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

Episode Transcript

Narrator (00:00):
Welcome to EdView 360.

Natalie Wexler (00:05):
We need to recognize that reading, writing
and content area learning areall connected.
When you think about it,anything that we can understand
when we read, anything we canexpress when we write, once
we've gotten the foundationalskills in place, draws on
whatever we've been able tolearn, and they are also ways of

(00:26):
learning and acquiring anddeepening knowledge.
So this idea that we've got areading block here and a writing
block there and, if we're lucky, we get some social studies and
science I think we really needto break down those silos, and
what that means in practice isthat every literacy teacher also

(00:47):
needs to be a content teacher.

Narrator (00:50):
You just heard from Natalie Wexler, respected author
and literacy advocate.
Natalie is our guest on theEdView 360 podcast.

Pam Austin (01:11):
Hello, this is Pam Austin.
Welcome back to the FU360podcast series.
We are so excited to have youwith us today for our September
Literacy Conversation.
I'm conducting today's podcastfrom my native New Orleans,
louisiana.
Today's guest is someone whosevoice has helped reshape how we
think about literacy, learningand equity in education.
Natalie Wexler is a nationallyrecognized education writer and

(01:31):
advocate whose work bridgescognitive science in classroom
practice with clarity andurgency.
Oh man, that sounds so good.
She's the author of Beyond theScience of Reading Connecting
Literacy Instruction to theScience of Learning a powerful
call to rethink how we teachreading comprehension.
Her earlier book, the KnowledgeGap, exposed the hidden causes

(01:56):
behind America's literacystruggles and sparked a national
conversation about the role ofbackground knowledge in
education about the role ofbackground knowledge in
education.
She also co-authored theWriting Revolution, a practical
guide that's transformed writinginstruction in schools across
the country.
Natalie has spoken to audiencesacross the US and
internationally and she's thehost of Reading Comprehension

(02:19):
Revisited, the first season ofthe Knowledge Matters podcast,
where she continues to elevatethe voices of educators and
researchers working to closethat literacy gap.
We're thrilled to have her heretoday to talk about how the
connecting of the science ofreading to the science of
learning can unlock.
Unlock is what we're looking atin the deeper understanding and

(02:42):
better outcomes for allstudents.
Natalie, welcome to our show.
Thanks so much.

Natalie Wexler (02:47):
Pam, I'm delighted to be here.

Pam Austin (02:49):
Oh yes, and we are so delighted to have you here,
you know.
Let's go ahead and start withthe basics here.
How do you define science ofreading?
We hear that phrase so often,and that's just part one.
Part two why do you think it'soften reduced to just phonics?

Natalie Wexler (03:08):
Right.
So I mean that phrase scienceof reading I'd never heard when
I was writing my first book, theKnowledge Gap, that came out in
2019.
And so in the last five yearsor so, it's really become a
catchphrase, and I'm not a hugefan of it because it kind of
like some people think, well,I'm teaching the science of

(03:29):
reading, right, like it's acurriculum and it really just
refers to a body of evidencerelated to reading.
But yes, as the second part ofyour question implies, often in
the media and sometimes otherplaces, you see it essentially
as being reduced just to phonicsor sometimes interpreted as
more phonics.
And I'm not saying science ofreading advocates do that.

(03:52):
I think everybody acknowledgesthat there is more reading than
phonics.
But because there's been thisreally narrow, intense focus on
problems with that one area ofreading instruction and how it
doesn't line up with whatscience tells us will work, I
think it's led to the assumptionthat's the only problem with
reading instruction and that ifwe just fix that phonics problem

(04:13):
, everything's going to be fine.
And so I would argue for adefinition that is broader, that
encompasses all of thecognitive science related to
reading, including the cognitivescience related to reading
comprehension.
And I think if we do that, wesee including the cognitive
science related to readingcomprehension.
And I think if we do that wesee there are also some problems
with typical readingcomprehension instruction, which
we can get into.
But to answer the second part ofyour question, why does it get

(04:34):
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 debateover phonics since I was born,
practically, and that's a longtime ago, and it's also easier,
I think, to grasp.
I think the science relating toreading comprehension and the
way it relates to what goes onin classrooms is more

(04:56):
complicated.
So I think that has a lot to dowith why there's been this
exclusion or overlooking of thataspect of science related to
reading.

Pam Austin (05:09):
You know that last phrase.
It's complicated.
There's nothing about literacyand learning and all of those
aspects.
That's very simplistic, right?
That's why there's a body ofevidence and it opens the door
for these instances where we dohave these misconceptions or the
assumptions there.

