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[Listen Again] Placing Text at the Center of the ELA Classroom (Updated)

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Episode 37 

The article Placing Text at the Center of the Standards-Aligned ELA Classroom is a must-read — before or after you listen to this episode!

Meredith Liben and Sue Pimentel join us to unpack the true intentions behind the Common Core State Standards and how they’ve sometimes been misinterpreted in practice. They share what they’ve observed in classrooms and schools — both when high-quality instructional materials (HQIM) are in place and when they’re not.

We also ask them some tough (and important!) questions:

  • What does this mean for assessment, especially “data-driven” instruction?
  • What are better ways to assess and track student progress?

Meredith and Sue are smart, funny, and incredibly relatable — you’ll love this conversation. It’s truly a must-listen episode!

📖 Read the article that inspired this episode:
 Placing Text at the Center of the Standards-Aligned ELA Classroom


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.

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Melissa :

Today we're re-releasing one of our all-time favorite episodes placing text at the center of the ELA classroom with Meredith Lieben and Sue Pimentel.

Lori:

We've refreshed it to make it even better. It's such an important conversation for anyone thinking about how to center instruction on rich, meaningful texts.

Melissa :

We loved revisiting it, and we think you will too.

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 everyone, welcome to Melissa and Lori Love Literacy. We are super pumped for today's guests. They are true literacy icons, and we are so excited to talk to them. Melissa, how pumped up are you? Yeah, so excited.

Melissa :

So we we, I guess it was David Liebin, somewhere in the middle of that podcast. I had asked him a question about assessment, and we were talking about standards, and he was like, you guys need to read this text at the center report. And you know, eventually I finally did, and then I became really obsessed with it and shared it with everybody that I possibly can. So I'm really excited to talk to Meredith Lieben and Sue Pimentel today, who wrote that about what's in there and a bunch of other stuff. So I'm really excited. So welcome to the podcast, gals. How are you doing? Sue, can you tell a little bit about yourself?

Sue Pimentel:

Well, I think probably for this conversation, one of the most important things to say is that I led the development of the Common Core State Standards in English language arts and literacy. Um, since that time, I've been um with student achievement partners. Um uh I'm called a founding partner. So worked very closely with Meredith and David and the whole team on uh figuring out ways to implement the standards um in ways that that that both that teachers can do and that teachers can learn what they need to learn.

Meredith Liben:

So I I am most I have taught in all kinds of different settings. I taught uh 19 years in East Harlem and Harlem and had the privilege of starting the school with David where we learned a lot of what we know about reading. Um, returned back to Vermont, and my mom was getting extremely old. Um luckily she lived to be very more than extremely old, so I got to hang out with her a while at the end of her life. But I then taught in um career and tech ed centers in Vermont. So I think of myself as a middle school teacher, and I did for 12 years, but I actually 13 other years were either high school or elementary. So um I've run the spectrum. I I I feel like I inhabit teachers' point of view, um, and then had the privilege of helping support uh mostly the reading standards uh for the common core. And ever since then have been obsessed with what do they really mean, what are they at their core, how can they be used to promote equity and come alive for all for all students so they can realize the promise of them. And I guess I'm a spirit of the law kind of person always. And I worry about sometimes uh the letter of the law misinterpretations of the standards that where they're used more as a hammer than uh than an inspiration.

Melissa :

So Naredith, I think you actually already started where I wanted to start the conversation, um, which is around standards. So, you know, the common core standards, they've they've been around a while now, but um, you know, they I think what we're gonna talk about with you all, like who had been in it from the the development of them, you know, what is what what are they really about, especially the ELA standards? Um, and how are they, how do you see them kind of playing out, which is sometimes maybe different than what was intended behind them? Um so that's where I wanted to start the conversation.

Sue Pimentel:

So one of the big challenges when you're writing standards, and here we were writing standards for English language arts literacy, is that you you you start to pull things apart, right? You pull reading apart into some component parts, you pull writing apart, you pull um speaking and listening apart and language apart. So, and I know all teachers know you never just teach reading as a silo, right? You don't you you can't teach reading. I mean, either students have to talk to you about them or talk to each other about them, or they have to write about them. Um, and so there is this place where what happens with standards is that they get so pulled apart and teachers think, or or administrators, I dare say, think you gotta like check things off. The whole point of the of the standards is to knit them back together and um and and to make um proficient readers and and and if I could say um for teachers out there or for administrators who may be listening, um, to really pay attention to the shifts because it's the shifts, it's not that don't pay attention to the standards, there's something to pay attention because there's a progression that happens. But it really is about the text students are reading, and then are they talking about and are they are they able to pull evidence out? Um, and are they able to learn and and understand what it is they're reading? Because that's that's how their brains grow and that's what's exciting to them. So I think there's this place where we got into sort of a checklist mentality. Maybe that came from you know how interims report out, I don't know. But that isn't what makes good instruction, and it isn't what is interesting to students.

