Science of Reading: The Podcast
Science of Reading: The Podcast will deliver the latest insights from researchers and practitioners in early reading. Via a conversational approach, each episode explores a timely topic related to the science of reading.
Science of Reading: The Podcast
S9 E2: Standards are the 'what' and curriculum is the 'how,' with Sue Pimentel
In this episode, Susan Lambert welcomes back Sue Pimentel to discuss the history and impact of the Common Core State Standards on English Language Arts and Literacy (ELA) education in the United States. Susan and Sue revisit what the standards were designed to focus on: knowledge building, college and career readiness, and fluency in both literary and informational texts. Their conversation covers the importance of text complexity, the lack of a research base to support leveled readers, and knowledge building as a matter of equity and content as a matter of access. While acknowledging the value of these standards, the discussion also highlights their limitations. Sue underscores the importance of always returning to the research to ensure students are truly learning, preparing them to navigate the world and ultimately, live happier lives.
Show notes:
- Website: Knowledge Matters Review Tool
- Listen: Season 4, Episode 5: Reading as liberation with Sue Pimentel
- Read: “Standards Are Not Curriculum”
- Website: Knowledge Matters Campaign
Quotes:
“Vocabulary is how we describe concepts; it's how we know how to talk to one another.” —Sue Pimentel
“What the standards say is, ‘Leveled texts are out and complex texts are in.’ There's no research behind assigning a level to students reading and then sort of imprisoning them in that.” —Sue Pimentel
“The more stuff you know, the better you're able to navigate the world….and I think the happier life is. And certainly the happier kids' lives are when they're actually learning stuff.” —Sue Pimentel
Episode timestamps*
02:00 Looking Back at the Common Core State Standards for ELA
04:00 Knowledge Building and Text Evidence
08:00 Text Complexity and College Readiness
14:00 Standards Organization
23:00 Collaborative Effort in Standards Development
26:00 Integrating Standards into Instruction
26:00 The Importance of Contextual Learning
27:00 Challenges with Early Curriculum Implementation
31:00 Standards vs. Curriculum
35:00 The Role of Knowledge Building in Literacy
50:00 Final Thoughts and Advice
*Timestamps are approximate, rounded to nearest minute
The standards define the what? The level complexity, the level of sophistication, really, really important. But curriculum tells us how to do the what? Well,
Speaker 2:This is Susan Lambert and welcome to Science of Reading, the podcast from Amplify, where the science of Reading lives. This season, we're embarking on a reading reboot, revisiting and building on the fundamentals of the science of reading. On today's episode, we're exploring the topic of literacy standards with Sue Pimentel lead writer of the Common Core State standards for ELA and the co-founder of Standards work. A few months back, Pimentel wrote a piece for the 74 titled Standards Are Not Curriculum, why We Must Put Student Knowledge Center Stage In How We Teach Kids to Read. On this episode, she discusses that piece as well as some common misconceptions about literacy standards. She'll also delve into some key similarities and differences between standards and curriculum and much more. Please enjoy this conversation with Sue Pimentel. Sue Pimentel, it's so great to have you back again on today's episode. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'm so glad to be here with you, Susan. You asked the best questions about the best things , so I'm really glad to be here.
Speaker 2:Well, if our listeners don't know, we actually had you on a while ago, and so we will point them in the show notes. Um, you talk a lot about your early interest in standards development and just a little bit about your background. So I'm sure listeners would love to listen to that. We won't go too far way back there, but we are gonna talk a little bit about standards and, and I know before we started you're like, wow, that seems like we're going back in history or going back in time to talk about the Common Core standards. <laugh>, it was a while ago, wasn't it?
Speaker 1:It was a while ago. It was in 2010. So it's been 14 years since they've been out and people have been working to implement them and publishers have been working to put curriculum together that matches them. Yeah. So as a while . So I had to think back to what were the major thrusts of the standards , um, and important to keep our heads and our brains on that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I, and I think it really is worthwhile taking a step back in history to talk through them because they were super influential and influential enough that number one, maybe some of the teachers knew in the classroom have not yet heard the history of them true enough,
Speaker 1:Or
Speaker 2:Why they seem to be so important. And number two, most state standards are a derivative in some form of the common core standards. I think that's true. Right?
Speaker 1:That's absolutely true. I think there's maybe a couple of exceptions, but mostly that's true as we've looked across the nation at standards that are there. That's true.
Speaker 2:So let's start by saying, can you give us a little overview of Yeah. Common Core ELA, how they developed, where they came from?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So there's two major thrusts as I sort of step back from the individual indicators in the standards. And that is one is knowledge building, which might surprise people. Yes. And the second is college and core readiness, which probably doesn't surprise people as much because there was a huge focus on, on making sure that we prepared students for college and careers. And I'll talk a little bit about that. But I first wanna hit knowledge building. Okay. So the standards themselves, the title is the Common Core State Standards in ELA and literacy and History, social Studies, science and the Technical Subjects. Now, that is not by mistake. <laugh>,
Speaker 2:That's a big title by the way.
Speaker 1:It's a big title and yes, it's a big title. And the, the folks who had hired us said, are you sure you wanna do it? We said, yeah, we gotta say more about the content areas because the researchers emphatic cognitive scientists are emphatic that students have to know a lot about the world. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and a lot about words in order to do well. So we have the title, but the title isn't all that there is. 'cause if that's all there is, you could easily kind of miss it. Right. But what I want you to know is that the standards also put a heavy emphasis not only on literary texts, but on informational texts. Mm . Again, critical. Now, why is that critical? Because informational texts deal with content. They deal with concepts in science and social studies, et cetera. Yeah. And so it was really important to say that you had, students needed to be reading more informational texts than we knew they were out there from the, the data that we had. And the other thing that might surprise people when you read through the standards, because I actually did a little count myself, <laugh> <laugh> , I went through the standards. We mentioned knowledge building more than a hundred times. Wow.
