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July 4, 2025 52 mins

Episode 230

In this episode, we discuss this article and the vital role of difficult texts with three experts: Kristin Conradi-Smith, John Strong, and Steve Amendum. They explore how thoughtful scaffolding and motivation help students confidently tackle challenging materials, clarifying the difference between text complexity and text difficulty. 

Listeners will hear practical strategies for assessing student needs and differentiating instruction, ensuring every learner can thrive. We also discuss key literacy components including activating prior knowledge, the importance of decodable texts in early grades, and the power of read-alouds for K-1 students. 

Drawing from research, expert guests highlight ongoing developments in understanding text complexity and stress the need for strong professional learning opportunities to equip educators with effective tools. This conversation is packed with insights and actionable ideas for supporting diverse learners on their reading journeys.

Resources


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

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Lori (00:00):
If you're like us, you've probably been told to match
students with texts at theirinstructional level and avoid
frustration level, but researchtells us to have students read
more complex texts, even inelementary grades.

Melissa (00:15):
In this episode we talk to three researchers Steve
Amendam, Kristen Conradi-Smithand John Strong about what makes
texts difficult and, mostimportantly, strategies for
scaffolding these complex textsand making them accessible for
all students in your classroom.

Lori (00:34):
Hi teacher friends.
I'm Lori and I'm Melissa.
We are two educators who wantthe best for all kids, and we
know you do too.

Melissa (00:44):
We worked together in Baltimore when the district
adopted a new literacycurriculum.

Lori (00:49):
We realized there was so much more to learn about how to
teach reading and writing.

Melissa (00:54):
Lori, and I can't wait to keep learning with you today.
Hi everybody, welcome to thepodcast.
John welcomed for the firsttime, and then Steve and Kristen
welcome back.
We're excited to have you back.

John Strong (01:09):
Thank you for having us.

Kristin Conradi-Smith (01:10):
Yeah, thank you, it's great to be back
.

Steve Amendum (01:12):
Yeah, thank you.

Lori (01:15):
Oh my gosh.
Well, we cannot wait to diginto complex text and
comprehension more with you alltoday.
I want to kick us off bysharing that you wrote an
article that kind of inspiredthis conversation.
It was titled SupportingElementary School Students
Reading of Difficult Texts.
You wrote this in 2018, but thebig ideas are still so
important today and one thingthat stood out to me.

(01:36):
I pulled a quote that said thesupport we provide can shift the
level of texts the students canhandle.
That is so powerful, like whenwe and you kind of had this
analogy of thinking aboutstudents' instructional level as
elastic rather than fixed,because it depends on the
support they receive.
So I think this kind of doesdebunk that idea right of our

(02:01):
teacher training.
I know I had this teachertraining of matching texts to a
student's instructional leveland avoiding those frustration
level texts, but with the rightsupport, we do know that
students can succeed with thesemore difficult texts.
Melissa, I think you might havea question about these
difficult texts, so I'm going toturn it over to you.

Melissa (02:19):
Yeah, so I wanted to start.
I think we're going to talkabout, like the students and the
texts a lot today.
So we're going to start bytalking about the texts
themselves and what makes textsso difficult.
But you know, we've heard thisphrase a lot and most people
probably have of leveled textslead to leveled lives and
there's been a lot ofconversation We've talked about
it on the podcast about leveledtexts.

(02:40):
So can we just start with thatidea of what's the difference
between a leveled text and acomplex text and why might we
want to lean more towards thesecomplex texts versus the leveled
texts?

John Strong (02:53):
Yeah, absolutely so .
First and foremost, I kind ofjust want to give a nod to other
researchers in this space whohave done this work before us
and who influenced us in thisarticle.
Other researchers in this spacewho have done this work before
us and who influenced us in thisarticle, I believe that leveled
text leading to leveled livesquote we know Dr Al Tatum has

(03:13):
used that quote and then thenotion of the instructional
level, sort of texts matchedwith students being more elastic
.
I think Kay Stahl had writtenabout that as well, right.
So there are lots of folks whoare doing work in this space and
I just kind of wanted to startwith the impetus for this
article about supportingstudents in reading complex

(03:37):
texts.
So we as teachers formerteachers ourselves were trained
to think carefully about how tomatch students with texts that
would be at their level, thatwouldn't be too frustrating for
them, right, but which wouldenable them to grow.
And then new sets of standardsreally kind of shifted the
conversation to complex text forall students.

(04:01):
English language arts teacher itwasn't uncommon to use sort of
quote unquote below grade leveltexts with students because
maybe their readingproficiencies weren't matched
with the grade levelexpectations, right, and so
we've had similar experiences,and I know Steve and Kristen
will talk about theirs as well.
But so what we really wanted todo was look into what supports

(04:26):
teachers could provide to helpstudents read those complex
texts.
And really before we got intothis article itself, steve and
Kristen, with Dr Freddie Hebert,conducted a literature review
investigating the relationshipbetween text difficulty and
reading achievement.
So basically, what would happento students' reading
achievement in terms of fluencyand comprehension, if you

(04:49):
increase the text difficultythat they're exposed to?
So I think it's important thatwe talk about that piece first
here, and maybe Steve andKristen could tell us a little
bit about that.