Meredith Liben:

And for me, I I think I'm obsessed with the um the interweave that I always think of this of uh English language arts and then the names, you know, the names that the standards assign to those annual year-end targets, which is what standards name. Um, they don't name, they're not an action plan, they're they're end-of-year targets at every grade. Um, so the action plan for me is is a constant interweaving of speaking, listening, reading, and writing in service of deepening understanding, creating passion, understanding who you are as a human, understanding your place in the world, understanding the world, understanding how to change the world, which we badly need right now, brains who are confident they can they can grow up and do better than what we're giving them. Um, so it's that interweave. A dynamic classroom and a supportive classroom has has students talking to each other, sharing revelations, pushing each other's thinking. And I think what's what I would love for people to understand is how how human the standards are when they're taken as a whole that way. They we all process orally. We rehearse when we have something hard, a hard conversation to have, we tend to go to a trusted source and say, can you hear me before I before I do this, or will you read this before I send it to make sure it's not um misunderstood and that I'm clear? That's what that's what our classroom should be recreating is the actual deeply human um elements of using language. And those things will help students who come in from another language base who are mastering English too, they can understand and process with their peers and and and get better. And then those things carry into reading and and obviously written expressions. So so for me, it's it's about creating the holistic promise of using language and creating people who can use it nimbly in all its different facets. So Sue's right about the the teasing apart because they have to be codified, and then I get the pressure on assessment creators to itemize them, but that isn't the way they're taught, that isn't the way they're learned, and that's not the way they're exercised.

Sue Pimentel:

Could I also just add, I think sometimes uh for for not necessarily teachers, but for administrators and others think that uh the ELA standards should be like the math standards, which is like this you build on this and then you build on, you know, you learn this, and you learn how to add, and then you learn how to subtract, and then you learn how to multiply, and then you learn. That is not this. If you look at the um at the standards, they're every year, you know, you're reading, you're reading more at complex text. You are drawing evidence, you're getting more sophisticated in your ability to draw evidence from text. You're learning more so you can read, read more, and do more. And if you look at the the standards, I think one thing that we uh one thing we did right in the standards. If you look at the standards, text appears in the reading standards, also appears in the writing standards. You're writing about what you read. It also appears in the speaking and listening standards, which is so you're talking about just what Meredith was saying. You're talking about what you're reading. Vocabulary, the importance of learning vocabulary, understanding vocabulary, which you get most from reading your volume of reading, certainly, but that appears in in all of the domains. And pulling evidence from text, being able to, as Meredith said so beautifully, being able to share what you're learning uh with what with one another, again, yes, it's in the reading standards, appears in the writing standards, appears in the speaking and listening standards. So it's really important then to think about these coming together as sort of an interweave in the classroom.

Lori:

Yeah, that's a great point about the the ELA versus the math standards. I think there's kind of two things that are important with with the misconception. So one is that ELA and math are different, and folks try to lump them together, like, oh well, we'll just repeat the skill of defining the central method because then they'll be able to do that just like you do in math when you repeat the skill of whatever repeated additions. Um but then ELA is just different in and of itself because it's so interwoven. Um and and I think that we forget that we can't isolate like we can from math. So like they're different and we can isolate. So like it's kind of like a dual understanding. Am I am I hearing y'all correctly?

Sue Pimentel:

Absolutely. And Meredith, you should speak to foundational skills because the one exception is, of course, foundational skills. Meredith.

Meredith Liben:

Yeah, so foundational skills are somewhat akin in the common core or any probably any set of standards because they are the skills are named, the way the math standards name the skills, and and therefore the progression is actually um, you know, it does staircase itself. So foundational skills also name what the ingredients are of learning how to decode and then how to get to automatic word recognition, and then how to do all that fluently. And those need to be mastered at some point, you know, ideally early on, so that the years and years and years of school students can access text for themselves. But I think what's also important is yes, they work that way, but they work in concert with the with the reading comprehension side, the ELA side of the standards. So even in kindergarten, it's mostly through oral comprehension, AUR, AL comprehension, read aloud, students get to grapple with complex ideas. And read aloud is an under another underutilized weapon if if or tool better. Um, if students haven't aren't reading at grade level for whatever reason, um there's been a mismatch of of uh instruction to their needs. So the ELA standards continue, they are always rich and complex, they are always at interplay, but foundational skills need to be solidified at some point, and they are much more linear. And it's never too late to do that work, it gets harder as students get older, but you don't withhold the good rich stuff from older students or five-year-olds. They get it through their ears, if no other means, or through that rich discussion and discourse. Because learning to read is a completely different part of the of the brain that's been co-opted far back in our human history, um, to decode and recognize an alphabetic uh system. That doesn't mean your brain can't think about really interesting ideas and contribute to rich discussions and and uh solve problems and do everything else that a thinking brain can do, even if you're slower at decoding.

Lori:

Yeah, that oral comprehension, when does it when does it level out? I think I'll I'll take a guess. I I have um this image that just like is in my brain that I'm not sure that I can find ever again, but I saw it one time and it was this beautiful progression. I think it's like 12, 12 years old, third, like sixth grade-ish.

Meredith Liben:

Yeah, I think I I this is where I would run get David to lock in the research. But I I have read fifth grade, but I have also read during middle school is when it sort of the uh trajectories cross. Yeah, yeah. Um and I it probably the reason it's probably a little slippery is because it's not there's not one human lock in locked in group, you know, every brain is different. So I betcha it it happens at different times for different students. Yeah. Um yeah, but access to text is paramount at all points. Everybody has that is a right um to have access to rich complex text. Yeah. And and I I think it's not baked into standards that wouldn't have even been appropriate, but I think it's not a do-over, but it certainly um, you know, text at the center is so uh um, you know, it's it's unnamed, but I think we really need we're to we're at a moment now, a long overdue of reckoning, you know, whose story is being told, whose history are we exploring? So that text also has to have to be broadened out and tell everybody's story and everybody's history and teach um, you know, and and reach people um and reflect people's reality that we have constantly underrepresented in in our schools too. So I think right now Sue and I have been spending a ton of time, I hopefully everybody is thinking about how to expand our definition of of what rich and complex text is.

