Melissa & Lori Love Literacy ™

Ep. 200: Know Better, Do Better: Comprehension with David and Meredith Liben

Share episode

In this episode, Meredith and David Liben discuss the importance of comprehension instruction, the power of questions, and the practice of close reading. They emphasize the value of curiosity, vocabulary depth, and the features of complex text. The conversation also delves into the debate around teaching comprehension strategies, the overemphasis on reading strategies, the impact of high-pressure assessments on instruction, and the need for a more comprehensive approach to reading comprehension. The speakers reflect on their own mistakes and the challenges in the field of literacy education.

Takeaways

  • The power of questions lies in their ability to provide insight into a student's comprehension, encourage precise thinking, and reveal the features of a text that stumped or aided comprehension.
  • Close reading serves as a valuable technique for examining the features of complex text, developing vocabulary depth, and understanding the world through text.
  • The debate around teaching comprehension strategies highlights the impact of high-pressure assessments and the need to prioritize meaningful instruction over test preparation. Comprehension strategies have limitations and may not be the most effective approach to reading comprehension.
  • The overemphasis on reading strategies can be detrimental to students' engagement and understanding of reading.
  • Foundational skills and the science of reading play a crucial role in improving reading comprehension.
  • Reflecting on mistakes and being open to learning from them is essential for progress in literacy education.


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

Grab free resources and episode alerts! Sign up for our email list at literacypodcast.com.

Join our community on Facebook, and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, & Twitter.

Lori:

Understanding how to teach reading comprehension is so tricky it can feel messy and much less structured than teaching foundational skills.

Melissa:

Absolutely, and learning about high-impact instructional moves to improve reading comprehension is critical, but there is so much conflicting information out there, specifically around teaching comprehension strategies in isolation or not, or teaching reading strategies versus building knowledge.

Lori:

Yeah, melissa, it makes it difficult to know what to do and, to add to that, it makes it difficult to know how to assess comprehension as well. It's hard to know what's working and what's not.

Melissa:

Yep. So today we'll talk to David and Meredith Lieben, who are authors of the new book Know Better, do Better Comprehension. They will share some of their top research-based recommendations for what teachers can do to help students comprehend texts.

Lori:

Hi teacher friends. I'm Lori and I'm Melissa. We are two educators who want the best for all kids and we know you do too.

Melissa:

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

Lori:

We realized there was so much more to learn about how to teach reading and writing.

Melissa:

Lori, and I can't wait to keep learning with you today.

Lori:

Hi, meredith and David, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having us.

Meredith Liben:

Thank you, hi. Meredith and David, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having us.

Lori:

Thank you. Yeah, so it is our 200th episode and you are with us to celebrate. Yeah, our special guests. We made it to 200. I don't even know how many times David has been on our podcast, but we couldn't resist having both of you back for our 200th episode because he wrote a new book that is part of Scholastic's Science of Reading in Practice series. So I just think that is so. These books are so readable and so we're so excited for you to be part of the series. Know Better, do Better Comprehension.

Melissa:

And we loved the first. Know Better, Do Better.

Lori:

We sure did Now we love the second Well thank you.

Melissa:

I do want to just make a plug that the first know better, do better, we sure did we?

Meredith Liben:

now we love the second. Well, thank you. I do want to just make a plug that the first book is back in print, not being in print, so on the right. So it's got a plain blue cover. It's only on amazon right now but it's available. If you search for it you'll find it. Um, so I just did want to just say that, and I need to figure out the amazon marketing thing and figure out how to get it more prominent than the one that's out of print or how to connect them or something. But it is available if you're persistent and look.

Lori:

Okay, well, meredith, we'll be sure to link that in the show notes so that everybody can buy all the know better, do betters that they want in their life. All right, so today, though, we're going to talk about know Better, do Better comprehension, because that's part of the Scholastic series, but you played that title off of your previous Know Better, do Better, which is great, so we thought we'd dive right in Chapter six of your book. We're skipping one through five right now, but chapter six is all about the power of questions, and we're hoping that you can share what you mean by this and why questions are so important for comprehension instruction.

David Liben:

At the simplest level, it's nice to know if the kid understands what they read. And asking a question is the most direct point. Piff, that's one level, depending on what your goal is. If you ask a question and you include the student to explain their thinking, then you're getting a more precise window into what they comprehend, what they don't comprehend, as well as how they reach that point of either comprehension or confusion, or sometimes both. On a third level, if, when students are asked to explain their answer as much as possible, they use not only evidence from the text, but what exactly in the text led them to that.

David Liben:

In other words, I realized that I didn't know the answer to this and then I stopped and I thought about it. Rereading it didn't help in this case, and very many times it doesn't and I realized they must have been talking about, they must have referenced something earlier. And then I thought, oh, okay, so it connects to what was in the very first paragraph or in the very beginning, or I was confused. And then I did go back to the question and as I started reading it, I saw this sentence really has the answer, but it's freaking long, so I'm going to have to slow down and read it differently.

David Liben:

So those are examples of the features of a text, are connections made between different parts of the text, and also are the sentences in the text complex and dense with information? You can have a complex sentence that doesn't have that much information and you can have a complex sentence that has a lot of information, and both of those are what we call features of the text and they determine the complexity or the difficulty. So there's three levels there One, well, it's good to know if the kid understood what he was reading. Two, how he approached it. And three, what were the features of the text that stumped her, or what were the features of the text that made it easier to answer the question?