Steve Amendum (04:59):
Yeah.
So I'll give you a littlehistory behind that review piece
that we did.
Kristen and I were both workingat NC State at the time,
working together, and we were ina big audience in a talk being
given by Tim Shanahan, and itwas pretty soon after the Common
Core Standards had come outwith the guidance for working in

(05:22):
complex text, with the guidancefor working in complex text,
and Tim started talking in histalk, as he has across the years
since then, with his argumentabout why instructional level
matching was not an effectiveway to support students'
literacy development.
Chris and I were sitting nextto each other and we both looked
at each other and we were likeno way, like this cannot

(05:45):
possibly be true.
You know, we were both trainedin, like you said, laurie, in
the instructional level matchingkind of format, and so we
started at the time he wasciting some studies in his talk.
We start Googling these studiesas we're sitting there in the
audience and you know thatthrough those discussions, like

(06:08):
between Kristen and I, we got tothis point where, like, what
does the evidence actually sayabout working in complex text?
And so that sort of got usembarked on this piece that we
ended up writing with Freddieand really looked into.
You know what happened forstudents, especially in

(06:29):
elementary grades, butespecially in grades two through
five, and you know we can talka little bit about some of the
main findings that happenedthere.
But I think that one of thethings that I want to highlight
before I get into the findingsis that the articles that we
looked at were generallyarticles where students were put
into different levels of textto see what happened to the

(06:52):
fluency and comprehensionoutcomes.
But by and large these werestudies where the level of
support for students was notalso being adjusted to help them
be successful in more complextext.
So some of the things in thearticle that John was
referencing about reallysupporting students in complex
text, those weren't happening.

(07:14):
In our review we were justlooking at what happens to
students' fluency, what happensto their comprehension when they
get into more complex text, andwhat we found was probably not
unexpected for most people.
The more difficult, morechallenging, more complex the
text is, students' fluency tendsto decrease, and it's

(07:35):
especially so for less skilledand beginning readers.
And a similar relationship wasfound for comprehension, where
the more complex the text was,the less comprehension students
tended to show, especially forstudents who are less skilled
and beginning readers.

Kristin Conradi-Smith (07:55):
It speaks to our shock back in 2012, or
whenever we first heard.
Shanahan kind of did lead tothat article, which then led to
this reading teacher article,but I think it parallels the
shock many teachers have asthey're being confronted with
this shift as well.

John Strong (08:09):
Right.
So I mean to get back to youroriginal question as well about
you know why complex text andnot level text.
So once Steve and Kristen andFreddie had written this piece
and I remember Steve and Kristenhad come to me and said well,
we want to write something forthe reading teacher that
teachers could.
How could they use thisinformation?
Right?
And so we summarized thosefindings and thought, okay, well
, if we increase text difficulty, student achievement you know,

(08:32):
in terms of fluency andcomprehension might decline.
But what can teachers actuallydo about that?
Right?
So we turned to some additionalresearch, including
practitioner-focused articlesand recommendations, looking at
what really are the benefits ofcomplex text.
One of the things that we wroteabout and that was interesting
to us was that complex text canbe motivating.

(08:55):
So persevering through achallenging task with support to
be successful in that task canbe a motivating experience,
right?
And then, of course, there area host of other benefits of
reading complex texts.
We wrote this article, I wouldsay, a little bit before the
current emphasis onknowledge-building approaches to

(09:16):
comprehension.
I mean, it was happening, right, so we didn't get too much into
that.
But of course reading morechallenging texts can be useful
for building knowledge, forbuilding comprehension, for
building fluency withprogressively more difficult
texts, right.
So there's lots of benefits forusing complex texts.
But I think the fear is that ifwe just put complex texts in
front of students withoutproviding them with enough

(09:36):
support, what's going to happenis that they're not going to
have those successfulexperiences right.
We want to ensure that theyhave that.
So really, the way that we setup this piece was around three
main recommendations forteachers to consider.
So one is to consider the textdifficulty.
Look really closely at the textthat you're using.
What makes a text moredifficult than another text?

(09:58):
Number two, look really closelyat your reader's skills.
Right Assessments that you haveof student skills.
Remember Steve's point fromtheir piece that for beginning
readers and less skilled readers, the detriments might be more
pronounced.
So we want to be careful aboutthat and also think about, based
on our students' assessed needs, how can we then provide

(10:21):
supports to meet those needs?
How can we then providesupports right to meet those
needs?
Basically, to you know, bringall students up to reading
challenging, complex grade leveltext with appropriate supports.

Melissa (10:32):
John, I'm wondering, or anyone can address this, but
can you talk about thatmotivation again really quickly?
Because my first thought is ifyou give a student a book that's
too hard, right that it's attheir frustration level and that
will decrease their motivationto want to read it, like they'll
want to give up on it.
So can you just talk about?
You said that was research thatshowed that there was

(10:52):
motivation for these complextexts.
Can you talk about that?

John Strong (10:56):
Kristen, do you want to take this question?

Kristin Conradi-Smith (10:59):
So, first of all, I'm right now analyzing
all this data where weinterviewed second, third,
fourth, fifth graders aboutreading reading preferences.
So I'm kind of knee deep andspending time with kids talking
about reading.
Not one of them ever talkedabout text difficulty when they
talked about the books.
Right, they're talking wings offire, dogman, graphic novels,
whatever, but they're neversaying, oh, I look forward to

(11:22):
pulling out book on X level,like that's not part of it.
What draws kids to text are thetopics, the plot, those kinds
of things.
So on a side note, we just knowkids care about books based on
what's in them.
There was a dissertation studydone now, probably two decades
ago, juliet Halliday, where sheexplored sort of what happens

(11:44):
when you give kids texts thatare interesting to them, to sort
of see what have if they'redifficult.
But kids wanted to read themand she found that kind of that
interest trumped whattraditionally people would say
no, this book's too hard for youand that makes sense, right,
like if I really want to readabout snakes, even though
there's all this new vocabularyand I and I don't know much
about it, but I'm motivated toread it, I'm willing to persist

(12:05):
even as it gets difficult.
Now current research onmotivation is really
highlighting the role ofcompetence beliefs and that's
going to fall on the teacher toreally provide the support.
So when a student has it, theyhave the belief that they will
be able to be successful with it, and so that's part of
motivation.
I would say, have the beliefthat they will be able to be
successful with it, and sothat's part of motivation.

