , the difference between research and evidence based , what explicit and systematic really mean , and so much more .

Lori 0:35

Welcome teacher friend . I'm Lori and I'm Melissa . We are two literacy educators in Baltimore .

Melissa 0:41

We want the best for all kids and we know you do too , Our district recently adopted a new literacy curriculum , which meant a lot of change for everyone , lori and I can't wait to keep learning about literacy with you today .

Lori 0:58

Hi everyone . Welcome to Melissa and Lori Love Literacy . Every teacher wants to know which programs are based in the science of reading research . These days , every product we see claims to be aligned to reading science . How do we know if it is or isn't ? We know this can be really confusing and tricky . Our guests today will help us learn more about what to look for .

Melissa 1:22

Our guest today is Holly Lane . We are so excited to talk with Holly today . She is the director of the University of Florida Literacy Institute and author of UFLY Foundations , which , if you don't know , I'm sure you do , but if you don't , it's an explicit and systematic phonics program that we will probably talk about a bit today . So welcome , holly .

Holly Lane 1:41

Well , thank you , and thank you for having me .

Lori 1:45

Yeah , absolutely . Thanks for being here .

Melissa 1:48

So we're going to jump in with an easy question . Don't worry , just kidding , it's a really big question , but we want to talk about this term science of reading . Like Lori said , everything right now is aligned to science of reading , don't worry . What does that term even mean ? And do we even agree on what that term means across the board ?

Holly Lane 2:12

I don't think we do . I mean , I think that the people doing the science actually have a fairly decent understanding and there's some consensus there . The interpretation of it from people outside of that group of people , I think , is a little bit less clear and I think in some cases it's pretty far from what those doing the science think of . So it's clearly not an approach or a specific method of instruction . It's not one element of reading being addressed . The science of reading . I think the pretty widely accepted definition would be just the accumulated body of evidence . We have a lot of evidence about how children learn how to read , what they need to know and be able to do in order to learn how to read , the things that teachers can do to support them . These are all things that have research behind them and that body of evidence , that research , is the science of reading . So when somebody says , is this program the science of reading , that just doesn't even make sense as a question .

Lori 3:30

Is that ?

Holly Lane 3:30

program based on that research ? That's a good question to ask . Has that program been studied ? That's a good question to ask . But there isn't some panel somewhere stamping their approval on a program or a method saying this is the science of reading or this is approved by the science of reading or aligned with .

Melissa 3:54

It would make our lives a lot easier , wouldn't it ?

Lori 4:00

I know I was thinking every state is kind of doing a little something different , but that is a whole nother conversation .

Holly Lane 4:06

Oh yes .

Lori 4:10

I'm wondering , Holly , if you might be able to help us differentiate between two terms that come up a lot when we're talking about the science of reading . I know that I hear research based and evidence based a whole lot , and I'm not sure that I understand the difference between the two . So if you could share what these terms mean and how they're different , that would be great .

Holly Lane 4:31

Sure . So they are terms that get used interchangeably and some people do mean the same thing when they use them , but and I don't know that there's a firm consensus that they have clear definitions . But most people who are engaged with research will discuss those two terms as something different . So research based , in my mind , means a program or a methodology or a strategy has been developed based on research about what we know , about reading , development and teaching and learning and taking all of those things into account to create something based on that research .

Holly Lane 5:22

More often than not , the person or group of people developing something didn't actually do that research . They're interpreting the findings from that research and creating something based on their interpretation . So sometimes it aligns well with that research and sometimes not so much . But that's what I consider research based to mean . Evidence based , on the other hand , I consider to be what happens after a program or a methodology or a strategy has been developed . Has it been studied , has it been put into actual use , and have the student outcomes or whatever it's attempting to accomplish ? Have those been evaluated ? So research based is what happens before a program is created and evidence based is what happens after . So that might be a nice simple distinction .

Lori 6:20

That's really helpful . Thank you , sure .

Melissa 6:23

I was just going to say . It sounds like the research based is what could get a little tricky when we're looking at programs that say they're research based . Is it based on one study and there might be some questions about that study .

Holly Lane 6:38

Absolutely . I think both can actually get kind of tricky because , for the obvious reason research based if you're interpreting someone else's research , you may be interpreting it incorrectly . Your understanding of their findings may not be what they actually found , and so that's an obvious problem . But the evidence based part , I think , is also tricky because there's so many different levels of quality of evidence based on the type of research that's been conducted , and so just because something says it's evidence based doesn't necessarily mean it has been studied rigorously or with the methods that we can draw strong conclusions from .

Melissa 7:18

Yeah , I actually think this is what we wanted to ask you . Next , which was maybe in your webinar , the Science of Reading , or Snake Oil webinar that we watched and loved you showed a pyramid graphic that had like the stronger and stronger evidence of the pyramid . Is that what you're kind of referring to here ?