Meredith Liben:

And there's even more going on with questions, which is why we're so in love with them and named that whole chapter around questions. One is a good question, a well-crafted question, whether your materials do that for you and all you have to do is tinker a little, or whether you don't have the materials or you're creating on your own, which is more challenging. But you can use a question to drive student attention to what is most important in the text, what is what is most challenging, likely in the text, or what's most fascinating in the text, or any number of things. So a question can actually it can actually be a scaffold in a weird way. So it's never felt that way as to students, weird way. So it's never felt that way to students. But if teachers really overtly say I want to draw attention here, I don't want the students casting around over 20 page span because they're not clear. So I'm actually going to include what paragraph to look for, because I know I have a lot of students who need that pinpointing. So you can either craft the question to be scaffolded or just by its nature, by asking about something specific. A question is pointing student focus and attention to one element of the text and I'm talking about good questions, well-crafted questions.

Meredith Liben:

The second thing is David was talking about the processes that go on inside an individual reader, student reader's brain, and we hear all the time how frustrating comprehension is, like people sort of they sort of know what it looks like but they do not know how to get it and we hopefully we'll talk about this more later they know the things they're being asked to do in most materials aren't getting students to the heart of the matter. They're not actually leading to deep, rich or even surface comprehension sometimes. So the idea of explaining your answer and doing it first, of course it does peel back. It's a window in their kid's brain, like how often do you get that, the things that David was discussing? But if you do it out loud, you know, pondering by yourself at times, or pairing up, or you know all different permutations, and then you discuss it out loud, pondering by yourself at times, or pairing up, or all different permutations, and then you discuss it out loud.

Meredith Liben:

There's this incredible power of elevating the entire world, because if a kid got an answer wrong in explaining it, he himself may see oh, this no longer makes sense to me, I realize I missed something, or the class itself can pitch in a comment can help that kid build a fuller understanding in a sort of collective way. If a student got the answer right and then is pointing at the places in the text that gave him the answer, then all the students who weren't sure of that answer or didn't find that evidence, you can bet they're drinking it in from their classmate because they, you know we want to do well, we want to understand what we read, and so it can. It can unlock the key to the kingdom. Really. It opens the vault for what comprehension actually is. So it's diagnostic power for the teacher. It lifts the teaching load to the, from the teacher to the students in this kind of social way, and it can pinpoint time and attention to what you most want kids to get out of tech. So we are madly in love with questions.

David Liben:

That's about six or seven points, and I think we put it together really well, better than we often have. You know why? Because it's in honor of the 200th podcast.

Lori:

I'm glad you got yourselves together for the 200th episode.

Meredith Liben:

We were trying for decades.

David Liben:

One last quote, one small quote, to that it's nice when a student actually explains everything and nails it, instead of only the teacher.

Meredith Liben:

And you've just encountered some research that that may actually cause deeper learning or better retention, when it's right that Harvard study the Eric Mazur stuff.

David Liben:

Well, it's basically student answers a question, another student answers the same question. They come together.

Meredith Liben:

With different answers. If they differ, they're paired on basis.

David Liben:

The program doesn't say what happens if they have the same answer, which is a problem, but it comes together, assuming they have different answers. They come together, they analyze, maybe they reach a conclusion or maybe you know a consensus and maybe they don't, and then the whole class comes together and the whole class analyzes the question in the light of some of the answers they gave and in light of the correct answer. It's very much the same as what we say in the book about explaining your answer, but it's structured nicely and bringing in pairs and whole class, and it was devised by a science teacher at Harvard actually for teaching undergraduate physics.

David Liben:

The article's still up.

Meredith Liben:

That's what I was pointing at. Um, yeah, I like the sort of pyramid scheme of it. Right, you go from pairs. At first I thought it went from pairs to quads, to the whole class, but I think he, because it's college, he'd probably freeze it up.

David Liben:

So it's not research, but it's a nifty method that is virtually identical to what we have talked about in the book. With explaining your answer.

Meredith Liben:

And close reading, and close reading being more communal and social, then it's often described as such a dreary enterprise. It's often described as such a dreary enterprise and we see it as this vibrant, alive, you know, chunk of the day, hard, hard work, and not necessarily, you know, joy-filled and giddy with fun, but like really rich and really social.

Melissa:

Well, we're really glad you just brought up close reading, because that's what we wanted to ask about next and because I mean when Common Core Standards were first introduced in Baltimore, I mean we went all in on close reading. It was like all we talked about was close reading and I think there were some really good things that happened with close reading. But I think we went like overboard on some things, especially around. I remember talking about like everything you need is on the page, you know, and I'm thinking like, well, not every reader is bringing what they know to this page Right. Like not everything can be found on that page. But anyway, close reading was just like the thing in Baltimore. And then it's sort of just.

Melissa:

We haven't really talked about it much lately. We haven't heard many people talk about it. We even get some questions sometimes from listeners, like do you have an episode about close reading? So when we saw a chapter in your book, we're like, oh good, they're talking about close reading and we're going to clear up what's good about close reading. What should it really look like? So fill us in. Let's talk about close reading.