(12:26):
I would say that's really wherea lot of the research is out now
to kind of think about whatkind of language frames and
scaffolds can teachers provideso that students don't look at
it and go, oh, this is going tobe too challenging for me,
because we all know kids aren'tgoing to say you know, ms
Conradi, I can't read this bookbecause it's too hard for me.
They're going to say this isstupid, right, and so we have to
figure out how do we navigatethat?
Does that kind of answer it?

Melissa (12:47):
Totally, or they need to go to the nurse for something
right or the bathroom for 20minutes.

Lori (12:53):
I also think we didn't say this, but I just thought.
You know teachers listeningmight be wondering.
I kind of want to think aboutwhat leveled means right
Independent instructionalfrustration.
Are we talking about the?
When we say difficult text, arewe talking in the frustration
level?
Are we talking about acontinuum between instructional
and frustration?
I just kind of wanted to findthat for those listening.

Kristin Conradi-Smith (13:17):
I'm happy to kind of tackle it.
In the article we address thedifference between text
complexity and text difficulty,and so text complexity is based
on things, like you know,quantitative measures like a
Lexile measure or somequalitative measures that can
make a specific text justcomplex.
Maybe it uses an unusualregister or a lot of difficult

(13:38):
vocabulary or figurativelanguage or different things.
That can make a text complex.
Text difficulty, on the otherhand, that's when we think about
sort of the match between areader and a text.
So even a dogman book could bedifficult for a five-year-old
right, because that kid's notquite there yet.
And so we try to sort of parseapart text complexity versus

(14:01):
text difficulty.
Because even you know, I have aPhD in reading but there are
still texts that are going to bevery complex and will present
difficulty for me, and that'sthe same, of course, with our
children.
So we're not really getting atkind of the bets, instructional
frustration, independent levelkind of stuff.
But we were really trying toparse out the difficulty level

(14:24):
there.
I don't know if that is thatenough.

Lori (14:25):
No, that's really helpful.
Yeah, because I keep thinkingyou know, that is a question
that Melissa and I get a lotabout the different kinds of
levels, and to me, when we getthose questions, it's like, well
, there's also like it's notjust about, like, the text level
, it's about the reader too andwhat we're like.
You all said, like all thoseinvisible things, right, the
motivation and the, the abilityto persist if they're super

(14:48):
interested in the topic or maybethey have some knowledge on it
and they want to learn more.
So there's just so many otherfactors that go into it.
I like the idea of being ableto parse those out like complex
and and and difficult.

Kristin Conradi-Smith (15:01):
And I think it falls on the teacher
then to be the broker in thatexperience, right, because the
teacher is the one who knowstheir students.
They know which students mightsort of need extra support in
background knowledge building inorder to access that text.
They know which students forwhom even just fluency might be
difficult.
But the teacher is the one whoknows, you know, needs to know
the text well to be able to kindof size that up, but also knows

(15:23):
their students.

Steve Amendum (15:24):
You know, I think it's one of the challenges that
we face in the field is theterminology around text
complexity, and so, like tobuild on what Kristen just said,
we've suggested in our articlethat text complexity is about
the text right.
It's about those factors thatChristian was talking about,
right Conceptual difficulty,right Vocabulary, those sorts of

(15:48):
things.
Text difficulty is about a textrelation to a reader.
But the other thing that comesinto play here, I think, is at
some point over the last fewyears with the Common Core,
texts that are at grade levelhave become synonymous with
complex text, and so sometimesthe grade level text and complex

(16:11):
text are sort of interchanged,and so I think that's an
important distinction, toremember too right, that there
are texts that are at gradelevels for particular, you know,
students or whatever but thereare also texts that could be
well above the grade level thatstudents could be reading, and
so those are somewhat different,and I think it's important, you

(16:35):
know, I think it would bereally great, especially to help
teachers, if we could come tosome agreement around the
vocabulary and the labels forthese texts to make the
conversations easier to have.

Lori (16:48):
I love that and we're guilty of that too.
So thank you for that reset.
We're going to make sure we'redoing better on that spectrum or
labeling, I should say Allright.
So if we can kind of dig intothis idea of text complexity
because I know teachers are outthere thinking, ok, you know if
I'm hearing a lot about Lexilelevels, but I know that's not

(17:10):
the only thing to look at, whatelse do I need to consider?
So I'll hand it over to you allto tell us a little bit more
about what's likely to bedifficult, about texts for
students or a specific text.

Kristin Conradi-Smith (17:24):
I can start, but feel free, john or
Steve, to jump in.
So the Common Core did some ofthis work for us because they
outlined kind of what they werecalling the qualitative sort of
areas of difficulty and Iaddressed it a little bit
earlier.
But really sort of, is themeaning of the text, the purpose
of the text?
Is that pretty straightforward,or is that something that the
reader is going to kind of haveto figure out on their own?

(17:44):
Is that straightforward?
So that's one part of it thestructure of the text, the
language, conventionality andclarity and then, of course,
these knowledge demands.
What we know about teachers andresearch with teachers around
difficult texts is that teacherstend to zero in on vocabulary.
It's like if you ask a teacherto look at a text and go what's
hard here, they just go and theystart pointing to like 11

(18:07):
different vocabulary words.
But there really is a lot moreat play.
How like?
And I look back at when I wasteaching second or fourth grade
and I wasn't particularly goodat kind of sizing up the text
and seeing like, oh, there areno sort of sub headers here that
are going to guide the reader,or this text employs a lot of
flashbacks that might confuse areader, or a lot of different

(18:28):
characters, so there's so manydifferent things that could lead
to some difficulty for astudent.
So I don't know, john or Steve,if you want to add any more.

