[LISTEN AGAIN} Ep. 66: Science of Reading Comprehension with Nell Duke

From July 30, 2021

To connect with a practitioner lens, Duke (alongside Ward & Pearson) also penned The Science of Reading Comprehension Instruction. They ask the question: What have decades of research told us about the nature of comprehension and how to develop students’ comprehension in schools? Listen to find out!

We answer your questions about teaching reading in The Literacy 50-A Q&A Handbook for Teachers: Real-World Answers to Questions About Reading That Keep You Up at Night.

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Episode Transcript

Lori (00:11):
Welcome teacher friend.
I'm Laurie and I'm Melissa.
We are two literacy educatorsin Baltimore.
We want the best for all kidsand we know you do too.

Melissa (00:21):
Our district recently adopted a new literacy
curriculum, which meant a lot ofchange for everyone.
Laurie and I can't wait to keeplearning about literacy with
you today.

Lori (00:32):
Hi everyone.
Welcome to Melissa and LaurieLove Literacy Literacy Podcast.
We are very excited to be heretoday with Dr Nell Duke.
She's a professor at theUniversity of Michigan.
We have been big fans of NellDuke since I worked at city
schools.
Melissa, I remember having Nellcome in and she did a little

(00:53):
small group presentation.
I was thrilled to heareverything that she had to say
and all of the research that sheshared.
Melissa, I know you're reallyexcited to talk with her too.

Melissa (01:04):
Nell Duke is a big deal in Baltimore because she came
to talk to us so much.
We are very excited to talk toher about some of her new
articles that she has Welcome.

Nell Duke (01:15):
Nell Great, thank you so much for having me.

Lori (01:18):
Yeah, we'd love for you to just start by sharing just a
bit about yourself.
I know that you have awonderful, wonderful website,
nellkdukeorg, so we can sendeverybody there if they'd like
to learn more.
If you could just give us abrief little bio and we'd love
to hear that from you so we canframe it for our listeners who
are you and what are we going totalk about today All?

Nell Duke (01:42):
right.
Well, I'm a professor, as yousaid, at the University of
Michigan.
I'm in two programs.
One's called Literacy, languageand Culture.
The other is the CombinedProgram in Education and
Psychology.
I study early literacydevelopment, birth to age eight.
I can stretch to the end ofelementary school, but really do
focus primarily on our youngestlearners and how we lay a

(02:04):
foundation for literacy successthroughout their lifetimes.
A lot of my work has focused oninformational text and how we
lay a foundation for that foryoung children.
I also work a lot on readingcomprehension development in
young children and on issues ofequity in literacy education.
In recent years I've beenwriting about really all aspects

(02:27):
of literacy education justmainly because if we can't get
the foundational skills right,then there's not going to be
much room to do comprehensionand informational text.
In the areas that I've doneresearch on, I've been doing a
lot more work, trying to reallyshare more information about how
to do research, alignedfoundational skills instruction.

(02:48):
I've also been doing a lot ofwork on project-based learning
in the last many years.

Lori (02:54):
Basically no big deal right, Just your everyday
run-of-the-mill literacy stuff.

Melissa (03:01):
I always tried to get Nell to come to Baltimore to
talk to our secondary literacyteacher, since she was like that
is not my thing, I'm nottalking to them, but she gave me
great people to talk to that isfunny.

Lori (03:16):
Oh my gosh.
Well, we're excited to talkwith you today, Nell, because
you've written a couple pieceslately that we want to draw some
attention to.
Hopefully, after thisconversation with you shift our
language to be more intentional.
I know we always referenceScarborough's Rope.
Melissa and I referenced thatoften in our podcast and in our

(03:39):
literacy lives.
I think, after reading yourpieces, it's important to be
really intentional with ourlanguage.
Now that we know more, we'regoing to do better and use
different language to addressthe Scarborough's Rope, if you
will, that you've, I guess,updated, revised, added to

(04:00):
edited.
We'd love to hear a little bitabout the research that you've
done and your pieces that we'regoing to talk about today.
So do you want to frame me alittle bit about that?

Nell Duke (04:13):
Sure, yeah, I'm happy to do that, thanks.
So I co-authored the piece thatyou're referring to and I'll
read the exact title for yourlisteners here.
It's the Science of ReadingProgresses Communicating
Advances Beyond the Simple Viewof Reading.
It appeared in Reading ResearchQuarterly in May and it is

(04:37):
freely available online.
It's not behind a paywall, I'mglad to say so.
In that article, what KellyCartwright and I tried to do is
to both acknowledge the realsignificance of the Simple View
of Reading, which probably manyof your listeners have heard of.

(04:59):
But just briefly, this is amodel of reading that was put
forth in 1985 by Goff and Tumnerand in that model, reading is
posited to be a product, andthat's very important.
So the time symbol here aproduct of two components

(05:20):
decoding and listeningcomprehension.
And already some of yourlisteners might be like wait a
minute, I didn't think it wasdecoding and listening
comprehension In the originalarticle in 1985, it really was
actually decoding and listeningcomprehension, or a few times in
the article they usedlinguistic comprehension.

(05:41):
It's much more recently thatother researchers and writers
have broadened those terms toword recognition and language
comprehension, and that'sactually a substantial
improvement over the model rightthere.
It captures a lot more datawhen we use those broader terms
of word recognition and languagecomprehension.

(06:02):
Anyway, so that's the SimpleView of Reading.
So that was originated in 1985.
And then, as you've mentioned,there's Scarborough's Rope Model
of Reading that was put forthin 2001, and it's a model that
I've drawn on a lot in my ownwork.
I very much admire that model.
I think it has so much goingfor it.

(06:23):
But of course it's been 20years and, just as in medicine
and public health, we don't havethe same understandings now as
we had 20 years ago.
Our knowledge continues toadvance.
That's how science works, samein literacy.
So there's some things we knownow that we didn't know in 2001

(06:46):
or in 1985 with the Simple Viewof Reading.
So what Kelly Cartwright and Idid in this recent article was
we just tried to update somethings.
So point out some things thatwe know now that we didn't know
then that seem important forteachers and for educators to
understand.

(07:06):
And that's really where ourfocus was is what are some
things that it's important forthe field to understand?
We tried to pull that alltogether in a model we're
calling the Active View ofReading, and there's a colorful
graphic in the article thatrepresents that model, but there
are other updated models outthere.
Listeners may have anothermodel that they prefer and we

(07:30):
actually talk about a number ofthem and draw attention to a
number of updated models ofreading within the paper itself.
So there are a lot ofpossibilities out there.
I think our biggest message waswe do need to move beyond model
from 1985 because we just knowmore and when we know more, as
you say, we do more.
So I could talk about some ofthe key differences of the model

(07:53):
Would that be useful.

