EDVIEW360
Hosted by Pam Austin, these discussions will feature dialogues with experienced educators, inspiring thought leaders, social media influencers, and leading education innovators.
EDVIEW360
Connecting the Science of Reading to the Science of Learning
The “science of reading” often gets reduced to “phonics,” but there’s a lot of science that relates to reading comprehension as well.
If we look at typical comprehension instruction through the lens of cognitive science, it becomes clear that we’ve unintentionally made reading and writing much harder than they need to be by separating them from each other and from content-area instruction.
But cognitive science also tells us that a content-rich curriculum combined with explicit, manageable writing instruction can provide all the benefits of science-informed instruction and more. If we break down the artificial walls separating reading, writing, and learning, we can enable all students to reach their full potential.
Listeners will learn:
- Why we need to do more than “fix phonics” if we want all students to become fully literate
- How we’ve been making reading and writing harder than they need to be
- Why it’s not possible to apply principles grounded in cognitive science to typical comprehension instruction
- How a content-rich curriculum combined with explicit writing instruction can provide all the benefits of science-informed instruction—and more
Welcome to EdView 360.
Natalie Wexler:We need to recognize that reading, writing and content area learning are all connected. When you think about it, anything that we can understand when we read, anything we can express when we write, once we've gotten the foundational skills in place, draws on whatever we've been able to learn, and they are also ways of learning and acquiring and deepening knowledge. So this idea that we've got a reading block here and a writing block there and, if we're lucky, we get some social studies and science I think we really need to break down those silos, and what that means in practice is that every literacy teacher also needs to be a content teacher.
Narrator:You just heard from Natalie Wexler, respected author and literacy advocate. Natalie is our guest on the EdView 360 podcast.
Pam Austin:Hello, this is Pam Austin. Welcome back to the FU360 podcast series. We are so excited to have you with us today for our September Literacy Conversation. I'm conducting today's podcast from my native New Orleans, louisiana. Today's guest is someone whose voice has helped reshape how we think about literacy, learning and equity in education.
Pam Austin:Natalie Wexler is a nationally recognized education writer and advocate whose work bridges cognitive science in classroom practice with clarity and urgency. Oh man, that sounds so good. She's the author of Beyond the Science of Reading Connecting Literacy Instruction to the Science of Learning a powerful call to rethink how we teach reading comprehension. Her earlier book, the Knowledge Gap, exposed the hidden causes behind America's literacy struggles and sparked a national conversation about the role of background knowledge in education about the role of background knowledge in education. She also co-authored the Writing Revolution, a practical guide that's transformed writing instruction in schools across the country.
Pam Austin:Natalie has spoken to audiences across the US and internationally and she's the host of Reading Comprehension Revisited, the first season of the Knowledge Matters podcast, where she continues to elevate the voices of educators and researchers working to close that literacy gap. We're thrilled to have her here today to talk about how the connecting of the science of reading to the science of learning can unlock. Unlock is what we're looking at in the deeper understanding and better outcomes for all students. Natalie, welcome to our show. Thanks so much.
Natalie Wexler:Pam, I'm delighted to be here.
Pam Austin:Oh yes, and we are so delighted to have you here, you know. Let's go ahead and start with the basics here. How do you define science of reading? We hear that phrase so often, and that's just part one. Part two why do you think it's often reduced to just phonics?
Natalie Wexler:Right. So I mean that phrase science of reading I'd never heard when I was writing my first book, the Knowledge Gap, that came out in 2019. And so in the last five years or so, it's really become a catchphrase, and I'm not a huge fan of it because it kind of like some people think, well, I'm teaching the science of reading, right, like it's a curriculum and it really just refers to a body of evidence related to reading. But yes, as the second part of your question implies, often in the media and sometimes other places, you see it essentially as being reduced just to phonics or sometimes interpreted as more phonics. And I'm not saying science of reading advocates do that.