(05:29):
Thank you so much for sharingthat.
It's making us think aseducators.
So, yeah, there's a whole lotmore, 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 thebiggest misconceptions?
Because you mentioned thatthere are some out there that

(05:51):
educators have about reading andcomprehension instruction.
You got the ball rolling.
I think you started theconversation.
Could you elaborate a littlebit more?

Natalie Wexler (05:59):
Yeah, and I want to say I mean, you know, it's
not the fault of any educator orany teacher.
It's really a systemic problemthat we've got a whole system
that is in curriculum materialsand training that is premised on
the assumption that readingcomprehension is essentially a
set of skills and strategies,things like finding the main
idea of a text or makinginferences, you know, and often

(06:23):
there's a skill of the week thatthe teacher demonstrates,
models and then the students gooff to practice the skill.
And there's no relationshipreally between the texts that
the text this teacher uses tomodel the skill and then the
text the students use topractice the skill.
Those things are categorized bythings like how long the

(06:45):
sentences are and how commonlyused the words are, and so that
it's presumed to be at students'individual reading levels.
And so the theory behind thisis if kids really continue
practicing skills like findingthe main idea, making inferences
, they'll master those skillsand they'll be able to apply
those skills to any text thatthey try to read and be able to

(07:07):
gain understanding, gainknowledge from those texts.
But cognitive science evidencetells us that's really not the
way reading comprehension works.
I mean it is important to beable to find the main idea of a
text and all of those things.
But it's a lot easier if youactually have background
knowledge relating to the text.
I mean especially makinginferences.
If we know a lot about thetopic we're reading about, we

(07:33):
make those inferences, naturally, you know, and even toddlers
can make inferences.
If they touch something hotthey infer If they do it again
it's going to hurt again, thatkind of thing.
So these are most of them.
We can maybe get into thedifferences between some of
these skills and strategies, butessentially you can't really
use any of them, you can't applyany of them unless you have a
certain threshold of knowledgerelated to what you're reading

(07:54):
about Could be knowledge of thetopic.
Ultimately it should be generalacademic knowledge and
vocabulary, because that is thekind of knowledge and vocabulary
that tends to be assumed bycomplex text.
You know, writers don't explainevery tone they use.
They assume readers are goingto know certain things and if
you don't, it's a real barrierto comprehension.

(08:15):
So I think that's one thingthat's been seriously overlooked
in the typical approach toreading comprehension.
And I would say a second andpossibly equally important
factor is the complex syntax ofwritten language sentence
structure.
So the sentence structure ofwritten language is almost
always more complex than thekind of sentence structure we

(08:37):
use in conversation Same withvocabulary.
So even if a kid is a gooddecoder, there can be real
barriers to readingcomprehension.
We have to start looking atwritten language as almost a
second language from orallanguage and really explicitly
teach kids both.
Explicitly teach them theknowledge that they will need to

(08:59):
understand written text andalso the knowledge of complex
syntax that they'll need.

Pam Austin (09:04):
It is complicated, it is not simplistic.
The whole idea of cognitivescience, natalie, is just so
intriguing here.
So not isolated skills allintertwined.
That background knowledge isheavily important here.
So you know often here thephrase in order to learn
something you must knowsomething.
So you have to have some kindof nugget there in order to

(09:26):
latch on to gain knowledge.
I love the fact that you pulledin that general vocabulary and
how important that is for thatlayer of comprehension and
syntax.
We're not thinking about syntaxand how complex that language
gets.
And, natalie, when does thatstart?
In what grade does that syntaxbecome more challenging for

(09:47):
students, or what are theexpectations?
Do we start early with ourstudents?

Natalie Wexler (09:52):
We definitely should start early.
I mean, there are studies thathave found that even the syntax
used in children's literature ismore complex than the syntax
that is used in adultconversation.
So reading aloud to kids beforethey themselves can read is
hugely important because it'sstarting to acquaint them with
that more complex syntax thatthey will need to understand

(10:15):
when they are able to read texton their own.
And, of course, as the gradelevels go up, the syntax as well
as the vocabulary becomes morecomplex.
Go up, the syntax as well asthe vocabulary becomes more
complex.
And what we need to do isrealize that, both with syntax
and vocabulary, rather thanthinking when kids are in the
early grades and they're notdecoding complex text yet,

(10:35):
they're not reading it on theirown but through oral language,
through read-alouds anddiscussion, back-and-forth
discussion, we can startfamiliarizing them with that
more complex syntax andvocabulary and that'll lodge in.
If we do it well, that's goingto stick in their long-term
memory and they'll be able todraw on it in years to come.