Melissa (07:54):
Yeah, that would be great.
I just really quickly.
I love that you all are talkingabout.
I think we often talk aboutscience of reading as if it's
this static thing.
Does this align with thescience of reading?
As if it's just these fivebullet points that are never
going to change?
So I just love the idea of that.
When we talk about scienceespecially, it's going to

(08:16):
continue to change and we needto continue to be OK with it
evolving.

Nell Duke (08:20):
So I'm just Melissa, that is such a great point.
I'm so glad that you checkedthe time to point that out,
because I think you'reabsolutely right.
A lot seems like a lot ofpeople do think of science, of
reading, as like a static bodyof settled knowledge, isn't that
?
There's certainly some thingsthat we feel pretty confident
about from the research at thispoint, but we're always going to

(08:42):
have evolving understandings.
I think of it if you, if you usethe analogy of a vaccination,
you know the science ofvaccination three years ago and
the science of vaccination todayare quite different, because we
have new techniques and we havenew, new understandings and new
phenomena, new, new tech pacesat which we can develop vaccines

(09:05):
.
I mean, there's just so manythings that have changed.
And so you know similarly, inliteracy, part of what it means
for us to be professionals isthat we embrace not the swinging
of a pendulum, you know notbandwagon's, not you know what
the latest guru says.
That's not what we embrace, butwe embrace that research
studies over time accumulate andtypically converge on

(09:28):
particular understanding.
So thanks for making that point.

Melissa (09:31):
Yeah, and I was going to say it feels like you all are
building on what's already beenkind of settled, if you want to
use that word.
But yeah, it's not like let'sthrow all this stuff away
because something new came outof the science.
It's okay, we have some thingsin place, but there are some new
things that we can add in orchange or shift the way we look
at it.

Nell Duke (09:49):
That's absolutely right and I hope that the piece
came through.
We certainly intended to writeit, you know as very respectful
of, and you know just a nextstep in.
You know these important modelsthat have come before and in
fact, you know I hope that 20years from now, people aren't
using the active re-readinganymore.
I hope that 20 years from now,they have, you know, another,

(10:12):
more updated model that addsadditional or adjusts
additionally.
So that's our hope.

Lori (10:18):
I think, too, to add to that, it's a lot of deepening
what's already been done.
So it's for me, it's called outsome more specific pieces that
can only help us moving forward,versus, like you said, swinging
the pendulum.
Like this is definitely notthat, because there are core
pieces that are staying groundedwithin, but then there are

(10:39):
pieces that are being fleshedout a little bit more.
So I think we're excited tohear from you a little bit more
about that, some examples ofthose pieces that are being
deepened, if you will Sure.

Nell Duke (10:52):
Great.
So one really key piece is thatin both the Rope Model and the
Simple View Model, thecomponents of word recognition
and language comprehension, or,in earlier form, decoding and
listening comprehension, aredepicted as largely separate.
In the Rope Model theyeventually pull together, which

(11:14):
is really, I think, a very nicemetaphor of that braiding of the
rope.
But in actuality, what we knowfrom research is that there are
actually some knowledge andskills that bridge those two
constructs, that is, the D andthe LC aren't entirely separate.
Actually, there are thesethings that are sort of the

(11:36):
integration of the D and the LCin the Simple View.
We call those bridgingprocesses, and what we know
about them is that they bothaffect, and are affected by both
, language comprehension and byword recognition.
So I can give you just a fewexamples of some of these.
So one is reading fluency,which I know your listeners are

(12:00):
probably really familiar with.
So reading fluency is obviouslyvery affected by your word
recognition, but it's alsoaffected by your language
comprehension and affects yourlanguage comprehension, so it
encompasses really both of those, particularly when you're

(12:24):
looking at the more the sort ofprosody or expression.
The aspects of fluency thathave to do most closely with
representing language, if youwill.
And so that's one reallyimportant one that, again, I
know your listeners are veryfamiliar with, is vocabulary
knowledge.
So traditionally people thinkof vocabulary knowledge as it's

(12:46):
just over in the languagecomprehension part of things.
But what we know from researchis that actually language
vocabulary knowledge affectsword recognition.
So you're actually, if you havea higher vocabulary knowledge,
if you know the words thatyou're now attempting to decode,

(13:08):
it improves your ability todecode them.
So that vocabulary really is areflection of and affects both
word recognition and languagecomprehension.
Why does that matter?
Well, if you have a student whois struggling with word
recognition, one of thepossibilities that has to be
considered is that part or maybeeven all, but probably part of

(13:30):
that is a vocabulary issue forthat child and not just an issue
of, for example, graphophonemicknowledge or knowledge of the
relationships between graphemesand phonemes and words and if
you don't realize that you couldbe putting a kid through more
and more and more and more andmore phonics intervention, when
what they really also need is aheavy dose of vocabulary and

(13:51):
concept knowledge intervention.
So that's one of the reasonswhy, again, it's just
practically helpful to think ofvocabulary as that bridging
scale.
And I'm excited to say thatthis week I read a new article
out and I won't remember all theauthor's names, but I know
Sharon Vaughn was one of them inwith fourth and fifth graders
in which they tested wordreading instruction for kids who

(14:13):
are at risk for readingdifficulty Word reading
instruction alone versus wordreading instruction plus
vocabulary.
And the word readinginstruction plus vocabulary
group grew more in their wordreading.
So that's a great example ofhow really thinking of this as a
bridging skill andacknowledging and understanding
the relationship of vocabularyto both word recognition and

(14:34):
language comprehension canreally help our learners.
So that's a couple of examplesfluency and vocabulary of those
bridging processes.
I'll just quickly mention theothers.
We put in the model printconcepts, so understanding how
language works, for example,that we read from left to right
in English that has historicallyin the rope model is under

(15:00):
language comprehension.
But in fact you've got to knowthat left to right
directionality in order to readwords right.
So it also affects wordrecognition.
Morphological awareness we putin there, that's awareness of
those smallest meaningful chunkswithin words.
And morphological awareness isanother one that has been shown
in many studies to be related toboth word recognition and

(15:24):
language comprehension andmorphology intervention.
So when you go in and you teachkids prefixes and suffixes and
roots, that actually can improveboth word reading and reading
comprehension.
So morphological knowledge hasa place.
And then the last one is a bitof a mouthful, so bear with me,
but the last one that we put inthe active view of reading in

(15:45):
the bridging processes sectionis graphophonological, semantic
cognitive flexibility.

Lori (15:53):
Which.
I'm really glad you broke itout and you put it just
underneath of it.