Speaker 2:Stop more than
Speaker 1:A hundred times. Yes . Times because of its importance, right? Yeah . Because of its importance. So the other thing is, if you look at something like the first standard in reading, putting foundational skills aside for a moment, but when you're learning how to read or you're knowing how to read, is text evidence pulling text evidence from text. Now that might seem like, well, what else would you do? But for a long time in instruction, what we've done is we ask students questions, not about what the author is saying as much as, well, what's a text itself ? How does this book relate to you in some way? Something, you know, what we wanted to do is put the focus back on the text and what the author's telling us. Not that you can't get to text itself , you can get to text itself Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> . But initially to really do a deep dive into what the author is saying. And the other thing to know and text evidence, by the way, just to say it, 'cause this is really important. 'cause we're talking about literacy. We're not just talking about reading reading's central to it, but text evidence appears in the writing standards. Yep . And the listening speaking standards first standard in listening, speaking, and it appears in the writing standard as well. Then there's vocabulary. Vocabulary is how we describe concepts. It's how we know how to talk to one another. And vocabulary development weaves its way through all four domains in the standards. All four reading, writing, listening, speaking, and language. Hmm . And so there was this real sense of the importance of knowledge building. And there's a statement in there, couple of statements that talk about all students needing a foundation in the content areas of history, social studies and science. And so I just wanna say, 'cause it pulls back from the individual standards that there are, that are important that that set important criteria. But the point was to really focus on knowledge building and then the second thrust, college and career readiness. And that might sound too , Susan, like, well, duh, of course you would. But I gotta tell you, I've been involved in standard settings since 1990 and we would get a group of people together, you know, educators and others around a table, and we would think about what we wanted students to know and be able to do. And we thought about ourselves to serve insular sort of K 12
Speaker 2:Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> . Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>
Speaker 1:Post-secondaries, post-secondary. Obviously we wanted students to graduate and be able to do well, but we didn't concern ourselves a lot with what students were being demanded in college. Right. Um , and careers. And so that was a major shift that I do believe that most state standards now recognize as an important thrust.
Speaker 2:Now I'm , I'm going back in my memory, which isn't so great as I get older, you know how that goes. But , um, I think one of the things that came out of that college and career readiness conversation was really the rigor or the, the text that we were putting in front of students or what we were expecting them to read. Um, 'cause I sort of remember, oh man, the lexile levels have jumped and kids are all of a sudden expected to read a lot more rigorous sort of text. Is that right? Yeah,
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Right. Because when we looked at what colleges and careers, we looked at the text complexity that the students were required to be able to comprehend when they got to college and careers, there was like a huge gap between that and what most students were graduating, being able to do. And it, it was a bit of a shock, but I wanna tell you what the standards say is level texts are out Yep . And complex texts are in, now there's an important caveat here. Sure. Which is when we gave level texts to students, first of all, can I also just say, 'cause it's just a, it's just a thing. There's no research behind giving, assigning a , a level to students reading and then Yeah . Sort of imprisoning them in that. But let's just hold that for a side that text complexity , um, means that if there's complex, 'cause you're gonna have students that are stronger readers and weaker readers, you're gonna have some students that can read really well in one content area , you know, a topic that's they're more familiar with than one that they're not familiar with. So it doesn't mean that you just hand complex text to kids and say, okay, well good, come on back and we'll have a conversation. It means that teachers give students supports along the way with level texts. What they did is they handed out different texts to different students, had them go read, and then, I don't know what all they did, answered some questions, but not as a group. So there was no sort of social kind of communal learning that was going on as well. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> . Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> . So I wanna make it clear that text complexity levels critical for students to be able to do well when they leave school and also when they, so that they can independently read texts and, and other sort of sources on their own as well. So that was a huge change. It got a lot of attention and it needs to get a lot of attention. And you will see in most curricula Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> , I may have a bone if it was some curricula that are out there, but most curricula have done away with level text . And do has , well, let me rephrase that. Still may have level text some, but they also have complex texts. Now the question is, are teachers actually teaching the complex text? That's a whole nother story in terms of implementation. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And text complexity. I'm, yeah, this goes way back, but I'm imagining Appendix A right now and the little triangle that's in Appendix A that talks about text complexity. It's not a lexile level. Right. There's more involved in text complexity than that.
Speaker 1:Yes, there is . Absolutely. Right. So the quantitative levels like a mm-Hmm . <affirmative> are tied to the quantitative levels of college and career. And they're, they're banded in grades, right? Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> , you can actually band then there's qualitative, a qualitative look. What are the themes? What kind of vocabulary and language is being used? So a whole series of things you wanna look at because the quantitative gets you sort of there partway there. But let's say it's, again, it's in a grade band. So you're looking at the six eight grade band of quantitative. You wanna have thing , most texts sort of that you're teaching that are the center of a lesson. You want most of those to be at the complexity. But is it at eighth grade or sixth grade? And then it depends on what does the qualitative measure say? Do they put, they say, oh no, this is like really like old language that most students aren't familiar with that that picks it up. Or is it the more conversational and dialogue? And you can have some, like for example, poetry isn't lexile can't really be because it's what it is . You know, a lot , some narratives, you know, really important stories that we know will get a really low lexile , um, because it's dialogue and it doesn't have complex vocabulary or even complex syntax. But that doesn't mean that the theme or the topic of the text isn't one that's more appropriate for an older student than not. Yeah . Yeah . And then the third one is sort of thinking about your own students. And what I like to think about that is that isn't about the measure of complexity, so the qualitative and quantitative r but this is more to me, a signal about how I need to teach this text. Is this a topic my students are familiar with so I can activate their knowledge? Or is this one that they're, I know because I've talked to them about it. <laugh> , they know nothing about this. They know nothing about sea mammals. They don't live near the sea, they haven't been to it . You know, so I need to, I need to help them more with, but I don't wanna not give them the text, but I wanna give them more assistance and more support about the content that they're gonna be reading about.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And, and not to link back to knowledge building, but it sounds like that has something to do with knowledge building that a more, the more somebody knows about the content of the text, the better they're able to read it.