Holly Lane 7:37

It's exactly what I mean . So there are a lot of different types of studies and there's a lot of different types of evidence that isn't even based on a study . So most practitioners rely very heavily just on anecdotal evidence . I saw something work , so I know that it works . I saw it with my own eyes , but generally you saw it with one child or one classroom or one school , and what you saw may not happen in other context with different children or classrooms or schools , and so and what you saw may not have even actually been what you think you saw . So that's even a problem with anecdotal evidence . But you can go up that pyramid and there are a lot of other levels of evidence that are actual studies conducted . But even when we're looking at studies , studies don't always show what caused what . So you could have , for example , a case study where you're studying something on a very small basis , but you're not really testing something out in a case study . You're just examining a phenomenon to understand it better .

Correlation, Causation, and Research Design

Holly Lane 8:48

You can have correlational studies that show two things are connected to each other , and I've seen instances where people use correlations to claim that one thing caused the other . But that's one of the most basic things about correlation is we don't . We can't establish causation from correlational studies . The classic example there is the correlation between ice cream sales and drownings . They're very highly correlated , but really no one in their right mind would say that ice cream sales caused drownings or that drownings caused ice cream sales . In that case there's an obvious third variable summer or hot weather . Both of those things are affected by hot weather , so ice cream sales go up , drownings go up , we're in the water more . So that that's a classic example of why we can't say that correlation and causation are anywhere near the same .

Holly Lane 9:54

So then we get up to the point where we're actually conducting studies that can show that a particular program or method or strategy is causing a particular outcome . And usually the most common type of study there is a quasi experimental study where we're comparing two or more groups of kids and we're looking at how they did , and that's most common because it's most feasible to conduct . You can look at a school or a classroom that's using a particular strategy and compare it with a school or a classroom that's not using that strategy and see who does better . A lot of programs have quasi experimental evidence and that's , that's good . We can see that , yes , probably the differences are caused by that program , but we can't be sure .

Holly Lane 10:52

So the next level up the ladder up that pyramid is randomized control trials .

Holly Lane 10:59

So this is a much more challenging design research design to pull off because you have to have people agree to be a part of your study but maybe not get your intervention and not that many people want to be involved in a study where they know they're going to be getting the placebo basically .

Holly Lane 11:20

So in a randomized control trial the idea is that you have , ideally , individual children assigned to different treatments , but when that's not possible , classrooms and when that's not possible , schools assigned to get different treatments or get a treatment or not get a treatment and be the control group . And that is usually a very difficult thing to set up in a very expensive kind of study to conduct . So we see a lot fewer programs have that kind of research behind them , especially on a large scale , and generally research done with more children is that we can draw stronger conclusions than research done with fewer children . So the larger the better in general . So doing a large RCT randomized control trial is really difficult , so we don't see a lot of that but that's really considered generally the gold standard for testing the effectiveness of a program , but we want to see at least quasi experimental data .

Lori 12:29

Yeah , that's , oh , that's really helpful . And when I think about a randomized control trial , I wonder why aren't there studies for all programs ? But you did just name some barriers . I'm wondering if you have any others that you want to add to that , or if , if there's anything you want to say about that , I to me it does kind of feel like the biggest one is I would I don't know that I'd sign off as a parent saying like oh , you know , maybe my kid won't get the thing that they need to learn to read . That feels challenging , you know , or ?

Lori 12:58

even as a principal in charge of a whole school . I don't feel that .

Holly Lane 13:02

Yeah , it is , and so getting a program study like that set up does require that . But if it's going to be rolled out slowly anyway and not everybody's going to get the program anyway , that's one way that that can happen . So we can say , well , we can't afford to provide it to everybody and somebody is going to get it first anyway . We're just going to make it random and that might even make it more fair . So that is one way that something like that can be rolled out . But but mostly we want to make sure that that programs have been studied , even that they've been field tested to get input from teachers on .

Holly Lane 13:45

Is this a program that is easy to use ? That's important data as well , not just the student outcomes . If it's great student outcomes but it's super hard to implement , then nobody's going to use it . So what's the value in that ? But so there are other things beyond just student outcomes that we want to know about , and so few programs are even field tested to get , you know , teacher input along the way , and that's that's a real problem in the field .

Melissa 14:13

Hi , can you tell us a little bit about you fly foundations , since you know it deeply , and what kinds of research you all did , maybe before , and it's a newer program , so I'm sure that you still have more plans going forward .

Holly Lane 14:29

Yeah , we honestly didn't set out to design a program , so I have to kind of Preface .

