April 2, 2025 • 41 mins
In this episode, Dr. Kate Cain joins Literacy Talks hosts Stacy Hurst and Donell Pons to explore why comprehension isn’t just about decoding—it’s about what students bring to the text. From oral language and background knowledge to the structure of “considerate texts,” Dr. Cain offers practical insights into how educators can teach comprehension intentionally. Tune in for a deep, thought-provoking conversation that connects research to classroom practice and redefines what it means to understand what we read.
Chat about this episode in The Science of Reading Collective.
Explore the Reading Horizons Discovery® Product Suite.
Access past show notes.
Read the transcripts.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Narrator (00:03):
Welcome to literacy talks, the podcast for literacy
leaders and championseverywhere, brought to you by
Reading Horizons. Literacy talksis the place to discover new
ideas, trends, insights andpractical strategies for helping
all learners reach readingproficiency. Our hosts are Stacy
Hurst, a professor at SouthernUtah University and Chief
(00:27):
Academic Advisor for ReadingHorizons. Donell pons, a
recognized expert and advocatein literacy, dyslexia and
special education, and LindsayKemeny, an elementary classroom
teacher, author and speaker. Nowlet's talk literacy.
Stacy Hurst (00:46):
Welcome to this episode of literacy Talks. My
name is Stacy Hurst. I have theprivilege of hosting this
podcast along with Donell ponsand Lindsay Kemeny, and those of
you who've been listening knowthat we are focusing this
season's podcast on the ideaissue celebrating its 75th
anniversary of perspectives. Sowe are excited for this specific
(01:11):
episode, and I'm going to letDonell introduce our guest and
tell you why we're excited.
Donell Pons (01:18):
Great. So this is such a pleasure to have Kate
Cain on. I had not known muchabout your background, Kate, but
I saw you. I had the pleasure ofbeing able to attend the IDA
conference in Texas that wasjust held recently when they
introduced this perspectivespublication. And then you took a
piece, because you have anarticle in the publication, and
(01:40):
boy, I was just, it was reallygood. Just very, very good. I
was so glad to be introduced toyour voice, and I thought
everybody's got to hear fromyou, so we wanted to make sure
we could get you on. And it'sbeen challenging because you
are, you know, in a differentplace than we are here in the
United States, and so the timedifference, and we really
appreciate you doing that andaccommodating us. And Lindsay
isn't going to able to join ustoday for that reason, so you'll
(02:01):
find you're absent, but we justreally found it important to be
able to talk to you today.
Thoroughly enjoyed what youdiscussed and when you
presented. You did your piecewas on making and conveying
meaning, how structured literacyintegrates comprehension and
composition, and so we've talkedabout various aspects of
structured literacy. This isn'tnew for our listeners. They've
been listening along and alsofollowing along in the article.
(02:21):
And so you'll want to go to yourperspectives publication,
because we've we've told folkswhere that's at, and they've
been following along. Page 60 iswhere it begins, but we really
get into it next couple of pagesin. But for our listeners, Kate,
just I'd like you to maybe giveus a little bit of your
background, because, like I say,you were new for me, relatively
new for me, and I was just sograteful to hear from you what
(02:42):
give us a little bit about yourbackground in reading. Okay,
well, first I'd just
Unknown (02:47):
like to thank you for inviting me to be part of this
and talk about these ideas andshare them with your listeners.
It's a great experience. I lovetalking about research to
different groups and reallytrying to bridge that research
to practice divide. So I guessmy background is maybe not what
(03:08):
people expect it to be. So mytraining is actually in
experimental psychology. So I'mnot a qualified classroom
teacher. I'm not a speechlanguage pathologist or an
educational psychologist, I haveonly ever stood up in a
classroom and work with childrenin terms of my research, but not
(03:29):
actually in terms of instructionor teaching. And so basically I
did training. My undergraduatedegree was in experimental
psychology, as I said at SussexUniversity. And one of the
things that I learned there, Ibecame particularly interested
in memory, in text, in languageprocessing, and then I got into
(03:51):
reading research, specificallyfor my PhD. So I worked for a
couple of years on adult textcomprehension with Jane Oak Hill
and Alan Garnham. And throughthat, I became really interested
in Jane's other work that hadbeen about children that have
got specific readingcomprehension difficulties. So
(04:13):
up to them, I'd only been sortof like doing work on skilled
adult readers, but Jane had donesome work previously with a
group of children who acquireapparently good word reading
skills, but they're not verygood at answering questions
about texts that they've read orrecalling those texts with
(04:34):
appropriate detail andsequencing. And so I ended up,
sort of like focusing on thatgroup for my PhD studies, trying
to understand, why does theircomprehension break down? You
know, why can they they'veobviously got good learning
skills, because they can developgood word reading skills. So
what's going on with thecomprehension? And then I took a
(04:55):
postdoc, actually, with Jane aswell, that was looking at
longer. Original study of agroup of readers, and I've never
really been able to get awayfrom reading comprehension
development and difficultiessince then, I was hooked.
Donell Pons (05:10):
Well, that's great.
That's our gain. I think that'san interesting background, like
you said, Kate, because when youpresented it, definitely it was
a different perspective that Iwas not used to hearing, and
really appreciated thatdifferent lens that you brought
to it. So that is that'sinteresting to hear from you,
that your background is is a bitdifferent. So I hope our readers
will or listeners will pick upon that. It's great. And to
(05:31):
let's just dive right in,because you get, you get started
right away in your article,which I love, just get right to
the right to it, and you saythat you begin the article by
stating good oral language andcommunication skills provide a
strong foundation for thedevelopment of reading and
writing. Preschoolers who knowthe meanings of more words speak
longer utterances and producemore sophisticated narratives
(05:53):
are those who typically acquirestronger literacy skills and
more quickly than their peers.
So this is an excellent openingstatement explain why this is
such a good way to begindiscussing a rather complex
topic of making and conveyingmeaning.
Unknown (06:11):
Yeah, so reading comprehension and written
composition, they're complex.
They draw on a very wide rangeof different knowledge skills
and cognitive processes. And Ithink one of the things I was
trying to get across often,readers and instruction
instructors of literacy, theyknow that kind of word
recognition skills have got tobe taught. Children have got to
(06:32):
be able to decode the words, tobe able to access meaning from
text, and they got to learn howto spell those words for
writing. We know that that'scritical, but what I wanted to
get across was the ability tounderstand what we read and the
ability to actually write sortof clear, unambiguous, sort of
persuasive text. It doesn't justcome from nowhere, so reading
(06:55):
comprehension, compositionskills, they've got to be taught
and fostered, similar to how wethink about word recognition
skills. They have to be sort oflike taught and fostered, too.
But it doesn't mean thatchildren are coming to the
classroom without anything,because we have this foundation
of their oral language skills,of their communication skills
(07:17):
that they've built up inpreschool, and those serve to be
a really strong foundation forwhat we need to go on and teach
and foster. So I guess to linkit with something that your
listeners might be familiarwith, it's not really dissimilar
to how we know that your orallanguage skills predict how
(07:38):
easily children learn to readwords? You know, children who
can play around with the spokenlanguage, can identify words
that rhyme, can identify similarstarting letters. They find it
much easier to learn to read orto decode the printed word. So
what we have comprehension,children who have just got
(08:01):
better oral language skills,they know the meanings of more
words. They produce longerutterances. They tell
narratives. Relateautobiographical events with
clear structures, you know, withthe beginning, a middle and an
end. Children who come withthose foundational skills, they
typically acquire or developprogress, if you like, in
(08:25):
reading comprehension much moreeasily than children who don't
have that oral languagebackground when they start
school. So I guess what I wastrying to do with that is really
get across this idea thatcomprehension, composition, they
do need to be taught. They doneed to be fostered. But we're
not starting with a blank slatelike the majority of children
(08:48):
will come to school with orallanguage skills, and we can
build on those and develop thoseto enable them to become good
readers and good writers.
Donell Pons (08:59):
Yeah, gosh, I just love the way you broke that down
for us, and the importance of itand the importance of knowing.