Natalie Wexler:I think everybody acknowledges that there is more reading than phonics. But because there's been this really narrow, intense focus on problems with that one area of reading instruction and how it doesn't line up with what science tells us will work, I think it's led to the assumption that's the only problem with reading instruction and that if we just fix that phonics problem, everything's going to be fine. And so I would argue for a definition that is broader, that encompasses all of the cognitive science related to reading, including the cognitive science related to reading comprehension. And I think if we do that, we see including the cognitive science related to reading comprehension. And I think if we do that we see there are also some problems with typical reading comprehension instruction, which we can get into.
Natalie Wexler:But to answer the second part of your question, why does it get reduced to phonics? I mean, I don't really know, but here's what I would suspect. I think it's more familiar. We've been having this debate over phonics since I was born, practically, and that's a long time ago, and it's also easier, I think, to grasp. I think the science relating to reading comprehension and the way it relates to what goes on in classrooms is more complicated. So I think that has a lot to do with why there's been this exclusion or overlooking of that aspect of science related to reading.
Pam Austin:You know that last phrase. It's complicated. There's nothing about literacy and learning and all of those aspects. That's very simplistic, right? That's why there's a body of evidence and it opens the door for these instances where we do have these misconceptions or the assumptions there. Thank you so much for sharing that. It's making us think as educators. So, yeah, there's a whole lot more, and I often say how do we get to the big C? That big C is comprehension, but there's so many aspects of it. That's just the end goal, right. In your view, what are the biggest misconceptions? Because you mentioned that there are some out there that educators have about reading and comprehension instruction. You got the ball rolling. I think you started the conversation. Could you elaborate a little bit more?
Natalie Wexler:Yeah, and I want to say I mean, you know, it's not the fault of any educator or any teacher.
Natalie Wexler:It's really a systemic problem that we've got a whole system that is in curriculum materials and training that is premised on the assumption that reading comprehension is essentially a set of skills and strategies, things like finding the main idea of a text or making inferences, you know, and often there's a skill of the week that the teacher demonstrates, models and then the students go off to practice the skill. And there's no relationship really between the texts that the text this teacher uses to model the skill and then the text the students use to practice the skill. Those things are categorized by things like how long the sentences are and how commonly used the words are, and so that it's presumed to be at students' individual reading levels. And so the theory behind this is if kids really continue practicing skills like finding the main idea, making inferences, they'll master those skills and they'll be able to apply those skills to any text that they try to read and be able to gain understanding, gain knowledge from those texts. But cognitive science evidence tells us that's really not the way reading comprehension works. I mean it is important to be able to find the main idea of a text and all of those things. But it's a lot easier if you actually have background knowledge relating to the text. I mean especially making inferences. If we know a lot about the topic we're reading about, we make those inferences, naturally, you know, and even toddlers can make inferences. If they touch something hot they infer If they do it again it's going to hurt again, that kind of thing. So these are most of them. We can maybe get into the differences between some of these skills and strategies, but essentially you can't really use any of them, you can't apply any of them unless you have a certain threshold of knowledge related to what you're reading about Could be knowledge of the topic.
Natalie Wexler:Ultimately it should be general academic knowledge and vocabulary, because that is the kind of knowledge and vocabulary that tends to be assumed by complex text. You know, writers don't explain every tone they use. They assume readers are going to know certain things and if you don't, it's a real barrier to comprehension. So I think that's one thing that's been seriously overlooked in the typical approach to reading comprehension. And I would say a second and possibly equally important factor is the complex syntax of written language sentence structure. So the sentence structure of written language is almost always more complex than the kind of sentence structure we use in conversation Same with vocabulary. So even if a kid is a good decoder, there can be real barriers to reading comprehension. We have to start looking at written language as almost a second language from oral language and really explicitly teach kids both. Explicitly teach them the knowledge that they will need to understand written text and also the knowledge of complex syntax that they'll need.
Pam Austin:It is complicated, it is not simplistic. The whole idea of cognitive science, natalie, is just so intriguing here. So not isolated skills all intertwined. That background knowledge is heavily important here. So you know often here the phrase in order to learn something you must know something. So you have to have some kind of nugget there in order to latch on to gain knowledge. I love the fact that you pulled in that general vocabulary and how important that is for that layer of comprehension and syntax. We're not thinking about syntax and how complex that language gets. And, natalie, when does that start? In what grade does that syntax become more challenging for students, or what are the expectations? Do we start early with our students?