Holly Lane 14:37

I call , I call you fly , kind of our you fly foundations is kind of an accident . We we had been doing work for years in our pre service teacher preparation programs using different kinds of instructional models where we provided our teacher candidates with a lesson structure and we wanted them to develop the background knowledge through our course coursework so that they could plan effective lessons . And they did . They were extremely successful and our program developed a really good reputation of preparing teachers very well to teach reading . So that got some attention and we were able to get funding from James Patterson , the author , to continue this work that we have been doing with pre service teachers and take it out into the field with practicing teachers who maybe didn't get that kind of teacher preparation .

Developing and Testing Phonics Instruction Program

Holly Lane 15:38

And so for a couple of years we were doing this work , working with practicing teachers and giving them a lesson structure and asking them to then plan the lessons based on the knowledge about reading that we helped them develop during just really short summer Academy kind of PD sessions . Some teachers took that and ran with it were super successful . A lot more teachers attempted it and got frustrated and we're not as successful and then some teachers said no , that's just too much work , trying to plan it from scratch , and and didn't try . So when we got a call from one of our partner schools saying we really want to take a deep dive into phonics instruction and learn a lot more . Can you help us do that ? I don't know what came over me , but I said well , why don't we just plan the lessons for you and then teach you what you need to know about why you're doing everything and teach you how to do it effectively , but not leave the lesson planning up to the teachers ? And of course , they said that sounds great , do that sure ? So we got to work doing that and we developed a scope and sequence that made sense to us and we started developing lessons and we were literally sending the school their lesson plans a week or two before they were implementing them , because we were really just doing it on the fly . And along the way we were getting tons of input from them . We like this part of the lesson , but not this part . You know , at first we were attempting to do one lesson and one 45 minute session . They said no , no , no , this needs to be divided into two 30 minute session . So we took a lot of feedback from the teachers and refine the lesson , and one of the important elements of this is this was happening right after the covid shutdowns , so the fall of 2020 is when they were in in schools implementing this . So they started .

Holly Lane 17:35

The kids started the year worse than they'd ever seen , but we were pretty pleased by the fact that they actually into the year with higher than their pre covid scores , and so that really was encouraging and we thought , well , maybe we're on to something with these lesson plans . And then our local district asked us to do a district wide pilot , and so we decided to be a little bit more systematic in our data collection and we looked at student outcomes across the year and by mid year we were seeing , in this district wide pilot with 21 schools , really , really good results , and that's when we decided , well , maybe we should publish this and make it available to other teachers . So that's what we did , and by the end of the year , we had really really strong effect sizes . This was a quasi experimental design . It was not a randomized control trial , so there are limitations in what we can say about it from that , but we saw really good gains and what we were able to do was to compare the kids who were getting UFLY .

Holly Lane 18:50

This was the 2021-22 school year . We were comparing them with the children from the year before , so one very valid criticism of that is those were the kids who were suffering from the immediate post-COVID effects , and that's true . However , around this area , for the most part the second year after COVID , kids did worse than the first year after COVID , and the kids in our pilot district did substantially better . So they went against the grain of what was happening . So we feel really good about our data from that pilot study . But the two years of studying the program were really important to us . We would never have decided to put this out as a program for people to purchase if we weren't sure that it had a really good likelihood of being successful wherever it was implemented .

Lori 19:52

OK . So I heard you say a couple key terms there For teachers listening . I'm just going to do a recap , holly , and you can affirm or say , laura , you missed something . I heard you say that you did field testing and received feedback from teachers . So you are ensuring that this is taught in classrooms and you're receiving feedback so that you can make adjustments . I also heard you say that word systematic , scope and sequence and maybe you didn't say systematic , but you said scope and sequence and I'm just putting words in your mouth , I don't mean to . So you definitely said we developed a scope and sequence , so I know that there's a structure to how we're teaching this . I also heard you say it was a quasi-experimental study , which I put a star next to in my notes because that's a good thing , but we know even better is a randomized control trial . I heard you say that you hadn't done that . Maybe yet Are you planning to Maybe do something out of the sort ?

Holly Lane 20:50

Yes , we are hoping to . We have a couple of different sites that we are hoping will work out for a randomized control trial , but we have not established that for sure . But that is certainly in the cards that we do plan to do that at some point . We're hoping this coming year it will work out , but so far that is not confirmed .

Field Testing and Evaluating Educational Programs

Holly Lane 21:13

But yes , the field testing was critically important to us . Field testing gives us a sense of feasibility .

Holly Lane 21:22

Is this a feasible program to implement ? Is it too much work , too many things to do , or do they have the right materials ? Is it usable ? Is it teacher-friendly , is it student-friendly ? These are the kinds of things that we can get through field testing and how can we make it easier to implement . And that's one of the things that we've gotten an enormous amount of feedback on . Teachers tell us all the time that they find it really teacher-friendly . I think the fact that everyone on the development team is a teacher , either currently in the classroom or has a lot of experience in the classroom , is really critical . We understand what it takes to teach and what kinds of things make it easier to do . So that was a really important part . But yes , and then doing a quasi-experimental study gave us enough evidence to feel confident that what we have is effective . Like I said , there are limitations to the study . We fully acknowledge that . But I also feel like it's actually a lot more evidence than a lot of other programs that are out there . So we feel good about it .