Nell Duke (16:00):
So it's a graphophonological, semantic,
cognitive flexibility.
So what does that mean?
So graphophonological, you knowgraphemes and phonemes or,
roughly speaking, not quiteaccurate, but letters and sounds
, and then semantic meaning andthen cognitive, mental
flexibility.
So this is basically yourbrain's ability to essentially

(16:21):
simultaneously consider both thegraphophonological structure of
words, the sort of codingaspects of words, and to
consider what those words mean,or to very, very actively and
quickly switch between those.
So you both do that very well,I'm sure, so you're just able to

(16:43):
handle both of those at thesame time in your minds.
But we know that adults andchildren both research has been
done with both who havedifficulty with reading, are
often not as good at that.
It's harder for their brains topay attention simultaneously to
these two things, and you cansee how this is a bridging skill

(17:06):
right.
It's a direct example of abridging between word
recognition and languagecomprehension, and fortunately
there is now research,intervention, research that
shows that we can do some thingsthat actually train brains to
pay attention to both of thosemore together, become more
flexible, and that that improvesreading comprehension.

(17:28):
So those are some of thebridging processes.
That's one big piece of ourmodel that I think is important
for teachers to understand.
And then I think the other bigpiece is really just we've added
some things, some constructs tothe model that weren't there
previously, that are importantto reading.

(17:50):
One piece we've added is calledTheory of Mind.

Melissa (17:55):
Yeah, I like that one.
We were talking about thatright before we talked to you.
Like, remind me what Theory ofMind is.
I'm not saying that.

Nell Duke (18:05):
I mean, it is a construct that's been around a
long time in particularlyresearch on preschool or very
early childhood development.
But more recently there's beenmore work on Theory of Mind and
reading.
And Theory of Mind is basicallyour ability to think about what

(18:26):
someone else is thinking orwhat someone else is feeling, so
kind of putting ourselves insomeone else's perspective, and
it's very important to narrativecomprehension right.
In order to really understand astory, you have to understand
what the characters in thatstory are thinking, feeling,
like their motivations, and sothat's where Theory of Mind has

(18:52):
implications for reading.
So that's one example ofsomething we added to the model,
and then a bubble that a wholebubble of our model.
If you see it, you'll know whatI mean by bubble.
But we'll link it, we'll link it.
Yeah, it was activeself-regulation, and so this is
a cluster of things we puttogether that really fall into

(19:15):
the broad umbrella of activereading and self-regulative
reading.
So it's, first of all,motivation and engagement.
You're just being motivated toread and it's sustaining that
motivation over time.
Some researchers call volitionand being engaged in that
reading.
We know that interventions toimprove motivation can actually

(19:37):
improve reading.
To improve reading, motivationcan actually improve reading.
The relationship, like lots ofthese constructs, is complex
because reading ability alsoaffects motivation, right, right
, right.
So it's kind of a two-way.
But the purpose of our modelwas to talk about things that
influence reading rather thanthings that reading influences.

(19:57):
So that makes sense.
So we focus on how motivationand engagement influence reading
.
We also included executivefunction and again, this is one
that is an area where there'sreally been an explosion of
research and still sorting out alot of the technical issues,
but for the purposes of yourlisteners if you think about

(20:23):
some of the children or studentsthat you may have had over the
years, where it seems like partof their challenge is sustaining
their attention to what they'rereading, keeping their mind
from wandering- yeah, it wasthought of as stamina.

Melissa (20:37):
Stamina is what we have Stamina yeah.

Lori (20:39):
Stamina.

Nell Duke (20:42):
And we talk about as inhibitory control.
So can you stop yourself fromgoing off on a mental tangent?
And I think we can all relatethat sometimes we can't.
We're reading along and we readabout a character who is doing
laundry and all of a suddenwe're thinking about our own
laundry and we're realizing wedidn't do the done lesson.
So the ability to sort ofsuppress those thoughts and stay

(21:05):
focused on what you're readingis called inhibitory control,
and for people who havedifficulty with things like that
, reading comprehension can bemore difficult.
So that's an example of wherethat executive function piece
has fallen in.
And it is interesting to seethat there are a growing number
of interventions where usuallyresearchers aren't intervening

(21:26):
on just executive function.
But when they combineintervention on executive
function with intervention onother aspects of reading, that
additional attention toexecutive function seems to be
well worth it.

Lori (21:38):
Now, what would that do?
Do you mind doing like a quicklittle tangential piece?
What would that look like?
Because I mean, I'm stillsitting here thinking about the
laundry that I need to put inthe dryer.

Melissa (21:48):
My laundry's in the washer.
And now I had to make a notefor myself.

Lori (21:51):
That's what I was thinking .
I'm going to put it in mynotebook right now after this
podcast changes the laundry, soI can, then I can forget about
it in my head.
I'm constantly making notes tomyself that's my strategy, but
I'm curious as to what an actualstrategy would be other than
putting it on a post-it andremember.

Nell Duke (22:11):
I love it, I love it, I know again, I think we all
can relate, especially as verybusy multi-tasking professionals
who have a job in the home andthe kids.
We can relate.
Yeah, so you're giving me a bitof an opening to talk about
strategy instruction, becausesome of the strategy instruction

(22:31):
models part of what they'redoing is helping really with
some executive function kinds ofissues.
So a big part of it is teachingreaders to do things in their
minds that keep those mindsactively focused on their
reading.
So one that's gotten a lot ofattention in the research over

(22:52):
over a number of decades now, sothis pretty longstanding area
is self-questioning, so askingyourself questions as you read.
Why would the character do thator why would that be a waste
product of this scientificphenomenon?
So that self-questioning seemslike it is one way that we keep

(23:15):
readers more actively engaged inthe reading and more focused on
what they're reading.
And indeed research suggests,including in meta-analysis, that
just teaching self-questioningcan actually support reading
comprehension.
Even though that's just onestrategy and some of the work in
this area why questions areespecially important so you

(23:37):
might have noticed my exampleshad that.
Why question feel, getting atthat, why often forces us to
make inferences and kind of toelaborate our understandings
within a text.
So that's an example of whereyou can be kind of
simultaneously improving what wetraditionally think of as

(23:58):
comprehension strategy use, butalso that it can really support
executive function.
Another strategy that I want totalk about that certainly has
overlap, I think, with executivefunction is comprehension
monitoring, and this is soimportant, right, paying
attention to whether what you'rereading is making sense and let

(24:19):
me be very clear that I'm nottalking about using sense to
guess at words that's notsomething we recommend but using
ongoing attention to whethersomething is making sense as a
way to flag whether you may havemisread a word or that your
mind is wandering or any numberof other problems in your

(24:42):
reading.
Maybe you misunderstood avocabulary word, maybe you
understood one meaning of itwhen the author intended a
different meaning of it.
Those are all things that wenotice when we're engaged in
comprehension monitoring, andstronger, more accomplished
readers tend to be very good atcomprehension monitoring.
So, for example, if your mindwandered to the laundry, you
would realize it after a bit.