Lori:

Yeah, and I want to call out standard 10.

Sue Pimentel:

And that's what I that's what I wanted to say too, in uh any sort of a rewrite. I would pull standard 10 right up and right with with standard number one, which is pulling evidence from text. And what kind of text are you reading, these this content-rich complex text. And and and you know, I think um, you know, it's interesting you bring this up because so much, way too much of what we've done um in this country uh for decades and still doing, even with that complex text sitting there, is put students in level text and put students in below uh grade level text. Um and there are some reasons for it, you know, it kind of feels like okay, it's your right, it's your right level. So of course we wouldn't do more. But it also feels incredibly uh un-American to me. Can I say that? Because what we because what we decided early on, and then we keep, we we we don't let you, we don't let kids get out of it. Like some kids are strong readers, you know, really easy, comms easy, some kids, but many of us had to build our reading muscles like for a while before we could catch up. Well, the way you build your reading muscles is to be faced with content-rich complex text, you mean grade appropriate, which is defined, and and then get some support with it. And the fact is that there is study after study after study after study that shows that even students who are still building their muscles on reading, and so you might give them a might uh assign them a below grade level reading level if they were just reading on their own. I want to say a little more about that in a second, too, because it uh drives me wild. But but it it says in those studies that when students are given content-rich complex text, they they they their their vocabulary grows, their knowledge grows, their fluency grows, their uh their their the if if you care about assessments, they do better on assessments. That's with students who actually came in quote unquote below level. And so what are we doing? Uh what are we doing to them? Because the fact of the matter is, if you look at the what students get when they read these below level texts, and they're getting that not just in one week, but week after week after week after week after week. What happens to them? You can't expect them to learn more than we're teaching them and allowing them to do so. I feel like this has just gotten stuck here um in in this country, and I don't know how to unstick people.

Melissa :

Yeah. Yeah. And I would say, like here in Baltimore, I mean, we've, you know, we adopted Common Core right away. We were doing PDs, we we created our own curriculum, now we adopted in wisdom. I feel like you know, we've done, we've taken really good steps in the right direction. And even when I was in the classroom and and even now, I still see that um, you know, it it's still so driven by this standards and standards mastery, and the text still gets lost, even when we have good texts. Yeah, mastery and isolation, yeah. Yeah, and it's like the teachers are planning around the standards, and the objective is written for the day around the standards, and the check for assessment each day is around the standard, and the assessments at the end are for the standard, and the whole text just gets lost in that. I pulled out a quote from you guys that said, the standards themselves are not the goal of daily instruction. Understanding the texts encountered and being able to express that understanding is, um, and that just really spoke to me because I feel like that's that's what I feel like is still getting lost, even when we take all these steps in the right direction.

Lori:

Yeah. Well, Melissa, and I think too, what I want to say just for listeners to kind of keep in mind too is that Baltimore is in a second year of a high quality curriculum adoption where they are using, you know, complex text at the center of their teaching. And that like mindset shift is still, we're still working on, right? And and so it takes a lot of time and effort and energy to undo what decades have done.

Melissa :

Um and and also like still see, Lori, where they'll say, okay, well, they can't read this text easily, so I'll find an easier one. And as long as they can master this standard with this easier text, then we can move on and we're good to go. Yeah. And that's what worries me. And I'm not saying every every teacher does that. I'm not blaming teachers, but I think it is something we still see. Yeah.

Sue Pimentel:

Right. And and and the fact is that, you know, both of you are raising, and emeritus said this as well around the text, is is that the re we don't read a text to check on our skills and our comprehension strategies. Like boring and not useful, right? We read, and this is one thing that I think got lost in in sort of decades of schooling, too, is that we thought that it was all about the skill or it was all about the comprehension strategy, which I know has research behind it, but not like ad nauseum. The point of reading is to learn from it. And then when you learn from one text on a particular topic, then you can read another one and you you add to your knowledge on that. That's why we read. And by the way, that is what is interesting to students is to hear what an author's saying. You might agree, you might disagree, you might be learning more. It might conflict with what you heard before or knew before, but that's what's interesting. It's not uh the end, and I just want to say for everybody out there that reading standards two through nine are not meant to be taken in isolation. We never meant that. Remember, I said I would start with standard one and standard ten. Uh, that two through nine are ways to unpack a text. You don't use all of them all the time. It depends on if structure is really apparent in the in the text or if there's an argument that's going on that the author's making a claim. That's when you pull them in. So it's really thinking about how to use those strategically, not to learn how to do the skill, but to learn how to unpack the knowledge that's in the text. My vision of the standards is is a ladder.