Lori 22:33

Yeah , I'm wondering too if you could walk us through maybe an example of what might be confusing in research or reports from publishers . Because I remember when we were in Baltimore when we were asking publishers to supply research on programs and it's like everybody comes in with their flyers and their words , they're saying this study and that study , and I just remember feeling really overwhelmed and I'm sure that some publishers supplied better stuff research and materials than others , but it was very confusing , it felt very misleading , it was almost like who gave a better presentation versus how we got to the meat of the stuff . And I know that that's like a real real I don't want to say problem , because it's like exciting to be looking for curriculum , but it's a problem in the way , I think , that we approach it . So I'm wondering if you can kind of do two things One , say more about what to look for and what could be misleading , but then also share examples of what could be confusing or misleading in reports , and I know we mentioned a couple specifics in the pre-call .

Holly Lane 23:46

Yeah , there's lots out there that can be confusing . I think what to look for is , if you have really strong state standards , you want to make sure that what you have aligns with those standards . That's kind of an obvious one . There's also some good tools out there . I think one of the better ones is the reading league has a tool for evaluating curriculum and determining if key features are present or , in some cases , absent . We want to make sure that they don't have certain features , so those elements , I think , are really worth paying attention to .

Holly Lane 24:27

Then the confusing part really is about what I was just describing , this strength of evidence piece , because one of the things that every student succeeds at ESSA has an expectation of programs that are using federal funding in particular , but a lot of states have just made it for state funding as well that they need to have evidence that meets ESSA criteria . So there's a lot of confusion around that . Essa criteria are based on the kinds of study designs that I just described , and so you'll see it's unfortunate that they use tiers as their term , because in reading we have tiers of words and tiers in MTSS programs . I mean , there's so many uses of that term that that gets more confusing . But they use the term tiers to talk about different levels of evidence . So tier one level of evidence for ESSA is a randomized control trial , because as the most quality of evidence or the strength of evidence . And then tier two is a quasi-experimental design and it goes much deeper into how many children need to be involved in the studies and that kind of thing , but it's much more specific than this . But then there's tier three , where something is promising . So they also use other terms , so strong evidence , moderate evidence , promising evidence . So these are important things to understand Because the quality of the evidence is not the same as the quality of the program and so there are programs out there that are very strong programs but they , to date anyway , don't have very strong evidence .

Holly Lane 26:23

And there are programs that have very strong evidence but are not strong programs . So one of my favorite instances of this is it just I thought was almost comical I got a promotional email about LLI and in this email it was flashing almost Look , evidence for ESSA has rated LLI strong and it was like this is what they were emphasizing . But really , what evidence for ESSA had done ? This is a website that looks at those levels of evidence and publishes it . There was strong evidence , but that means that the studies that looked at this program were strong , but it also then had an effect size . The average effect size of these studies was , I believe , a 0.13 , I think , which is a very , very weak effect size . The way that John Haddy describes effect sizes and all of the meta-analysis work that he does , he would consider that developmental effects . That's less than having any instruction at all . It's what you would see just as kids grow over the course of time .

Lori 27:40

So they're sending a promotional email .

Holly Lane 27:44

They're sending a promotional email that says there's very strong evidence that our program doesn't really work . And it really concerned me because either the people developing or selling the program don't understand this evidence , or they understand it and they hope you won't when you get the email , and either one is not a good look , and so that to me is a big problem , because I do think that most people who received that promotional email thought wow , there's strong evidence for this program . Yeah , it sounds great .

Holly Lane 28:15

There's strong evidence for the studies of this program , but the program itself doesn't work effectively . So I think that that's a big issue with looking at evidence .

Melissa 28:30

Holly , what works ? Clearing house similar to evidence for ESSA in that way ?

Holly Lane 28:34

Yes , I think that there is a real issue with these different entities that review programs . What works clearing house is certainly one of those . There's nothing wrong with what they're doing . They're doing a great job of making sure that the evidence is rigorous . The problem lies in , then , the translation of that to practitioners , because they are not clear , and I don't think that evidence for ESSA is clear enough that what you're looking at is a rating of the quality of the study . You have to actually understand the results of the study to understand well , now that I know it was a good study what did the study find . So what Works Clearinghouse does a little bit better job of that part of it , of letting you know how effective the actual program was .