John Strong (18:38):
Yeah, I think you've summed it up pretty well,
kristen.
Yeah, I think you've summed itup pretty well, kristen.
Right, in the Common Corepoints to that and in the piece

(19:04):
we kind of included some mapsthat teachers could use or, you
know, to kind of plan andsupporting students' readings of
challenging text through makingthe text structure clear, right
and more explicit for them.
So that's a piece where I thinkit's useful for teachers when
using a text that might bedifficult for their students to
think about.
Well, how are the ideas in thispiece structurally related to
one another and how can I makethat clear to students and that
can help drive comprehension aswell.

Melissa (19:26):
All right.
So I think we should start totalk about the hard question of
what teachers can do whenthey're in this situation, where
and this happens all the timeright, when you have a fourth
grade grade level text right,steve, I'm going to use your
terms there to the grade leveltext, which might be complex for
that grade level and that's whyit was chosen for whoever chose

(19:49):
it, the curriculum or theschool or the teacher chose that
book for the fifth grade andthen fourth grade, and then you
have all your students atdifferent places, right?
So you have some students thatmight not even be that difficult
of a text.
Others it might be like, right,where they need to be, and for
others it might be reallydifficult.
And I really want to talk aboutthat's the hardest part is,

(20:12):
when it's a really difficulttext for students.
How do we help them?
What do we do?
You mentioned scaffolds a fewtimes.
How do we scaffold and supportstudents to read that difficult
text?
Instead of saying they can'tread that, let me give them a
different text that they canread.
What can we actually do?
And I'm going to just throw inanother thing what are things
that might not actually be thathelpful that teachers think are
like I'm just trying to get themto get through this book, but

(20:35):
it might not be the most helpful.

John Strong (20:37):
Yeah, I think we're going to share three main
recommendations and I'll startwith the first one and I'll get
to the second part of yourquestion first.
So when we look atobservational research in
classrooms, both with print textand digital text, what we see
is that one of the main waysthat teachers will try to
support their students readingof grade level complex text is

(21:00):
they'll either read aloud thetext for students or, if it's a
digital text, they'll employkind of read aloud functions,
right, well, the text can readthat for them.
And I don't want anyone tomisunderstand.
I'm not trying to say that readalouds, interactive read alouds
, in the way that weconceptualize them, aren't
important.
They certainly are for buildinglistening, comprehension and

(21:20):
background knowledge ofvocabulary and language
knowledge and all sorts ofthings, right.
But if we are consistentlyreading aloud text to students
instead of giving them theopportunities to read the text
with support, then we're perhapsnot building their reading
comprehension skills right tothe extent that we are hoping to

(21:42):
do so.
So, building on that idea ofinteractive read-alouds and
other texts, our firstrecommendation is really to
think about how texts arepresented in sets of related
texts, right, so that perhapsteachers and students work their
way up to challenging gradelevel text by reading easier

(22:06):
texts on the same topic and thenworking their way up to more
difficult texts, or evenbeginning with an interactive
read aloud of a text on the sametopic, where they can be
exposed to some of thevocabulary and knowledge that
they will then see in the text.
And so lots of folks have donework in this area.
I'll say as well.
You know, gina Cervetti's workon conceptually coherent text

(22:28):
sets, as well as the work onquad text sets that Bill Lewis
and Sharon Walpole and MikeMcKenna had started, really
point to the benefits ofapproaching text from a sets of
related text approach.
Instead of thinking about well,I have this one difficult text
in isolation, what am I going todo about this?

(22:49):
Well, let's think about that inrelation to the other texts
that students experience.

Steve Amendum (22:54):
So I can jump in with a second idea here and
related to your question,melissa, about sort of you have
this wide range of studentabilities in your classroom.
I think another thing that canbe really helpful for teachers
is to have profiles of theirstudents that are based on the

(23:15):
assessment data that they have,to really help them think about
what types of scaffolds andsupports are going to be most
helpful to different groups ofstudents in their classrooms.
And so I think being able tohave a really high quality set
of assessments that can helpidentify students in your

(23:35):
classroom who may havedifficulties with word
recognition and fluency still,or maybe some comprehension
difficulties with morechallenging and difficult text,
and students who might bemultilingual learners and so
they may not have the Englishbackground they may have it in
their home language, and sothinking about how to really

(23:58):
support students that fit thatprofile would be another
important thing that teacherscould focus on.
That really helps identify whichscaffolds might work best for
which groups of students, and Isay that, but I also say it with
a caution, that that only worksas well as the sort of like the

(24:19):
quality of the set ofassessments that you have.
So if you don't have a set ofassessments as a teacher that
can really help you pinpoint,like what the particular
strengths are of readers andwhat their particular needs are,
so that you can really addressscaffolds to those particular
needs, I think it could bereally challenging.

(24:40):
I know in a lot of the workthat we've done here in Delaware
and in working with ourDepartment of Education, one of
the frustrations that we oftenrun into is where people may
have a screener that they usewith all the students in their
classroom and anyone who showsup as below benchmark is sort of

(25:00):
getting the same scaffolds tosupport them right.

(25:31):
So these are my kids who are,quote unquote, struggling to use
with different profiles ofreaders in my classroom.