And I think Kate, sometimesthat's where it breaks down for
us, is we see children andthey're being expressive, and
they might be telling a story,and they're rather young, and we
think that's just so adorable,but there's a lot going on when
they do that, and they'representing a lot of skill when
they do that. And I think maybesometimes we lose track of that
(09:21):
and think, Oh, it's just naturalwhen really, there's a lot that
plays into how well they dothat, right and sets them
Unknown (09:27):
up. I agree, and I think also it's really difficult
sometimes for us as skilledlanguage users to reflect on
that. It's very difficult for usto remember back and reflect on
our own learning. So sometimes,and I think I may it may be one
of the things that I did whenyou saw me speak at Ida, when we
(09:48):
were launching this perspectivesissue, I often try to use
different types of texts andexample to put a skilled adult
audience in the shoes of a youngRe. Data to give them some of
the challenges with vocabulary,with structures, with meaning
that a young reader might comeacross. Yeah. In fact,
Donell Pons (10:09):
Kate, you have a text right away. After that
first bit that I read, youpresent the reader with a text,
and you say, just read this. Andthen you ask a few questions,
and you call this. I thought itwas really interesting. You had
a good name for it, and I'mtrying to remember, oh, consider
it considerate text. And thatwas kind of the first time I've
heard anybody use So Kate, tellus a little bit about that,
(10:30):
because it was a great exercise,by the way, and a great piece of
text to get us thinking like yousay,
Unknown (10:36):
oh goodness. Well, certainly the idea of a
considerate text, I'm sure itdoes not come from Me, but
basically, you can think about awriter as being considerate and
thinking about their audienceand what knowledge they have and
how much help and support theygive them with explicit
(10:56):
information and with signalingso that they can extract meaning
from it. So I'm allowed I had aseries of questions after this
text, and I'm allowed to call itan inconsiderate text, because I
wrote it deliberately to try andsort of like trip readers up. I
mean, in fact, I actuallyadapted it from a text that had
been used in the study of poorcomprehenders Many years ago by
(11:20):
Nicola Yule and Trish Jocelyn,who I both know. But basically,
in this text, what I was tryingto get across was you can read
the words on the page, and youstill may have to engage in some
active effort to extract themeaning of a text. I've actually
got the text here. Shall I readit out? And then I could talk
(11:41):
read through what I wasthinking, or your listeners
rather, sorry, I'm so obsessedwith reading, I'm going to
constantly refer to readers, butI can talk you through what I
was thinking about, the ideas Iwanted to get across with this
text. So it's very brief. Ithink it's only about, it's
only, it's only three sentenceslong. So the text reads like
this, Lily had been busy withher bucket and spade for hours.
(12:06):
A huge wave crashed onto theshore just after she had
completed the tower. On seeingthat her day's work had been
ruined, Lily started to cry. Sothe first question I asked was
for a reader to think about, isthis a considerate text or not?
To try and get them into theprocess of thinking, how well
did I understand it? But thensome follow up questions to
(12:28):
really get them to probe them sothey could think, Well, did I
really get that or not? So wherewas Lily the setting of the
story? That's not statedexplicitly, what was she doing?
Well, the activity, it's a bitvague and fuzzy, really, in what
we're talking about and whathappened to make Lily cry.
Typically, in a narrative,things happen for a reason.
(12:49):
There's a motivation for acharacter's actions. And so in
this text, it doesn't, as Isaid, it doesn't state the
setting, but there are clueshere, because we've got a wave
and we've got a shore. So youmight infer that Li was at the
seaside, means she could be by abig lake. I guess if it's got
(13:10):
sufficient weather system, we'vegot words that could trip a
reader up if they were not usingthe context to extract meaning.
So for example, the word wave,it doesn't mean a gesture here,
it means sort of like a wave atthe seaside. But that sentence
starts off it's a huge wave, sobefore you hear crashed onto the
(13:33):
shore, you don't actually knowwhether that is somebody
gesturing or not. And then thereare details where the reader
really needs to infer what isgoing on by drawing on their
background knowledge and theirgeneral knowledge. So we have, I
mean, this obviously reflects mychildhood fact that I've written
(13:55):
about this many happier time ona cold beach with my bucket and
spade making sand castles. Butyou know, so there are these
clues that if you have thatbackground knowledge, as I do,
that sort of a bucket in spade,it doesn't say that she'd
completed a sand castle, but itcalls it a tower. You can use
that information to understandthat that was what Lily was
(14:16):
doing. Again, this text doesn'tstate explicitly that the sand
castle was ruined, or, like,kind of, or doesn't say that it
was, you know, like kind ofcrashed by the wave. The wave
crashed onto the shore. Lily'sday's work had been ruined by
that the reader can infer, oh,the reason that Lily started to
(14:37):
cry was not just this fuzzy ideathat her day's work had been
ruined, but that her glorioussandcast or some magnificent
tower had been destroyed by thewave. And if you don't engage in
that additional processing oftrying to rather than just
understanding the words inisolation, but linking them
(14:59):
into. Coherent clauses, coherentsentences, linking up those
ideas across the text. And bydrawing on your background
knowledge to actually make senseof these more implicit details,
you're only going to have afuzzy, inadequate representation
of the text, meaning there'sactually an awful lot going on
(15:22):
even to understand a very, verysimple text. You know,
Donell Pons (15:27):
that's interesting, because Stacy, you and I have
had a conversation before, tooabout the kind of text we put in
front of students, and ourexpectation for what we think
the student ought to be able toaccomplish with that. And Kate,
you are honing right in on thisfor us, because you often see a
great deal of text put in frontof young readers, and people
think just because the languagehas been simplified, that Oh,
(15:48):
that's good. But as you'vementioned in those four key
parts that you would teach instructured literacy, if you're
really paying attention to this,you're looking at vocabulary and
background knowledge, sentencestructure and grammar knowledge
and use of text structure andcritical thinking skills. That's
a whole lot more than justmaking the words making the
words a little more simple,
Unknown (16:05):
right? Definitely, most definitely, I think that's we
often think about words. Wethink that if individual words
are familiar, or if individualwords are decodable, then
everything will be okay. Andoften also we have, there's a
bit of a challenge. I think whenwe use readability formula to
identify whether or a word atext is easy to read or suitable
(16:32):
for a particular age group,because that typically focuses
on, I mean, those differentformulae, they typically focus
on Word Frequency anddecodability and also sentence
length. And sometimes a shorttwo short sentences isn't always
that helpful, because sometimeswe actually have these signaling
(16:52):
words that signal the way thattwo events or ideas are related,
such as before and after.
Because, you know, thinkingthose words can be very
important, and if you don'tactually have them in a text,
but you've stripped it all outto have supposedly short, easy
to read sentences a childdoesn't have that signal from
(17:12):
the writer about how to linkdifferent ideas. So I think I
like to think of them as sort oflike processing instructions.
And I think we really have tothink, when we're looking at
what we might call a simplifiedtext, we have to go beyond the
words and the length of thesentences, actually think about
the ideas. Think about thatdepth of processing and what it
(17:32):
takes to truly understand whatis going on in that text.
Stacy Hurst (17:41):
And sometimes those readability formulas they Well,
they can't take intoconsideration the background
knowledge of a student, so whatthey're bringing to the text as
well. I think that puts it uponus as teachers and practitioners
to be extra aware when we'reasking a student to decode a
(18:01):
text, then are they prepared tocomprehend it based on what we
know about their backgroundknowledge?
Unknown (18:08):
Yeah, I fully agree, because a child who's got that
background knowledge, they'renot just going to find it easier
to understand the text. Theywill find it easier to decode
unfamiliar words because theycan use the context to help
them. But it also, I think,points to that idea that there
are these different skillsinvolved, and vocabulary and
(18:31):
background knowledge are very,very important, but there are
other skills within your sort oflike, kind of your battery, your
toolkit as a reader that you canuse to sort of like support and
help you to extract meaning fromthat text.
Narrator (18:48):
Educators and administrators know how
important it is to close thegaps in foundational literacy
skills for older learners.
Reading Horizons Elevate isdesigned to help students in
grades four through 12 andbeyond, Master foundational
skills they may have missed bycombining direct instruction
with engaging age appropriatesoftware. Reading Horizons
Elevate makes readingproficiency attainable for older
(19:11):
learners, helping students builda strong literacy foundation is
key to unlocking success acrossall academic subjects. Visit
Reading horizons.com/elevate, tolearn more.