Meredith Liben:

So the polls, the the strength of it comes from one on one pole, standard one, the evidence standard, and then the other pole is standard 10, the text complexity standard. Those two rise up in complexity from K to 12. They are they are clearly get more sophisticated, you know, what you're what you read is gets more challenging and rich and complex. And then what you're expected to do with it, the evidence you're you're uh supposed to extract and then deploy in speaking or writing gets more demanding. Two through nine are the runs. They walk, they you stand on them while you're accessing evidence in text. They are they they serve those master polls, and they do they do increase in complexity in the when you read them, they're a little bit more demanding. But essentially, standard four is always dealing with vocabulary. That vocabulary is getting more challenging and interesting because of the text complexity, not because standard four in fourth grade is radically different than standard four in eighth. There is nuance, yes, uh, but it's the complexity of the text that leads the demand. So if you don't concentrate on the text itself and the complexity it's offering you to read and understand and learn from, you are the whole ladder collapses because you're trying to make the rungs into the whole into the whole point. And they're just where you stand for the moment, so you can climb higher on text complexity. So I do like that ladder metaphor. Um yeah, it it it uh it sometimes this whole conversation reminds me of my favorite Billy Collins poem. Um, is I can't, I always I think it may be called How to Read a Poem, but he talks about tying what we do to poems. We tie them to chairs and beat them to make them tell us reveal their meaning instead of reading them and living within them. And it's a gorgeous little poem. Um, but it but that it feels like we do that to text. We beat them to make them reveal their structure, whether their structure is a big deal or not. And we we get kids stuck on structure because it's structure weak. So everything we or author's purpose weak. And instead of saying we're reading an editorial, it really matters what the author's purpose is. So let's look at that. And you know, the text demands what attention we pay to it, not the inverse. We can't beat the text to make it squish into whatever standard we wanna want, we want to be uh talking about. And that's just it's it is horribly deadening. It's really it's no wonder to me that that most children, you know, most students in America don't like to read. Either they haven't been taught because they've been stuck in level text, or they've been taught with complex text, but they've been they've been like just asked to think about main purpose or making a prediction instead of understanding the actual what that writer, you know, left his heart on the page to reveal to us. We don't get to, we don't show that to kids enough. So let them play with it and and revel in it.

Lori:

Yeah. I remember um when I taught second grade pre-common core, I remember distinctly, like you said, that week was cause and effect week, and I had it up on my bulletin board. And you know, every we've we were we were looking for cause and effect in all the texts that we were reading. And I remember planning for the next day and thinking, I don't know if that don't cause an effect. What the hell am I gonna do now? Like, I was like, oh my god, like I'm like frantically searching for and then I was like, this is so stupid. I'm just going to teach them like a good text. And I mean, but I didn't have a my quality curriculum, you know. Um, and I I was doing it on my own, but I remember that moment standing there being like, I've run out of text, and it was like my second year teaching, right? Like, what and and I'm supposed to be teaching cause and effect, and now I don't have any more cause and effect texts because we've read them all.

Melissa :

What what do I do? I'm wondering you guys talked in the in the report about um teachers spending a majority of their time planning with the text. Um I thought that was interesting. And I think, you know, if if there is no curriculum, I think like Lori, right, you'd have to spend time with your text to see is it cause and effect or is it not? Um and I'm wondering if that also applies if we have a high-quality curriculum, if you still would recommend the majority of the teachers planning time being spent with the text and how that would look.

Sue Pimentel:

Absolutely. Um one of the beauties of uh a knowledge-based curriculum, I would say, is that um you really um there is an attention um to the text. Um, if you don't have that, as you were saying, Lori, or if you're in one that sort of moves through the standards and says today you're doing structure and cause and effect, or this week and next week you're doing author's purpose, is that um you don't you what what happens is that you stop focusing on the text itself and what it means and what it will mean to the students who will be reading it, what they will be learning, what they will be learning from the text. So there is no doubt that also, you know, you have these rich texts and they they talk about, they show you what to focus on. But then as the as the teacher in the classroom, it's right there with your students, right? So it depends on like what are your students' reactions to this, what are your students' questions about this, what do I want to um ask more about? Because either it's really interesting to my students or it's a place where they're grappling, they're not quite sure they get it or or or that. So really um, and being able, I think one thing that we can do for students is when we revel in the text, when we model, and I think there's actually research about this, Meredith. When we model that, when we're excited about reading this text, um, when we really know the text, then it it models that for students about there's something here that you're gonna really in one way or another enjoy. You're gonna enjoy the challenge of it or you're gonna enjoy the ideas in it. There's something here for you because there was something here for me in it. So um, you know, the one good thing about the like a wit in wisdom is that it it helps to unpack what's in the text for the teach students and have to do it all by himself or herself, which is uh which is a tall task, but still to really read it and understand it so that you can, when you're then faced with your students, you can get what they're getting. Can I also just say one thing? Because the flip side of like a wit in wisdom or education or some of these others is a leveled text uh system where you've got your students reading all you've got a class of 30 kids and they could be reading 30 different books. I mean, maybe not that much, maybe it's 15, maybe 10. But imagine if you do not, you've not read those texts. Um because that's a lot. That's like a lot of text to read. Um then and then you want to have a conversation with with students about that text, even if it's in a small group or a small reading group. Well my goodness, like what what you don't you don't know anything about the text. So then you ask these sort of generic, what did you think? What's the no idea what the man about what's the man of that? So I mean, I mean so the preparation when you're not dealing with one of the other ones that sort of center around an anchor text and then have other text around is is like the the the load that teachers have to carry there is is immense. And I fear most don't have time to do it.

Lori:

I was thinking like this is really the first time at least, you know, I've I've been in education for 17 years. This is the the first time that I've been here, and teachers are being asked to do so much preparation work beforehand that's really just intellectual, challenging, different work than what we've known before. And then coming into the classroom and saying, okay, now I'm gonna let the students do the work in this space, right? Because I've prepared, I know the stuff so deeply. But it's so different than that level text model. Because when you did the level text, if you really were becoming an expert on the strategy, which I still don't know what that means, and I'll be honest about that. Like I don't know what it means to be an expert on cause and effect. Um do I.