(25:02):
You know, and you oh, I need togo back and reread.
I wasn't paying any attentionfor the last two paragraphs or
whatever the case may be.
So that comprehensionmonitoring is so important.
And we do know from researchthere are a lot of individual
differences in that area.
So some children are seeminglynatural comprehension monitors.

(25:22):
They just do pay attention towhether what they're reading
makes sense and they do stop orslow down if it doesn't.
There's some really interestingeye tracking research that
Carol Conner and colleagues didwhere they showed, you know,
that our stronger readers reallydo slow way down Something is
inconsistent or doesn't makesense.

(25:44):
I think that's such animportant finding and, just to
go on a quick tangent, it's oneof the reasons why sending
students the message thatreading faster is always better
is really problematic, right,because we know that those
really strong readers are infact slowing down more than less

(26:05):
strong readers when they'rehitting those rough patches,
right.

Lori (26:08):
Yeah, I have to undo a lot of that in my little one
because she thinks and she'sgoing into fourth grade, but she
is not.
She does not stop when itdoesn't make sense or the word
you know.
She's saying the word thatcould be said two different ways
.
She's saying it the way thatit's not intended in the text
and then just keeps going and Ifind myself saying what you're

(26:30):
saying in a very child friendlyway to her.
Often, like good readers,reread and think about if it
makes sense, and if it doesn't,then we go back and reread.
She's like I just want to get itdone, like that's not the point
, you know and then I do a lotof like modeling, to be like, oh
my gosh, this doesn't makesense here and I'm thinking

(26:50):
she's even listening to me, youknow but it's that it's
reaffirming to hear that that is, you know, the right thing to
do and that it's important to dothat because it it's really
hard to make sense of whatyou're reading If you're not
going back and slowing down andreading.
I would love to learn moreabout that eye tracking research
.
That's really intriguing.

(27:10):
I'm going to try to find someof that after.

Nell Duke (27:14):
Yeah, if you have any trouble, let me know.
I'd be happy to share.
I do think that that is reallyintriguing and what you're doing
with your daughter is just soimportant, and it's it's
important to her comprehension,which of course is the point of
reading, but it's also importantto her word recognition
development, because if shespeeds through those words,
having read them incorrectly,then what she's doing is she's

(27:35):
orthographically mapping thewrong word pronunciation onto
that word and we don't want thateither.
So that comprehension monitoringis one of our protections or
guards against kids doing thewrong orthographic mapping in
their, in their mind.
So it's, it's really soimportant.
So just practically speaking, Imean, you know, we teach

(27:58):
comprehension monitoring, theway that we teach so many things
.
You'll explicitly explain itand we model it, and sure that's
what sounds like you were doingwith your daughter, explicitly
explaining why this is soimportant.
But there are also some littletricks.
So one thing is kids justputting a little check mark at
the end of each line theyunderstood and a question mark
if they didn't.
And just kind of training,therefore, that they're like

(28:22):
paying attention each line towhether what they've read is
making sense to them, instead ofchecking in about it every few
pages or something.

Lori (28:30):
Yeah, that's a great idea.
That's what I'm going to dowhen I go back and reread this
this weekend.
I'm going to use that strategy.
I recall yes, the big one, theheavy one that we're talking
about.
The science of readingprogresses.
I'm going to use your screen,thank you now.

Melissa (28:49):
Thank you so much.
I was definitely selfmonitoring when reading that I
love it so anyway.

Nell Duke (28:55):
So those are some of the key, you know, differences
between our model and and andthose past models.
Again, very much building onthem, but just extending.
And, as I said, you know, onehopes that that you know, 20
years from now, maybe even fiveyears from now, maybe even right
now, researchers will say Ithink you should add this, or I
think this should be in thisbubble, not this bubble, or, you

(29:16):
know, because that is again howscience works, we read lots of
studies.
You know that's what I doSaturday night.
It's a very wonderful life here.
I have, and you know, readresearch studies and synthesize,
you know, thousands of studiesin your mind to try to kind of
sort out and map out the field.

Lori (29:36):
Yeah, yeah, you're in good company.
That's what I mean.
I was thinking about doing thisat the pool this weekend with
the Pina Colada and using thestrategy already synthesized for
you.

Nell Duke (29:48):
Thank you.
Well, a few things here on that, Lori.
First of all, I think it'simportant for your listeners to
know that I did apologize to youfor the fact that you were
thinking you needed to read thisarticle at the pool this
weekend.
We read it again.
No, I mean, but this is such animportant article.

Lori (30:04):
I can help, but this is such an important article to to
read again and again and againthat you know I am willing to
read it with a Pina Colada andhand at the pool this weekend
for you.
But I do want to talk a littlebit about.
This is incredible work.
Now first, but I do want toshift a little bit to, you know,

(30:24):
thinking about my daughter andwhat I just shared.
She is, she just finished thirdgrade and she's heading into
fourth grade and I know thatthat's a time where educators
might use phrases such as she'squote transitioning from
learning to read to reading tolearn.
And you know, after readingyour piece and knowing

(30:47):
everything that you know,melissa and I always talk about
how decoding and languagecomprehension go hand in hand,
straight up from birth to allthe way through adulthood.
We'd like to talk a little bitabout those phrases and the

(31:08):
impact of them as well.
As you know just how I don'tknow, melissa, go ahead.

Melissa (31:13):
Well, I was just going to say.
What I had in my mind the wholetime that Noah was talking was
that I said this like a milliontimes on the podcast.
But during my letters trainingI had a teacher who said like
Well, if this is just so key tobecoming a good reader, why
don't we just start with wordrecognition and spend all of our
time there and make sure thatevery student has it down pat
before we go on to anything else?

(31:35):
And in my mind I'm like no no,no.
there's so many other thingsthat are so important.
We can't we can't just staythere for years, yeah.
So similarly, I had that in mymind of, like you know, we have
to.
I love the idea of the bridgingprocesses because it really
shows that these things do gotogether Right.
We can't separate them out likethat.