Donell Pons (19:26):
So interesting. And Kate on page 63 you say
something interesting. I thinkit aligns with this little
conversation we're having. Yousay it is well established that
books provide more rich, diverseand advanced linguistic content
than child directed speech andeveryday conversation. Thus,
good oral vocabulary knowledgeis not sufficient to support
good reading comprehension. Thatright there could be a
(19:49):
revelation for a lot of folks,because they assume, if this
child is very orally, you know,prattling along, chit chatting
and good at conversation, thatthat's going to automatically
help them in. Text, but notnecessarily, right?
Unknown (20:02):
Yeah. So, as I said at the start, having these good
oral language skills, it's anessential foundation on which we
can build but language, justlike the conversation we're
having, this is on the fly. I'mjust like, kind of retrieving
words. Quite a narrow I'll beusing quite a narrow vocabulary
in this conversation compared toif I was like writing about
(20:24):
this, because we're retrievingthis in real time, it might
surprise people to know some ofthe differences that you have
between written text andconversation. So even young
children's picture books havegot a greater variety of
vocabulary. They've got morerare vocabulary, less familiar
(20:48):
words than adult conversation.
When we're talking like kind ofin conversation as a group of
adults, unless it's sort ofsomething very, very specific,
we use this very reducedvocabulary so children, as
they're reading, they will comeacross words that may be very
unfamiliar to them. I mean, it'sa challenge, but it's the real
(21:09):
opportunity that you actuallyhave with written text, because
a writer has time to think aboutwhat they're writing. They want
to avoid repetition. They mightbe selecting very precise words
for a particular nuance or shadeof meaning. We get this very,
very rich vocabulary that's usedin in printed books, even
(21:30):
printed books very youngchildren and typically also
those really critical word wordsare the content words, the words
that are carrying meaning. So Idid an analysis of the language
that had been used in achildren's reading scheme, or
rather correct I did not do theanalysis. Some other people did
(21:53):
the analysis. I read about itand wrote about it. I will give
credit where it is due. This wasdone years ago by Morag Stewart
and colleagues, but it stillreally holds true, and they
found that a lot of those keyessential words that you have in
supposedly like fairly simple,supported, decodable reading
schemes, occur veryinfrequently, and they're very
(22:17):
rare words. So how often do wetalk about or read about dragons
and princesses? For example, wedo it a lot when we're children.
Same with words, like giant butthese words, they're not
actually that familiar in like,sort of standard vocabulary and
conversation, but you get thesame I mean, it's not just with
(22:39):
vocabulary, where you can thinkabout the language of books and
written text being different. Soin terms of thinking about
sentence structures, thesentence structures we use in
conversation and in you know,child directed speech in
particular, are typically verysimple. We don't use very many
(23:00):
relative clauses, but relativeclauses occur much more
frequently in written text. Ifyou think about a conversation
that you're having with thechild, or even if they were
telling you back a story ortelling you sort of an
autobiographical memory, you'rethere to scaffold it. You're
engaged in turn taking. It'sshort bursts of language,
(23:21):
production of conversation. Youknow, it's very different to if
a child was reading a text whereyou're integrating across
different paragraphs, or if thechild is like kind of, you know,
writing a text for an assignmentwhere they're expected to
connect up ideas across aparagraph. You know, we're
they're doing it independentlywhen they're reading and
(23:43):
writing. It's not like sort of ascaffolded, sort of like two way
conversation. But yeah, so youhave that some very, very
critical differences between thelanguage that we're exposed to
in conversation and the languagethat we're exposed to in terms
of print, but as I said, we alsothat also gives us an amazing
(24:06):
opportunity. So building goodreading habits, for example, is
just so unbelievably important,because people adults, not just
children, but adults as well,who engage in more reading in
their free time. They're betterat word reading, they're better
at spelling, they know morevocabulary, they have better
(24:29):
general knowledge. They'rebetter at reasoning. I mean,
it's just amazing the power ofprint and what you know it can
give to an individual, butobviously, if you don't have the
right text processing skills,you're not going to be able to
take advantage in that way andlearn from
Donell Pons (24:47):
it. Yes, so interesting, Kate, you were
saying a couple of things. Ithink we make assumptions
oftentimes about what we mean bybackground knowledge as well,
because you made a reallyinteresting point about
oftentimes, the backgroundknowledge might be able to help
a student. Be able to interpreta text that maybe they're
lacking a little bit vocabulary,maybe that meaning is fuzzy,
maybe even an image of somethingmight be a little difficult for
(25:08):
that student. However,background knowledge may be
helpful. And so do we sometimesmake an assumption that if a
student has a lot of orallanguage, they've got a lot of
background knowledge, and maybethat's not necessarily the case.
And then how do you help astudent gain back that
background knowledge? Yeah,that's a really
Unknown (25:25):
interesting point. Oh so. Background knowledge, as you
say, it can help to compensatefor poorer reading skills. And
there are lots of studies wherethey get individuals who are
either experts in baseball, ornovices and those sorts of
things, getting them to readtext. And then the ones who know
(25:46):
that, because they know thepattern of a game, you know,
like the structure how thingshappen, they're able to, sort
of, like, understand that textmuch more readily than someone
who actually, on a standardizedtest would be seen to be a
skilled reader that doesn't havethat knowledge. They can't fit
it into the framework. Theycan't draw up that schema of how
(26:07):
that particular event unfolds.
So it's you know, this is thiscomplex interaction, but then it
also speaks to your point ofsort of, how should we, how do
we teach this backgroundknowledge? And you know, one of
the ways that people areexploring this and pushing this
(26:29):
a lot is really trying to have,I guess, what can be referred to
as content focused instruction.
So rather than teaching thingsin isolation, the way that you
can build up banks of knowledge,banks of vocabulary, so it
really does become sort of likeintegrated, and you're sort of
(26:50):
like, you have to establish,sort of like rich, connected
semantic representations, andthat has To be connected more
broadly to what you know aboutthings, your conceptual
knowledge about the world. Imean, I do kind of, you know, I
always say I'm not really surewhere vocabulary knowledge ends
(27:12):
and background knowledge begins,because, you know, I really do
see them on a continuum. But Ithink it really speaks to the
fact that, like, kind of wecan't just give kids, like a
list of vocabulary items andsay, This is your list of words
for this week. Go away and readit and learn it. You know that
is not necessarily going to helpthem, but actually, kind of like
(27:35):
building on that knowledge byhaving texts and activities that
are all based on like,particular topic areas can help
you to use that knowledge indifferent ways, because we know
that to consolidate knowledge,it's not just coming in. You're
not just like sort of a passiverecipient. You have to use that
knowledge to consolidate it.
Retrieval is very important aswell, right?
Donell Pons (27:57):
And connection too, right? Kate, so you're reading
other texts, you can makeconnections. Yeah, that's really
interesting. I'm just thinkingabout, you know, this makes text
selection so much moreimportant. And how often is text
maybe the last thing we thinkabout, because we're doing all
of the teaching, and the text issort of an afterthought, and it
(28:20):
really should be our primarygoal is that text shouldn't it?
Unknown (28:24):
I agree with you, in terms of what the text can
offer. If you're working with agroup of students, you're never
going to be able to select atext that is going to be equal
to all of them. But one of thenice things is because they'll
all have different knowledge andexperience. Then through that
discussion, you can help them tomake the connections that you
(28:47):
were talking about, to connectit with their own experiences
and with different texts. Butyou know, there are so many, I
think if you understand what isgoing on in constructing meaning
from text. You can use almostany text to actually create a
really interesting discussionand facilitate learning. But
(29:12):
there is something to be saidfor you know, we do want to
encourage children to be happy,successful, motivated readers
and writers. So we do reallyhave to think about, sort of
like our selection of texts, asyou say, to really try and
instill that enjoyment and tosort of like, bring up the next
(29:35):
generation of motivated readers.
It's something I think peopleare concerned about a lot in
terms of how much time is spentoutside of school in reading and
writing activities. You know, itseems much more less than sort
of couple of decades ago.
Donell Pons (29:54):
Boy, isn't that true. So Kate, you looking at
that from your perspective onyour background? What are.
What's one of your main concernsyou have about students reading
text?