Speaker 1:Sure does. So again, we're talking about Absolutely. We're talking about building knowledge, not just activating knowledge. Yeah. And, and in part, can I say that that's an equity imperative because students come with all different kinds of experiences, some more, some less. And what you wanna do is make sure that all students have the knowledge they need to be able to access this more complex text. Because once, and that means giving students accessible texts. So I'm not saying leveled, right. But I'm saying it's more accessible text on a topic that sort of are sequential. And I think this is Marilyn Adams thing where one text bootstraps the next Mm . So that the content that you learn, you're learning the content bit by bit, by bit by bit. And by the way, just to say it, you wanna be able to stay on a topic and readings on that topic. You wanna go into depth. So you wanna have two weeks, three weeks, four weeks where you're, that's what you're doing. You're writing about what you're reading, you're talking about what you're reading, and you're building knowledge together really as sort of a community of learners. And that's what the standards require, I would say.
Speaker 2:I love that. And it's a great segue into talking a little bit about why are the standards organized the way that they are . So you already mentioned speaking and listening, reading, writing, foundational skills. Can you talk a little bit about the organization of the standards? Yeah.
Speaker 1:Orig . So, so you've named off the domains that we have the standards organized by. But I will tell you that when we first got started, we tried to do something really different because we knew we want , we didn't want it to be reading siloed, writing, siloed all by itself, listening and speaking, siloed language, silos. If you would do them at different times with different stuff. It was a , so we tried to mush 'em together. Or maybe a better word to integrate them . <laugh> .
Speaker 2:I don't know . I like mush 'em together. That's a good, that's
Speaker 1:A good , uh, anyway, there was an outcry across the nation from teachers who said, what is this? We don't understand it. We don't know how we'd implement this. Do something different. So then we said, okay, for conceptual clarity, we're going to use the domains of reading, writing, listening, speaking, and language. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> . But we're gonna build redundancy in them. By that I mean, when you're reading those reading standards, talk about sharing your evidence. And you would do that by writing? Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> or by speaking otherwise I , I can't share. Right. The writing standards. Talk about writing to what you're reading and researching, which is both reading and writing and perhaps presenting. And then you get to the listening and speaking, which is how do you work in groups with students, you know, your peers and how do you collaborate well, but you're not just collaborating the standards. Say you collaborate about what you're reading and about the topics you're learning. And then there's redundancy built in , as I said about text evidence all the way through. There's the vocabulary standards in reading, writing, listening, speaking, and language. 'cause our point was, you can't do one of these without the others. You just, you Mm-Hmm . You can't do it. Well, yeah, sometimes curricula try , but you can't do it well. And so we ended up with this organization that might look traditional and maybe in some ways is so that people could understand, but really wanted to build the connections between and across the domains.
Speaker 2:Mm . Okay. So the domain serve as the main organizer. And they're sort of the key things that we wanna look for when, you know, kids are engaging in instruction or as they're learning, but then within the domains there's individual standards themselves and how are they organized and sort of what's the purpose with each of those individuals as we know 'em standards.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So they, they set out the skills and strategies that we want students to have as they write, as they read, as they talk to one another. So there are specifics about, like, if you take into writing, there's, you know, narrative writing is mentioned, persuasive writing or arguments mentioned expository text mentioned research is mentioned in the reading standards. There's a way, there were two that aren't, they weren't part of standards before. And one is drawing evidence from text, believe it or not, was not there . And then that you had to read texts at a certain level. Not like every single text in that grade level. You had to, but because we just talked about having students have accessible text to build their knowledge. Sure . And then in between you have things like author's purpose, author's perspective, comparing to texts, things that probably were in a lot of standards before. So how do you piece apart, how do you get to , uh, standards? What I think , um, where I think, and, and I can take some of the blame for this. I think what happened was that people started to look at these standards as a checklist. Mm . So, okay, we're gonna do main idea this week and next week we're gonna do author's perspective. And Okay. You know , first of all, it doesn't work that way because you wanna make sure that the text is at the center or texts are at the center. And then what's relevant, what's gonna help a student unpack that text? What do I need to ask them? What do I need to have them do? And also main idea, I know those are things you should practice all year long in some form, but not like Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> rotely . But will that help with unpacking the particular text and then think about them as annual targets as opposed to organizing the lesson around , you know, we got into this thing, Susan, and I'm sure you've seen it. Um, and I remember long ago, many decades ago, looking for it when I did observations, do they have the standard on the board? Yes. What standard, what standards on the board ? Now, I , I don't have a problem with letting students know something of what you want them to get. But the point is, we , we want students to understand what they're reading. 'cause we want them to build their knowledge. 'cause the more knowledge they have, the better reading comprehenders they are , the better reading comprehenders are, the more knowledge they have. And we want them to have knowledge. 'cause we want their brains to grow. So when they get out, they can do what they wanna do and extend their studies or go into a technical field or whatever. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> . So I think that standards, because we pieced, we have these called anchor standards. 'cause we tried to say, you know, there are these anchor standards that should anchor us from K to 12 and they don't change. Yeah. But then there are specifics that deal with the sophistication and complexity of what students should be expected to do, get more out of texts and so on and so forth as you move up the grades. So we wanted to be able to do that . But in the parsing apart sometimes of a domain or in standards , you can get into this thing. Well that's what I, that's all I should focus on. As opposed to step back a moment and say, oh wait a minute, now I'm thinking about how I teach. What do I need to do to teach?