Holly Lane 29:29

But one of the criticisms of what Works Clearinghouse is that they'll look at the quality of the studies , but not always who conducted the studies . So I was mentioning our quasi-experimental design . We conducted the study , in that we implemented the program in the district and we got the data from the district , but we had an independent external evaluator analyze the results so that we knew for sure what we were doing wasn't a result of our bias . We didn't pay that evaluator to do that they were doing that to look at the evidence of that , and so a lot of the studies of some programs were paid for by the publishers of the program . And that's not to say that whoever conducted it was biased , but it raises that question and it leaves that open . It's . If it's not a completely independent evaluation which ours was not either then I think that you have to take that with a grain of salt as well .

Melissa 30:36

I just keep thinking about the evidence for ESSA and what works Clearinghouse because I know when I worked in the district of Baltimore City when we wrote grants for we would get a lot of grants to adopt programs and that's where we would look and I don't know , to be perfectly frank , I don't know that . I knew that I was looking at it the wrong way , Like you just said . We saw green and said , okay , this has strong evidence , let's go for it .

Holly Lane 31:05

Yeah , the effect size piece is an important one , and different people will give you different ideas of what is a desirable effect size , but generally you want to have an effect size that's moderate or large or very large , and so you want to see effect sizes of at least a 0.3 . That would be the range that would be considered moderate . 0.4 would be better , and then the higher you go , the better . So most effect sizes are up to one , but they can be higher than that . They can be much higher than that . So if you see something with an effect size of a 0.6 or a 0.9 , you're in really good shape . 0.13 , not so good .

Lori 31:58

That's really helpful to know . I'm taking all of these notes and writing them down like a little cheat sheet for myself . I hope I bet our listeners are too . They're awesome , but , like , this makes me think so much of what we talked about in our pre-call in terms of really asking questions about what we see and just not like believing everything . And one of the things that you had mentioned and I think Melissa and I were like didn't realize that this was something that we should have dug deeper into at the time was and correct me if I'm wrong , holly , but it was that number of repetitions and it was like one to four , I can't remember four to is it four to 20 , 20 to 100 , to two ? I'm guessing that those are the ranges . Do you want to elaborate , since you know what I'm talking about ? Yeah , I know what you're talking

Citing Books and Defining Explicit Instruction

Lori 32:49

about .

Holly Lane 32:49

Yeah , so this was something , just an exchange that I saw on Twitter that I wondered about it and I asked about because I had seen these numbers repeated . So the idea was how many exposures to a word does a child need in order to commit it to memory or to , you know , to to orthographically map it or however it was phrased ? And it was something like one to four for for a gifted child , four to 14 for a typical child , or what , and it had all these very neat numbers and you know , 14 to 40 and 41 . How did they get those numbers ? Because that seems such an odd thing . I can't imagine , as a researcher , ever generating such pretty numbers like that , and so I was curious , and then I saw this discussion about it and somebody had included it in a presentation , and so I inquired and the person who had presented it said here's where it was from , and they posted a picture from a book where it had been cited and they had cited it exactly . The presenter had cited it exactly as it was cited in the book , but the book referenced a study for where they got that information . So you know , I have access as a university faculty member to journals and I went in and looked that up .

Holly Lane 34:20

I looked at that journal article that was cited . It didn't have anything remotely like those numbers in it and it did say that you know some general statement like children who have more exposures are more likely to remember words than those who have fewer exposures . I'm like , okay , that makes sense , but where did these numbers come from ? Clearly not from that article , but this book had cited it and the book was reputable authors . It wasn't , you know .

Holly Lane 34:49

So it was a concern to me and I see that all the time that books are often cited as research and books are not research . Books are just somebody wrote something down and they got it published in a book and that's great for them , but it doesn't mean that it is research . So I'll see claims of you know the science of reading supports this . What does it really ? Can you tell me where you find this research ? And it's almost always somebody's book . Like no , books are not research . And so you know blog posts are not research . You know we need to . Even all journal articles are not research . There are lots of journal articles that are just really either reviews of research or thought pieces . This is what I think as an expert here , let me explain it to you . Those are great articles , but that's not research , and so I think that just because something has been written down and published somewhere doesn't mean it's research , and we really need to be careful about that .

Melissa 35:53

That's so helpful . One of our guests actually shared those numbers A while back . A while back yeah , over a year ago , and we saw that we saw the audience , like , we saw people creating their own graphics of those numbers and we were like , oh , wow , and same thing . We were like , yeah , it came from this book . Like and like you said , reputable authors of this book , we didn't take that next step . You did , which we're glad to learn from you .

Holly Lane 36:19

Well , and maybe the numbers are accurate and there is a good reference for them . But the reference that was cited in that book did not have those numbers .

Melissa 36:28

So helpful , so helpful .

Lori 36:29

Yeah , yeah , yeah , like yeah . And also it's helpful to like question it . Oh sorry , yeah , to know , like , what the red flag is . Like that went off in your head . I love that .