Nell Duke (31:56):
Yeah, I mean both of you are making, I think, such
important points for yourlisteners to hear and just to
kind of give some some credenceto what each of you said.
So, starting with what you weresaying, lori, about this sort
of traditional idea of first welearn, read to learn, sorry,

(32:16):
first say it.
I disagree with it so much Firstwe learn to read, then we read
to learn that first of all.
That idea comes from work inthe 1960s in which Jean Chal in
particular was describing whattypically happens in children's

(32:38):
reading development, not whatshould happen in children's
reading development.
And in fact, one of the thingsI really admire about Dr the
late Dr Charles work is that shewas a very strong advocate for
more opportunities for childrento engage with informational
texts and learning through textin the earliest stages of

(33:01):
reading.
So it's not that she wanted itto be first learned to read,
then read to learn.
She was just describing was outthere.
She was actually advocatingover over many years.
She was advocating for adifferent kind of model.
So again leads credence to yourquestioning of that, of that
idea.
And then, melissa, with yourpoint, it's just so, the letters

(33:24):
training you know the leaddeveloper of that is Dr Louisa
Mott's and I know for a factthat Dr Mott's does not want
people focusing on just wordrecognition and nothing else for
the first few years of school.
So you know, again, hopefullythat leads credence to the idea
that that even the materialsthat maybe have led a few people

(33:46):
to come to those conclusions,you know the very originators of
those materials didn't wantthose conclusions.
So you know exactly, we justsimply it just does not make any
sense and and is not, I don'tknow any researchers, actual
researchers, who advise focusingon nothing but word recognition
in the early years of schoolingright away.

(34:08):
We need to be concerned aboutcomprehension development as
well, as well as, as developmentand other areas have talked
about, like you know, anexecutive function, for example,
and that really even very youngchildren can handle texts that
are designed for them to learn.
So informational texts, youknow being the kind of most
obvious category.

(34:30):
I did some research and manyothers have done research in
this area.
But I'll just give you oneexample of a study in that was
published in 1990.
I think so.
Let's pretend I was 10 yearsold at the time.
So when I was 10 years old in1995 and published an article
with Jane Kays in earlychildhood research quarterly.

(34:55):
What we did is Jane Kays is ateacher, so this was a teacher,
researcher practitionerpartnership.
We she had kindergartners andat the very beginning of the
year we asked the kindergartnersindividually to pretend to read
two texts.
One was very clearly a storyand it was clearly a fictional
story.
It was a Mercer Mayer storywith monsters and so on, and we

(35:19):
covered up the words.
So if there were kindergartnerswho could read, you know they
wouldn't do so they was topretend to read it.
Say what you think the bookmight say.
And we also gave them aninformational text that was
designed to teach aboutfirefighters and firefighting
and this text had realphotographs and there was no
storyline.
I mean, it was very clearly aninformational text.

(35:40):
So we asked them to pretend toread these at the beginning of
the year and then after thatJane Kays read aloud to the
children as information booksand storybooks for three months.
So each day for read aloud.
You know she would make surethat she had a nice balance,
like the Common Core StateStandards call for, but this was
long before that A nice balancebetween informational and

(36:03):
narrative text.
And then after the three monthswe asked each kid individually
to once again pretend to readthose same two books Again with
the words covered up, and whatwe found was that the children
differentiated.
They're pretending to reads,they're saying what they think

(36:24):
the book might say.
Those differentiated a lot moreafter three months than they
had at the beginning of the yearwhen they were reading the
information book.
It sounded much more like aninformation book now and the
storybook sounded like storybook.
So there are all sorts of.
I won't get into all thelinguistic details but for

(36:44):
example, in information booksverbs are often timeless.
So you might say, likefirefighters fight fires and
that's timeless, right, it couldbe at any moment.
Whereas in a storybook usuallyverbs are timed and usually in
past tense.
So it would be something likethe monster left the door, you
know.
So what we found was that afterthree months children were more

(37:08):
using more timeless verbs whenthey were pretending to read the
information book and using moretimed verbs when they were
pretending to read the storybook.
So they had already kind ofpicked up on this language
difference between these twokinds of text.
And what we argued was if youcan do that as a kindergartner
after three months of someread-alouds, clearly reading to

(37:30):
learn is in your wheelhouseright, like clearly yeah.
You're able to handle theseinformation books first as a
listener, but of course, as youknow, by first grade they can
also handle them as readersthemselves.
So that's part of why you knowwe disrupt both of those notions
that the two of you brought upand I know you both have long

(37:53):
spoken against those as wellwhich I really appreciate.

Lori (37:56):
Yeah, it's frustrating to like hear it still, but you know
, I think it's such anopportunity to dig a little
deeper and to hear the why.
And whenever I do talk with ateacher you know informally who
is still using that language,they don't actually usually mean
it the way that it's said.
They usually mean exactly whatwe are talking about.

(38:17):
It's just because no teacherthat I know is denying students
the opportunity to access thosetexts, right Like teachers are
reading kids books and they wantthem to learn to love books.
I think it's just like you saidnow that the phrase became like
catchy, even though it wasn'twhat it was intended.
It was what it was happeningversus what should be.

Nell Duke (38:42):
It's such an important point that you are
making because I think you'reright.
The vast majority of teachersare very interested in
developing comprehension notjust listening comprehension but
also reading comprehension inthose early years of schooling,
and are interested in usinginformational texts as well as
narrative texts.
Sometimes it's more that, likeour language or our
pronouncements or some of ourpolicies that haven't kind of

(39:02):
caught up with.
I think you're right where many, many teachers are and I do
want to give you credit as wellto curricula which have shifted
so much.
I mean, earlier in my careeryou would be hard pressed in
primary grade curricula to findinformational texts.
They were overwhelminglystories and story books and

(39:25):
similarly I think the CommonCore really state standards and
of course I know people havelots of opinions about them and
they're certainly not perfectand they certainly do for an
update in any case.
But the Common Core did make avery strong pronouncement about
the importance of informationaltext and learning from reading.
That I think did help to movethe field along.

Lori (39:49):
Yeah, and just to add to that, with what Melissa, you had
said about the teacher inletters training, I'm sure that
it.
I mean, if that newer teacher,if you really dug deep into like
what she said and you said, hey, does that mean that you
wouldn't ever read them?
You're the kids of book aloudabout firefighters or whatever
it might be, I'm sure her answerwould be, oh no, yeah, you're

(40:11):
right, that doesn't make a lotof sense, like I mean I think,
digging deep.
I think it's just a catchphrasethat feels really catchy and
sounds great, but I think whatwe should shift it to, if I may,
is learning is reading, readingis learning, and instead of two
it should just say is, and itall is working together and

(40:34):
collaboratively.
So I'm gonna throw that outthere to the world.
Maybe we can shift thenarrative.
We've got lots of listeners andlots of downloads, so take that
with you, friends.
Very nice.

Melissa (40:45):
Lori, we brought up this pendulum swing and I think
that we do that a lot inliteracy, right.
It's like we wanted to be likeone thing or the other thing or
this thing, and there's so muchbalance and so many things that
that model of reading, theactive view of reading model
that you all created there's somany things on there that we do

(41:08):
have to pay attention to all ofthem.
I think sometimes people like Imean, maybe it's a comfort
thing, right, if Icompartmentalize it a little,
like let me just focus on onepart first, it might feel a
little bit better.
But I think we all know thatthey're all important.