Kristin Conradi-Smith (25:38):
And then I just want to add on and I
don't think we've said it yet,so I want to make sure we sort
of really hit it home None ofthis sort of should happen in
the absence of also really goodcode-based instruction, right
Like we're assuming for our kidsin fourth grade who are really
struggling still we're assumingthat sort of as part of this

(25:58):
conversation they're gettingreally good phonics, fluency
support and instruction.
So I just wanted to make sure Isaid that.
But a third kind ofrecommendation that we'd make is
we want to think about so ifwe're really talking about,
instead of differentiating theinstructional level, instead
differentiating the support,like Steve said, we need to know
our readers and then we have tobe kind of mindful of thinking

(26:22):
about how do we differentiatethat support, when and where and
how can I make sure all of mystudents will be successful with
whatever text?
Whether it is a luxury of doinga novel in your fourth grade
classroom or whether you'redoing sort of a you know core
reading program, there are goingto be students that need
support, and some of thesupports are already embedded.
If you do have a core readingprogram but you're still going

(26:43):
to have to be the one to kind ofnavigate and decide how to kind
of support your students.
We've been influenced a lot byWalpole and McKenna and their
bookworms model ofdifferentiating at the skill
level rather than kind ofinstructional level.
And so as you look at yourschool data and you look at your
students and go, hey, I havesome students who still are
going to need some maybe smallgroup time or extended learning

(27:06):
time where we're working oncode-based things.
But maybe I have some otherstudents who we're about to
tackle a text that's set in thefuture and has robots, and I
have some students who I don'tthink quite have the knowledge
that would be helpful for themto sort of understand that text.
Maybe on Thursday and Fridaythis week I'm going to pull that
group of students to the sideand I'm going to have them read

(27:28):
with me an easier text aboutrobots so that they have some
exposure to it beforehand.
So some of this comes down toteachers being aware of what
scaffolds are available and thenknowing when and how and in
what context they can providethem.
And of course we still love thebefore, during, after kind of
format.
But there are certainly thingsyou can do before you read a

(27:49):
text to sort of make surestudents will be successful
Vocabulary, background knowledge, text structure and, I really
think, setting a purpose forreading, because it's not just
about, hey, we're going to startreading now, right, like well,
let's set that purpose.
And then, during reading,there's a lot of research to
show the benefits of partneringstudents up I know you had Jake
Downs on and so partneringstudents up where one of the

(28:10):
readers might be a little bitmore skilled than the other and
that'll support them as theyread more complex texts.
And then we can't sort of sleepon the importance of discussion
and writing and thinking aboutthe text afterwards.

Melissa (28:22):
On the importance of discussion and writing and
thinking about the textafterwards.
Kristen, I'm just wonderingabout one thing you mentioned
because I was guilty of this formany years where I would, you
know, I would give an assessmentthat was based on my standards
and then I would get it back andI would say, okay, well, this
student got this question wrongabout theme.
So then we would do a littlesmall group about theme and that
is not what you're saying.
No, no, I didn't.

(28:44):
I know I didn't do what Ineeded to do then, but can you
talk about how that's differentfrom what you're saying about
these like skills?

Kristin Conradi-Smith (28:52):
Yeah, I mean it really is, and I find I
think Our constrained skillsdata, our data about sort of
everything from letter awareness, letter sounds through fluency
are very reliable, and it's easyfor me to look at that data and
then go I need to support mykids and these things.
Our data about the top of therope, the unconstrained skills,

(29:15):
are not going to be as helpfulfor us, and it's certainly not
very beneficial to lump kids ingroups like they got six out of
10 on inferring, and so I needto infer more with them.
We know that kids don't transferand apply it in the same way,
and so I would say, if you havestudents who have shown
proficiency and fluency butsometimes look up at you after

(29:37):
they've read and they go I haveno idea what I just read, then
we might want to do more thingslike chunking up the text, like
the scaffolds that I encourageteachers to do, or things like
paragraph shrinking or gettingthe gist.
They have to be I don't want tosay trained in, but they have
to learn the practices that weall, as proficient readers, do
anyway, and so I would move morein the practices of

(29:58):
comprehension and of thinkingwhile reading, and less of let
me parse this up into subskillswhich I did so 20 years ago.
If you went into my classroomthat was me, does that answer it
?
Absolutely yes.

Steve Amendum (30:11):
I just want to add on to what Kristen said when
she referenced the tap of therope, which I thought was a
great comment, and becauseactually I had the same thing
running through my head when shementioned that.
And I think so many teachers nowhave been trained in the
science of reading and havegotten exposure to the reading
rope, if they haven't beenalready.

(30:32):
But I think one of the thingsthat we don't often discuss
about the rope is what thosefive components in language
comprehension are all important,but what's really important is
how they weave together overtime for students to become
increasingly strategic, as itsays on the label on the rope,

(30:55):
and I think that's the key part.
So in your example, melissa andI did the same thing when I was
teaching Right, we hadstandards.
We wanted to make sure that weaddress those standards based on
the assessments, but what oftenhappens is the important part
is how those standards areactually integrated and woven
together for students to becomeskilled readers.

(31:17):
And so to Kristen's part.
I think that's the reallyimportant part that we see in
the top half of that rope isthat sort of development over
time, as students can integratethese in different texts for
different purposes.
Right, and that's the thingthat really matters.

John Strong (31:33):
I just want to add one more piece here, just
because Kristen made the pointabout.
You know, kind of all the wayfrom letters to fluency, right.
So just to make this kind ofreally practical and actionable
for teachers, right, thinkingabout code-based assessments you
know, beginning, middle and endof your benchmarks or any
progress monitoring in between,that's done around students'

(31:53):
word recognition and decodingskills, their oral reading,
fluency look and see wherestudents are performing in
relation to grade levelbenchmarks in time of year,
right, and that's a goodstarting point for thinking
about.
Well, these students might needmore fluency support, but they
don't need more word recognitionsupport.
Based on the data that I have,right, these students are
performing at or above benchmarkand fluency, so maybe they

(32:16):
don't need as much fluencysupport with this text, so that
we're all approaching the samedifficult text but some students
might need more word levelsupport.
Some students might need morefluency support.
Some students might just needthose comprehensive supports and
then there might be mixing andmatching across those, right.
So I think that's kind of howI'm thinking about
differentiating theinstructional supports from

(32:37):
supporting the code-based skillsthat they need.
Right To attack the text, andI'm going to probably assume
that if I'm using a difficulttext, that I'm going to provide
comprehension supports for allstudents but again, maybe
different supports for fordifferent students based on what
they're bringing to the textreading experience.