David Liben:

It's important to point out that nobody's done a randomly controlled trial about close reading, so there is no knowledge of the best way to do it. However, no one and I've been looking for this for a long time no one has come up with a system that the whole class can get together with kids three or four years below grade level, up to kids three or four years above grade level, and everybody engage in that text in a meaningful way other than some form of close, of close reading and I would say that's because of this collective, the social, the social aspects of it, and I I would never want that to get set aside.

Meredith Liben:

This I, the reason you can have an eight or ten grade span examining the same text, is because you're doing it together and executing. And I often say that close reading is closely and carefully reading some little chunk of text. But it's also the teachers hanging out close by our students as a coach, so the teacher stays close to the students and pays a lot of attention to the interactions and understandings that are getting built again in that small chunk of text.

David Liben:

Post-reading also, either implicitly or explicitly and it should be explicit teaches kids the nature of complex text. In the previous example, if you're stumped because you didn't make a connection that was of two propositions or ideas that were separated by three paragraphs, you're learning that that's one of the features that can make a text complex how many ideas need to be connected to comprehend the text, how close they are in the text and how close they're related other than being necessary to comprehend the text. So if, when you explain your answer in that third level that I discussed, where you use the features of the text, then you're teaching kids to. You're teaching kids the nature of complex text. And complex text gets talked about all the time, often with close reading, but we don't really spend a lot of time teaching kids what is the nature of complex text, why, what makes it complex and and what can we do about it. And that's one of the key ingredients in chapter. To be honest, I don't remember Six and seven.

Lori:

Seven is this one. Do you have any practical tips, like if teachers are listening right now and they're going to buy the book? I know it, but just in case they haven't had it delivered to their doorstep yet. Chapter seven is close reading and that's what we're kind of like diving into right now. Do you have any tips for teachers who want to try some close reading strategies, like David? I just heard you say that it's important to acknowledge the elements of the text that make it complex. Any tips for teachers on how to do that?

Meredith Liben:

Yeah, I would have a couple. One is you need to pick that chunk carefully because it is tiring. It's tiring for the adult, it is exhausting for the kids. So short I mean, we did it, our kids had a lot of stamina and it did build up their stamina. We did it four times a week for 45 minutes. I think at our height at our own school, I think 20 can be really enough, but it can be as little as five minutes.

Meredith Liben:

If a math teacher is closely reading a math word problem, like that's an amazing use of close reading, so that could be a five minute very useful time. So and that also I taught career in tech, ed, and so we don't talk a lot there about you know beautiful literature, you know elegance, but we talk about highly, you know highly utilitarian stuff. So I would also say to teachers it has to be a value to you and what your goals, your learning goals, are in the moment. It has to. So it has to be small and it does have to be a valuable chunk of text, but the value is in the eye of the beholder. There has to be stuff going on that you know your students are not going to get if they just were left alone to read it off in their own corners. Off in their own corners, so a value to the teacher short enough to be managed in the time that you have or over multiple encounters, if there's really a lot going on.

Meredith Liben:

I think poetry getting away from CT is a great place to start, because poetry is almost always complex. Even a haiku is really sort of profound. It's usually it. Interestingly, it's because it's ordinary language, it's common words used in uncommon ways, right, and, and syntax starts getting messed around with. So poetry can be a really short, quick thing, you know, thing to look at. So choose it yourself.

Meredith Liben:

Unless your materials are fabulous and make really good choices, um, it needs to be of high utility to you, or or something you badly need to communicate to your kids. Like at the tech center we did safety instructions, we did close reading, um, you know, so they could operate, the kids could operate material. You know the machinery safely. Or when the kids wanted to be certified to do state level auto inspections, we prepped for the text through close reading to understand that I had kids who wanted to go to the military and their mothers would come in and say help them get a higher score on the ASPAD.

Meredith Liben:

I think that it's really important for teachers to take hold of that and claim their power with close reading of value to them or of they know it's important to the kids and chunk it and know that it's tiring and know it takes time to get good at it and not try to wring every last thing out of the text. That's the last thing you can't. I mean, a really rich text is rich for a reason. You want some level of understanding, but you can't wring it dry and just leave it in. You know tatters.

Melissa:

That's what I was thinking. I'm from the secondary English world, so you know we love our novels. And I was thinking like you can't closely read everything, nor should you, my goodness, what do you think?

Meredith Liben:

Nor should you. So what in what you ask students to read, or what you're reading now in a whole novel? What's worth? What is really pivotal? What matters? Where do characters surprise or pivot? And then you pick that.

Lori:

And going back, meredith, to like what I keep, you're keeping text at the center. We love that piece. You're a banker about that, I know, I know.

Lori:

We talked with her about it. That's a loss. I think it has to do not just with that text at hand, but how does that text relate to all the other texts? And, as you said, but just to kind of stamp it for listeners, the world around, the kids, especially as they get older, what's really important to them? What do they need? Why should they be doing this? What's their interest and how is it going to help them so that they can see the value of then doing that in the real world for themselves? I recently had to very closely read new car insurance documents to make sure that it was in a different way, but I think that there's ways that, as kiddos get older, we can make it applicable to them and the text that they're reading, the text that they're reading in that moment and the texts that support those texts.

David Liben:

A few things. First of all, make sure none of your listeners recommend using the Armed Forces Basic Assessment text in elementary school. Oh no, otherwise you might not go on to your 201st podcast.

Meredith Liben:

Okay, these were juniors and seniors in high school. I'll be clarifying.