Natalie Wexler:We definitely should start early.
Natalie Wexler:I mean, there are studies that have found that even the syntax used in children's literature is more complex than the syntax that is used in adult conversation.
Natalie Wexler:So reading aloud to kids before they themselves can read is hugely important because it's starting to acquaint them with that more complex syntax that they will need to understand when they are able to read text on their own.
Natalie Wexler:And, of course, as the grade levels go up, the syntax as well as the vocabulary becomes more complex. Go up, the syntax as well as the vocabulary becomes more complex. And what we need to do is realize that, both with syntax and vocabulary, rather than thinking when kids are in the early grades and they're not decoding complex text yet, they're not reading it on their own but through oral language, through read-alouds and discussion, back-and-forth discussion, we can start familiarizing them with that more complex syntax and vocabulary and that'll lodge in. If we do it well, that's going to stick in their long-term memory and they'll be able to draw on it in years to come. So we need to think not just what vocabulary, what syntax do kids need to understand what they can read now, but what are they going to be expected to know 10 years from now and start planting the seeds of that success through oral language.
Pam Austin:I love hearing you talk about read aloud and how important those read aloud opportunities are for students, and I've always said and let me know your thoughts on this that extending all the way through high school, reading aloud more complex text than what students will read themselves to get the brain ready to hear the cadence of that syntax, the more difficult language that they're going to encounter. So tell us what you think.
Natalie Wexler:Yeah, I mean. I do want to be clear, though that sometimes I hear well, if kids can't read the text on their own, then teachers just read it aloud to them, and that's not where it should stop, but it's a good place to begin. I think you know, we know, that kids' listening comprehension exceeds their own reading comprehension through about age 13 on average, and really until they're proficient readers, and that's so. It could be beyond 13, depending on the individual student, depending on the individual student. And the reason, the explanation for that, I would say, is that we have a limited what cognitive scientists call working memory capacity. So that's the aspect of our consciousness where we're taking in new information, trying to understand it, and it's been found that on average it can only hold four or five items of new information for about 20 seconds before it starts to become overwhelmed.
Natalie Wexler:And if you're not yet a proficient reader, among the things you're juggling in, working memory is going to be decoding the words, figuring out where the emphasis goes in a sentence. But if you have an experienced reader, an adult teacher or whatever, doing that decoding work and the work of prosody, the work of putting in the emphasis where it belongs for you, that opens up more capacity in working memory for you to just take in the new information, understand it and retain it and then, armed with that vocabulary, that information, in long-term memory, it will be easier for you to read that same text or maybe another text on the same topic that uses the same concepts and vocabulary, because now you're already familiar with those concepts and that vocabulary. You don't have to juggle that in working memory along with the tasks of reading, which can pose a very heavy burden.
Pam Austin:All right, very good. Thank you so much for sharing that, really diving into understanding that they can gain meaning from text based on so many other factors that are there. I do want to ask you something you've said is that we've unintentionally didn't do it on purpose, of course made reading and writing harder than it needs to be. Can you unpack that for us? Tell us a little about what are we doing. That's getting in the way, yeah.
Natalie Wexler:Well, that again has to do with this concept of working memory that I just was describing and its limitations. And so, as I said, you know if you're not yet a proficient reader, you're going to be juggling those things. And working memory decoding and writing imposes an even heavier burden or cognitive load, as cognitive scientists say on working memory, because you're not only like having to decode words, you're having to produce those words, you're having to form those letters, you're having to spell those words, plus, you know organizing your thoughts. And what do you want to say about this? So we know reading and writing already impose a heavy cognitive load on kids. If you then have them try to read and write about topics that they are not familiar with, that cognitive load becomes crippling, it's overwhelming.
Natalie Wexler:And yet we do routinely in our current system, ask kids to read and write about topics they may not be familiar with.