Speaker 2:Hmm . Yeah. You know, a great example is, I remember when, when those standards first came out, observing kindergarten classrooms and kindergarten teachers were trying to get them to write essays. And if you went back to look at the in , because they were looking at the in anchor standards as opposed to what is the thing the kid should be doing in kindergarten that's going to help them to get that direction? And we don't want kids writing five paragraph essays in kindergarten.
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness. No. They're just learning the letters and they're learning how to form , form words for heaven's sakes. And we talk in the standards themselves, talk about students talking or dictating to a drawing and dictating to teachers about what they're learning. That's the other thing I just wanna say, and I wish we had put this in the standards and we didn't. But in the reading standards early on, I'm gonna , again, the foundational skills really important. Yeah . But then we talk about that students should be able to answer who, what, where, and why questions they should be able to summarize on . So people might be thinking, oh , well they can't read very much. It's really simple text. We need read alouds , read alouds, read aloud , read alouds , which is gonna grow students' knowledge and grow their understanding of, of words. And this was actually a little bit of a surprise for me when we were putting the standards together. And that is, maybe I should have known this, but that our reading comprehension doesn't catch up with our listening comprehension until students are in middle school.
Speaker 2:Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> . Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> .
Speaker 1:So I'm not saying that it should just be steady dose of read alouds. Once you know how to read yourself, you should be reading yourself. But let's not forget about the importance of read alouds and certainly importance of read alouds when students are in kindergarten, first and second grade. And can I also say, because this is another thing, and I'm sure you've heard this one too. Oh, in kindergarten, first and second grade, students learn to read. Mm . And then they read to learn. Now <laugh> . Now kids , first of all, have you ever met like a 3-year-old, 4-year-old, five-year-old six , didn't wanna know about the world and how it works. Great . Yeah . I mean , my goodness. And then that's just a great time to use read alouds and discussions and all of that about concepts that you're learning. So what I say about this notion of organizing around topics, including informational texts, not just stories. Stories and information texts.
Speaker 2:Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> . Mm-Hmm.
Speaker 1:<affirmative> together to build that knowledge so students have it when they get into , um, and they can read text into third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade, and on up where they can read, read texts, at least part of the texts on their own. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's a great point. I say that all the time too. It's not learn to read, read to learn. That's a false dichotomy. I can't remember false. I I stole that from somebody. I can't remember who, but I like it. It's a good one. Alright , before we sort of jump into talking a little more in depth about instruction, can we talk a little bit about the we, because you didn't, you didn't write these on your own. So you had a We.
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness. No, we sure did.
Speaker 2:Thousands. You
Speaker 1:Said thousands. But I would say the, so Jim Patterson and David Coleman were, we were sort of the central three, I would say. Okay. But when you look at the standard , I can't name everybody. 'cause we heard from researchers and scholars and so on and so forth. But a really important component of the standards was the foundational skills. And those were authored by Louisa Noah, other than Louisa Moats and Marilyn Adams . They did 'em . Then Meredith and David Leban , who are great scholars themselves in the area of foundational skills and literacy, and have written one book and now a new book coming out about knowledge building, by the way. Um, were deeply involved in the writing of the standards. And then as we put a draft out, there were state teams of educators that came together. There were college folks that came together to take a look and chew on it. So, and I mean chew , when I say chew, I mean chew <laugh> . And then we had regular webinars where people, so there was a ton. But we did say this, Susan, because you could make yourself crazy, is that we had to have evidence.
Speaker 2:Okay. What do you mean by that? We
Speaker 1:Had to have e data that this was important to students when they left high school. Hmm . So there was a push, I'll give you an example. Great. There was a push to make sure that every student wrote a poem before they would be allowed to leave school. Now, we don't have a problem with students, a school saying, a student has to write a poem. We love poetry poetry's, part of literary text. Mm-Hmm . Really important to do that. But we couldn't find any evidence in college or in careers that if students didn't know how to write a poem, they wouldn't do well. So that doesn't mean that, and when we wrote the Common Core , you know, states could add what they wanted to add, but we insisted that it be on evidence because we didn't want a huge, huge document that included a little bit of what everybody wanted. So I love poetry. I just wanna stay for the record <laugh>, but having to write a poem Yeah . In order to graduate, just, we couldn't find the data for it, so we didn't include it.
Speaker 2:Oh, that makes a lot of sense. Not that it's not important. No , it's just there was Okay. Evidence-based
Speaker 1:Evidence-based , uh, of what was required for college and careers. And so we actually looked at, we looked at college placement tests, we had , um, groups of college professors, and by the way, they weren't just ELA or literacy or literature professors. They were history and science teachers, technical subject teachers. Because what we wanted to know in college, because what we wanted to know is what kind of reading do students need to do? What kind of writing is really critical for students to do? And so we, we, we pulled on all of those resources. So no, we didn't, you can blame us, <laugh>, but we, we weren't the sole authors. For sure. For sure. For sure.
Speaker 2:<laugh>, we're not gonna blame you for anything. So <laugh> .
Speaker 1:Okay. Alright .
Speaker 2:So now in the organization, you attempted to mush them together in your very technical term. Yes.