(10:57):
So we need to think not justwhat vocabulary, what syntax do
kids need to understand whatthey can read now, but what are
they going to be expected toknow 10 years from now and start
planting the seeds of thatsuccess through oral language.

Pam Austin (11:11):
I love hearing you talk about read aloud and how
important those read aloudopportunities are for students,
and I've always said and let meknow your thoughts on this that
extending all the way throughhigh school, reading aloud more
complex text than what studentswill read themselves to get the
brain ready to hear the cadenceof that syntax, the more

(11:35):
difficult language that they'regoing to encounter.
So tell us what you think.

Natalie Wexler (11:40):
Yeah, I mean.
I do want to be clear, thoughthat sometimes I hear well, if
kids can't read the text ontheir own, then teachers just
read it aloud to them, andthat's not where it should stop,
but it's a good place to begin.
I think you know, we know, thatkids' listening comprehension
exceeds their own readingcomprehension through about age
13 on average, and really untilthey're proficient readers, and

(12:04):
that's so.
It could be beyond 13,depending on the individual
student, depending on theindividual student.
And the reason, the explanationfor that, I would say, is that
we have a limited what cognitivescientists call working memory
capacity.
So that's the aspect of ourconsciousness where we're taking
in new information, trying tounderstand it, and it's been
found that on average it canonly hold four or five items of

(12:26):
new information for about 20seconds before it starts to
become overwhelmed.
And if you're not yet aproficient reader, among the
things you're juggling in,working memory is going to be
decoding the words, figuring outwhere the emphasis goes in a
sentence.
But if you have an experiencedreader, an adult teacher or

(12:46):
whatever, doing that decodingwork and the work of prosody,
the work of putting in theemphasis where it belongs for
you, that opens up more capacityin working memory for you to
just take in the new information, understand it and retain it
and then, armed with thatvocabulary, that information, in
long-term memory, it will beeasier for you to read that same

(13:10):
text or maybe another text onthe same topic that uses the
same concepts and vocabulary,because now you're already
familiar with those concepts andthat vocabulary.
You don't have to juggle thatin working memory along with the
tasks of reading, which canpose a very heavy burden.

Pam Austin (13:27):
All right, very good .
Thank you so much for sharingthat, really diving into
understanding that they can gainmeaning from text based on so
many other factors that arethere.
I do want to ask you somethingyou've said is that we've
unintentionally didn't do it onpurpose, of course made reading
and writing harder than it needsto be.

(13:49):
Can you unpack that for us?
Tell us a little about what arewe doing.
That's getting in the way, yeah.

Natalie Wexler (13:56):
Well, that again has to do with this concept of
working memory that I just wasdescribing and its limitations.
And so, as I said, you know ifyou're not yet a proficient
reader, you're going to bejuggling those things.
And working memory decoding andwriting imposes an even heavier
burden or cognitive load, ascognitive scientists say on

(14:16):
working memory, because you'renot only like having to decode
words, you're having to producethose words, you're having to
form those letters, you'rehaving to spell those words,
plus, you know organizing yourthoughts.
And what do you want to sayabout this?
So we know reading and writingalready impose a heavy cognitive
load on kids.
If you then have them try toread and write about topics that

(14:37):
they are not familiar with,that cognitive load becomes
crippling, it's overwhelming.
And yet we do routinely in ourcurrent system, ask kids to read
and write about topics they maynot be familiar with.
I mean that skills-focusedapproach to comprehension that I
was describing.
The teacher might be reading abook about I don't know sea

(14:58):
mammals to demonstrate you know,determining the author's
purpose, or whatever.
And then kids go off topractice the skill on books on a
random variety of topics thatthey may not know anything about
, could be the solar system orwhatever.
And then, with writing, weoften ask kids to respond to
prompts on topics that theyreally haven't learned about.

(15:19):
You know, with a separatewriting curriculum.
So that's what I mean aboutmaking reading and writing
harder for kids if they need tobe.
And the way to I mean we'renever 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 readand write about topics they've
may be hard to read about atopic you don't know much about,

(15:53):
but it is virtually impossibleto write about a topic that you
don't know much about.