Natalie Wexler:I mean that skills-focused approach to comprehension that I was describing. The teacher might be reading a book about I don't know sea mammals to demonstrate you know, determining the author's purpose, or whatever. And then kids go off to practice the skill on books on a random variety of topics that they may not know anything about, could be the solar system or whatever. And then, with writing, we often ask kids to respond to prompts on topics that they really haven't learned about. You know, with a separate writing curriculum. So that's what I mean about making reading and writing harder for kids if they need to be. And the way to I mean we're never going to, I don't think we're ever going to make it easy, but the way to make it less difficult is to have them read and write about topics they've may be hard to read about a topic you don't know much about, but it is virtually impossible to write about a topic that you don't know much about.
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Pam Austin:You talked about exposing kids to all sorts of content, right, different topics, giving them an exposure, building the background, and then you even pull in some information in regards to writing, they've learned something new. I'm going to respond to that. I'm going to write. Think about, how do teachers, how do educators, manage that? How do they create that opportunity for that explicit instruction that's manageable. I'm thinking about all the content, I'm thinking about all the background. I'm thinking about helping my students to develop and write, to communicate and express themselves based on what they've learned. How do we do it, Natalie?
Natalie Wexler:Yeah, I really feel for teachers. I know that many teachers, most teachers, have not gotten really good training in how to teachers who said what they were excited about learning about, you know, rocks or whatever, and they couldn't wait to write about it and it was great. And so some kids, you know, especially kids who come from more highly educated families where they've been more exposed to printed written text at home, that'll be enough. But I'd say for most kids, they'll have stuff they want to say and they could express it orally. But expressing it in writing is a whole other ball game and they really need explicit writing instruction that begins at the sentence level, crucially in order to modulate, to lighten that heavy cognitive load that writing imposes.
Natalie Wexler:So there are, you know, a number of activities that kids can engage in that begin at the sentence level and then, equally important, when they are ready to move on to writing at greater length, teaching them how to outline a paragraph, how to outline an essay, before they actually draft it, which is, again, really important for modulating that heavy cognitive load of writing at length. So the other benefit of writing is if you embed it in content that kids are learning about, the content in the curriculum. It is a really powerful boost to comprehension, to retention of information and to the ability to analyze information. Plus, I should mention, when you start at the sentence level and that should continue even when kids are writing paragraphs and essays. Sentence level work is really helpful and important. It also in a very powerful way familiarizes them with that complex sentence structure of written language. If you teach a student how to use something like a subordinating conjunction in their own writing, they are in a much better position to understand that kind of sentence structure when they encounter it in their reading.
Pam Austin:So that reading-writing connection is really essential for building readers and writers. It just makes sense. Thank you so much. You know you've talked about that artificial separation between the reading and writing and you've made some suggestions for how we can connect that when we think about the consequences that we've developed over time. You've mentioned a few things. Can you kind of summarize just once more what are the consequences, especially for those kids who struggled, when we do separate reading from writing instead of combining it as a skill for gaining knowledge and expressing and communicating knowledge?
Natalie Wexler:Well, I think it's really ended up holding a lot of kids back, especially kids from the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum who are less likely to pick up academic knowledge and vocabulary at home, who are less likely to have parents with the resources to get them tutoring or, you know, supply things that might be missing. And so those kids, they really rely on school for acquiring that academic knowledge and vocabulary, that familiarity with complex syntax that enables them to reach their full potential and succeed in school and in life. And I think that separating these things I mean part of one thing that's happened especially at the elementary grades, but often through middle school is a lot of time being spent on reading and math, the tested subjects, and that's particularly likely to happen in schools where test scores are low. Or if kids are struggling with reading, they'll get pulled from social studies and science in order to get reading intervention and the end result is that very little time is spent on social studies and science, especially for kids who struggle the most. But we have evidence that is. Actually those subjects fiction, poetry, et cetera have their place, but social studies and science may have the most potential to build the kind of knowledge and vocabulary that enables kids to read complex text. And yet, with the best of intentions, we're most likely to deny those kids who need it the most access to that kind of content because we think, well, they've got to, we've got to get their reading skills and their comprehension skills in place first. But it really doesn't work that way. What's going to be much more effective is to weave these things in, weave reading comprehension into the across the curriculum, across subject matters, and the same with writing.