Speaker 1:Um ,
Speaker 2:So that instruction would be a certain way. As teachers are implementing these, what should we think about then in, in terms of instruction in relation to the standards and , and how should they be taught?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so integrate, integrate and integrate again. Um, so don't silo writing like it's its own thing. Yeah . Where you give students a topic they know nothing about or you just ask 'em to write about themselves. We want students to be writing about what they're reading, a vocabulary words. They're still around where there are these decontextualized lists of words that students are supposed to learn. We know from the research that doesn't work. Doesn't work, yeah . Didn't work. So we want it to, we want it , the vocabulary to be pulled from the readings that students are doing. That's how it makes real sense to them . And we want students talking about what they're reading in part because we're having a conversation today. And I will learn from some of the things that you say, because I'm hearing from you. I'm not just , just in my own little cubbyhole, if you will . Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> . And that there's this notion of building a community of learners where then we're talking about what we're reading and learning. So that I, I can argue a little bit. I can hear say , oh, I didn't think about that. Okay, well that changes a little bit about how I feel. And so, so very important. And plus, once I'm talking about things and I'm writing about what I'm reading and learning, it sticks in my brain. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> . Otherwise it could just go floating right on out.
Speaker 2:So early on, were you able to observe classrooms that were attempting to integrate these standards into an ELA block, if you will?
Speaker 1:So yes, we went into classrooms. It was very early. But what I would say more is the focus was on curriculum that were coming out because there were a lot of curriculum that were stamping themselves. Common core aligned. Yep . And , um, well one, how could they be, because the standards just were hot off the presses, <laugh>. So we began to take a look at the curriculum . Were coming out now. We were in really incre , it took a , took some time, right. Because for two things. First on the publisher side , it takes time to get it right and to produce something. But then on the teacher side or the educator side, they need time to be able to understand what are the shifts, the big shifts I have to make, you've mentioned one text complexity. Text evidence is another building knowledge is the third one. So what does that mean? Because they'll sound kind of strange to me. Those aren't what I'm used to. And teachers need not just a week of professional development. Right . But they need to be able to meeting together regularly to say, oh yeah, my students are getting it and this is what I'm doing. And so on and so forth. And that takes time as well. Tall time well spent , but time as well. So when we looked at, we were disappointed by some of what we saw coming out from some of the, I'm just gonna say it, the older publishers. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> . Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> . Because they, instead of reorienting and cutting things out, they just add it . So for example, they had level text before. They have level text still. They organize around skills and strategy, not around knowledge building. They have some writing to reading, but a lot of writing that's siloed. Some of 'em have great texts, great complex, authentic texts . But when we went to , um, went to a state and we met with a whole group of curriculum advisors, administrators, people kind of in charge of implementing the standards in the curriculum in their districts. And we asked them Mm-Hmm, <affirmative> , because you can't focus on everything on some of these programs, so what do, are you focusing on these things? They said, no, we're not doing the complex text too hard for our students. We're not doing those. We're doing level text. Yeah. We're doing level text and we're doing a lot of strategy work and Oh yeah, we're doing some writing, but not about, anyway, it's a good lesson for all of us really to not just dump everything in and just keep bringing it because teachers are overwhelmed. Yeah. And then what are they going to do? Unless they get some really good instruction. 'cause you can use some of those programs well, but the way to use them well is to weed stuff out. Unless you've got a lot of extra time. And then you can Okay. Bring not level text , but you can bring other stuff in. Yeah . Um, so that was a, that was a disappointment to us. And we worried about what that meant. And then I'll just name it. Balanced literacy itself was still alive and well. Mm . Very alive and well. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> . And it's all based on level texts. So different students getting different texts and no real communal learning in that way. I mean, there's a love of reading that comes out in balanced literacy, which is important, but that's kind of it. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> . And so it didn't fit, but it didn't go away. Initially we did a, at Student Achievement Partners, where I was the founding partner, we did a review of balanced literacy to say Uhuh. And then Ed reports, bless them, came in and said, yeah, Uhuh reads. So that was really, really important. So it wasn't like an automatic, here come the standards. Oh yeah. Okay, well, we'll we'll do this. 'cause teachers needed training. Administrators needed training, and the publishers needed to get some things right. Yeah. And some of them did. Knew , knew young. I'm gonna call 'em young publishers. Did
Speaker 2:<laugh> . Mm , that makes sense. And I think you wrote a piece, we're gonna link our listeners , um, in the show notes to this piece. But you wrote a piece about how standards are not curriculum. And I mean, I think this is a good segue to say that many times teachers are looking at standards and trying to turn them into a curriculum, but they still need what we call high quality instructional materials , um, to help them, you know, in in their instructional process.