Nell Duke (41:24):
I think you're absolutely right and I think I
try to use public healthmetaphors sometimes here because
I think there are ways in whichliteracy development is a
public health issue for us andin this country, and when public
health advocates andresearchers are perfectly
comfortable with the idea thatwe need good sleep, that we need

(41:47):
a healthy diet, that we need tolower our stress, that we need
to exercise, that we need to bein homes that are free of
various kinds of environmentaltoxins whether that's air
pollution, lead, and I could goon.
But when advocates are tryingto speak to the importance of

(42:08):
one of those say sleep, theytypically don't denigrate all
the others, and I think that'sreally the mentality that we
need to adopt in our field.
There are a lot of things thatare important and sure they're
gonna be figure ground kinds ofthings I'll be the first person
to say like get word readinginstruction right in first grade

(42:34):
.
We are in big trouble if wedon't get that right.
So of course that's gonna beheavy on our mind, but it
doesn't mean that we speakagainst or completely
marginalize all of these otherareas and we look for those
synergies wherever we can.

(42:54):
I also just wanna kind of backagain to really the wisdom of
teachers, some of the moreextreme pronouncements that I
tend to hear.
There was a professionaldevelopment group that was
actually doing some work inMichigan in which they said
don't read aloud to kids tillthird grade.
Oh my goodness, why Can youbelieve that?
Why, of course, I got plenty ofcommunications from people

(43:18):
attending that.
Can you believe it?
And from teachers attendingthat, pushing back on, I do
think that at least myexperience is that some of those
loudest voices that are justsort of myopically focusing on
one aspect of reading or aresaying this is bad, this is good

(43:41):
, they're often not actualclassroom teachers.
I think that classroom teachersvery, very often do recognize,
because they have the reality ofthe kids in front of them every
day and the kids are teachingthem themselves.
This is sort of all of thedifferent ways in which they can
have strengths and weaknessesin their learning.
So I think we all just have toband together and we hear

(44:04):
somebody say build knowledge butdon't teach strategies.
Or they say teach decoding butdon't teach comprehension, or
develop narrative comprehensionbut don't do informational
comprehension, or doinformational comprehension but
don't get started comprehension,or whatever people are out
there doing.
We just have to bring thatcritical eye and kind of put

(44:26):
ourselves in that public healthshoes.
Put ourselves in the publichealth shoes.
That does not sound right atall.
Put ourselves in the shoes ofsomeone in public health to make
sure that we're bringing thatcritical eye and that lens of
complexity.

Melissa (44:44):
Yeah, so, speaking of this, like focusing in on one
area, I have your other articlein mind that we read before we
talked to you, and I loved justthe title of it, honestly,
because it's the science of oh,I'm gonna get it wrong the
science of reading,comprehension instruction.
And I always talk about this toLori, I think, especially

(45:05):
because I was a secondaryteacher and like the science of
reading like so often getstalked about only in this word
recognition part of it, and weboth are like there's science
that also talks about thecomprehension part of it too,
but no one's not no one, not alot of people are talking about

(45:25):
that part.
So I was really excited to seeyour article that kind of brings
that a little bit more to light.
So I'd love to hear about thatother article as well.

Nell Duke (45:34):
Oh, thanks so much.
So that second article you'retalking about the science of
reading comprehensioninstruction was published in the
reading teacher.
It was absolutely written forpractitioners and it's also
freely available online openaccess, so we hope people might
check it out.

Lori (45:53):
I would like to take the right.
Take.
Pardon me, oh, I said I'll linkthat as well.
I'll link both of your pieces.

Nell Duke (46:00):
Oh, thanks so much, and you might not even need a
pina colada for this one.

Lori (46:05):
I mean that you have to decide what you think I don't
want to give us too much credit.

Nell Duke (46:10):
But yeah, and this was co-authored with Alessandra
Ward and with P David Pearsonand, just to put it a little bit
in historical context, davidPearson and I, with
collaborators, have published apiece about every decade for
practitioners, where we try topull together what we think

(46:31):
research is suggesting aboutelementary reading comprehension
instruction, and we were duefor a piece.
So that's really what thisparticular piece is, and I hope
it will be useful to people.
The first thing that I shouldsay about it is, as you pointed

(46:53):
out, we really want people tounderstand, which every
researcher I know understands.
So I don't think this is acontroversial statement at all
that the science of readingencompasses not just word
reading, but there's lots ofscientific research around other
kinds of processes that aregoing on in one's mind as they

(47:13):
read, and lots of scientificresearch.
I call it the science ofreading instruction that gets at
the instructional context andinstructional moves that support
reading development.
So yeah, so thanks.
I appreciate that you both readthe piece.
I guess I can just summarizefor the listeners that what we

(47:36):
did in the piece is weidentified some findings from
research that we think arepretty robust.
You know that there's quite abit of agreement on within, from
study to study and a fairamount of research on.
So, for example, our firstpoint is the teaching word
reading and bridging skillssupports reading comprehension.

(47:56):
That's a very I feel like it'sit'd be hard press to find
anyone who disagrees with that,right?
Yeah, so that's an example of akind of finding that we share
in the piece and then with eachone we do try to, you know,
point to some sort of practicaldirections for instruction.
In the piece we do have agraphic, as you both know, so

(48:20):
your readers know there's agraphic the layered model of
reading comprehensioninstruction.
Yep.

Lori (48:26):
It looks like a layer cake , but reverse, like a reverse
wedding cake, if you will.

Nell Duke (48:31):
Ah, thank you, that is a very yes.
It's very good with that ombrefor those listeners.

Lori (48:38):
It's cute.

Nell Duke (48:40):
That ombre, that fading of color, right yeah, and
so part of what we were tryingto do there is actually get it
something that both of you haveraised, this sort of either or
idea that often doesn't serveour field very well.
So, you know, instead of kindof a metaphor of, say, a balance
scale where you may be put likeknowledge building on one end

(49:01):
and comprehension instruction onthe other, in the layered model
, you know, we suggest that thatcomprehension instruction is
layered inside of the engagementwith texts to impart, build
knowledge, so these things don'thappen in different parts of
the day.
These things are, you know,really, really embedded and

(49:23):
integrated.
So if I could go back to yourdaughter for a minute, lori, you
know we did talk about theimportance of you know that
comprehension monitoring as wellas her read, word reading.
But a sort of another layer upfrom that is you know why is she
reading?
You know, if you're justreading to finish an assignment
and you don't have much, youknow sort of interest in the

(49:47):
assignment that you're doing,you're going to be less likely
to apply those goodcomprehension strategies.
Slow down when you need to, youknow, worry about accuracy and
so on, right yeah, but if you inbed or layer that reading
experience inside a motivatingcontext.
You know she's reading thisbecause then she's going to give

(50:08):
a presentation for preschoolersabout some information she
learned.
Or she's reading this becauseshe's going to come to school
with her peers who read otherarticles and they're going to
jigsaw and share what anotherlearned, you know, for the
purpose of a project they'reworking on.
You know that's where we startto see a context that makes it
more likely that we will.