Voyager Sopris Learning (15:57):
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Pam Austin (16:26):
You talked about exposing kids to all sorts of
content, right, different topics, giving them an exposure,
building the background, andthen you even pull in some
information in regards towriting, 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?

(16:47):
How do they create thatopportunity for that explicit
instruction that's manageable.
I'm thinking about all thecontent, I'm thinking about all
the background.
I'm thinking about helping mystudents to develop and write,
to communicate and expressthemselves based on what they've
learned.
How do we do it, Natalie?

Natalie Wexler (17:05):
Yeah, I really feel for teachers.
I know that many teachers, mostteachers, have not gotten
really good training in how toteachers who said what they were
excited about learning about,you know, rocks or whatever, and

(17:33):
they couldn't wait to writeabout it and it was great.
And so some kids, you know,especially kids who come from
more highly educated familieswhere 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 itorally.
But expressing it in writing isa whole other ball game and

(17:53):
they really need explicitwriting instruction that begins
at the sentence level, cruciallyin order to modulate, to
lighten that heavy cognitiveload that writing imposes.
So there are, you know, a numberof activities that kids can
engage in that begin at thesentence level and then, equally

(18:15):
important, when they are readyto move on to writing at greater
length, teaching them how tooutline a paragraph, how to
outline an essay, before theyactually draft it, which is,
again, really important formodulating that heavy cognitive
load of writing at length.
So the other benefit of writingis if you embed it in content

(18:36):
that kids are learning about,the content in the curriculum.
It is a really powerful boostto comprehension, to retention
of information and to theability to analyze information.
Plus, I should mention, whenyou start at the sentence level
and that should continue evenwhen kids are writing paragraphs

(18:56):
and essays.
Sentence level work is reallyhelpful and important.
It also in a very powerful wayfamiliarizes them with that
complex sentence structure ofwritten language.
If you teach a student how touse something like a
subordinating conjunction intheir own writing, they are in a
much better position tounderstand that kind of sentence
structure when they encounterit in their reading.

Pam Austin (19:18):
So that reading-writing connection is
really essential for buildingreaders and writers.
It just makes sense.
Thank you so much.
You know you've talked aboutthat artificial separation
between the reading and writingand you've made some suggestions
for how we can connect thatwhen we think about the

(19:38):
consequences that we'vedeveloped over time.
You've mentioned a few things.
Can you kind of summarize justonce more what are the
consequences, especially forthose kids who struggled, when
we do separate reading fromwriting instead of combining it
as a skill for gaining knowledgeand expressing and
communicating knowledge?

Natalie Wexler (20:00):
Well, I think it's really ended up holding a
lot of kids back, especiallykids from the lower end of the
socioeconomic spectrum who areless likely to pick up academic
knowledge and vocabulary at home, who are less likely to have
parents with the resources toget them tutoring or, you know,
supply things that might bemissing.
And so those kids, they reallyrely on school for acquiring

(20:24):
that academic knowledge andvocabulary, that familiarity
with complex syntax that enablesthem to reach their full
potential and succeed in schooland in life.
And I think that separatingthese things I mean part of one
thing that's happened especiallyat the elementary grades, but
often through middle school is alot of time being spent on

(20:46):
reading and math, the testedsubjects, and that's
particularly likely to happen inschools where test scores are
low.
Or if kids are struggling withreading, they'll get pulled from
social studies and science inorder to get reading
intervention and the end resultis that very little time is
spent on social studies andscience, especially for kids who

(21:07):
struggle the most.
But we have evidence that is.
Actually those subjects fiction, poetry, et cetera have their
place, but social studies andscience may have the most
potential to build the kind ofknowledge and vocabulary that
enables kids to read complextext.
And yet, with the best ofintentions, we're most likely to

(21:27):
deny those kids who need it themost access to that kind of
content because we think, well,they've got to, we've got to get
their reading skills and theircomprehension skills in place
first.
But it really doesn't work thatway.
What's going to be much moreeffective is to weave these
things in, weave readingcomprehension into the across

(21:48):
the curriculum, across subjectmatters, and the same with
writing.
And so I'm not saying you needto choose between building
knowledge and using strategiesat all.
I mean, sometimes it'spresented as this you've got to
do one or the other.
The question is really what areyou going to put in the
foreground?
And what I and others arearguing is we've got to put