Unknown (30:07):
I think they don't do enough of it. Text. So for me,
it's, it's, it's, you see, I'm areal book worm. So I could read
from a very young age. And Ialways say you're never lonely
with a book, because you canalways, like, kind of escape
into that other world. And Ialso see that books just open up
(30:30):
so much knowledge andopportunities. So I can be a
male medieval traveler, youknow? I can get into, like, the
shoes and the perspective ofthat character through a book.
So I can experience alldifferent types of cultures, of
ages, times in history,emotions, you know, like
(30:51):
different positions andattitudes and perspectives,
because we don't always readbooks where we agree with the
perspective of the author. So Ithink you can learn a lot from
books. There are studiesdemonstrating how more with sort
of like narrative reading, inparticular, it's actually
(31:13):
important for emotional wellbeing, and so it can sort of
like impact on your ability toempathize with other people on,
sort of like insight intoyourself. Obviously, you know,
it can help you to relax, whichis a good thing to do. So there
are lots and lots of benefitsfrom reading. I mean, the same
(31:35):
is true with writing, and it'sone of the things. I don't know
what the situation is like inthe US, but in the UK, we have a
there's a charity, the NationalLiteracy trust, that does an
annual survey of literacy, andin the last one, they found that
fewer than three in 10 childrenengage in writing in their free
(31:57):
time. It's something that theymight do in school, but they
don't engage in writing anymore.
They found out of those who didengage in writing, often they
did it to like, kind of relax,and I think to sort of like,
help them think through problemsand their well being. Maybe they
were keeping diaries. But it's,you know, it's really so it's
(32:19):
not, you know, it's, it's sortof like reading and writing.
Those general literacyactivities are not something
that necessarily features soheavily in children's free time.
Yeah, in today's society, morethan ever, you've got to be
literate to have sort of likeeducational success, but to have
(32:39):
employment success, you know,you have to be able to fill in
all of those forms. To do yourtax returns. You have to be able
to understand really complicatedinformation to sort of like,
make choices about healthcare,to like, you know, participate
in democracy. You know, life iscomplex now, and actually, kind
of literacy is important, Ithink, more than ever so, and
(33:03):
it's easier if it's an enjoyablelifelong habit. So it's really
sort of like trying to supportchildren to see that there's a
purpose to it, that it isn'tjust something that you do in
school. It's not just somethingthat is taught in school. It
(33:24):
actually serves a much widerpurpose, maybe partly helping to
connect it to these broaderaspects in life, as well as just
the enjoyment aspect, is a wayfor children to really sort of
see that function and engage inliteracy activities outside of
school.
Stacy Hurst (33:44):
Yeah, I love that you're you're mentioning that
because I think oftentimes, asteachers and I, I formerly I
taught first grade, now I'mteaching pre service teachers,
but I I'm just making a note formyself to mention more often,
the importance we have as adultsto instill that love of reading
(34:05):
in our students. I think sooften we're overly conscious of
can they actually read? That'sthe important thing. Can they
decode? But there's no reasonthat we can't, at the same time,
develop this love of reading andlearning from reading that may
help facilitate that. We mightneed to just start putting that
on the map more often, right?
Like do? Our students love toread, and most of my students,
(34:29):
to be honest, will mention thatthey don't like to read, and
they're going to be teachers, soI think it's important that we
can instill that in our studentscoming up.
Unknown (34:43):
But if you think about a standard young child, standard
classroom, or think about thefamily home, how often does a
young child who is learning toread actually see an adult read?
Yeah, they may. Engage in, like,shared reading activities and
discussion. But childrenactually don't see us reading
(35:06):
very often. We don't necessarilylike show it and model it as an
activity that we engage in inour
Donell Pons (35:16):
free time. Yeah, you are so right. And I know
some teachers who
Unknown (35:21):
will, like, kind of who do this in class, and they will
sort of like, the children arelike, kind of there to do their,
sort of like, read their book,you know, do their silent
reading on their own. And theteacher will sit at the front of
the class, rather than grading alot of assignments. Will sit
there and read a book toactually demonstrate and try and
sort of have some of that sharedexperience and be a good role
(35:44):
model. You know,
Donell Pons (35:45):
kid, I love that you mentioned that because I
taught creative writing for fora bit in high school, for high
school students, and we wouldwrite together. So I was writing
as well. I would be engaged. Ihad my assignment as well. We'd
all get the topic. We wouldshare, and I would share, I'd
share part of mine, and thatreally is that community sense
and that leadership of Yes, Ienjoy doing this as much as you
(36:08):
should be enjoying doing this. Ithink is so important. So I'm
glad you mentioned
Unknown (36:12):
that. That's a lovely example. Yeah, I love that idea.
Like a community of readers, acommunity of writers,
Donell Pons (36:19):
yeah? And I was just thinking, Kate, of you
talking about, do they see usdoing this thing that we say we
value so much the reading andwriting, but reading in
particular and thinking, my bestmemories from childhood were
memories of my mother, who wouldand when she had a free minute,
she was very busy, she wouldrace into her room. She had a
book always on the go, and she'dget down on her bed and just
(36:41):
start reading. She'd lie down alittle bit, put her feet up, and
I remember crawling in, becauseI was young, and resting my head
in the crook of her arm whileshe read. And as she turned the
pages, I could do that for hoursjust watching her. I couldn't
read, but just the act of howengaged she was. And these are,
as you say, they're reallyimportant moments, aren't they?
Well, Kate, you've just beenfantastic. I know we're well,
(37:01):
you need to get to bed. For onething,
Unknown (37:05):
I have to read my book.
I always read before I go tobed. I can't get away from it.
We don't
Donell Pons (37:12):
want to cheat your reading time before bed. This
has been a delightfulconversation, though, Kate, we
really appreciate it, and reallygot us thinking about some very
important things that we've beenhearing folks talking more
about, more appreciative. Andthen when I saw you present like
I said, I just thought, oh,readers have to be introduced to
you our listeners, because it'sso good. And I
Stacy Hurst (37:29):
am dying to know what are you reading right now?
Yeah,
Unknown (37:35):
what am I reading right now? I'm actually, I'm reading a
very, um, traumatic, um, sort oflike thriller, um, by Louise
Doughty, but I will say, ifyou're into reading the book I
finished before that, if you'rereally into reading and words
and you like a bit of a mystery,then Susie dent guilty by
(37:58):
definition, it's for like, booklovers and word of files,
whatever the true word for thatis is absolutely it's about a
group of interview, I won't saymuch, but a group of individuals
who work in an esteemed andestablished dictionary in
(38:19):
Oxford. And there is like kindof an old mysterious case that
comes about with lots of kind ofwritten clues and puzzles that
they have to work out. But, andI learned, you learn a new word
every chapter you learn likekind of a new word that has got
(38:39):
some, often some quite ancientorigins. So I think for people
who like books and words, Susiedent is guilty by definition, is
one to read. Well,
Donell Pons (38:51):
that sounds good.
Yeah,
Stacy Hurst (38:53):
it just added it to my list. Sounds great. And thank
you so much for joining us. DrKane, we've learned a lot from
you, from your article and fromthis conversation, and I know I
have been inspired to reallyhelp my students who are
becoming teachers, focus on whatwe need to do to model that
(39:17):
comprehension, ability tocomprehend the differences
between written and spoken text,and why it's important for us to
emphasize those with ourstudents. So thank you so much.
Well, thank you for this
Unknown (39:30):
opportunity. I mean, I'm hoping that having this
conversation and people beingable to listen to it, it might
help to put a little bit moredetail and information, because
we had a very challenging wordlimit when we were tasked with
writing those articles fromperspectives, they could have
been 10 times the length, and itwasn't possible to get all of
(39:52):
that information in there. ButI'm hoping it like kind of, you
know, sparks off discussion andinterest in people. Yeah. Yeah,
Stacy Hurst (40:00):
certainly would, and that is impressive. That's a
good reminder that you did havelimitations, because that was a
very expert article that youwrote, and fit a lot of really
good information in withconsidering those limitations
even that's great. Good job.
Thank you, and we'll encourageour listeners to read and reread
(40:20):
that article as well. I knowevery time I've read it, I've
read it a few times now I do geta new nuanced understanding of
something that is going to bereally important to my career
going forward in helping prepareour teachers. So thank you so
much, and thank you to ourlisteners who've been joining us
(40:42):
this season, and especially forthis episode, and we hope to see
you on the next episode ofliteracy talks.