David Liben:

A major point of the book was that there are these constructs that are underneath reading comprehension, vocabulary knowledge, word recognition, fluency, an understanding of the way morphology works.

David Liben:

But if all of those are in place at some level, then what's left is what is there in the construction of this text that would closely aligned the propositions are, how dense the sentences are, how much the author explicitly makes connections between ideas, how often the reader has to make those connections, and also how the text is written so that the reader will likely connect to relevant knowledge. Because you have relevant knowledge, it doesn't always mean you connect to it when you read. And then there's actually research about that, by Kate Nation and Jane O'Kill, I think. So that's important to consider, but we don't really consider that. And considering that means that, in terms of your original question, melissa, as a technique and this would work regardless of what program you're using, and some programs are way better than others and some programs are way below the seller and you could do this with either one- and you can ask David on the side if you want.

David Liben:

We're going to drop David's email in the show notes so everybody can get your honest thoughts on that Read the text for what are the features that might make it carefully read the text, for what are the features that might make it difficult, and then ask some questions about that.

David Liben:

And you can do that even if you're using a program that has questions and even if some of those questions are very good and even if none of those questions are very good or very few are very good, if some of those questions are very good and even if none of those questions are very good or very few are very good. So that's possibly the strongest technique and, over a period of time, if you do that as a teacher, you're going to learn what are the features that make the text complex. You're going to get a more expansive and in-depth understanding of what this whole complex text thing is about, which is a good idea, since we brought that thing into the world like 12 years ago now, something like 14 years ago, because really, if you just ask the kids to read the easiest thing possible, you wouldn't be on your 200th podcast.

Meredith Liben:

I'll be sad, kids will be reading at a second grade level and everybody will be happy. There's a couple other implications to what David said, and that point I think you said, melissa, that not everything lives inside that four corners of the text. We were a little ideological about that at first too, because we were combating so much text to self. It's all about you and your feelings, and you know so there was a lot.

Meredith Liben:

You know everything has a historical moment, right. So there was a history to that rigidity. But it's obviously not true. And knowledge the knowledge emphasis rightfully puts the lie to that. We also really leaned into curiosity in the book in a way that might belie the title. And there's, that's a two-way street too.

Meredith Liben:

Teachers have to be curious about their kids and have an imaginative about what's going to, to David's point. Just then understand, if you're teaching fourth grade, what makes my this group this year fourth graders stumble or what will they find easy? And then for the kids, they need to be invited to be curious, to be curious about text, to be curious about the world, to be curious about words and why they have. You know the story behind words and why they're spelled. You know, as opposed to bemoaning that a word is spelled bizarrely, like, let's look at why that word is spelled so bizarrely. Oh, it comes from Greek. Oh, it came from Urdu into English or whatever. Oh, it comes from Greek. Oh, it came from Urdu into English or whatever.

Meredith Liben:

So this idea of staying curious about your children, about the world, you know, it's this bicameral or multilateral construct that I think is crucial here, because teachers can't. If you're, if you're a really good reader and most teachers are very comfortable, you know, with with the skills that they are imparting. And sometimes it gets confusing when, when your students in front of you are are can't do the thing that you find so valuable and easy. It's to get curious and try to inhabit what it feels like to be that restless butt in the chair of your eight-year-old kid that you're teaching and and where they might be befuddled. That just really can open doors.

Melissa:

I wanted to ask something about close reading before I forget about it, because I know that the first read and second read is what I'm really remembering. That was the thing. You have to read it more than one time and I'm wondering if you all can speak to that. And what's the biggest difference between that first read and the second read? Once you've picked a really good text, right, you have that really good text. What do you do differently in those two?

David Liben:

reads Well, the first read is pretty straightforward. It serves two important purposes. There's oodles of research showing that if someone reads a louder text with fluency and students follow along, that's one way to improve fluency. And weak fluency is certainly part it's almost always, it's always part of children who are very far behind and it's often part of children who are just behind somewhat. But and the second thing is it brings them into the text. So if you're doing close reading, if you've got, you're using, a text in the fifth grade and it's at a fifth grade level, no matter how measured, and you've got some kids reading it at second or third grade level, reading it aloud with them following along, is the first, is the first step in bringing them into the text. And then the later reads depends on the length of the text and it depends on the goals that you have and it depends on how much you're focusing on what we've been talking about here. So, more or less the way I've been thinking about it recently as we wrote the book and as we talked to people about it, the second read should focus on some of those features of the text that make it complex, because the goal is understanding the text. So you craft questions that address the features of the text that make it difficult, whether they're density of information, syntax, lack of authors not making connections and so forth.

David Liben:

Then there's knowledge of words in the world, because close reading is not the ideal way to grow knowledge of the world because the texts are usually short and it's a short amount of time and usually on a rich, short text. But nevertheless there is opportunities to learn about the world in close reading, especially with vocabulary depth, meaning. Why did the author choose this word instead of four other words? Close reading is ideal for that and there's some interesting research by cognitive scientists and maybe only one study showing that. Actually, vocabulary depth how much you know about a word, all the different senses, what are all the different senses that you know about? About the word ground, it's what you stand on, but it also is an ideological position. It's also a way he defended his ground. Um, he's a well-grounded person. He ground the sugar into the drink. Um, how? How much you know about a word and also the antonyms for the word and the different? What's the term at the end?