Meredith Liben:

Yeah, it is hard work, but it's also really, I mean, it is what a lot of teachers went into teaching. You know, they love literature, they love reading, they love thinking about books. So it does invite that again. I think the other crazy irony here is that this approach, the intellectual preparation and then turning it over to your students, so it's truly a student-centered and student-driven uh learning with teachers facilitating is actually the goal and dream of a uh reader's workshop approach, right? Putting students at the center and teachers being the coach, the guide. This actually holds the promise of that in a level I've never, I know they must exist. They they just must, with teachers tooling themselves to do so. Because I'm also readers and writers workshop trained, and I have as much energy as anybody. I've almost missed. I could not in this problem with 70 students a day. I could not pull it off. You know, having 70 different um personal biographies of you know of whatever, you know, bio whoever they were writing about, I could not do enough money lessons. I was running as hard as I could. So I never, it wasn't ever a unified, rich, student-driven classroom. It was always me staggering home at the end of the night trying to tear my hair off. And so, but but this actually holds the promise of centering text and then helping the students access that text is kind of the promise of truly workshopping a text together, which it was the sort of goal, you know, the the love of literature, love of learning, love of reading goals behind um the workshop approach. But it's just it it hasn't been successfully actualized. And it also defaulted the standards and and teaching skills in in a really pernicious way, I feel like. So yeah, we all have to unlearn it, and hardly anybody is helping show us the way. It's all a lot of people doing a lot of self-study, and that that's why I really appreciate chances like this, where you all are talking about this week after week after week. So I also it's hard. It's hard work.

Sue Pimentel:

Meredith, sorry, I didn't need to interrupt you. So and Meredith, you talk a lot about this about how learning is social, but there's this this place where you've I've heard teachers talk about, okay, I'm just gonna try this. I'm just like gonna, like, I'm not gonna, I'm gonna leave the level text thing behind and I'm just gonna teach an anchor text. And realizing that all students in the class, whether they were the strongest readers or, you know, they're still building their muscles and you know, that that that assignment of a of a level uh reader thing sort of hangs up, they all had something to um uh to share. They all helped one another with their perspectives, which was interesting for teachers to see that it wasn't just based on what we would call, you know, a student's um reading ability. Um, and I think that's so important too, um, as we think about when we get kids into twos and threes, they don't get the, they don't get the sense of of the of the class and the richness of what those discussions can be. Um, because they aren't hearing from from from their peers that my chem attack's completely differently than than than another student. So I think that's another thing that gets lost when we start to section kids off the way we do.

Melissa :

So I want to jump into a little deeper into something we brought up a couple times, but around assessment. Um, so another, you know, habit or not habit, but things we learned in grad school and things that are good good strategies is data-driven instruction. Um, and I remember my first year teaching uh where you know I was I had to track who who mastered which standard. And um I from the first year was like, this doesn't feel right. Like I don't know that they've mastered, like, how do you master some of these things? Didn't seem right. Like, I don't know. Um, but that's what we were doing, and I think we're still doing. Um, so just wanted to get, you know, you guys talked about you know, not isolating the standards and all of this rich, really rich, like discussion-based and hearing from students, but how do we marry that with the push for data-driven instruction that often falls into isolating standards and assessing them and maybe reteaching them?

Lori:

In isolation.

Sue Pimentel:

We have to stop that. Stop it. Like, I understand the the desire to and the need for teachers to check and have and have good understanding about where their students are or are not. It's complicated in uh reading because it's you when a student takes a test and and they answer a question, you there's a there's a hundred reasons why they might be getting it wrong. Um, or maybe not that many, but at least about 20, right? Like they're not, they can't, they can't, their their fluency um with this particular topic is not good. So that's happening. The vocabulary then they're having a problem with they've never read about this stuff. There's so many different things. It probably the last thing it is is because they didn't know how to identify the structure or they didn't know how to identify the author's purpose. That's likely not happening because when you're reading the text, all of this stuff is coming together. Now, I can understand you know, if there are such things and maybe they're getting to be built here. I know Louisiana's done a little bit of this, I know some of that, where you actually have an interim that matches the curriculum. So um, so what what you've actually been studying and what you've been learning and what you've been reading about actually then gets reflected on whatever test there is. But we are way behind. Way behind in our assessments. We are still at that, you know. Did they get this is an item that tests, you know, central idea. Did you get it right? Did you get it wrong? How'd you do it? I do think there is new new conversations coming up about um one, checking a student's fluency to begin with on this grade level text, um, and seeing if fluency is an issue or if there's some other foundational skill issue going on for the student if you find fluency is not good. Um, and then thinking about ways to bundle the standards, you know, we think about the qualitative characteristics of text, you know, as you're thinking about the complexity of the text, and thinking about ways to bundle them and how are students doing in those bundling. Also thinking about, you know, we hear that, you know, um usually literature is easier for students than informational text. So kind of checking that a little bit too, if you if you have enough um uh text, the problem is that in a lot of what is out there now in interims, a child's getting like two different texts. That's it. And by the way, if they don't know anything about that subject area, um uh then then they they may do badly, but not because they can't read. It's because because they don't know anything. This topic is totally new to them. So they're of course they're going to struggle through it more, and we want them to be able to struggle through it more. So we have a long way to go to make any interim worthwhile and worth the money, by the way. Worth the money and time and time, and then ask teachers to then look at what how the results come in, where they then feel, I don't know, under pressure, forced to, oh, this is this is the skill, you know, a lot of your kids in the class never got. Now, I could see, you know, if you're seeing something consistent and as you check with your kids on, if you're allowed to take a look at, you know, how they did and ask them questions about it. But I mean, there could be a place where you could go, oh gosh, you know, a lot of the texts we've I've used over the year haven't done as much on structure. So that's, you know, so so okay, so we can, you know, now take, you know, take take some texts and take a look at that, you know, that that that are cohesive in some some fashion. So I'm not saying that one would never look at that, but but the way we do it now, no.