Narrator (40:54):
Thanks for joining us today. Literacy talks comes to
you from Reading Horizons, whereliteracy momentum begins. Visit
Reading horizons.com/literacytalks to access episodes and
resources to support yourjourney in the science of
reading. You.
Welcome to literacy talks, the podcast for literacy
leaders and championseverywhere, brought to you by
Reading Horizons. Literacy talksis the place to discover new
ideas, trends, insights andpractical strategies for helping
all learners reach readingproficiency. Our hosts are Stacy
Hurst, a professor at SouthernUtah University and Chief
(00:27):
Academic Advisor for ReadingHorizons. Donell pons, a
recognized expert and advocatein literacy, dyslexia and
special education, and LindsayKemeny, an elementary classroom
teacher, author and speaker. Nowlet's talk literacy.
Stacy Hurst (00:46):
Welcome to this episode of literacy Talks. My
name is Stacy Hurst. I have theprivilege of hosting this
podcast along with Donell ponsand Lindsay Kemeny, and those of
you who've been listening knowthat we are focusing this
season's podcast on the ideaissue celebrating its 75th
anniversary of perspectives. Sowe are excited for this specific
(01:11):
episode, and I'm going to letDonell introduce our guest and
tell you why we're excited.
Donell Pons (01:18):
Great. So this is such a pleasure to have Kate
Cain on. I had not known muchabout your background, Kate, but
I saw you. I had the pleasure ofbeing able to attend the IDA
conference in Texas that wasjust held recently when they
introduced this perspectivespublication. And then you took a
piece, because you have anarticle in the publication, and
(01:40):
boy, I was just, it was reallygood. Just very, very good. I
was so glad to be introduced toyour voice, and I thought
everybody's got to hear fromyou, so we wanted to make sure
we could get you on. And it'sbeen challenging because you
are, you know, in a differentplace than we are here in the
United States, and so the timedifference, and we really
appreciate you doing that andaccommodating us. And Lindsay
isn't going to able to join ustoday for that reason, so you'll
(02:01):
find you're absent, but we justreally found it important to be
able to talk to you today.
Thoroughly enjoyed what youdiscussed and when you
presented. You did your piecewas on making and conveying
meaning, how structured literacyintegrates comprehension and
composition, and so we've talkedabout various aspects of
structured literacy. This isn'tnew for our listeners. They've
been listening along and alsofollowing along in the article.
(02:21):
And so you'll want to go to yourperspectives publication,
because we've we've told folkswhere that's at, and they've
been following along. Page 60 iswhere it begins, but we really
get into it next couple of pagesin. But for our listeners, Kate,
just I'd like you to maybe giveus a little bit of your
background, because, like I say,you were new for me, relatively
new for me, and I was just sograteful to hear from you what
(02:42):
give us a little bit about yourbackground in reading. Okay,
well, first I'd just
Unknown (02:47):
like to thank you for inviting me to be part of this
and talk about these ideas andshare them with your listeners.
It's a great experience. I lovetalking about research to
different groups and reallytrying to bridge that research
to practice divide. So I guessmy background is maybe not what
(03:08):
people expect it to be. So mytraining is actually in
experimental psychology. So I'mnot a qualified classroom
teacher. I'm not a speechlanguage pathologist or an
educational psychologist, I haveonly ever stood up in a
classroom and work with childrenin terms of my research, but not
(03:29):
actually in terms of instructionor teaching. And so basically I
did training. My undergraduatedegree was in experimental
psychology, as I said at SussexUniversity. And one of the
things that I learned there, Ibecame particularly interested
in memory, in text, in languageprocessing, and then I got into
(03:51):
reading research, specificallyfor my PhD. So I worked for a
couple of years on adult textcomprehension with Jane Oak Hill
and Alan Garnham. And throughthat, I became really interested
in Jane's other work that hadbeen about children that have
got specific readingcomprehension difficulties. So
(04:13):
up to them, I'd only been sortof like doing work on skilled
adult readers, but Jane had donesome work previously with a
group of children who acquireapparently good word reading
skills, but they're not verygood at answering questions
about texts that they've read orrecalling those texts with
(04:34):
appropriate detail andsequencing. And so I ended up,
sort of like focusing on thatgroup for my PhD studies, trying
to understand, why does theircomprehension break down? You
know, why can they they'veobviously got good learning
skills, because they can developgood word reading skills. So
what's going on with thecomprehension? And then I took a
(04:55):
postdoc, actually, with Jane aswell, that was looking at
longer. Original study of agroup of readers, and I've never
really been able to get awayfrom reading comprehension
development and difficultiessince then, I was hooked.
Donell Pons (05:10):
Well, that's great.
That's our gain. I think that'san interesting background, like
you said, Kate, because when youpresented it, definitely it was
a different perspective that Iwas not used to hearing, and
really appreciated thatdifferent lens that you brought
to it. So that is that'sinteresting to hear from you,
that your background is is a bitdifferent. So I hope our readers
will or listeners will pick upon that. It's great. And to
(05:31):
let's just dive right in,because you get, you get started
right away in your article,which I love, just get right to
the right to it, and you saythat you begin the article by
stating good oral language andcommunication skills provide a
strong foundation for thedevelopment of reading and
writing. Preschoolers who knowthe meanings of more words speak
longer utterances and producemore sophisticated narratives
(05:53):
are those who typically acquirestronger literacy skills and
more quickly than their peers.
So this is an excellent openingstatement explain why this is
such a good way to begindiscussing a rather complex
topic of making and conveyingmeaning.
Unknown (06:11):
Yeah, so reading comprehension and written
composition, they're complex.
They draw on a very wide rangeof different knowledge skills
and cognitive processes. And Ithink one of the things I was
trying to get across often,readers and instruction
instructors of literacy, theyknow that kind of word
recognition skills have got tobe taught. Children have got to
(06:32):
be able to decode the words, tobe able to access meaning from
text, and they got to learn howto spell those words for
writing. We know that that'scritical, but what I wanted to
get across was the ability tounderstand what we read and the
ability to actually write sortof clear, unambiguous, sort of
persuasive text. It doesn't justcome from nowhere, so reading
(06:55):
comprehension, compositionskills, they've got to be taught
and fostered, similar to how wethink about word recognition
skills. They have to be sort oflike taught and fostered, too.
But it doesn't mean thatchildren are coming to the
classroom without anything,because we have this foundation
of their oral language skills,of their communication skills
(07:17):
that they've built up inpreschool, and those serve to be
a really strong foundation forwhat we need to go on and teach
and foster. So I guess to linkit with something that your
listeners might be familiarwith, it's not really dissimilar
to how we know that your orallanguage skills predict how
(07:38):
easily children learn to readwords? You know, children who
can play around with the spokenlanguage, can identify words
that rhyme, can identify similarstarting letters. They find it
much easier to learn to read orto decode the printed word. So
what we have comprehension,children who have just got
(08:01):
better oral language skills,they know the meanings of more
words. They produce longerutterances. They tell
narratives. Relateautobiographical events with
clear structures, you know, withthe beginning, a middle and an
end. Children who come withthose foundational skills, they
typically acquire or developprogress, if you like, in
(08:25):
reading comprehension much moreeasily than children who don't
have that oral languagebackground when they start
school. So I guess what I wastrying to do with that is really
get across this idea thatcomprehension, composition, they
do need to be taught. They doneed to be fostered. But we're
not starting with a blank slatelike the majority of children
(08:48):
will come to school with orallanguage skills, and we can
build on those and develop thoseto enable them to become good
readers and good writers.
Donell Pons (08:59):
Yeah, gosh, I just love the way you broke that down
for us, and the importance of itand the importance of knowing.