Meredith Liben:

of the word Tenses.

David Liben:

Not tenses, but you know the suffixes that make the word differently how it's used in different parts of speech.

David Liben:

The more you know about the word, the more likely you are to be a proficient reader, and close reading is ideal for that. So you have the first read, for read aloud, to develop fluency and to bring everybody into the text. The second read, to start examining the features of the text that make it complex. The third read and this can overlap knowledge of words and knowledge of the world, particularly vocabulary, vocabulary depth, and then standards that make sense, um, that are not shoehorned in but that fit to this text and what we see a lot of to some extent, certainly in in in the weaker programs, but sometimes even even in the programs that we really think are top notch tech standards will be shoehorned into the text to make sure that they're covered, and that's really not a good use of time when you have all these opportunities to learn about complex text, to learn about words, to learn about the world. To shoehorn in standards that don't make any sense is problematic. Is that helpful? Because that's a mouthful.

Lori:

Yeah, that was helpful. I'm actually wondering if we can talk a little bit more about that. Last thing you said about kind of forcing them in the standards in. I think that happens often with comprehension strategies and I'm wondering if we can kind of discuss that, because that's like a hot button topic what does the research say about teaching comprehension strategies? Because there seems to be this debate and that seems to be where we're doing a lot of forcing.

Meredith Liben:

Yes, and standards often name a comprehension strategy along with other things.

Melissa:

There's overlap, there's definitely overlap.

Meredith Liben:

Certainly in the Common Core there was Standards two and nine. The readings either one and 10 are unique and special and we love.

Lori:

But two and nine are pretty ordinary Right, Like I felt like we were always just trying to force kids to find the main idea. I was like can I find? The main idea right now? I'm not sure.

Meredith Liben:

Well, yes, let alone that there might be three. So yeah, I'll start. We have a lot to say. First of all, you know, we, we think we think at this point summative and high pressured and high accountability assessment has done way more harm than good. We just found out that in Canada kids are tested a total of three times in their public school life. Three. And so you know, assessment is, yeah, test prep and it's horrible use of time. And so there's this downward, you know, and assessment companies always tell us so we've tried to work with them that they're responding to district and state mandates and laws and giving them the measurements they want. But it's really pernicious because there is no way. There's a way anyway.

Meredith Liben:

David can get into what assessments can and can't show us, but they, the result of a kid failing to get a question correct is a comprehension failure or a vocabulary question or a foundational skills gap or a fluency gap or an exhaustion kicking in. It's all kinds of things. It's probably not because they innately don't understand how to infer. We are a species hardwired to infer. We're a species that can find these things, these subtleties. We do it all the time in our lives.

Meredith Liben:

But with text there's a lot more going on and nobody assessments that report in these simplistic measures aren't looking at what. All the rich things that are going on. You know, vehicles like Ed Reports, which started, you know, which started as a good gatekeeper, have also put crazy pressure on publishers to like we need to recognize the standards showing up in each and every one of your questions, and then you have this insanity of coverage. That is that kind of shoehorning. So there is an overreach there and a misunderstanding on the parts of their indicators and then their teacher reviewers no fault of theirs, they're just not trained right in the subtleties of how this should be happening. So there's all kinds of horrible ways that reading strategies are overemphasized and show up and then teachers are like what?

Melissa:

am I supposed to do?

Meredith Liben:

My administrator says I have to ask standards based questions. We hear that all the time, so we know you have a teacher audience. But for whatever administrators or people with any policy power listening, stop doing this to the kids. It's really destructive. So that's my soapbox. David can tell you more of the research behind it in his bed.

David Liben:

This is a whole podcast in itself, but there there's two avenues that that the debate revolves around. One is Dan Willingham's work, which you're probably familiar with, showing that, yeah, you might get a bit of an uptick in comprehension with comprehension strategies and I emphasize the word might, and he puts it that way but you get the same effect with 20 minutes a week as you do with two hours a week, and there's way more than 20 minutes a week being done with approaching comprehension strategies. We had to review when we worked with Detroit after after the state tried to destroy it for 10 years and gave it back to the community. They had to pick a new core ELA program. But to cover themselves they needed a review of the existing program, which was a K-12 McGraw-Hill program that had been around for a while but it had comprehension strategies.

David Liben:

They were teaching kids in kindergarten what an inference is. But they were also teaching kids in kindergarten in 12th grade what an inference is. So those kids who retained their sanity over those 13-year period were being told what an inference is for 13 years. I had that experience. I understand that were being told what an inference is for 13 years I had that experience.

Melissa:

I understand that. I remember in a high school classroom I walked into they were like introducing theme, as if students had never heard it before, and I was like I know that they have been taught what this word theme means. Now to find the theme in whatever text they have in front of them is a different story, but they've heard this word before, exactly.

David Liben:

So that's what Dan Willingham said.

Meredith Liben:

Can I just make? I want to pivot off what Melissa just said about theme, because we just talked to Madi McCown about this and she is militant on this question and she's done really good research that the field loves to shun but nobody's ever disproved or been able to pick at, but they just pretend it doesn't exist. She said that's really all that should be taught is the vocabulary, so that you know, like when you are discussing the thing that is a theme, you give the kids a common language, but that the idea of a theme and the idea that you practice with you know 42, you know paragraphs and find the theme in all 42, absolutely zero time should be spent on that because it doesn't transfer. But knowing this thing that is sort of the author's passion project and point of writing is called a theme. That that's a useful common vocabulary. So that is sort of yes, they've been taught what a theme is and that's enough.