Speaker 1:For sure. For sure. For sure. Oftentimes , standards are thought to be synonymous with curriculum. They are not. As a matter of fact, I had a phone call with someone , not , they're not in education, so we don't have to get worried, but I said, I told him I was doing this podcast and what it was about, and , uh, something about standards not being curriculum and how important it was to, to, and he said, and he said, well, standards are curriculum. I said, no, no. And so here's, here's, so standards are really important, right? Because they, they allow a meaning of the minds in terms of this is what our students need to be learning. It's like a compact, if you will, with our students and our parents and the public. I like that to say, Mm-Hmm , <affirmative> , this is what you can expect your students to be learning. So that's really critical. But the standards define the what importantly Define the what, the level of complexity, the level of sophistication. Really, really important. Yeah . But curriculum tells us how to do the what? Well, and to use the literacy research to make sure all students get access. Because if we, if, if we don't pay attention to that, we'll leave. We have a lot of students in the dust and even even students who are excellent readers and excellent writers may be left in the dust as well. Unless we use a well crafted curriculum that shows us how to best teach by the research, right? How best to teach complex texts, how best to teach writing, et cetera . How best to teach vocabulary. And so there needs to be the standards and then there needs to be curriculum. And if I could also just say this, I'll say two more things about this, which is, if, if standards were enough, we wouldn't need curriculum. Oh , all these years we wouldn't need 'em. We wouldn't, why would we bother spending millions of dollars on buying curriculum? So our evidence is that we're, we realize we, we need more. Right? And then there's just a sense that , that the standards themselves aren't supposed to, aren't supposed . If you had standards that talked to you about all the guidance you possibly needed in order to teach, they would be hundreds and hundreds of pages along and no one would ever get through them. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> . And so that's why it's really important to think about standards and curriculum. And this is the other thing I would say is that, so this is maybe the third thing I would say is that so much of our time through these past decades when we started putting standards together, we thought, we debated hot debates about what should be in the standards, what should be out of the standards, what blah, blah, blah. And then we flipped directly to assessments. And we said, okay, well how are assessments assessing the standards? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> . Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> . And we forgot about them . And we said , oh , the teachers will kind of all figure it out. All, you know, they'll figure it out somehow. And the fact of the matter is , um, and I think this is a quote from somebody that education reform is a three-legged stool. There's the standards, there's the instruction materials in the curriculum and how teachers teach them. And then there are the assessments. And for too often, we've kind of skipped over the notion of high quality . Because if I'm a student in fifth grade and my teacher is not using a curriculum that's going to give me access to what the standards say I need to have, then I'm not gonna learn the forget the stand . I'm not learning them . Right . So it's really, really critical to think about high quality curriculum as a really important component of, of what's there. So yeah, standards are not curriculum. We
Speaker 2:Used to hear a lot more about high quality instructional materials. And I don't know, maybe I'm missing something, but I, I don't hear as much about that. I do hear about curriculum. Is this curriculum a science of reading curriculum? Which I don't like it when people ask that question, but I understand why they're asking that question. So when you think about the science of reading movement, high quality instructional materials, common core state standards, and where they came from, where do you see the intersection with all of those things?
Speaker 1:Well, so first of all, thanks to you Susan. You did a whole series of podcasts on science of reading that includes foundational skills and knowledge building. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> . And I'm so glad to see that conversation moving forward in some states, I think Wisconsin and Minnesota, maybe there's other states that are doing this as well, are actually beginning to say, yeah, science of reading, really critical. That includes, you know, learning to read foundational skills, but it also includes knowledge building. And you can begin to see that. So then some of the curriculum they might have approved before this gets into the, the connection between high quality curriculum and that are beginning to shift. So the, the lists are getting smaller to say, yeah , these are the texts that, that are not. So I'm really glad to see that that's happening. I know that as part of my role on the knowledge matters campaign, that you can, people can go and look at , um, has really been focused on which of these curricula are knowledge building, systematically coherent knowledge buildings, their reason for being essentially. And you know, how those then connect to the standards and how that then connects to the science of reading. There's a scientific advisory committee, and I'm not gonna know all , uh, you know, Lily Wong Fillmore is on it now . Duke's on it. Marilyn Adams is on it like this , you know, the authorities of the authorities in literacy? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> . And they have come out recently with asking legislatures to, you have to be careful when you ask legislators to do things, but to include , uh, <laugh> , um, to include knowledge building in with foundational skills so that it's the science read . 'cause there's as much research behind the importance of knowledge building and reading comprehension. The connection between them as there is for structured systematic foundational skills. And can we please, please, please not do what we always do an education , which is we look for a single silver bullet.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And think that will solve everything. Can we please go by the research to say Yes, strong systematic, structured phonics important. 'cause reading isn't a natural thing for any of us human beings. We have to learn it. Yeah . But then knowledge building. 'cause when you , I decode, if you ask me to decode a piece of writing, right. Okay. I have to know the sound symbol correspondences. I have to form them into words. Okay. So far so good. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> . And I gotta understand the words. Yeah. Or what's the point of my decoding? I don't , I still don't know what it means. So the fact that we want to say that it isn't an either or , it's a both and, and that will enrich instruction throughout.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I love that. And you know, we had , uh, a good point. We started this podcast with Natalie Wexler, ah , at the same time, her book, the Knowledge Gap came out. And one thing that she said to me that I've never forgotten, she said, you know, parents just assume that when they send their kids to school, they learn stuff. And so much of our programming, ELA, programming, whatever, kids don't actually learn things. They don't learn stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And kids hate that too. <laugh> . Yeah . I mean, how many times do you hear from kids? Well , if you said, well, what did you learn today? And if it's all about skills, and oh yeah, I learned how to determine the main idea. No kid's gonna say that. That's not what, but if you tell them , oh, you know, we learned about railroads across the nation and what that did for our economy, or we learned about the importance of bees or whatever, climate, weather, you name it. That's what interests students. That's what gets them. And that's what parents will hear. 'cause otherwise you go, they go , uh, nothing. You know, <laugh> Yeah , yeah . <laugh> . And so it's really important. She's right. Um, the more stuff, you know, the better you're able to navigate the world. Yeah. Whether that means as a citizen, whether that means as a worker, whether that means as a college student, whether that means as a mom or dad, whatever it is, the more you know about stuff, the better off. Um, I think the happier life is, and certainly the happier kids' lives are when they're actually learning stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah . It makes it much easier too, when they're focused on learning something to integrate your listening and speaking, reading and writing all together,
Speaker 1:All together. And I wanna say, you know, 'cause I've, I've knocked skills and strategies a bit here, but it's not that they're unimportant, but there are means to an end. And, and , and for a while, I think in education we got into, oh , let's focus on reading Strateg . There's a big, there's a research base for reading strategies, you know, good readers. It's what good readers do. When they, they , they summarize a paraphrase. They might ask questions, whatever. Really, really important. But there were means to understanding what's in the text. And for a while I think we got into, well, let's do the strategies. Let's, let's forget about what the text actually says. I remember observing a classroom and they were reading a poem. It was a poem, and they were reading a poem on dogs. And this went on for like a half hour. They had the kids read, and then they had them write, you know, like questions or do whatever else. But I never understood what the poem was really, really said because the teacher just said, what kind of questions do you have? Or Can someone paraphrase this? Or what's the main, you know, they never talked about like the poem itself or the expressions in the poem or what, what the poem says, sort of in between the lines. I didn't, I , I left it and I was like, well, I don't even know what that was about <laugh> . And I feel like kids are that way too . Okay. I can do the questions. I , and not that those aren't, again, have a research base and important , but they have a place to help uncover what's in the text. They're not the purpose of the lesson. There are a means to get to that understanding and to, as Natalie said, to learn stuff .