Holly Lane 36:39

Yeah , yeah , that it was like those numbers are too neat and clean , you know you never . I mean , if it had said you know the on average , you know one to 3.4 exposures and ugly numbers or weird numbers like that . I might have never checked , but because it was so neat and clean , it was like , yeah , that's doesn't . It doesn't work like that .

Melissa 36:59

And , interestingly , probably why people latch onto it ? Because it has me and clean numbers . Well , it is easier to remember that Right Because of that .

Holly Lane 37:08

So , but yeah , that's just one of many , many , many examples of things that I've I've seen people cite , as you know , this is obviously . This is true , it's research . I mean , no , that's not research .

Lori 37:22

Yeah , yeah Well , speaking of like neat and clean , I feel like that's why in , like the science of reading movement , we are it's , or , as we talk about the science of reading , research in the movement it's we keep using these terms explicit and systematic , and I'm hoping that you can like define these terms for us , because I I think there's there's a difference and I'm hoping that you can like get that difference out there . But I think that's why sometimes we latch on to teaching , you know , in the foundational skills in the K2 , because it isn't neat and clean , like you can see when kids master those skills versus like comprehension is a little way , messier . So , all right , Hallie , I'm turning it over to you explicit , systematic . What does this like ? Define it for ?

Holly Lane 38:10

us . I'm going to start with systematic , because that's a little bit simpler of a concept , and you you touched on it earlier when you said a scope and sequence . That's kind of the heart and soul of systematic . So systematic is mostly just you're thinking about things in a logical order , you're designing something that takes into account how people learn , and so that means building on prior knowledge and and so forth . So the analogy I always use for systematic is an architects blueprint , right , so a builder would never just show up on a vacant lot with a bunch of boards and start nailing them together . Right , there's a plan and there's a system of what needs to happen first , and then next , and then next there's some leeway you can put in this window before that door who cares ? But you got to have a foundation before you have walls , and you got to have a walls before you have a roof . These are very clear delineations and reading works like that too . It doesn't matter if you teach you know vowel teams before our controlled vowels , but you need to know the letters of the alphabet before you get to . You know more advanced graphene , phoning , correspondence . So there's some kind of basic things that matter , and we don't have a perfect scope and sequence . That has been proven . This is the one , but there are things that we need to consider .

Holly Lane 39:31

So the systematic part is really thinking about the logic behind how you organize things . The explicit part is it's harder to pinpoint , because I hear a lot of people calling their programs explicit when that's not what I would describe as explicit . And so explicit is very clear and direct and unambiguous . I think that's one of the the terms that I really associate most with explicit . It's unambiguous , it is this , it's not that , and so helping a child understand a concept involves knowing what it is and what it's not . So understanding the boundaries of the concept is part of explicit instruction . But really what we're talking about is just making something very clear .

Holly Lane 40:19

So if I'm teaching a phonics concept , something like the Graphene Phoneme correspondence between you know the letter M and the sound , right , if I want kids to know that , I need them to know that this is the shape of the letter , this is the name of the letter , this is the sound associated with the letter , this is the placement in a word . The graphene placement Can it come at the beginning of a word ? And when we're talking about words at this stage , we're talking about one syllable word . So can it come at the beginning ? Can it come in the middle ? Can it come at the end ? Where can it appear ? Yes , it can come in the beginning and the end , but you're not going to see an M in the middle of a one syllable word .

Holly Lane 41:03

So learning those kinds of things is part of it . And now how to apply that , how to blend words to be able to decode , how to segment words to be able to encode or spell them these are all parts of it as well . So explicit really helps is what's necessary to understand what is this concept and what it's not . So an M has all these features . It looks a little bit like an N , but it's not an N , and here are the differences . And so you know . At the end of an explicit lesson , kids should know all this and have a pretty good understanding and be able to apply what they've learned .

Melissa 41:45

Holly , what happens in programs where it's more ambiguous ? Like what do you see ? It seems like of course that's what we should do .

Holly Lane 41:52

Right . Well , I think most programs really don't encompass all of those features and those aren't even all the features Like what I'm teaching . You know an M I'm going to talk about the articulatory gesture for that sound . And you know , when you're making , when you're producing this phoneme , your lips are together , your voice is on , your vocal cords are vibrating , those those kinds of things . So really getting down to the nitty-gritty to help kids understand the concept , and I don't think that that happens much at all . It's like here's an M . M says let's read some words . Right , I mean it's , it's much more , just kind of haphazard . There's also a .

Holly Lane 42:32

I see in a lot of programs a lot of independent work . I don't think phonics can be effectively taught with worksheets and workbooks . I don't not to say that they're all bad , but I don't think it's a good use of kids time or effort . So I feel like if you're going to teach them skills , it needs to be interactive . There needs to be sounds being made out loud . It's not . It's not quiet seat work . So those are some of the kinds of things you can't . You know , having a whole worksheet where , okay , color in the pictures of things that start with M .