(22:11):
content in the foreground andthen bring in whatever skills or
strategies are most appropriateto help kids understand and
analyze that particular content,and also think of these
strategies not just as readingcomprehension strategies, but
also as writing strategies.
I mentioned earlier that there'sa difference between different
kinds of strategies, so makinginferences, as I said, that's

(22:32):
kind of a thing we do, naturally, if we have enough knowledge,
finding the main idea orsummarizing pretty much the same
thing.
That's not something that kidsjust do.
Naturally, that actually doesneed to be taught explicitly,
but often what we do is we justtell kids okay, now go off and
just put in the most importantthings and leave out the

(22:53):
unimportant stuff, and thenyou'll have the main idea or
you'll summarize.
But they may not know what themost important stuff is.
If we provide them with astructured writing activity
where there are questions thatguide them to the most important
information like who, what,where, when, why, how them to
the most important informationlike who, what, where, when, why

(23:13):
, how and then teach them how toput those things into a summary
sentence and eventually asummary paragraph, that's going
to be much more effective.
So again, that's breaking downthese artificial barriers that
we've erected between reading,writing and the content areas.

Pam Austin (23:25):
Oh yeah, we want to break down the barriers for sure
, natalie.
Would you say that these weresome of the key principles of
cognitive science?
When we apply these, thatintegration that you talked
about, really finding thoseapproaches that will help
students understand, based onthe structure we use for this
explicit instruction?

Natalie Wexler (23:45):
Yeah, I mean I would say that the principles of
cognitive science lead to theconclusion that we should tie
these things together.
And you know, I'm not sayingthere's been a lot of research
on that.
Most of the cognitive scienceresearch that relates to
education has been on math andscience, because they're kind of
easier to study for variousreasons.
But the principles apply to alllearning.

(24:06):
And there is one caveat there,though it's very hard to apply
these principles to typicalcomprehension instruction.
So these principles and they'rethings like just briefly,
because you could take a wholegraduate level course on all of
this.
But, for example, there'ssomething called retrieval
practice.
All that means is that the moreyou try retrieving an item of

(24:31):
information that you've gotsomewhere in long-term memory
but maybe you've slightlyforgotten, the more you retrieve
that, the easier it is toretrieve in the future.
And so that's why priorknowledge is so helpful to
learning something new about atopic, because if you're
retrieving knowledge you alreadyhave, you don't have to juggle
that in long-term memory.
So that opens up more capacityI mean in working memory, excuse

(24:52):
me.
So that opens up more capacityin working memory to take in new
information.
But what these?
And then there's anotherprinciple that I should mention,
which is something calleddeliberate practice, which could
be applied to any skill, so fordecoding, for example.
So deliberate practice meansthat a teacher breaks down a

(25:13):
complex task into manageablechunks for a student and gives
that student practice withwhatever chunk he or she needs
and prompt, targeted feedbackand when they've mastered that
chunk, moving a student ontoanother chunk.
That can be applied to, I think, lots of skills.
Chunk that can be applied to, Ithink, lots of skills.

(25:34):
The problem with comprehensioninstruction is these principles
all assume that you are eitherteaching a skill that is
transferable, like decodingwords or multiplying numbers or
whatever, or you're teachingsomething substantive, like
history or science.
With comprehension instruction,the problem is teachers are
trying to teach a skill that isnot transferable, as though it

(25:55):
were transferable, like makinginferences.
Let's just practice makinginferences on this text and then
you'll be able to makeinferences on another text.
Comprehension skills don't worklike that.
So you can't use deliberatepractice.
You also can't use retrievalpractice, because there's no
common content for kids topractice retrieving.
They're all reading books ondifferent topics.

(26:16):
So if you're a teacher who'slearned about these principles
of cognitive science, you wantto apply them in your classroom,
but you're using the typicalapproach to comprehension.
There's really no way to do it.

Pam Austin (26:30):
So we're looking at a scaffold, step-by-step
approach, so that students havesome guidance.
Step approach so that studentshave some guidance, some support
based on what they're reading,and it can be a variety of
different content, variety ofdifferent texts that they're
actually encountering.

Natalie Wexler (26:48):
Yes, I mean I would say ideally there'll be
some coherence to the text sothat ideally you'll have a
curriculum that is structured ina way that provides students
with knowledge in the earliergrades.
That's going to be, they'll beassumed to have that the
curriculum assumes they have atlater grades.

(27:10):
So I do think curriculum andit's not just for history or
science but literature too Imean, if you're reading To Kill
a Mockingbird and you don't knowanything about what was going
on in the United States in the1930s, you know you need to
supply students with thatinformation for them to
appreciate literature as well.