Natalie Wexler:And so I'm not saying you need to choose between building knowledge and using strategies at all. I mean, sometimes it's presented as this you've got to do one or the other. The question is really what are you going to put in the foreground? And what I and others are arguing is we've got to put content in the foreground and then bring in whatever skills or strategies are most appropriate to help kids understand and analyze that particular content, and also think of these strategies not just as reading comprehension strategies, but also as writing strategies.
Natalie Wexler:I mentioned earlier that there's a difference between different kinds of strategies, so making inferences, as I said, that's kind of a thing we do, naturally, if we have enough knowledge, finding the main idea or summarizing pretty much the same thing. That's not something that kids just do. Naturally, that actually does need to be taught explicitly, but often what we do is we just tell kids okay, now go off and just put in the most important things and leave out the unimportant stuff, and then you'll have the main idea or you'll summarize. But they may not know what the most important stuff is. If we provide them with a structured writing activity where there are questions that guide them to the most important information like who, what, where, when, why, how them to the most important information like who, what, where, when, why, how and then teach them how to put those things into a summary sentence and eventually a summary paragraph, that's going to be much more effective. So again, that's breaking down these artificial barriers that we've erected between reading, writing and the content areas.
Pam Austin:Oh yeah, we want to break down the barriers for sure, natalie. Would you say that these were some of the key principles of cognitive science? When we apply these, that integration that you talked about, really finding those approaches that will help students understand, based on the structure we use for this explicit instruction?
Natalie Wexler:Yeah, I mean I would say that the principles of cognitive science lead to the conclusion that we should tie these things together. And you know, I'm not saying there's been a lot of research on that. Most of the cognitive science research that relates to education has been on math and science, because they're kind of easier to study for various reasons. But the principles apply to all learning. And there is one caveat there, though it's very hard to apply these principles to typical comprehension instruction. So these principles and they're things like just briefly, because you could take a whole graduate level course on all of this. But, for example, there's something called retrieval practice. All that means is that the more you try retrieving an item of information that you've got somewhere in long-term memory but maybe you've slightly forgotten, the more you retrieve that, the easier it is to retrieve in the future. And so that's why prior knowledge is so helpful to learning something new about a topic, because if you're retrieving knowledge you already have, you don't have to juggle that in long-term memory. So that opens up more capacity I mean in working memory, excuse me. So that opens up more capacity in working memory to take in new information. But what these? And then there's another principle that I should mention, which is something called deliberate practice, which could be applied to any skill, so for decoding, for example. So deliberate practice means that a teacher breaks down a complex task into manageable chunks for a student and gives that student practice with whatever chunk he or she needs and prompt, targeted feedback and when they've mastered that chunk, moving a student onto another chunk. That can be applied to, I think, lots of skills. Chunk that can be applied to, I think, lots of skills.
Natalie Wexler:The problem with comprehension instruction is these principles all assume that you are either teaching a skill that is transferable, like decoding words or multiplying numbers or whatever, or you're teaching something substantive, like history or science. With comprehension instruction, the problem is teachers are trying to teach a skill that is not transferable, as though it were transferable, like making inferences. Let's just practice making inferences on this text and then you'll be able to make inferences on another text. Comprehension skills don't work like that. So you can't use deliberate practice. You also can't use retrieval practice, because there's no common content for kids to practice retrieving. They're all reading books on different topics. So if you're a teacher who's learned about these principles of cognitive science, you want to apply them in your classroom, but you're using the typical approach to comprehension. There's really no way to do it.
Pam Austin:So we're looking at a scaffold, step-by-step approach, so that students have some guidance. Step approach so that students have some guidance, some support based on what they're reading, and it can be a variety of different content, variety of different texts that they're actually encountering.
Natalie Wexler:Yes, I mean I would say ideally there'll be some coherence to the text so that ideally you'll have a curriculum that is structured in a way that provides students with knowledge in the earlier grades. That's going to be, they'll be assumed to have that the curriculum assumes they have at later grades. So I do think curriculum and it's not just for history or science but literature too I mean, if you're reading To Kill a Mockingbird and you don't know anything about what was going on in the United States in the 1930s, you know you need to supply students with that information for them to appreciate literature as well.