Melissa 43:10

Yeah , how much I remember this from first grade . I think I did , oh , I did it too , I absolutely did that .

Holly Lane 43:17

In fact I probably did that as a teacher because those are the materials that were available to me , available to me at the time , and I think you know we can't fault teachers for using what they're provided .

Holly Lane 43:29

But we need to be looking critically and is what are kids really learning from drawing a line from this letter to this picture or whatever is ?

Holly Lane 43:39

If they're not actively reading words and spelling words and applying what they're learning , that really doesn't matter . Probably what we talk about the most in terms of explicit instruction being effective is really ample opportunities to respond , having kids practice as much as we can get in a lesson and then having that practice interleaved across lessons . So after we have introduced and practice a lesson and we move on to a concept , we move on to a new concept . We're practicing the old concept still . We introduce a new concept , we're still practicing all of those old concepts and we keep seeing the same things come up lesson after lesson after lesson , to really make sure that kids have lots and lots of opportunities to respond . And we're monitoring those responses to make sure that they're correct , that they're not practicing something the wrong way . If kids are doing independent seat work , you're not able to monitor them in real time and they could be making inaccurate connections and you're not there to stop that from happening and to redirect them .

Lori 44:48

Yeah , I keep thinking about how what we talked about earlier like it does feel a little messier , this interleaving concept , where I know it's shown to prove long term retention with you know , with lots of practice . But like you gave this example from UFly with short I , that over 10 lessons in UFly , short I is practiced 338 times with right with the concept of interleave , and to me that just makes a lot of sense that over the time after that with an explicit you know , with explicit teaching , with a systematic scope and sequence , that I mean that as a teacher that makes me feel really confident that 338 times over 10 lessons my students are going to have practice with short I it doesn't stop after 10 lessons .

Holly Lane 45:39

They're still going to see it after that .

Holly Lane 45:41

But you know , just to get it firm , real early on and that's another part of systematic that I really didn't touch on is just this idea that what you're getting kids to practice is applying what they have learned so far , and so one of the things that we spent an enormous amount of time on is creating word lists for practice that only included the graphing , phoning correspondences that kids have been exposed to so far .

Holly Lane 46:09

So it's not just just any random list of words with sh and them , it's words that have sh and the other things that they've learned so far . So if they haven't gotten to th , it doesn't have an sh and a th right . So those kinds of things are not necessarily part of every program , but that's a part of being systematic as well that we have . We're only expecting kids to be able to do the things that we have taught them that they . We don't expect them to catch on to other things , although most kids do catch on to other things and can figure out words with features they haven't been taught . That's not an expectation in a systematic program .

Lori 46:52

Makes so much sense .

Importance of Practice in Education

Holly Lane 46:55

Yeah , that concept of interleave practice is so contrary to what we do in in classrooms , so much that the traditional spelling test is my favorite example , because you know we talk about teaching spelling . We're not usually teaching spelling . We give kids a list of words and say here , go teach yourself these words , you've got a week and to do that , I want you to write them five times each and I want you to put them in alphabetical order and I want you to write sentences with them and all these other activities . And they practice , practice , practice . And they come in and take the test and they get 100% Yay , they've learned them , but have they really ?

Holly Lane 47:30

No , we know , deep down they haven't really learned them , because a week or two or three later they don't use the correct spellings of those words when they write them . So they really didn't learn them and so that's just a classic example of blocked practice compared with interleave practice where over , like you just said , 10 lessons , which is over , you know , five weeks of instruction , you're seeing that correspondence with the short I 338 times that at the end of those five weeks , those kids know what sound that letter I represents . You know there's no doubt in their minds anymore , so that they're going to remember it . That's the idea behind interleave practice , is it leads to longer term retention of skills . So kids don't retain . When they have that block practice , you know they get 100% on Friday , but two weeks later if you gave them the same test , they get a 40 or 50% .

Melissa 48:31

So that's so helpful and you really have me thinking at the moment , because we always bring up , I always bring up , you know , in when you're teaching comprehension . I taught middle school , so you know I always think about my , my practice of teaching .

Melissa 48:45

You know we would , we would teach inferences and then I would similarly give a quiz of some kind , be like , yes , they know how to make inferences from this text and it was always weird to me because I was like , yeah , but I want them to do that in other texts , like it's not , like I don't want them to be like check off the box , they can do it . Now we're done with that , move on . But I I do often think of foundational skills and think , you know , you can kind of check off a box and move on , but I love thinking about it this way of like you still don't want to , even if they can write , even if they you know , you see that they can identify that sound or they , they can write the letter correctly , whatever it is , you still want to keep it going .