Lori:

I unmuted to say the same thing. I was like it just seems like if I was a high school teacher, to give them the definition of that word, refresh their memory in a second, two seconds, 30 seconds, and then go right into the text. What does this have to do with this? That seems to be the better use of time, as per the research. Anyway, david, we all cut you off, all of the women on this call. Just cut you off. We apologize. It's a part of my life. We figured, so we just did it.

David Liben:

So the other thing is actual research done by Beck and McCown that we write, that we describe in our book and fortunately, marty McCown that's Madeline McCown that we write, that we describe in our book and fortunately, marty Marty McCown, that's yes, you know, thought, thought that it was done very well. They basically did two, three situations a comprehension strategies approach, a basal approach and what they called a content approach. The content approach is text-dependent questions. What happened here? Why do you think this happened?

Meredith Liben:

Which they named questioning the author, just to give it its due.

David Liben:

In the book. The book was questioning the author In the actual study. They called it content questions and it was fifth grade and it was two years and over the course of the two years the group that got the content question outperformed the other groups on every measure that they used, not only standard type measures or traditional reading measurement type measures, but when they asked the kids the questions and they recorded it on some kind of what?

Meredith Liben:

would that be A podcast?

David Liben:

But online there's an audio recording of the kids being asked these questions and the kids who were asked a comprehension strategies approach. Essentially, they got tongue-tied, which is well, can you make an inference, can you visualize, can you make a connection, can you ask a question? In the content there were questions like well, what happened after this, or do you think anything happened before? That might help you explain this. Or, if you looked at it again, did you see something differently? They were focusing on the content, what are now called text-dependent questions or text-specific questions, and so the text-dependent group just outscored the other groups.

Meredith Liben:

So did the basal group?

David Liben:

They were the control group and the Basel was a little weird, as they said, because it had some strategies approached but it had some strategies questions and it had some content questions but it outscored the strategies group.

Meredith Liben:

On strategies-based assessments. Which is really interesting, let alone student talk time which soared in the text-specific text-focused group.

David Liben:

I think it well does that help with comprehension strategies, because there's a follow-up to that that I think is important.

Melissa:

but I don't want to do that without yeah, I was going to just just to clarify. So if I'm thinking, I'm just thinking about inferences in my head right now. So, instead of doing what Lori and I did a while ago which we hate to admit, but we did was, like you know, it was an inferences week, so we would teach inferences and we would, like you said Meredith, practice inferences with a few different texts and then see if they can do an inference with this other text at the end of the week. You're talking about, like looking at the text and thinking, okay, is making an inference here going to actually help this, help them understand this text here? And then you ask them a question that asks them to make an inference. You might not even use the word inference in the question, it's just a question about the text that's going to help them understand it Is that, is that? Am I thinking correctly about the difference here?

Meredith Liben:

Yes, you are thinking correctly about inferencing. Except I would say you, you have to make an inference when something's not provided in the text, so you have to. It's a connection. The thing David was talking about making connections back or forward or sideways. That's what inferring is. It's figuring out the relationships between the ideas and the text. So if there are keywords there, if there are words that are pointing that thing out, you don't, you have to notice those words doing that work.

Meredith Liben:

So if you said you know, for example, if, if, for example, is it one of those connectors? But if you said, um, one notable exception is when, blah, blah, if you don't know what one notable exception means, or that it's about to isolate a different condition where that other thing isn't true, you, you are dead in the water. That's not an inference, that is a vocabulary challenge. So in that case you wouldn't want to infer when doesn't this work? Because the author provided you a key phrase, the one notable exception. So you have to teach kids to pay attention to phrases like that.

Meredith Liben:

So you're not always inferring, you're sometimes noticing the breadcrumbs the author laid out for you, trying to help you understand. So that's again why, focusing on the text and what the author actually is doing with words and ideas and how they're being connected, and just to go back just to your knowledge, authors always have some working assumption of who their audience is right, who their readers are going to be, so they assume a certain level of knowledge, sometimes none and sometimes a lot, depending, depending on what they assumed. And so that's where knowledge comes in. Knowledge helps you infer, because it helps you fill those gaps, and that the author didn't actually stop to explain, which would be really tedious if they re-explained everything every time something came up, as opposed to you inferring or recalling.

David Liben:

Does that help or do you need more examples?

Lori:

No, I think that's really helpful. I also think it gets into the nuances of okay, there could be like a kid who understands the text but doesn't understand that phrase. So maybe couldn't make an inference because they didn't understand that phrase. There could be, but they do understand the general idea of the text. There could be a kid who doesn't, who doesn't, who doesn't get that quote, you know, question correct, because they don't know what notable means. Right, they might understand exception, they don't understand, they might not understand notable. So then they're, they're trying to understand. Well, like this is an exception, but what? Like? Why is it important? They don't get that part of it and they can't explain further. So there's so many nuances here and I think like this is really why comprehension is really tricky. This is why we want to ask these content questions also, because in real life it's not as though often we're being asked very isolated strategy instruction questions. We're asked authentic questions about and we're thinking. Authentic questions about what we're reading and what we're watching, what we're listening to. Right.

Meredith Liben:

Exactly yes.