And I think Kate, sometimesthat's where it breaks down for
us, is we see children andthey're being expressive, and
they might be telling a story,and they're rather young, and we
think that's just so adorable,but there's a lot going on when
they do that, and they'representing a lot of skill when
they do that. And I think maybesometimes we lose track of that
(09:21):
and think, Oh, it's just naturalwhen really, there's a lot that
plays into how well they dothat, right and sets them
Unknown (09:27):
up. I agree, and I think also it's really difficult
sometimes for us as skilledlanguage users to reflect on
that. It's very difficult for usto remember back and reflect on
our own learning. So sometimes,and I think I may it may be one
of the things that I did whenyou saw me speak at Ida, when we
(09:48):
were launching this perspectivesissue, I often try to use
different types of texts andexample to put a skilled adult
audience in the shoes of a youngRe. Data to give them some of
the challenges with vocabulary,with structures, with meaning
that a young reader might comeacross. Yeah. In fact,
Donell Pons (10:09):
Kate, you have a text right away. After that
first bit that I read, youpresent the reader with a text,
and you say, just read this. Andthen you ask a few questions,
and you call this. I thought itwas really interesting. You had
a good name for it, and I'mtrying to remember, oh, consider
it considerate text. And thatwas kind of the first time I've
heard anybody use So Kate, tellus a little bit about that,
(10:30):
because it was a great exercise,by the way, and a great piece of
text to get us thinking like yousay,
Unknown (10:36):
oh goodness. Well, certainly the idea of a
considerate text, I'm sure itdoes not come from Me, but
basically, you can think about awriter as being considerate and
thinking about their audienceand what knowledge they have and
how much help and support theygive them with explicit
(10:56):
information and with signalingso that they can extract meaning
from it. So I'm allowed I had aseries of questions after this
text, and I'm allowed to call itan inconsiderate text, because I
wrote it deliberately to try andsort of like trip readers up. I
mean, in fact, I actuallyadapted it from a text that had
been used in the study of poorcomprehenders Many years ago by
(11:20):
Nicola Yule and Trish Jocelyn,who I both know. But basically,
in this text, what I was tryingto get across was you can read
the words on the page, and youstill may have to engage in some
active effort to extract themeaning of a text. I've actually
got the text here. Shall I readit out? And then I could talk
(11:41):
read through what I wasthinking, or your listeners
rather, sorry, I'm so obsessedwith reading, I'm going to
constantly refer to readers, butI can talk you through what I
was thinking about, the ideas Iwanted to get across with this
text. So it's very brief. Ithink it's only about, it's
only, it's only three sentenceslong. So the text reads like
this, Lily had been busy withher bucket and spade for hours.
(12:06):
A huge wave crashed onto theshore just after she had
completed the tower. On seeingthat her day's work had been
ruined, Lily started to cry. Sothe first question I asked was
for a reader to think about, isthis a considerate text or not?
To try and get them into theprocess of thinking, how well
did I understand it? But thensome follow up questions to
(12:28):
really get them to probe them sothey could think, Well, did I
really get that or not? So wherewas Lily the setting of the
story? That's not statedexplicitly, what was she doing?
Well, the activity, it's a bitvague and fuzzy, really, in what
we're talking about and whathappened to make Lily cry.
Typically, in a narrative,things happen for a reason.
(12:49):
There's a motivation for acharacter's actions. And so in
this text, it doesn't, as Isaid, it doesn't state the
setting, but there are clueshere, because we've got a wave
and we've got a shore. So youmight infer that Li was at the
seaside, means she could be by abig lake. I guess if it's got
(13:10):
sufficient weather system, we'vegot words that could trip a
reader up if they were not usingthe context to extract meaning.
So for example, the word wave,it doesn't mean a gesture here,
it means sort of like a wave atthe seaside. But that sentence
starts off it's a huge wave, sobefore you hear crashed onto the
(13:33):
shore, you don't actually knowwhether that is somebody
gesturing or not. And then thereare details where the reader
really needs to infer what isgoing on by drawing on their
background knowledge and theirgeneral knowledge. So we have, I
mean, this obviously reflects mychildhood fact that I've written
(13:55):
about this many happier time ona cold beach with my bucket and
spade making sand castles. Butyou know, so there are these
clues that if you have thatbackground knowledge, as I do,
that sort of a bucket in spade,it doesn't say that she'd
completed a sand castle, but itcalls it a tower. You can use
that information to understandthat that was what Lily was
(14:16):
doing. Again, this text doesn'tstate explicitly that the sand
castle was ruined, or, like,kind of, or doesn't say that it
was, you know, like kind ofcrashed by the wave. The wave
crashed onto the shore. Lily'sday's work had been ruined by
that the reader can infer, oh,the reason that Lily started to
(14:37):
cry was not just this fuzzy ideathat her day's work had been
ruined, but that her glorioussandcast or some magnificent
tower had been destroyed by thewave. And if you don't engage in
that additional processing oftrying to rather than just
understanding the words inisolation, but linking them
(14:59):
into. Coherent clauses, coherentsentences, linking up those
ideas across the text. And bydrawing on your background
knowledge to actually make senseof these more implicit details,
you're only going to have afuzzy, inadequate representation
of the text, meaning there'sactually an awful lot going on
(15:22):
even to understand a very, verysimple text. You know,
Donell Pons (15:27):
that's interesting, because Stacy, you and I have
had a conversation before, tooabout the kind of text we put in
front of students, and ourexpectation for what we think
the student ought to be able toaccomplish with that. And Kate,
you are honing right in on thisfor us, because you often see a
great deal of text put in frontof young readers, and people
think just because the languagehas been simplified, that Oh,
(15:48):
that's good. But as you'vementioned in those four key
parts that you would teach instructured literacy, if you're
really paying attention to this,you're looking at vocabulary and
background knowledge, sentencestructure and grammar knowledge
and use of text structure andcritical thinking skills. That's
a whole lot more than justmaking the words making the
words a little more simple,
Unknown (16:05):
right? Definitely, most definitely, I think that's we
often think about words. Wethink that if individual words
are familiar, or if individualwords are decodable, then
everything will be okay. Andoften also we have, there's a
bit of a challenge. I think whenwe use readability formula to
identify whether or a word atext is easy to read or suitable
(16:32):
for a particular age group,because that typically focuses
on, I mean, those differentformulae, they typically focus
on Word Frequency anddecodability and also sentence
length. And sometimes a shorttwo short sentences isn't always
that helpful, because sometimeswe actually have these signaling
(16:52):
words that signal the way thattwo events or ideas are related,
such as before and after.
Because, you know, thinkingthose words can be very
important, and if you don'tactually have them in a text,
but you've stripped it all outto have supposedly short, easy
to read sentences a childdoesn't have that signal from
(17:12):
the writer about how to linkdifferent ideas. So I think I
like to think of them as sort oflike processing instructions.
And I think we really have tothink, when we're looking at
what we might call a simplifiedtext, we have to go beyond the
words and the length of thesentences, actually think about
the ideas. Think about thatdepth of processing and what it
(17:32):
takes to truly understand whatis going on in that text.
Stacy Hurst (17:41):
And sometimes those readability formulas they Well,
they can't take intoconsideration the background
knowledge of a student, so whatthey're bringing to the text as
well. I think that puts it uponus as teachers and practitioners
to be extra aware when we'reasking a student to decode a
(18:01):
text, then are they prepared tocomprehend it based on what we
know about their backgroundknowledge?
Unknown (18:08):
Yeah, I fully agree, because a child who's got that
background knowledge, they'renot just going to find it easier
to understand the text. Theywill find it easier to decode
unfamiliar words because theycan use the context to help
them. But it also, I think,points to that idea that there
are these different skillsinvolved, and vocabulary and
(18:31):
background knowledge are very,very important, but there are
other skills within your sort oflike, kind of your battery, your
toolkit as a reader that you canuse to sort of like support and
help you to extract meaning fromthat text.
Narrator (18:48):
Educators and administrators know how
important it is to close thegaps in foundational literacy
skills for older learners.
Reading Horizons Elevate isdesigned to help students in
grades four through 12 andbeyond, Master foundational
skills they may have missed bycombining direct instruction
with engaging age appropriatesoftware. Reading Horizons
Elevate makes readingproficiency attainable for older
(19:11):
learners, helping students builda strong literacy foundation is
key to unlocking success acrossall academic subjects. Visit
Reading horizons.com/elevate, tolearn more.
Donell Pons (19:26):
So interesting. And Kate on page 63 you say
something interesting. I thinkit aligns with this little
conversation we're having. Yousay it is well established that
books provide more rich, diverseand advanced linguistic content
than child directed speech andeveryday conversation. Thus,
good oral vocabulary knowledgeis not sufficient to support
good reading comprehension. Thatright there could be a
(19:49):
revelation for a lot of folks,because they assume, if this
child is very orally, you know,prattling along, chit chatting
and good at conversation, thatthat's going to automatically
help them in. Text, but notnecessarily, right?