Holly Lane 49:26

Yeah , and I think with foundational skills , and A lot of programs do a decent job at developing kids accuracy with these skills , but not that many do a good job at promoting automaticity , and automaticity is really our goal . We want kids to know something so well that it's effortless for them . That's how I define automaticity . By the way , it's just effortlessness that I've done something so many times I don't have to think about it . It's like when I drive a car I don't have to think anymore how to turn on the blinker or how to step on the brake . That stuff just happens automatically without any conscious attention to it . I can be on the phone , I can be jamming to my favorite song on the radio and not even paying that close of attention , and I can still drive safely because it's also automatic .

Holly Lane 50:18

I want kids to be able to be like that with their reading , so that instead of devoting attention to labor you know , slog through a word that they you know a new word to decode . They can just look at it and figure it out quickly because they know how to do those things so automatically . That means all of their cognitive load , their working memory , can be devoted to understanding the text and they can really think about the author's message rather than how to get through this word . So that piece of it is the other part of practice that's so essential as we're developing automaticity . We want to get kids past this and if we do a really good job at that in kindergarten , first and second grade , then really we won't have to think about it .

Holly Lane 51:05

Beyond that , most kids , when we get into more challenging graphing , phoning , correspondences or you know multi-syllabic words or morphemes , most kids won't still need that degree of explicit and systematic instruction . They get to a point where they can start teaching themselves and you know , they come across a new graphing that they've never seen before . They can use other ways to figure it out . When we expect kids to do that from the beginning , most kids fail . They can't do that . They never reach proficiency . We need to make sure that we get them to that point that they're able to start teaching themselves .

Melissa 51:43

Love it . It feels like a mic drop moment , I don't know . Well , in all seriousness , I know we're running out of time here with you , holly , we could probably keep going for a really long time , but is there anything else you want to share about research and evidence or programs that say they're based in the science of reading ?

Holly Lane 52:04

Yeah , I feel like you know you mentioned the science or snake oil webinar . That really got me thinking so hard about it . I had always heard this term snake oil salesman but I never really knew the story behind it .

Lori 52:21

I love the story .

Holly Lane 52:22

You read it up . You read up on it and found , yeah , there were actually people who sold snake oil and claimed that it solved all your problems and there actually was snake oil that had healing effects . But the stuff that these people were selling was not that snake oil and it had no effects . And eventually what they were selling didn't even actually have snake oil in it . They were just putting that on there and so there wasn't any regulation of it . And then the United States government had an agency called the Bureau of Chemistry at the time that analyzed this one guy's snake oil and found it was not effective . It didn't have anything useful , and they made him stop . And that agency then became the Food and Drug Administration where now anything that's sold either things you're going to eat or medicine that you're going to take has to get tested to a point that we know that it's safe , we know that it does what it's supposed to do .

Holly Lane 53:23

We don't have anything like that in education . We have different entities like what works clearinghouse , that do look at the research that's done , but there's no expectation that everybody's programs get tested to that degree and to have that level of rigor of study . There's no expectation , but to me it would be just wonderful to have an entity that required programs to be effective . If you're going to use taxpayer dollars to purchase it , it's got to have whatever level it's got to have . You know this level of approval , not of you know philosophy behind it , but of its effect on kids learning , and we don't have anything like that .

Holly Lane 54:14

So that means practitioners are left having to figure it out for themselves , and it's a big ask . So anyway it's . I don't know if that's a , if that's a , it's not an optimistic point to leave us on , but I but I do think it's . It means that that teachers really do have the responsibility to learn and school and district leaders have the responsibility to learn and understand what evidence really is . Yeah , I think Holly Lane for Secretary of Education one day , I know .

Lori 54:51

Thank you , I know I kind of want to do an FDA for Education now with with you at the helm . We're here for it , not with me at the helm .

Holly Lane 55:00

There's plenty of people who are far more capable of that than I am and maybe actually might even want to do it , but I do .

Lori 55:08

Well , we're putting the idea out there .

Holly Lane 55:11

Right , I do think we need something like that because it's yeah , we've , we've seen the detrimental effects of not having that and having things just become popular for whatever reason right that you know aren't . That is not based on evidence , not based on science . So we want to make sure that what we're doing has evidence of effectiveness .

Lori 55:33

Yeah , especially when it affects children's lives and people's lives every day .

Holly Lane 55:38

So I absolutely .

Lori 55:41

Well , we are so grateful that you talked with us today . I know that I feel much more confident . I wish that I had talked with you 10 years ago and had all these notes . It makes it like really just feel really easy to understand . So thank you for making it easy to understand for everyone , from teachers to district leaders , to school leaders , to maybe parents even listening , who are wanting to know about what's happening in their school district with their taxpayer dollars . You never know , right , right , exactly Well , thank you , yeah , thank you .

Lori 56:18

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Melissa 56:27

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Lori 56:36

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Melissa 56:46

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Lori 56:58

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