Melissa :

Yeah, Nate, when you were talking about that too, I think it's interesting. I don't know that I've never seen, but maybe it has happened, where um teachers are looking at the texts for assessments. You know, we look so I think we skip right to data reports and how did they get it, yes or no, but we never look at that like, well, what was in the text that they read?

Sue Pimentel:

And that needs to be done. Assessment folks have to be anyway, merit go, but assessment folks have to be able to those out so you can actually see merit. Yeah.

Meredith Liben:

I I remember reading years ago in France, you know, high-stakes tests, you know, we have nothing on European high-stakes tests at System Winno kids. Um, but but in France, the national test is published in the newspaper the next day, and families routinely sit down and like go over it with their kids and talk about like, oh, how did you do? What do you think? And then it's the the texts are released every year. So we need models where the where not only the items, but the passages are released every year. And the banks are so robust that that doesn't matter. They, you know, and um there are there are solutions to to how to make those permissions affordable. Um, the assessment companies know what those solutions are, and and some of them have have have gotten them. I also think the other huge problem, and who definitely uh pointed toward this too, is you the assessments are not yet reporting why your student got an item wrong. There are so many reasons why, really low down on the list is that they don't understand the concept of main idea. We're pretty much hardwired to understand the point, the main idea. That is very rarely why a student got a main idea question wrong or whatever. And we are hardwired to make inferences. If so, it is a it is a is there's something else breaking down, and the interims and the summatives, none of them tell us what is breaking down for that student in that moment. Is it vocabulary? Is it a decoding problem? Are they exhausted because they're not fluent enough to sort of easily keep up with this as a sixth passage? Now, again, teachers with Herculean effort could do that for themselves and know their students to that degree. But what if the company started to provide that kind of information? Or we used AI, we used personalized learning to actually interrogate the kid and say, what were you thinking when you did this? Like, where did your thinking pattern go wrong? And those were the really interesting conversations we were having. Non-defensive, non-judgmental, just like I'm really interested in your thinking. This you didn't you got you got the answer wrong, but I'm really curious what you were thinking or what happened when you chose this other alternative answer. Those are the assessments worth taking and worth spending time on. And you would actually learn actionable and helpful data to have data parties around if you had that kind of conversation. So right now it feels like incredible misallocation of resources, of teacher time and energy, student and parent angst, and money. And money is so scarce, and it's gonna be scarce for a while in schools with the holes we've dug ourselves into. So why? Why are we doing these things to ourselves and to most importantly to our students?

Lori:

Yeah, and I'm I'm I'm assuming that there's um not an assessment out there right now that that performs these magical powers of being able to give the diagnosis. Um, but I always thought when I was a teacher that listening to a student read and was like the most intimate experience you could have. Because even your best readers, you know, um, who could attack any text when you gave them a more challenging text, you could hear where their miscues were going to be and and where they struggled or where they really excelled. Um and so, you know, I I feel like that old practice is still really relevant in that.

Sue Pimentel:

Absolutely, absolutely. And that's why, and you know, there are, you know, um, so I love the idea of a teacher listening to each one of her students um doing that and and you know, in sort of in a pri in in some private time. There's also a lot of AI now that where this can happen. And and by the way, the fluency piece, sometimes we think, oh, it stops at third grade or it stops at fifth grade, like it doesn't stop. The texts get more complex. And so to be able to check on, as you've just suggested, Lori, the the miscues that might be happening. Um, the the fact that after the child gets done uh plowing through the words, um do they know they have any sense about what they just read about? I mean, just some simple like questions. And there's a lot that you we can take off of teachers, but it doesn't take away from a teacher listening to a student. I don't want to say that, but there are things that assessments can do where a child can can read into a um uh you know into a computer and and and and the teacher can get some really good information there. Um and they're getting, I think it's getting better and better, by the way. I think the technology is getting better and better on that.

Meredith Liben:

So what if you automate everything but prosody? Um, you know, actual expressiveness, and there's good reciprocity corresponds tightly to comprehension. You can't you can't say it with the proper expression if you didn't understand what you were reading. So talk about a cheaper alternative and and less tax and to reading comprehension tests. Yes. Um, just listening to a student's prosody and querying them about what they think they read. So that's the comprehension side of the house that we're talking about. Again, the exception is foundational skills. We do need, not on a quarterly basis, on a weekly basis, to know what our students know about learning how to read so that we can intervene at the right grain size. So that's where grain size matters and timeliness matters. And so I don't have solutions, but I do know that foundational skills are the exception to this, that we should we can't stop assessing and teachers knowing and then reacting to what they know and making sure they're providing students with missing pieces so that the students do learn to read and have the access, you know, to all these riches we've been talking about. So that's I do want to draw a very bright line between foundational skills assessing and reading comprehension assessing, or which is what it should be. It shouldn't be standards assessment, it should be assessing reading comprehension. And the standards are named therefore, it would all come together uh once we figure it out.