Pam Austin:In many instances there's so much to consider, isn't there, natalie? Yeah, and we can see why educators are feeling overwhelmed, right? So when we think about all of the different competing frameworks, there's this approach and there's that approach, and you've given us lots and lots of ideas. What's the first step a teacher should take when they're considering the best path to move forward, to help our students dive into text and get meaning from text and get to that big C I spoke of earlier?
Natalie Wexler:Well, I think, especially if you're an individual teacher in a school that maybe doesn't have the kind of content-rich, coherent curriculum that I was describing, I think a great place to start is with writing, with the kinds of sentence-level activities that I was just talking about, and they're really drawn from a method called the writing revolution, which isn't my method.
Natalie Wexler:It was developed by my co-author, the book by that name, with the creator of the method, judith Hockman. But I think writing, as I said, it's one thing that teachers know they could use some help with. I think it will also, even if the content that you're teaching, if there's not a whole lot of content, it can still help kids retain whatever content is there. It can also clue you into when you need to supplement that content to make it richer, because if kids aren't able to write even, sometimes even a few sentences about a topic, that's a sign that they may not have enough information, they may not have been given enough information about that topic and that you need to bring in more materials to supply that information. So it can help you determine whether the curriculum you're using is supplying enough content for kids to really get a meaningful education.
Pam Austin:So if you have a curriculum that maybe are centered around thematic units, where we have multiple texts on one particular topic, where students are gaining knowledge, would that be an example of the type of text or the type of curriculum we're looking for?
Natalie Wexler:Yes, although I would be just to add yet another complication really broad themes like childhood around the world or something you know, you sometimes see those those probably are going to be not as good as something that's a really meaty topic like westward expansion or, you know, sea mammals or whatever. One reason is that it's going to probably be pretty superficial and the kids aren't going to have something to really dig into, which probably won't be as engaging. But also in terms of building knowledge, it's really important for kids to hear the same vocabulary, the same concepts repeatedly in slightly different contexts over a period of time I'd say two, three weeks at a minimum for those things to really stick in long-term memory. So you want to make sure, if it's a theme or a topic, that it's defined enough so that kids get that repetition.
Pam Austin:Right, so we'll have that retrieval for use later and deliberate practice. That's what we're looking for. Okay, all right. Before we wrap up, what's one idea, insight that we hope that our listeners hear, that every listener walks away with today after having heard this conversation?
Natalie Wexler:I guess the basic message I try to get across is we need to recognize that reading, writing and content area learning are all connected. When you think about it, anything that we can understand when we read, anything we can express when we write, once we've gotten the foundational skills in place, draws on whatever we've been able to learn, and they are also ways of learning and acquiring and deepening knowledge. So this idea that we've got a reading block here and a writing block there and, if we're lucky, we get some social studies and science, I think we really need to break down those silos. And what that means in practice is that every literacy teacher also needs to be a content teacher, and every content teacher also needs to be a literacy teacher.
Pam Austin:I absolutely love that. Now can you also tell our listeners where they can learn more about you?
Natalie Wexler:Sure, probably the best place is my website, which is nataliewexlercom, and that has information about my books, and I have a Substack newsletter that is free, so you know there's information about that and a way to subscribe on the website as well.
Pam Austin:Thank you. Thank you so much, natalie. This has been such a wonderful, informative, insightful conversation. We thank you for sharing your knowledge, your experiences, with our audience as well. That's it for another great FU360 podcast. Please join us again next month and visit voyagersoperscom slash Edview to learn about our webinars, blogs and other podcasts. This has been Pam Austin and we hope to see you again soon. This has been an Edview 360 podcast.
Narrator:It's been Pam Austin and we hope to see you again soon. This has been an Edview 360 podcast. For additional thought-provoking discussions, sign up for our blog, webinar and podcast series at voyagersopriscom. Slash edview360. If you enjoyed the show, we'd love a five-star review. Wherever you listen to podcasts and to help other people like you find our show, Thank you.
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