Pam Austin (27:29):
In many instances there's so much to consider,
isn't there, natalie?
Yeah, and we can see whyeducators are feeling
overwhelmed, right?
So when we think about all ofthe different competing
frameworks, there's thisapproach and there's that
approach, and you've given uslots and lots of ideas.

(27:49):
What's the first step a teachershould take when they're
considering the best path tomove forward, to help our
students dive into text and getmeaning from text and get to
that big C I spoke of earlier?

Natalie Wexler (28:05):
Well, I think, especially if you're an
individual teacher in a schoolthat maybe doesn't have the kind
of content-rich, coherentcurriculum that I was describing
, I think a great place to startis with writing, with the kinds
of sentence-level activitiesthat I was just talking about,
and they're really drawn from amethod called the writing
revolution, which isn't mymethod.

(28:26):
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 helpwith.
I think it will also, even ifthe content that you're teaching
, if there's not a whole lot ofcontent, it can still help kids

(28:51):
retain whatever content is there.
It can also clue you into whenyou need to supplement that
content to make it richer,because if kids aren't able to
write even, sometimes even a fewsentences about a topic, that's
a sign that they may not haveenough information, they may not
have been given enoughinformation about that topic and
that you need to bring in morematerials to supply that

(29:13):
information.
So it can help you determinewhether the curriculum you're
using is supplying enoughcontent for kids to really get a
meaningful education.

Pam Austin (29:24):
So if you have a curriculum that maybe are
centered around thematic units,where we have multiple texts on
one particular topic, wherestudents are gaining knowledge,
would that be an example of thetype of text or the type of
curriculum we're looking for?

Natalie Wexler (29:38):
Yes, although I would be just to add yet another
complication really broadthemes like childhood around the
world or something you know,you sometimes see those those
probably are going to be not asgood as something that's a
really meaty topic like westwardexpansion or, you know, sea
mammals or whatever.

(29:59):
One reason is that it's goingto probably be pretty
superficial and the kids aren'tgoing to have something to
really dig into, which probablywon't be as engaging.
But also in terms of buildingknowledge, it's really important
for kids to hear the samevocabulary, the same concepts
repeatedly in slightly differentcontexts over a period of time
I'd say two, three weeks at aminimum for those things to

(30:20):
really stick in long-term memory.
So you want to make sure, ifit's a theme or a topic, that
it's defined enough so that kidsget that repetition.

Pam Austin (30:30):
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 oneidea, insight that we hope that
our listeners hear, that everylistener walks away with today
after having heard thisconversation?

Natalie Wexler (30:50):
I guess the basic message I try to get
across is we need to recognizethat reading, writing and
content area learning are allconnected.
When you think about it,anything that we can understand
when we read, anything we canexpress when we write, once
we've gotten the foundationalskills in place, draws on

(31:10):
whatever we've been able tolearn, and they are also ways of
learning and acquiring anddeepening knowledge.
So this idea that we've got areading block here and a writing
block there and, if we're lucky, we get some social studies and
science, I think we really needto break down those silos.

(31:31):
And what that means in practiceis that every literacy teacher
also needs to be a contentteacher, and every content
teacher also needs to be aliteracy teacher.

Pam Austin (31:41):
I absolutely love that.
Now can you also tell ourlisteners where they can learn
more about you?

Natalie Wexler (31:50):
Sure, probably the best place is my website,
which is nataliewexlercom, andthat has information about my
books, and I have a Substacknewsletter that is free, so you
know there's information aboutthat and a way to subscribe on
the website as well.

Pam Austin (32:06):
Thank you.
Thank you so much, natalie.
This has been such a wonderful,informative, insightful
conversation.
We thank you for sharing yourknowledge, your experiences,
with our audience as well.
That's it for another greatFU360 podcast.
Please join us again next monthand visit voyagersoperscom

(32:27):
slash Edview to learn about ourwebinars, blogs and other
podcasts.
This has been Pam Austin and wehope to see you again soon.
This has been an Edview 360podcast.

Narrator (32:37):
It's been Pam Austin and we hope to see you again
soon.
This has been an Edview 360podcast.
For additionalthought-provoking discussions,
sign up for our blog, webinarand podcast series at
voyagersopriscom.
Slash edview360.
If you enjoyed the show, we'dlove a five-star review.

(33:03):
Wherever you listen to podcastsand to help other people like
you find our show, Thank you.

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