Sue Pimentel:

We've done a lot of talking about content-rich complex text. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. The one thing that that is nuanced and sometimes hard to keep both in our hand, uh you know, both as we're talking about it, is students' volume of reading on a topic that can be in a range of complexities. So it isn't like you have to stock your classroom or only allow your students to read like a grade level complex text. If it's an area they don't know a lot about um or they're really interested in it, they can start with with um with easier text and move and and move on up, if you will, on that particular topic. It's a hard thing to keep. It's different than than leveling students and saying this is you're you're relegated to this level. That's where you are, and you can't get out of it. It's like a prison, you can't do that. It's different than saying, no, and to build your knowledge, like there are some things like, uh, oh my goodness, give me a give me something on physics. And uh, you know, I'm like, I gotta go back to like the basics before I can understand the black hole and what they're trying to tell us they just found out. I am, but I, you know, I'm a really good reader, but those I don't know as much about that topic as maybe I should or whatever. But I so I've got to start with much easier text and then move on up. So I I want to say that there's this volume of text reading that can be at many levels, and then there is your complex, content-rich uh, you know, complex text, which sort of anchors maybe your other reading in that um in that. I just want to make that point because sometimes people come away thinking, oh my gosh, it's complex or nothing.

Lori:

Yeah. I also want to want to think that when you're talking about text, um I'm uh I think it's important to recognize it doesn't just have to be a book or an article. I mean, if I'm starting to learn about something, you know, I've I've made I'm making something like a dish I've never made before for dinner, I might watch a video or or listen to a podcast on whatever it might be. Um and again, that uh visual comprehension, that or that uh auditory comprehension, I'm able to take that in in a different way than I would text. So it's just multiple access points. So, you know, just keeping that multimedia in the spirit of text is important to consider in this conversation as well. But yeah, I mean, how how appropriate and how impactful for our secondary student, for all students, but especially those secondary learners who could really drive and make choices in their learning in that way with the with the the choice in how they're building their knowledge. Like that would be so empowering and impactful.

Sue Pimentel:

Amen. Bravo, bravo on the visuals, because um yeah that is a wonderful uh way to give access uh immediately both to all students, but as certainly our English learners as well, to be able to see it and hear it is different than seeing the words on the page. So um, and it can drive interest as as well. And then you feel like you have a modicum of of understanding to be able to dig in uh in in other ways. So bravo on that.

Lori:

I like to think about it when how when I put my first piece of IKEA furniture together, the little packet that they gave me really was not helpful. The picture packet. So I had to go to YouTube and watch that video a hundred times. And four hours later, I was finally a uh master reader.

Meredith Liben:

That is a good analogy.

Melissa :

Well, thank you both. I'm so excited that we got to talk to you, and I I hope we can have you back at some point because I feel like we could have many more conversations.

Lori:

Before we wrap up, we want to do something a little bit different. We want to take a second to reflect back on this powerful episode because even listening just now, so many years later, there are ideas in here that really stick with us and continue to shape how Melissa and I think about teaching. Melissa, I know you want to chime in on that because this is one of your favorite episodes of all time.

Melissa :

Yeah, I was thinking about that, Lori, because I, you know, it's really rare when you can like pinpoint a conversation or an article that really did totally shift the way you think about anything about really anything in life, but especially around teaching and education. And this was 100% one of them for me. Um, and so, you know, listening back to the episode, there are a lot of like aha moments, places where I was like, yep, this is so important. But the biggest one for me was that it really reframed Sue and Meredith really helped me reframe the way I think about standards. And I was always a little uncomfortable with the way that I was teaching standards because we were just covering standards, it felt like, or mastering standards. And it never felt quite right, especially at I was at the secondary level teaching English. So it was a lot about reading comprehension. And I was like, I don't know, can they master this? It didn't, it just never stuck the you know, to us like this isn't the way it should be. So hearing from them, especially, I mean, Sue was one of the actual writers of the Common Core standards, and Meredith supported that. And so to hear from them that like I was not crazy, that that's that's not the way to use these standards to really like you know, to shift from that idea of the standards first, trying to master them, to the text. And that's where I, you know, it really helped me think, oh my gosh, yes, like we need to help students engage with texts, read texts, and most importantly learn from the texts they're reading.

Lori:

Yeah, completely. I totally agree with that. I remember when we were in Baltimore City doing a lot of because the standards had just come out at that point, like, you know, been released at that point. And we were doing a lot of professional developments where we were unpacking the standards and seeing what they meant, which is really important work. Like I don't want to undermine that. But at the same time, it's not about checking the standard off as a to-do list or a able to-do. It's about looking at the text and seeing what does the text demand, and then bringing in the standard goals to support the text. And that's where I think we got it wrong, right? Standards one and 10 were actually really aimed to help us think that way. But what we did was we misinterpreted those, um, I would say, as a whole. And so hearing Sue and hearing Meredith talk about this idea of shifting to focus on the text, it really reframed for me to that idea of like, we don't do things in isolation, right? Like we're not doing a strategy, we're not finding the main idea and then checking that off as, okay, yep, Lori can now find the main idea for the rest of her life. Because I will tell you what, I just read a text, uh actually it was a blog um on lithium EV batteries that came across, came across my daughter's homework. And it was when I tell you this was for an expert, not definitely not an eighth grader, but it was for an expert, definitely not a mom who was a teacher. It was insane. And if you asked me to tell you the main idea of it, I would stutter and stammer and not be able to. So I definitely can't still check that box of main idea. But what I can do is center on the text and try to make sense of it, right? And little by little then chip away at the main idea as I read more and learn more and make sense of it. Um, but you know, the the point of reading, kind of like what I'm getting at, is to learn from what we're reading. So that's that was my big takeaway in this episode too.