Speaker 2:Yeah. And I think , uh, she probably said , said it a little more eloquently than I did, like the learn stuff. But yeah, we get the point. <laugh> , um, I think I read someplace in terms of some , um, I think it was a Susan Newman article actually, where she was talking about the important things to remember about your ELA curriculum and what, what we should put forth as the front for students. And one of the things was make sure students are learning the things that they're reading about. And when you say that to teachers, teachers are like, oh, oh, wait a minute. That's right. You know, we were not focused on that. We were
Speaker 1:Not focused on that. And, and , you know, yes. Because we were thrilled with the research behind strategies skills, which are important and important to learn. But then again, again, see, well that's what we did again. So then we got really focused on that and forgot about, well, why we cared about strategies at all, which is what, so students, and these are my words, students can learn stuff. Um, so I think that's really , uh, really critical.
Speaker 2:So you, you touched a little bit on the importance of found . So in the science of reading movement, right? We've talked about the importance of foundational skills. Everybody agrees that's really, really important. You've talked about the fact that knowledge building has gotten maybe a little overshadowed in in this conversation. Have you seen any changes or progress as far as getting the message out that both of these things are really critical to kids' development?
Speaker 1:Well, I , I can talk about what I'm getting calls on and emails on and ask to present on, which is the importance of knowledge building and foundational skills. That , that's a , uh, that's a small little niche I know. But then when you begin to look at the Knowledge Matters campaign, which is beginning to get more and more interested parties about what does it mean to be knowledge building? And we've put together a, because we, we also showcase several knowledge building exemplary curricula on the website. And then we started getting questions from people that said, well, how did you come up with that? Because we, we don't give, we don't give like a score or a rating. We, we talk about the important components of, of a knowledge building curriculum , which is foundational skills, which is reading complex texts. So you get the complex syn text and vocabulary and that you're actually learning about <laugh> , there's my word again, learning about stuff, topics, content stuff, <laugh> . Um, and so we, you know, we look at the materials, you know, the units and , and then we write about it. But then what people said is, well, can you tell us how you got there? Like, how you got that These were the curriculas . So we've put together something called the Knowledge Matters Review tool to try to dissect, if you will, sort of working backwards from our evaluations or not . It was not evaluations. Yeah . It's our, our to be able to showcase these curricula. And that is available now to folks. So again, you can go on the Knowledge Matters campaign website and you can pull it down and you can use it in a variety of ways. You could use it just as professional development. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> . So let's say you've got a curriculum that isn't one of these knowledge building ones. You might figure out, well what can we focus on in this particular curriculum we have that will get us there? 'cause it may have the components, it's just, there's just so much. So what should we focus on? It may be that you're going to go through a new adoption cycle and the team that's coming together to do the adoption could use alignment with standards certainly. But then also, so what does , you know, ed reports and others say about these things? But then also if we wanna dive into knowledge building, what might we look at? What might we do? What might we look at? And use it as another source. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> , we wanted to make transparent what our decision making was. And also people were like, well, I wanna see if our curriculum doesn't , we don't have it up. Yours , ours didn't get up on the web. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> . But maybe ours is. And for them to be able to take a look themselves. So we've included that.
Speaker 2:That's great. I love that you talked about using that , um, review tool as a professional development moment. Um, not just to evaluate curriculum to see what knowledge building should look like in, in your instruction.
Speaker 1:Right. And what you'll see in that was we were just talking about integrate, integrate, integrate. Um , yeah , you will see that there are, so I think there's eight dimensions, but you will see when you deal with complex texts, how you're dealing with other aspects you're dealing with , uh, you know, within that dimension. Writing is mentioned. Discussions are mentioned. When you get to writing, it's, it's writing about what you're reading when you're in discuss . So, so they all, again, create those connections between and across the dimensions. 'cause if you lose sight of that, you've lost sight of what kids need, I think. Yeah . So that's there as well.
Speaker 2:So there's two questions I want to ask you. And they're related. One is, often people will look at a knowledge building curriculum and say, this is ELA , why am I teaching science and social studies? And then they may say, oh, I'm teaching science and social studies in ELA , so I don't need to teach science and social studies later, you know, at other parts of my day. How would you respond to those?