David Liben:

And we think the high quality programs for the most part do this and for the most part do it well. I would like to add to that the explanation, the explanation using the features of the text that I don't think is as prevalent. It's not completely absent, but I think it's a powerful technique and you know it can be used with the best questions and mediocre questions.

Meredith Liben:

And it elevates the learning to be class-wide right. So it not only helps the student explain it to herself, it's an explanation offered to the whole room. So it floats everybody, as I said. It floats everybody, as I said, it raises everybody's comprehension. So that that is the power move I think of our whole book is like. Just include that practice of of how do you know what, you know what in the, what in that text that you just read, made you believe that to be true, and in defending that, or developing that understanding is the comprehension of that. So we're back to where we started.

Melissa:

Standard one.

Meredith Liben:

Yeah, exactly, standard one is important for our whole society right. The stakes are high that we actually revert back to evidence and knowing why we know something.

Lori:

Yeah, how do you know what you know? I love that. That's a great way to go back and rebrand standard one.

David Liben:

Yeah, exactly. So the question then comes to mind if the research base is so relatively weak, if it's not in fact on comprehension strategy, if it's not in fact the best way to approach text, why is it so prevalent and why is it so durable?

Melissa:

And I would argue like people are arguing still hard for it right now.

Meredith Liben:

Oh yeah, oh yeah.

David Liben:

Hard. I think one reason is you said something earlier, melissa. You said I'm ashamed to say or I hate to. What was it that you did?

Lori:

this too, I forget very exactly how I worded it I think you said how I worded it.

Meredith Liben:

I hate to admit it, I was silent, raising my own hand too. Who didn't do it?

David Liben:

Our whole, yeah, and I think that, whether it's researchers or whether it's people who are in the literacy world, it's hard to admit when you might've made a mistake or when you might've overemphasized something. World it's hard to admit when you might have made a mistake and when you might have overemphasized something. I think that's what motivated us to be very clear A to title the book Know Better, do Better both of them and B to be very forthright with our mistakes, possibly the biggest one in 2010 or 11, whenever the standards were, you know, when it was out and the panic had clearly begun, we really had the nation's attention and we didn't talk at all about foundational skills, and we should have known it was a problem because, as we lay out in book one, we switched from whole language on steroids to a systematic phonics program and that was the beginning of the rise in reading scores not the end, but the beginning and still we didn't say anything about it when we clearly had the nation's attention.

David Liben:

And I blame myself more than anybody, because I was the one who first read Marilyn Adams' book, who drove in the beginning, with support from Meredith, obviously, and the teachers because getting the lowest reading scores in the city of New York is a motivator, and certainly.

Melissa:

David.

David Liben:

Coleman had no reason to know about that. There's no foundational skills in his experience and that was a huge mistake.

Melissa:

And David, you just mean they're in the standards, in the Common Core standards.

Meredith Liben:

They're in there, but they weren't a shift because of I mean, we did talk about it and think about it. Not much I know they weren't anything new and different. We thought we should have known.

Meredith Liben:

What we should have known better is they weren't settled, they weren't stable, they didn't have market share, they weren't being done. Should have known better is they weren't settled, they weren't stable, they didn't have market share, they weren't being done. And we were in New York City for crying out loud. You know we were literally sat under the castle that is Columbia University down in Harlem, below below, you know, geographically below Lucy Calkins's empire. So we knew that it was a problem, but yet we were like that isn't what's new about the standards that? You know we really are just revoicing the National Reading Panel. You know Louisa Motz and Marilyn, who else?

David Liben:

The National Reading.

Meredith Liben:

Panel. Who wrote the Financial Skills? Louisa and Marilyn right.

Melissa:

Louisa and Marilyn wrote the Financial Skills.

David Liben:

They were good and to make it worse, I was the only one under the nose tool who laid eyes on nose and which I, to be honest, which I am I found that kind of intimidating. I was not a foundational skills expert, and this was Marilyn Adams and Louisa Motz.

Melissa:

That is intimidating.

David Liben:

Yeah, those foundational skills made sense, those standards made sense, but nobody was doing that. I was in schools for 20 years and not in the evil castle. It was a huge mistake.

Meredith Liben:

And what are some of the other mistakes?

David Liben:

that we fessed up to.

Meredith Liben:

We were very strategies. We also taught our kids to label the questions on the test. Now, this is before the standards, so New York State tests were not gameable, but they were very, very transparent and we taught our kids what kinds of questions yield and what kinds of things to do about it.

David Liben:

I mean that was because we had to get a little better than comprehension strategies, but not a lot and not research based, and that was another mistake we made.

Meredith Liben:

When David first came to Vermont, he got a job as the co-director of the Vermont Strategic Reading Institute, which was all about disseminating reading strategies across the little state of Vermont.

David Liben:

I don't just make mistakes.

Meredith Liben:

I make big mistakes. You do everything big, go big or go home.

Lori:

Yeah, but at least you admit it.

Meredith Liben:

Well, that's the thing that may be. Our singular talent is that we learn and we're honest and we live our title.

Melissa:

How do you all respond to anyone that brings up the National Reading Panel? But that was I mean. What they said about reading comprehension was a lot about reading strategies and that they were you know, part of it is what, what not Tim?