(50:29):
You know that we'll do thingslike monitor our comprehension
carefully and so on.
And so in our layered model,readers will see that we didn't
just focus narrowly on literacy.
We tried to kind of the top ofthat inverted layer cake to use
Lori's description also dealswith just general you know,

(50:51):
generally good classroompractice and context and deals
with literacy and readingmotivation and so on.
So that's what we were tryingto do there with that graphic.

Lori (51:04):
Yeah, what stood out to me , I think, is that you really
draw attention to embeddingstrategies within the knowledge
building constructs.
It's not, like you said, liketeam strategy or team knowledge
building.
It really fits together.
And, melissa, I'm wondering ifit might be helpful for us to
give an example.

(51:24):
I know we always speak to witand wisdom, because that's what
we know.
Do you want to give an, do youwant to try to give an example,
melissa, within the contentstages?

Melissa (51:34):
Yeah, well, I mean, I think this kind of was in my
head when you were talkingearlier now about the self
questioning and self monitoringand I was thinking, like you
know, in within wit and wisdomthere's the first content, or
the first stages is aboutnoticing and wandering right,
just like getting students tosee.
What do you wonder about thistext, what do you notice about

(51:55):
this text?
And to me that's like startingto we call it, like you know
replicating these habits likehabits that they can start to
like use as they get to othertexts on their own.
You might have more, lori,that's just where my head was,
but I love that about wit andwisdom is that it's like it's
almost so like inside of theknowledge building texts and the

(52:18):
engagement of these texts thatit's almost not noticeable, if
that makes any sense, but it'sthere and I love that because
when I taught, I did it, the I'mjust going to say I did it the
wrong way, right when I, like, Ihad a self questioning day and
we're going to learn how toquestion, and here's this random
text that I have here for us topractice questioning and then

(52:39):
I'm going to see if you can doit and check off the box that
says oh yes, lori can askquestions, but now not so much.
Let's try it again next time.
Right, and like that didn'tmake any sense.
Yeah.

Lori (52:51):
So I mean, and I may have been able to ask questions
because I was super interestedin what we were reading about,
right, it might have been atopic right.
Something that was familiar tome and now might have had no
idea what the topic was.
But yeah, I think, like goingback to your point now a moment
ago, that when we embed thosehabits of mind with and teach

(53:12):
strategies within knowledgebuilding, that that helps
students be curious learners, ithelps them to ask questions as
they read, it helps them to, youknow, have a bigger purpose.
And also, when we do it withinknowledge building, what I think
helps me frame it is that it'snot like this jigsaw, like

(53:34):
different topics.
It's a really fluid um topicalalignment where students are
learning about a topic to reallybecome an expert on it and to
to be able to know about thatspecific topic.
So really the intrinsicmotivation could be to know more
about a specific topic and toinvestigate questions within

(53:56):
that, which is highly motivatingfor students, just as kids, you
know they're curious in nature.
So that's what I always thinkabout.
And then you know, like Melissasaid, with the, it's embedded
within, like it has that wonderis the first stage but organizes
the second.
And you're asking, like, whatis happening in this text and
reveal, and you're looking alittle bit deeper to see what

(54:19):
something reveals about the text, distilling what's the
essential meaning and know howdoes this build my knowledge so
students are able to to pullspecific pieces that are going
to help build theirunderstandings, that they
eventually can know more about atopic and then apply that.
And I mean, if that's notmotivating, I don't know what is

(54:41):
Like?
you know I want to become anexpert on lots of the topics
that you know, a lot of the highquality curricula that is out
there addresses, because I feellike we didn't get to do that
when we were in school and it ispretty amazing to feel like a
historian or to feel like ascientist and to know that
information to powering.

Melissa (55:00):
Yeah, and I do think, like I think when I was teaching
at least, I think like some ofthese things fell into different
buckets, like I'm going toteach vocabulary over here
separately, I'm going to teach,you know, I'm going to do some
motivation over here by havingthem do some like self-selected
reading.
I'm going to do you know this.
Something else over here aboutthe strategy is totally separate

(55:20):
, right, yeah, it was like, likeyou said, trying to do things
separately instead of like howdo we actually bring it all
together?

Lori (55:28):
Yeah, now you mentioned a piece of in your not maybe not
you, but you're, you and yourteam in the piece that we're
talking about now the science ofreading comprehension
instruction.
Melissa, when you saidself-selected reading, it made
me think about the part of thetoward the end.
Yeah, that talked about volumereading.
Would you be able now, justvery quickly I know we're almost

(55:50):
we're over time, but to talkabout that?
I loved this.
This is really, reallyimportant, I think so Would you
be able to draw that out andjust quickly talk about it
before we close out?

Nell Duke (56:03):
Sure, yeah.
So I mean, if you think ofanything that people try to get
good at, you know playing theviolin, swimming you know.
Whatever the case may be, it'shard to deny that an important
part of that is you have to dothe thing a lot.
You know you got to swim a lotto become a really good swimmer,
right, and you know you have toplay the violin a lot to become

(56:25):
a very good violinist.
And the same is true forreading.
You know our strongest readersneed to spend a lot of time
reading.
The conundrum here that I thinkour field is really struggled
with for a long time now is howdo you make that happen?
So, you know, one model is well, you take large chunks of the
school day and you just havekids read.
Well, when that gets tested inresearch against more

(56:48):
instructionally orientedactivities, it typically loses.
That is, you know, just thiskind of old model where the
teacher, you know, sits andreads something the teacher is
interested in and the students,all you know, sit and read
something they're interested in.
You know, for example, oftencalled Dear Time, you drop
everything and read.
I call it drop everything andfind Waldo because you know so

(57:10):
often the kids are, you know,doing something like reading
wears Waldo, or you knowsomething that probably isn't
doing a lot.
You know their reading ability.
With all due respect, I meanthose books are really fun but
in terms of you know some of thekinds of reading moves that we
need students to make.
Anyway.
So if giving over large swathsof the day to kids just sort of

(57:32):
reading whatever they want andthe teacher reading whatever
they want, you know if thatdoesn't work, what does work.
You know what's going to createa situation in which students
have adequate time to do thisthing, that you have to do a lot
to get good at right, not tomention that it builds knowledge
.
You know per the examples thattwo of you were were giving you
know shortly ago.