Speaker 1:So I'll take the last one first. Well, no, of course. You know, one of the things that's happened, and we hear teachers talk about this and, and the public talk about this is how the, the curriculum has narrowed. We used to do science and social studies in elementary school. We don't anymore. Yeah. Um, there's quote unquote not time. And, and I would say, I am hoping that's gonna come back that people will say, wait a minute. Because the more content you know Right, the better off you are. And if you're doing a, a social studies, instructional materials and science instructional materials, they're also gonna follow a , a sequence I think from grade to grade to grade to grade, which is really, really important. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> , you can get some curricula. CKLA is one of them that does some sort of grade to grade, but some of them just deal with sort of topics. And then your first question. Oh yeah. So science and social studies. Um, why, why ? Well , because knowledge building, understanding the human and natural world makes you a better reader. It also, what I wanna call is create sort of Velcro in the brain on which I can include and learn more stuff about this content. And so it's also , uh, fun and interesting for students. So if you look at the research, it is so clear that , uh, I heard someone talk about knowledge building as a curriculum, as an interest-bearing account. Because the more you learn, the better you read, the better you read, the more you learn. And it's so true. So, and what's what's lovely, I think about if you go onto the website , um, and look at the curriculum, and we had them set out the topics that they cover <laugh> , um, because some mm-Hmm . <affirmative> , they're very different. One from the other. They operate differently, one from the other. But they're all focused on the goal of knowledge building, which is lovely. And by the way, accords directly with the literacy research.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's so great. I, I often remind people that what we're teaching in English language arts is how kids can take in information and be able to communicate information. And what better way to do that than through, you know, content.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Because again, it's interesting and we know, like if I, for example, if you were to give me a tested reading and you'd probably say, oh yeah, she's pretty up there in terms of being an excellent reader, but you give me a plumber's technical manual or like, I, New York Times had something on the black hole, I'm like lost. I would need instruction. I would need content to be able to access those , um, in the way. So this notion that we're just, I know there's something about being a good reader and I kind of get that, but it's also because the more you know, and I know a lot about a lot of subjects as I know you do, and many of our audience members do. And so we don't get stumped very often. But , uh, the whole notion is that the content matters when I'm reading about matters and how I get through that content matters and, and how I get access to that content matters, which means I'm building my knowledge solely. But sure . I have not cracked the plumber thing yet, but <laugh> , you know , I figured how to hire one. But anyway, so really important. <laugh> .
Speaker 2:Yes, for sure. Let me know when that happens and I can have you over .
Speaker 1:Yes. Okay. <laugh>. Okay . Sounds, yeah. Another lifetime perhaps. Yeah .
Speaker 2:Oh, this has been great. As we sort of wrap up here, Sue, do you have any final thoughts or advice you'd like to leave our listeners with today?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do. I think I've said it, but I wanna underscore it. And that is, you know, we hear all this talk from students, from others that learning isn't relevant and it's uninteresting. And so if you, if you even set aside all the literacy research that ties knowledge building closely with being better reader, comprehenders, the fact of the matter is students love to know about things. They love to become an expert on things. Uh, you know, my grandson, when he was three and four years old, just became obsessed with the Titanic. He could tell me everything about how it sunk and who came to rescue it and how it, you know, ships and what that means and so on and so forth. 'cause he was, he . And that's how kids get, they get like, they love to learn about stuff and they talk more to each other and learn, learn how to converse about these kinds of things. And it, it piques their curiosity, their delight and so on. And that's what they'll talk about when they go home and their parents or caretakers ask them , what did you learn today? Or what are you learning today? So, and I wanna say connected to that two cautions for folks as they as teachers implement the curriculum. And that is, please leave level text at the door. If you have a level text library, organize it by topic. Mm-Hmm . So that students can have access. 'cause some students might know a whole lot about horses or whatever, or animals because they've lived on a farm or visit farms and someone else might know a whole lot about some other subject. But so organize and allow kids to pick up the texts that they wanna pick up. Again, love to have it organized around the topics that they're reading. Mm . But level texts have no place, there's no research basis for it. We don't just have one level. It's stymies kids, stop it, stop it, stop it , stop it. So, and then connected to that is because we've done this shift from Yeah, we really care about what we're learning from what we read. It's not just the skills and strategies that are a means to uncovering what that is. So be careful about how much time you're spending on the skills and strategies versus your goal, which is to get students to understand what this author's telling us versus another author to get and build and building the knowledge. Mm . Because those two things get in the way of, you know, making joyful learning for students. <laugh> .
Speaker 2:Oh, that's a great, well I love that. Number one, you have such steep background knowledge in this topic that we're talking about, but you also have lots and lots of passion about it. <laugh>,
Speaker 1:I surely do. Thank you Susan. And for all you've done with the Knowledge Building podcast, amazing researchers and scholars you had on to really uncover why it's so important. So yay for you.
Speaker 2:Oh , thank you so much. And thank you again for joining us. It's always a pleasure to have you on. And I'm Sure. We will talk again soon.
Speaker 1:Sounds good.
Speaker 2:That was Sue Pimintel , co-founder of Standards Work . We'll have a link to the Knowledge Matters review tool in the show notes, and we'll also link Sue's piece for the 74 standards are Not curriculum, and next time on the show we're continuing our reading reboot By focusing on the critical role of curriculum, we'll reexamine and build on the key elements of high quality curriculum. What's important to look for and what are some red flags.
Speaker 3:You know, the non-negotiables are really like, what are those aspects that we know are most critical to developing skilled literacy? What do we have the most amount of research to support
Speaker 2:That's coming up next time? Also, given what Sue just said about the importance of writing,
Speaker 1:Don't silo writing like it's its own thing where you give students a topic they know nothing about or you just ask them to write about themselves. We want students to be writing about what they're reading.
Speaker 2:I'd like to remind you that we'll be paying special attention to the reciprocal relationship between reading and writing throughout this season, and now's the perfect moment to announce this exciting news. All season. We're building towards a special miniseries that's going to explicitly focus on writing. We'll be sharing more information on that in the upcoming episodes. And don't forget this season, we really want to hear from you as we embark on this reading reboot. What's a science of reading question that you'd like us to explore during this season? We'll tackle some of your questions by submitting a question. You could also win a visit from me to your school. Find out more information and submit a question at amplify.com/soar. Mailbag Science of Reading. The podcast is brought to you by Amplify. For more information on how amplify leverages the science of reading, go to amplify.com/ck a . I'm Susan Lambert. Thank you so much for listening.