David Liben:

what Dan says that the what's called the dosage, how much time they spent, didn't seem to make a difference. Right, and he had some other criticisms that I don't remember right at the moment, but just the dosage is big enough. But the better point is that there's a research that does not address the question of are comprehension strategies effective, but addresses what I think is the right question is there a method that is more effective than comprehension strategies? And that's what that study does, and at the very least that should be out there as part of the debate, and I don't think it is.

Meredith Liben:

But the National Reading Panel. I think when you look at the authors, they were the people that were espousing that, so they wrote what they knew and believed to be true at the time. It's so good on foundational skills that I don't even know how widely it is. I mean, I think now it's starting to get some attention. You're like, well, the NRP said this and it was the state of the art 25 years ago. The truth is, the model we present in the book of reading comprehension of what it means to comprehend as a mental representation of meaning was written in the mid-80s, right, yeah, but it was cognitive scientists and who was it you talked to that had a stunning story about being across the quad at Ann Arbor from the School of Education, keith Stanimich, right?

David Liben:

Someone told us about it. I don't think Stanimich was at Michigan.

Meredith Liben:

Anyway, it was some researcher.

David Liben:

University of Wisconsin Madison. That's what it was. But I spent most of my time trying to observe government there. But University of Wisconsin Madison was a hotbed of of whole language and that's where Seidenberg. Seidenberg's been there forever and it made him. It made him. It made him absolutely stark, raving man. They did not want to listen to him at all. The man, the man, developed essentially a full throated, 360 degree model of how the mind develops, word recognition and across the field there at Baskin-Wall Quad Quad I don't know if it was a quad, it was a hill in Madison they just didn't want any part of it whatsoever.

David Liben:

And he talks about this in his first book. It's not a gap, it's a chasm. And it's also a chasm when we, as educators, launch into the science of reading and in the mind of like 90, what percent is phonics? The science of reading is phonics, and the science of reading is not just phonics, as you know, and it's not just phonics and knowledge either. That's a great addition, but still there's more to it than that. We need to fully embrace the full 360 degree dimension of the science, science of reading, some of which is solid science, some of which we're not sure of exactly how it works yet, but it's. But.

Meredith Liben:

but it is not just these two constructs phonics and knowledge and if there's probably two reasons that we wrote the book, because writing books is harder it's not as hard as teaching.

Meredith Liben:

But one of which is not because it's fun, yeah um, one was because we were worried that science of reading was over, tipping toward it's harder. It's not as hard as teaching, one of which is not because it's fun. Yeah, one was because we were worried that science of reading was over, tipping toward foundational skills. And, and you know that, obviously, if every single kid could decode, you know with fluency and automaticity by the end of second grade, we'd be in a lot better shape. So it's not, it's it's a good thing, but there's more and the more is important. And it's a good thing, but there is more and the more is important.

Meredith Liben:

And then bookending that is this disastrous state of affairs with comprehension strategies, reading. I don't blame any kid who endures a year of so-called reading that is drenched in reading strategies to say I hate reading. Because if that's what you think reading is, it's hateful, it's horrible, it's deadening and dull. It's not, it doesn't allow for intellectual curiosity. So teachers hate instructing it and they know they're not getting the right thing, but they don't know what to do and, my God, the kids hate it. It's horrible. So you know, as a nation, we have this nation of kids who don't like to read because they think reading is, you know, inferring, you know, 50 times in a week and then finding the main idea 42 times the following week.

David Liben:

And you know it's just uh, yuck and I think standards is is a similar issue. Trying to shoehorn the standard into a text or x number of standards into a text is a similar problem.

Melissa:

Because they'll see it on an assessment one day.

David Liben:

Exactly. Yes, the standard is an understanding that a student should have reading a complex text by the time that grade is finished. And you build up to it. True, you build up to it over the course of the year and when it fits the text you ask questions that that match that standard. But if you go overboard it's kind of like a goal line offense in football which is basically on the two yard line. Um and practicing, practicing all year plays that work for the two yard line, and then the season starts and everybody goes Holy shit, there's 80 more yards to go.

Lori:

I like that, cause I can get down with the football. The baseball is a little slow. We talked about that before we started, but I like that reference. That's a great way to think about it, yeah.

Meredith Liben:

I used to say it's like practicing to be an Archer by running up to the up to the target, stabbing the arrow. I got luck, I got a bullseye, like I'm right here stabbing it, as opposed to learning all the lovely aspects of archery.

Lori:

Well, this is just awesome. Your book is amazing. We love it, and thank you, david, for wearing your hat in this podcast so that, just like on the back of your book, you could have the same photo. Thank you.

Melissa:

And just once again, your book is Know Better, do Better. Comprehension is the new one, but also the first one is available as well, and we know it's available on Amazon. This new one is available on the Scholastic Teacher Store. I'm sure many other places.

Lori:

Your local bookstores.

Melissa:

Target Lori's excited about Target.

Lori:

Thank you so much. This is amazing. We can't thank you both enough for always podcasting with us and talking with our listeners. Thank you.

Melissa:

To stay connected with us, sign up for our email list at literacypodcastcom.

Lori:

Join our Facebook group and follow us on Instagram and Twitter. If this episode resonated with you, take a moment to share with a teacher friend or leave us a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts.

Melissa:

Just a quick reminder that the views and opinions expressed by the hosts and guests of the Melissa and Lori Love Literacy Podcast are not necessarily the opinions of Great Minds PBC or its employees.

Lori:

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