(57:52):
So certainly one thing islooking at outside of school
time and there are definitely anumber of studies and I think we
cite a review in the paper, ifI remember correctly and what
happens when we make sure thatstudents have access to books
over summer and have, you know,some mechanisms that encourage
them to really read those booksover the summer, and some of

(58:15):
those approaches do work verywell to improve reading
achievements.
So you know that outside ofschool reading is one way that
we can do it.
Another way we can do it isthrough partner or dyad reading.
At least some versions of dyadpartner dyad reading have been
tested in research and shown tobe effective.

(58:36):
So that reading with thatpartner, where you have certain
ways that you and a partner aresupporting one another in the
reading, that seems to be apromising mechanism.
You know situations in whichstudents are reading with a
higher degree of teacherinstructional support, whether
that's that they're reading toimmediately try out something

(58:57):
that they were learning, orthey're, you know, in their
instruction, rereading a textthat they had initially
encountered in instruction,rereading that multiple times,
doing Reader's Theater toimprove fluency, where you know
the teacher is there reallyguiding that reading development
, connecting that reading to themeaning of whatever the text is

(59:20):
that they're doing Reader'sTheater.
You know those are some of thekinds of things you know that
have that additional layer ofscaffolding that's important.
And then, of course, now withartificial intelligence and so
forth, there are increasingnumbers of programs that are
designed to where the computeris listening to children read
and responding and when we'reanother.
So eventually, you know, we'llhave that too.

(59:42):
But I think that's the key.

Lori (59:43):
So like do you think Alexa will ever be able to give
feedback?

Nell Duke (59:48):
Yes, I do I am, it's not crazy yes.
I'm just being funny, but oh mygosh, there are company I won't
name specific companies becauseI'll get in trouble if I name
some and not others but thereare companies right now working
on exactly that idea andresearchers who have long been
working on that idea.
Jack Mastow at Carnegie Mellon,for example, has been working

(01:00:09):
on that idea for many years.
So, yes, but the larger kind ofcontext and issue here really
is that, you know, we do needstudents to read a lot.
That's not going to teach themto read.
So let's be very clear asalways, this is one piece of a
larger pie of things that needto happen.
But we do need students to reada lot.

(01:00:30):
We accomplish that partly bymaking sure that our
motivational mechanisms are inplace, that we're creating a
really motivating context forstudents to read.
And then we accomplish thatbest outside of school through,
you know, various kinds of bookaccess programs with various
enhancements.
Inside of school, we accomplishit by having a heavier layer of

(01:00:52):
collaboration and instructionalscaffolding rather than a
traditional you know quotesilent reading model.

Lori (01:01:01):
Thank you for that.
Yeah, and Melissa, were you adear?
Did you do dear in yourclassroom back in the day?
I did.

Melissa (01:01:06):
Let's not talk about it .

Lori (01:01:07):
Lori, I know I was like I didn't think that sitting in the
front of the classroom and likereading would help anybody else
read.
That doesn't make any sense,but it was I thought I was doing
the right thing, I know.

Melissa (01:01:18):
We're going to do a no better, do better.

Nell Duke (01:01:21):
To wrap up, because I think it's the theme of our
whole conversation like that'sscience, right?
Like you know, 30 years agothere were all sorts of things
we did that we thought wouldhelp our health and later we've
learned they don't really help.
Or there were things that, youknow, I remember when I was
growing up.
I mean, you just didn't really,the kids didn't wear seatbelts.
We're climbing all over theback seat.

(01:01:42):
You know what we were.

Lori (01:01:43):
We were we were watching full, like the original full
house, the other night.
Oh my gosh, they're in aconvertible crossing the Golden
Gate Bridge with, like someone'sin the kids in the front seat,
kids in the back seat no carseats Like I don't even know
anybody had seatbelts on, I waslike oh my gosh, I would never
you know, but you're right, wewent by those constructs.

(01:02:07):
We would not be very safe today, so thank goodness for science.
Right, that's it Right there,lori.

Nell Duke (01:02:14):
Thank goodness for science.

Lori (01:02:16):
No, we would love to invite you.
Well, first, we want to thankyou for your time but we would
love to invite you to share onefinal piece of advice with our
listeners, because we thinkeverything that we've talked
about today has been so valuable.
But if you can funnel it downto just one final piece of
advice, that is going to be thelast thing that they hear from
you before you leave.
We'd love to ask you for that.

Nell Duke (01:02:38):
Oh, that's a tough one.

Lori (01:02:39):
Lori.

Nell Duke (01:02:43):
I think I would ask everybody.
First of all, we're coming upsuch a hard year and a half and
so just on the affective side, Ijust have to say let's give
ourselves some grace, let's giveour children and our students
some grace, let's give ourcolleagues some grace.
Going into this year, you know,get back to the things that are

(01:03:06):
most important for, you know,our growth and for our
children's growth.
So I feel like I need to saythat.
But on the sort of side, that'smore in the technical aspects of
things, I would just say thatthere are a lot of people out
there right now talking aboutthe science of reading who do

(01:03:27):
not know what scientificresearch on reading actually
finds, whose understandings areoutdated or outright wrong, who
don't actually read researchstudies, who don't or read just
a few cherry-picked researchstudies and don't look at the
whole volume of literature.

(01:03:48):
And I just would ask all of yourlisteners to really be critical
consumers of people'spronouncements about science and
make sure that you can reallytrust that who you're reading
and hearing from has actuallyread lots and lots and lots of
scientific research, or isworking with people who have

(01:04:08):
read lots and lots of scientificresearch, and that you know
they are really accuratelyrepresenting the science.
You know just as I would hopeyour listeners would feel that
way about any given publichealth issue you know that they
should bring that same criticallens that hopefully they're
bringing you know to issues ofpublic health, to issues around.
You know science and reading,and so I guess I'd leave it at

(01:04:31):
that and thanks so much forhaving me.
It was really such a pleasureto talk with the two of you and
I really appreciate it.

Lori (01:04:37):
Thank you.
Yeah, thank you.
I learned so much.

Melissa (01:04:40):
I know it was amazing.

Lori (01:04:41):
Actually what you just said Nell reminds me of.
We talked with James Murphy,who edited the research ed guide
to literacy, and he had thisconcept of truth versus truthy
and how teachers need to beaware of what is truthful versus
truthy and I was like I lovethat so much.
So I'm going to throw back to anepisode that we've just

(01:05:01):
published, and hopefully ourlisteners can get a little more
from that one after hearing yourplug to be knowing what is
truth versus truthy Wonderful,so thank you so much.
Now have a wonderful day.
We appreciate your time so much.
Thank you, bob.

Melissa (01:05:17):
Yeah, thank you, bye, bye, bye.