Melissa :

Yeah, no, I love that. That reminds me of that line that they say is like, we don't, we don't read to check on our skills and strategies. We read to learn from whatever it is we're reading, whether it's batteries or doesn't matter, whatever it is where we read to learn. And that's what we want kids to be able to do too, not to check on can they find the main idea, right? First of all, that's boring. And second, it's not the real purpose of reading. And it does bring me back to you know, so many times that was the way, I mean, that's the way I was taught to teach was with those skills, strategies, standards first. Yeah. You know, and so it really that's where this like it just was a huge shift for me. They're still there. You're still gonna ask students to find main the main idea at times when it's helpful for them to understand the text, right? When it's when it helps them to make sense and learn from what they're reading.

Lori:

Yeah, that makes sense. I think centering the instruction on the text is so important because we know it's not about checking the skills or strategies, but the thing that we haven't talked about yet in this back and forth between you and I is that building knowledge is really important in centering the text. And if we go back to that example about the lithium EV batteries, which now I know about this week, um, I still don't know enough to be able to have a good understanding moving forward, right? Like I was kind of just like a, oh, all right, a task. Let me just check the box. But if I were going to teach that text, I would have a lot of knowledge-building texts leading up to it that were scaffolding that information because there was a lot of vocabulary, a lot of ideas that were really like really abstract for, especially for kids, but definitely still for me as an adult. Like I had to keep revisiting, like, okay, this is what this is. Oh, an Alithium EV battery is made of these components. Like, oh, okay, like I haven't heard cobalt since chemistry in high school now. Here we go, we're coming back. Um, but really we have to think about the knowledge that we're building through the text itself and where we're going with that, right? So breaking that text down into its different components. And it's I think it's actually so much fun as an educator. Like to me, that's really fun work. And even if a curriculum is given to us, you know, I think you can still do that work in a way that makes it fun and meaningful for your students, right? You can still share a story, you can still tell, you know, or show a video, whatever it might be to help our students get the knowledge that we want them to get and the vocabulary that we need them to get to understand the texts that we're putting in front of them.

Melissa :

Yeah. And you're making me think of interventions, right? Because it's like you sort of needed an intervention for that article. Totally did. Totally did. But the way you did it was like, okay, it's not about the main idea, right? We're not going to keep, you know, just going back and saying, okay, Lori, how do I help you find a main idea? Let me tell you how to show, I'll show you how to find a main idea. Like you weren't just going back to do that. You're like, okay, let me look at this text. What is it about this text that was difficult? The vocabulary, the knowledge, things that you needed support with to be able to make sense of that text so that you could then find the main idea. Right. So it really does re-reshape and reframe the way you think about interventions for comprehension as well as regular instruction too.

Lori:

Yeah. And I mean, that text was complex, um, no doubt about it. And, you know, I'm I was actually really still glad to see that text in front of my kid instead of a leveled text or like a just right text. Um, because we know that even having a little bit of a stretch text is still a good thing if we help our students access it, right? We can scaffold that. Um, and so I, you know, I know we in the episode Sue and Meredith talked about how like for decades we've been putting students in quote, those quote just right text or below grade level text. But our students need us to give them grade level texts. And so this conversation, um, the article placing text at the center, it reminds me of the power of grade level text that students need to challenge themselves with struggling through and then seeing themselves get through it and and working through that with the help and support of a teacher.

Melissa :

Yeah, that's such a good point because I think we often hear like, oh, well, they can't read that text. And it's like, yes, like like you said, that stretch text is exactly what they need, right? If we're just putting text in front of students over and over year after year, the text that they can already read, then we're not pushing them. And and yeah, it does make it a little bit tougher for sure, because you have to do that work of scaffolding and making sure that they can access those texts. It definitely does, and and making sure that they have the decoding ability and fluency to be able to read those texts too. Um, so it definitely makes it a little bit more of a challenge than just finding a text they can already read, but it is what is going to push them to make that progress that we want to see.

Lori:

Yeah, and we know that the payoff there is massive, right? That students are not only gaining knowledge and skills, but they're they're gaining how to interact with text. And I would say, you know, for people who might be thinking, well, I want kids to love reading. Well, I think first of all, we have to know how to read to love reading. But second of all, when we see ourselves struggle and do something that we didn't think we could do, or um work like build new knowledge, gain new content, that helps us love reading because then we'll be more equipped to read other things with different contexts, with different vocabulary, and even, you know, that are difficult. We're not going to shy away from them as much if we have that experience of doing something difficult and as opposed to having experiences where we're successful over and over and over again, which I mean kind of isn't real life, right? Yeah.

Melissa :

Absolutely. So yeah, like to summarize again, wrap it up. I think, like you said, real what's real life like, right? We read to be able to learn and we read to build our knowledge. Like that is the point of reading. So that's what we should be replicating in our classrooms. You know, everything that's happening in reading instruction should look like that. And we should not just be doing this skill acquisition, but really trying to center that making meaning of text, learning from text just like we do in real life. To stay connected with us, sign up for our email list at literacypodcast.com. Join our Facebook group, and follow us on Instagram and Twitter.

Lori:

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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.