Lori (32:53):
Yeah, john, actually that was.
I was thinking about the samething and one thing that ran
through my mind I'm so glad thatwe're talking about this too,
because I think it's like thetrickiest of all of them, the
most nebulous, right, likedifferentiate supports.
Okay, well, I'm a third yearteacher.
What does that actually mean?
Like, how do I get my kidsheads?
So I love these practicalexamples and ideas.
One thing I was thinking wassomething like very practical,

(33:16):
like an anticipation guide.
Very practical, like ananticipation guide.
Right, I could give that to allof my students, but then I
could pull the ones who reallyjust have no idea about this
particular set of knowledge orvocabulary or information.
Kristen, you gave that robotexample, like thinking about
going to the future.
If they have no concept of whatyou know time travel might be,
or robots or any kind ofinformation about any of those

(33:39):
topics, they're going to be lostreading that particular text.
And once we can scaffold andgive them I think we're now
going back to the firstrecommendation maybe some
scaffolded text sets thatinclude some knowledge and
vocabulary to help them, butlike build up to what we're
asking them to do, and then II'm just kind of putting it all

(34:00):
together right Based on againthey're they're a little profile
based on what we've learnedabout them.
Then we can kind of like buildit all together.
It's not neat, it's not clean,it's kind of messy, and I think
that's what's tricky about thewhole thing is it's not like a
check.
Now they know about robots sothey can go ahead and read this
text effectively, you know.
So I just wanted to throw thatout there.

(34:21):
Like I appreciate the depth ofthis conversation going very
practically, and I don't know ifthere's anything you want to
add to that.

Kristin Conradi-Smith (34:28):
Can I, can I add to that?
I think I mean, the beauty ofthis, right, is, now we're
getting to encourage teachers topick texts that they want to
read, texts that relate to othertexts that are on topics that
they want to sort of read about.
And it's not just what I did,where it's like, oh, we need a
level R or whatever sort of Iwas going for.
And all of this just makessense.
For just an anecdote, myhusband's really into science

(34:50):
fiction and before sometimes helike convinces me to watch a
science fiction movie with him,and I know I'm going to be lost,
I don't even want to read it.
But what do I do?
As like movie with him?
And I know I'm going to be lost, I don't even want to read it.
But what do I do?
As, like, I go to IMDB and readthe plot first.
Right, I do that so that I'mnot lost while we're watching
the movie.
And this is these are the kindsof that's a little scaffold I've
sort of developed in myself tomake sure I won't sort of be

(35:13):
unsuccessful watching the movie.
And that's what we're talkingabout with some of our students.
Right, that's a tiny littlescaffold to go.
Hey, we're going to read thisthing.
This was set in World War II.
Some of you you have varyingknowledge of that and I'm going
to decide whether it's a wholeclass read aloud or whether I
pull a group of students here orwhether I tell all of you just
in a few minutes what you needto know, so that you're not lost

(35:35):
already in page one or page twoand again kind of shut down.
And so we're trying to thinkthrough how can we support
readers through that.

John Strong (35:43):
I just want to respond to that and build a
little bit on what you said,laurie, about the anticipation
guide as well.
Right, because when we'rethinking about knowledge and
supporting that before, duringand after reading a text, I
think an important distinctionto make as well.
Where do I need to buildspecific distinction to make as
well?
Where do I need to buildspecific, perhaps content
knowledge that the text expectsreaders are bringing?

(36:04):
Where is the text itself goingto build knowledge and where can
I activate prior knowledge thatstudents already have?
So I make that distinctionbetween the building versus
activation of knowledge, and Ithink we're perhaps doing a
disservice to our kids if we'realways assuming, well, I need to
build knowledge here becausethey're not going to know this.
Well, different students arebringing different you know
experiences and knowledge andtopics that they're interested
in into the classroom and youknow teachers will know this

(36:26):
right by the students reallyinterested in this one
particular topic and knowseverything about it and maybe
the others don't.
But so I think that's animportant way of scaffolding and
differentiating.
Right is, where can I, you know, activate some prior knowledge
and build on that?
Versus you know, buildknowledge about a topic that
some students might not have?

Lori (36:45):
Okay, so this is a little follow up question to the one
Melissa asked a while back, butI'm I'm thinking about our
teachers in K2.
And you know students are stilllearning to decode and I know
we had our caveat right thatwe're thinking about this idea
in context of students havingthis really good structured

(37:07):
instruction.
But if we could kind of justlike maybe backtrack to our K-2
students, does this look anydifferent in those grades?
And I'm specifically thinkingabout maybe decodable texts?
Is there like?
To me there's a differentpurpose for those.
So I just want to make surethat we briefly chat about that.