Unknown (20:02):
Yeah. So, as I said at the start, having these good
oral language skills, it's anessential foundation on which we
can build but language, justlike the conversation we're
having, this is on the fly. I'mjust like, kind of retrieving
words. Quite a narrow I'll beusing quite a narrow vocabulary
in this conversation compared toif I was like writing about
(20:24):
this, because we're retrievingthis in real time, it might
surprise people to know some ofthe differences that you have
between written text andconversation. So even young
children's picture books havegot a greater variety of
vocabulary. They've got morerare vocabulary, less familiar
(20:48):
words than adult conversation.
When we're talking like kind ofin conversation as a group of
adults, unless it's sort ofsomething very, very specific,
we use this very reducedvocabulary so children, as
they're reading, they will comeacross words that may be very
unfamiliar to them. I mean, it'sa challenge, but it's the real
(21:09):
opportunity that you actuallyhave with written text, because
a writer has time to think aboutwhat they're writing. They want
to avoid repetition. They mightbe selecting very precise words
for a particular nuance or shadeof meaning. We get this very,
very rich vocabulary that's usedin in printed books, even
(21:30):
printed books very youngchildren and typically also
those really critical word wordsare the content words, the words
that are carrying meaning. So Idid an analysis of the language
that had been used in achildren's reading scheme, or
rather correct I did not do theanalysis. Some other people did
(21:53):
the analysis. I read about itand wrote about it. I will give
credit where it is due. This wasdone years ago by Morag Stewart
and colleagues, but it stillreally holds true, and they
found that a lot of those keyessential words that you have in
supposedly like fairly simple,supported, decodable reading
schemes, occur veryinfrequently, and they're very
(22:17):
rare words. So how often do wetalk about or read about dragons
and princesses? For example, wedo it a lot when we're children.
Same with words, like giant butthese words, they're not
actually that familiar in like,sort of standard vocabulary and
conversation, but you get thesame I mean, it's not just with
(22:39):
vocabulary, where you can thinkabout the language of books and
written text being different. Soin terms of thinking about
sentence structures, thesentence structures we use in
conversation and in you know,child directed speech in
particular, are typically verysimple. We don't use very many
(23:00):
relative clauses, but relativeclauses occur much more
frequently in written text. Ifyou think about a conversation
that you're having with thechild, or even if they were
telling you back a story ortelling you sort of an
autobiographical memory, you'rethere to scaffold it. You're
engaged in turn taking. It'sshort bursts of language,
(23:21):
production of conversation. Youknow, it's very different to if
a child was reading a text whereyou're integrating across
different paragraphs, or if thechild is like kind of, you know,
writing a text for an assignmentwhere they're expected to
connect up ideas across aparagraph. You know, we're
they're doing it independentlywhen they're reading and
(23:43):
writing. It's not like sort of ascaffolded, sort of like two way
conversation. But yeah, so youhave that some very, very
critical differences between thelanguage that we're exposed to
in conversation and the languagethat we're exposed to in terms
of print, but as I said, we alsothat also gives us an amazing
(24:06):
opportunity. So building goodreading habits, for example, is
just so unbelievably important,because people adults, not just
children, but adults as well,who engage in more reading in
their free time. They're betterat word reading, they're better
at spelling, they know morevocabulary, they have better
(24:29):
general knowledge. They'rebetter at reasoning. I mean,
it's just amazing the power ofprint and what you know it can
give to an individual, butobviously, if you don't have the
right text processing skills,you're not going to be able to
take advantage in that way andlearn from
Donell Pons (24:47):
it. Yes, so interesting, Kate, you were
saying a couple of things. Ithink we make assumptions
oftentimes about what we mean bybackground knowledge as well,
because you made a reallyinteresting point about
oftentimes, the backgroundknowledge might be able to help
a student. Be able to interpreta text that maybe they're
lacking a little bit vocabulary,maybe that meaning is fuzzy,
maybe even an image of somethingmight be a little difficult for
(25:08):
that student. However,background knowledge may be
helpful. And so do we sometimesmake an assumption that if a
student has a lot of orallanguage, they've got a lot of
background knowledge, and maybethat's not necessarily the case.
And then how do you help astudent gain back that
background knowledge? Yeah,that's a really
Unknown (25:25):
interesting point. Oh so. Background knowledge, as you
say, it can help to compensatefor poorer reading skills. And
there are lots of studies wherethey get individuals who are
either experts in baseball, ornovices and those sorts of
things, getting them to readtext. And then the ones who know
(25:46):
that, because they know thepattern of a game, you know,
like the structure how thingshappen, they're able to, sort
of, like, understand that textmuch more readily than someone
who actually, on a standardizedtest would be seen to be a
skilled reader that doesn't havethat knowledge. They can't fit
it into the framework. Theycan't draw up that schema of how
(26:07):
that particular event unfolds.
So it's you know, this is thiscomplex interaction, but then it
also speaks to your point ofsort of, how should we, how do
we teach this backgroundknowledge? And you know, one of
the ways that people areexploring this and pushing this
(26:29):
a lot is really trying to have,I guess, what can be referred to
as content focused instruction.
So rather than teaching thingsin isolation, the way that you
can build up banks of knowledge,banks of vocabulary, so it
really does become sort of likeintegrated, and you're sort of
(26:50):
like, you have to establish,sort of like rich, connected
semantic representations, andthat has To be connected more
broadly to what you know aboutthings, your conceptual
knowledge about the world. Imean, I do kind of, you know, I
always say I'm not really surewhere vocabulary knowledge ends
(27:12):
and background knowledge begins,because, you know, I really do
see them on a continuum. But Ithink it really speaks to the
fact that, like, kind of wecan't just give kids, like a
list of vocabulary items andsay, This is your list of words
for this week. Go away and readit and learn it. You know that
is not necessarily going to helpthem, but actually, kind of like
(27:35):
building on that knowledge byhaving texts and activities that
are all based on like,particular topic areas can help
you to use that knowledge indifferent ways, because we know
that to consolidate knowledge,it's not just coming in. You're
not just like sort of a passiverecipient. You have to use that
knowledge to consolidate it.
Retrieval is very important aswell, right?
Donell Pons (27:57):
And connection too, right? Kate, so you're reading
other texts, you can makeconnections. Yeah, that's really
interesting. I'm just thinkingabout, you know, this makes text
selection so much moreimportant. And how often is text
maybe the last thing we thinkabout, because we're doing all
of the teaching, and the text issort of an afterthought, and it
(28:20):
really should be our primarygoal is that text shouldn't it?
Unknown (28:24):
I agree with you, in terms of what the text can
offer. If you're working with agroup of students, you're never
going to be able to select atext that is going to be equal
to all of them. But one of thenice things is because they'll
all have different knowledge andexperience. Then through that
discussion, you can help them tomake the connections that you
(28:47):
were talking about, to connectit with their own experiences
and with different texts. Butyou know, there are so many, I
think if you understand what isgoing on in constructing meaning
from text. You can use almostany text to actually create a
really interesting discussionand facilitate learning. But
(29:12):
there is something to be saidfor you know, we do want to
encourage children to be happy,successful, motivated readers
and writers. So we do reallyhave to think about, sort of
like our selection of texts, asyou say, to really try and
instill that enjoyment and tosort of like, bring up the next
(29:35):
generation of motivated readers.
It's something I think peopleare concerned about a lot in
terms of how much time is spentoutside of school in reading and
writing activities. You know, itseems much more less than sort
of couple of decades ago.
Donell Pons (29:54):
Boy, isn't that true. So Kate, you looking at
that from your perspective onyour background? What are.
What's one of your main concernsyou have about students reading
text?
Unknown (30:07):
I think they don't do enough of it. Text. So for me,
it's, it's, it's, you see, I'm areal book worm. So I could read
from a very young age. And Ialways say you're never lonely
with a book, because you canalways, like, kind of escape
into that other world. And Ialso see that books just open up
(30:30):
so much knowledge andopportunities. So I can be a
male medieval traveler, youknow? I can get into, like, the
shoes and the perspective ofthat character through a book.