Steve Amendum (37:28):
Yes, I think that's a hugely important topic,
especially when we're talkingabout text complexity and using
complex text, because I mean TimShanahan and his argument, and
he has a new book coming outaround this but one of the
things that he talks about isthat we have to exempt K-1 from

(37:50):
the sort of discussions aroundtext complexity that are
appropriate for grades 2 through12.
And because of exactly what yousaid, laurie, right, we have
students who are still learningthe basics, the foundational
skills around reading, and so Ido think that we have to think
about K-1, I'm going to limit itfrom K-2 to K-1, slightly

(38:14):
differently.
And, um, and I guess I wouldsort of boil it down to saying
that we don't want students'initial experiences with
learning how to read to be insomething that is complex and
really difficult and reallychallenging.
We want them to be able topractice the foundational skills

(38:37):
that they're learning in a waythat's sort of helpful and sort
of for lack of a better way tosay at a really great level.
And so, like your example fordecodable text, I think is a
great one.
One of the things that we'rehearing in some of the research
is that decodable texts areoften being used for too long of
a period of time and thatthey're really appropriate for

(39:01):
that point in time when studentsare really learning about the
alphabetic, and that they'rereally appropriate for that
point in time when students arereally learning about the
alphabetic principle.
They're really learning aboutblending and segmenting and, you
know, decoding, and sopracticing those skills with
appropriate decodable texts thatare matched is the ideal time
for those things to happen, butnot beyond that right.
Then we want to start to movestudents into some, you know,

(39:25):
types of easy readers, thingsthat may have controlled
vocabulary, where they can alsopractice some of the other
beginning reading skills as well, and so I think decodable texts
are really important, butthey're important for a
particular period of time and aparticular purpose, as students
are learning to read in thoseearly grades.

Melissa (39:47):
And I would imagine, bringing back to the read alouds
that John brought up earlier,that that's the place where our
K-1 students are hearing thesecomplex texts is through the
teacher read alouds.

Steve Amendum (40:13):
Absolutely.
Just.
Like John said, that is theideal time for the read-alouds
that are clearly above sort ofthe K and 1 level, where
teachers are reading those,they're introducing new
vocabulary, different languagestructures, right, they're
modeling strategies forcomprehending, engaging students
in lots of discussion, orallanguage development.
All of those things can happenin really effective, interactive
read-alouds in the early grades.

Melissa (40:27):
Right, so this article came out about eight years ago.
If you all can believe.
It's been that long, but youtold us you've continued to do
research on this topic, so we'rejust so curious about what
you've learned since you wrotethis article.
So, please, we'd love to hearwhoever wants to start sharing
what you've learned since.

John Strong (40:45):
Yeah, I'll start with some of the work that I've
done since then.
Right Eight years ago when thisarticle came out, I was a
doctoral student at Universityof Delaware working with Steve,
and now I'm about to be anassociate professor at
University of Buffalo.
So it's been about that long,and in the time since, I've been
working mostly in the upperelementary grades, but now into

(41:07):
the middle grades and highschool as well, with an
intervention called Read StopWrite that I initially designed
to focus on supporting students'informational text reading
through text structure andlearning how to identify and use
text structures, both whenreading informational text and
use text structures both whenreading informational text and
then when writing their owninformational text in response

(41:28):
to the informational text thatthey were reading.
And what I was really trying tocounter was something that I
had mentioned earlier, which wasseeing a lot of teachers using
informational text passages andreading them aloud to students
and then giving them kind ofcomprehension questions
afterwards.

(41:48):
But instead, how could I buildout some supports, focused
initially on text structure, forstudents to comprehend and
write about those texts?
And so that was actually mydoctoral dissertation.
I developed and I tested aversion of Read Stop write in
fourth and fifth grades and Ifound, you know, positive impact
of this type of instruction onstudents' comprehension and

(42:08):
writing skills.
But with those experiences withteachers and talking to them in
that study, teachers were stillconcerned with like Kristen had
mentioned earlier, thevocabulary that was in the text
right and the words beendeveloping a new version of Read
Stop Write with my colleaguesLaura Tortorelli and Blythe

(42:46):
Anderson, which builds outmultisyllabic decoding
vocabulary and fluency supportsinto the Read Stop Write
instructional model and we justwrote about that in the Journal
of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, so there's an open access
article on that program.
But really my work in this spacenow in grades four through nine

(43:10):
is to again provide allstudents with opportunities to
read complex grade levelinformational texts about
science and social studiestopics and then differentiating
the instructional supports thatteachers use and that students
benefit from to read that textwith some multi-sloppy decoding
strategies that are immediatelyconnected to vocabulary right,

(43:32):
because it supports a morerobust word learning right, not
just decoding the word but alsoattaching it to a known word
memory or discerning the meaningof the text from the context,
as well as including fluencysupports through repeated
reading in this lesson structurethat we've developed and still
really focusing on textstructure and comprehension

(43:56):
strategies like getting the gist, like paragraph shrinking where
students pause reading withpartners, pause, identify main
ideas and important details inthe text and then summarize
those, think about how they'restructurally related, organize
those in a graphic organizer tosupport text structure and then
plan and write their owninformative writing to support

(44:19):
their comprehension and buildtheir writing of the text.
So that's really the work thatI've been doing is thinking
about how we can implement thistype of instruction from upper
elementary through high schoolgrades and it's really aligned
also with the one of the mostrecent IES practice guides on
which Sharon Vaughn was firstauthor, providing interventions
for students in grades fourthrough nine right.

(44:41):
So in that practice guide youknow from her research and lots
of other folks' researchsupporting students in what they
call now stretch texts so tothrow out another term for you
there right Texts that are goingto be challenging for students
and especially building theirmultisyllabic decoding skills,
their comprehension skills andtheir fluency in order to

(45:05):
comprehend those texts.
So that's really the work thatI've been doing for a number of
years and that I hope folks areinterested in checking out.

Steve Amendum (45:13):
Yeah, and I'll jump in and say I was on John's
doctoral committee and it isgreat work, so I do hope people
are interested in checking itout.
And then I would say you know,the most recent work that I've
been engaged in is actually withKristen, and we have a chapter
that's coming out in thehandbook on the science of

(45:34):
literacy in grades three througheight, and our chapter is on
text complexity.
And so you know, I would justhighlight, you know, we sort of
talk about some of the thingsthat we've already talked about
today, sort of being able tooperationalize and sort of
define text complexity, textdifficulty, so on.
We also do a review of sort ofwhat is known about text

(45:58):
complexity, especially focusingon the year since we wrote our
original review on textcomplexity.
And then we also, I think youknow, talk quite a bit in the
second half of the chapter aboutwhat kinds of things can we do
in the field, so, especially forteachers, what kind of things
can happen.
And you know, I just highlighta couple of things that we talk

(46:20):
about in there.
One of the things that we talkabout is helping teachers to
build a deep knowledge of textcomplexity, so helping
understand the different sort ofvariables that go into text
complexity, what makes aparticular text complex?
Not only things like vocabulary, as John mentioned several

(46:40):
times and Kristen mentioned, butalso things like sentence
structure, organization, youknow, language, conventions,
knowledge demands, all thosesorts of things that play into
complexity and difficulty.
The other things that we talkabout, as Kristen mentioned,
were, you know, making sure toaddress foundational skills that

(47:01):
students may need.
So if students are strugglingwith word reading or fluency, we
have to make sure that we'reproviding supports for that,
addressing things likemorphology and morphological
knowledge to really supportstudents' abilities to be
successful with difficult andcomplex text.

(47:21):
We also talk about differenttypes of supports that teachers
can incorporate.
So we talk about supports forfluency, things like partner
reading, as we've mentioned,also repeated reading, and you
know, as Kristen mentioned,we've taken a lot of the work
that we've done from the workthat Sharon Walpole and Mike

(47:43):
McKenna did on bookworms, andthey even incorporate repeated
reading into their sharedreading block so that students
are reading new text each day,but they're reading it once as a
group and then a second timewith a partner, so they're
building in both the partnerreading and repeated reading.
And then we also know aboutstructured programs like Stahl

(48:06):
and Kuhn had with 4E,fluency-oriented reading
instruction, as well as there'sa variation of that called wide
4E where students are readingmultiple texts within the week.
We also talk a little bit aboutmulti-component supports, so
being able to integrate andcombine some of these different

(48:27):
scaffolds and supports, somaking sure we have like
vocabulary supports as well astext structure analysis.
You know that plays intosomething like the shared
reading block in bookworms, likewe've mentioned, but also in
John's work around read, stop,write is also a type of
multi-component interventionthat really builds the

(48:50):
integration of those scaffoldsand those skills in for students
.
And we also reference John'snew term there, the stretch text
that Vaughn and colleagues talkabout as well.

Lori (49:02):
Oh my gosh, so much good stuff, kristen, I'll let you add
, but I do want to jump in andsay it's all in the show notes.
We're going to link the book toone so we'll get all that
information, but it's all.
It's all in there.
The intervention is linked, soif you're like I want to see
what this is, go to the shownotes, click on it.

Kristin Conradi-Smith (49:19):
The only thing I was going to add to that
is that most of my energy hasbeen on sort of translating
research for teachers since 2018.
But I do do research in readingmotivation and I'm currently
doing a big review and I alludedto it earlier.
But this notion of confidence,beliefs and how we can not

(49:43):
convince, but how we can sort ofprovide the support and create
the conditions where studentsthen think they can be
successful.
I'm really excited to sort ofsee what research is out there
and try to kind of synthesize itfor the field, because there
really are certain languageframes teachers can do and
certain supports to ensure thatstudents will be successful.
So I also have an article outin the issue that John mentioned

(50:07):
, the JAL article aboutmotivation as it relates to
adolescence and specifically asadolescents encounter texts that
are difficult.
So I'll make sure to share thatas well.

John Strong (50:16):
I just wanted to say one more piece, since the
book was mentioned on thescience of literacy in grades
three through eight.
Sharon Walpole and I wrote achapter on professional learning
for that book as well, and soyou know, when Steve and Kristen
are talking about all thesesorts of professional learning
right, that we hope to build inour teachers to consider also

(50:41):
the ways in which we approachprofessional learning for
teachers to be effective forthem right.
So it's not just kind of likethe sit and deliver or perhaps
some other approaches that we'reseeing for professional
learning.
So we really actually dug intothe science of professional
learning for that chapter, andso I won't say too much about it
here.
But if you're already checkingout the book, I think that

(51:02):
chapter would be of interest aswell.

Lori (51:06):
Cool, that's awesome.
We'll link it all.
You all are just so busy.
I don't know how you even hadtime to podcast with us today.
Thank you, this is awesome.
I feel so much more informedabout all of this and I'm just
so grateful that you all tookthe time to talk with us.
Like eight years after you know, it's like become knocking on
your door.

(51:26):
Hey, we really want to talkabout this topic, so, thank you.

John Strong (51:31):
Thank you so much for having us.

Kristin Conradi-Smith (51:33):
Absolute delight, as always.

Steve Amendum (51:35):
Yep, as always, a lot of fun.
Thanks for having us.

Melissa (51:38):
Thank you of fun.
Thanks for having us.
Thank you To stay connectedwith us.
Sign up for our email list atliteracypodcastcom, Join our
Facebook group and follow us onInstagram and Twitter.

Lori (51:53):
If this episode resonated with you, take a moment to share
with a teacher friend or leaveus a five-star rating and review
on Apple Podcasts.

Melissa (52:08):
Just a quick reminder that the views and opinions
expressed by the hosts andguests of the Melissa and Lori
Love Literacy Podcast are notnecessarily the opinions of
Great Minds PBC or its employees.

Lori (52:14):
We appreciate you so much and we're so glad you're here to
learn with us.
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