So I can experience alldifferent types of cultures, of
ages, times in history,emotions, you know, like
(30:51):
different positions andattitudes and perspectives,
because we don't always readbooks where we agree with the
perspective of the author. So Ithink you can learn a lot from
books. There are studiesdemonstrating how more with sort
of like narrative reading, inparticular, it's actually
(31:13):
important for emotional wellbeing, and so it can sort of
like impact on your ability toempathize with other people on,
sort of like insight intoyourself. Obviously, you know,
it can help you to relax, whichis a good thing to do. So there
are lots and lots of benefitsfrom reading. I mean, the same
(31:35):
is true with writing, and it'sone of the things. I don't know
what the situation is like inthe US, but in the UK, we have a
there's a charity, the NationalLiteracy trust, that does an
annual survey of literacy, andin the last one, they found that
fewer than three in 10 childrenengage in writing in their free
(31:57):
time. It's something that theymight do in school, but they
don't engage in writing anymore.
They found out of those who didengage in writing, often they
did it to like, kind of relax,and I think to sort of like,
help them think through problemsand their well being. Maybe they
were keeping diaries. But it's,you know, it's really so it's
(32:19):
not, you know, it's, it's sortof like reading and writing.
Those general literacyactivities are not something
that necessarily features soheavily in children's free time.
Yeah, in today's society, morethan ever, you've got to be
literate to have sort of likeeducational success, but to have
(32:39):
employment success, you know,you have to be able to fill in
all of those forms. To do yourtax returns. You have to be able
to understand really complicatedinformation to sort of like,
make choices about healthcare,to like, you know, participate
in democracy. You know, life iscomplex now, and actually, kind
of literacy is important, Ithink, more than ever so, and
(33:03):
it's easier if it's an enjoyablelifelong habit. So it's really
sort of like trying to supportchildren to see that there's a
purpose to it, that it isn'tjust something that you do in
school. It's not just somethingthat is taught in school. It
(33:24):
actually serves a much widerpurpose, maybe partly helping to
connect it to these broaderaspects in life, as well as just
the enjoyment aspect, is a wayfor children to really sort of
see that function and engage inliteracy activities outside of
school.
Stacy Hurst (33:44):
Yeah, I love that you're you're mentioning that
because I think oftentimes, asteachers and I, I formerly I
taught first grade, now I'mteaching pre service teachers,
but I I'm just making a note formyself to mention more often,
the importance we have as adultsto instill that love of reading
(34:05):
in our students. I think sooften we're overly conscious of
can they actually read? That'sthe important thing. Can they
decode? But there's no reasonthat we can't, at the same time,
develop this love of reading andlearning from reading that may
help facilitate that. We mightneed to just start putting that
on the map more often, right?
Like do? Our students love toread, and most of my students,
(34:29):
to be honest, will mention thatthey don't like to read, and
they're going to be teachers, soI think it's important that we
can instill that in our studentscoming up.
Unknown (34:43):
But if you think about a standard young child, standard
classroom, or think about thefamily home, how often does a
young child who is learning toread actually see an adult read?
Yeah, they may. Engage in, like,shared reading activities and
discussion. But childrenactually don't see us reading
(35:06):
very often. We don't necessarilylike show it and model it as an
activity that we engage in inour
Donell Pons (35:16):
free time. Yeah, you are so right. And I know
some teachers who
Unknown (35:21):
will, like, kind of who do this in class, and they will
sort of like, the children arelike, kind of there to do their,
sort of like, read their book,you know, do their silent
reading on their own. And theteacher will sit at the front of
the class, rather than grading alot of assignments. Will sit
there and read a book toactually demonstrate and try and
sort of have some of that sharedexperience and be a good role
(35:44):
model. You know,
Donell Pons (35:45):
kid, I love that you mentioned that because I
taught creative writing for fora bit in high school, for high
school students, and we wouldwrite together. So I was writing
as well. I would be engaged. Ihad my assignment as well. We'd
all get the topic. We wouldshare, and I would share, I'd
share part of mine, and thatreally is that community sense
and that leadership of Yes, Ienjoy doing this as much as you
(36:08):
should be enjoying doing this. Ithink is so important. So I'm
glad you mentioned
Unknown (36:12):
that. That's a lovely example. Yeah, I love that idea.
Like a community of readers, acommunity of writers,
Donell Pons (36:19):
yeah? And I was just thinking, Kate, of you
talking about, do they see usdoing this thing that we say we
value so much the reading andwriting, but reading in
particular and thinking, my bestmemories from childhood were
memories of my mother, who wouldand when she had a free minute,
she was very busy, she wouldrace into her room. She had a
book always on the go, and she'dget down on her bed and just
(36:41):
start reading. She'd lie down alittle bit, put her feet up, and
I remember crawling in, becauseI was young, and resting my head
in the crook of her arm whileshe read. And as she turned the
pages, I could do that for hoursjust watching her. I couldn't
read, but just the act of howengaged she was. And these are,
as you say, they're reallyimportant moments, aren't they?
Well, Kate, you've just beenfantastic. I know we're well,
(37:01):
you need to get to bed. For onething,
Unknown (37:05):
I have to read my book.
I always read before I go tobed. I can't get away from it.
We don't
Donell Pons (37:12):
want to cheat your reading time before bed. This
has been a delightfulconversation, though, Kate, we
really appreciate it, and reallygot us thinking about some very
important things that we've beenhearing folks talking more
about, more appreciative. Andthen when I saw you present like
I said, I just thought, oh,readers have to be introduced to
you our listeners, because it'sso good. And I
Stacy Hurst (37:29):
am dying to know what are you reading right now?
Yeah,
Unknown (37:35):
what am I reading right now? I'm actually, I'm reading a
very, um, traumatic, um, sort oflike thriller, um, by Louise
Doughty, but I will say, ifyou're into reading the book I
finished before that, if you'rereally into reading and words
and you like a bit of a mystery,then Susie dent guilty by
(37:58):
definition, it's for like, booklovers and word of files,
whatever the true word for thatis is absolutely it's about a
group of interview, I won't saymuch, but a group of individuals
who work in an esteemed andestablished dictionary in
(38:19):
Oxford. And there is like kindof an old mysterious case that
comes about with lots of kind ofwritten clues and puzzles that
they have to work out. But, andI learned, you learn a new word
every chapter you learn likekind of a new word that has got
(38:39):
some, often some quite ancientorigins. So I think for people
who like books and words, Susiedent is guilty by definition, is
one to read. Well,
Donell Pons (38:51):
that sounds good.
Yeah,
Stacy Hurst (38:53):
it just added it to my list. Sounds great. And thank
you so much for joining us. DrKane, we've learned a lot from
you, from your article and fromthis conversation, and I know I
have been inspired to reallyhelp my students who are
becoming teachers, focus on whatwe need to do to model that
(39:17):
comprehension, ability tocomprehend the differences
between written and spoken text,and why it's important for us to
emphasize those with ourstudents. So thank you so much.
Well, thank you for this
Unknown (39:30):
opportunity. I mean, I'm hoping that having this
conversation and people beingable to listen to it, it might
help to put a little bit moredetail and information, because
we had a very challenging wordlimit when we were tasked with
writing those articles fromperspectives, they could have
been 10 times the length, and itwasn't possible to get all of
(39:52):
that information in there. ButI'm hoping it like kind of, you
know, sparks off discussion andinterest in people. Yeah. Yeah,
Stacy Hurst (40:00):
certainly would, and that is impressive. That's a
good reminder that you did havelimitations, because that was a
very expert article that youwrote, and fit a lot of really
good information in withconsidering those limitations
even that's great. Good job.
Thank you, and we'll encourageour listeners to read and reread
(40:20):
that article as well. I knowevery time I've read it, I've
read it a few times now I do geta new nuanced understanding of
something that is going to bereally important to my career
going forward in helping prepareour teachers. So thank you so
much, and thank you to ourlisteners who've been joining us
(40:42):
this season, and especially forthis episode, and we hope to see
you on the next episode ofliteracy talks.
Narrator (40:54):
Thanks for joining us today. Literacy talks comes to
you from Reading Horizons, whereliteracy momentum begins. Visit
Reading horizons.com/literacytalks to access episodes and
resources to support yourjourney in the science of
reading. You.
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com