November 13, 2024 • 37 mins
In this episode, Susan Lambert chats with ReadWorks Chief Academic Officer Susanne Nobles, Ph.D., to explore her organization’s mission of making high-quality texts free and accessible to all. Together, they discuss ReadWorks’ Article-A-Day program, which offers articles to build students’ knowledge and vocabulary while supporting teachers with resources that promote topical coherence. Susanne shares insights into why text quality matters, including that kids know when text isn’t worth their time and attention. She also details how ReadWorks ensures the quality of their materials, describes the Spanish-English texts they’ve introduced to support multilingual/English learners, and offers advice for listeners thinking about text quality and cohesion.
Show notes:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/susannenobles/.
- ReadWorks Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/readworks/?hl=en
Quotes:
“I have a fear that too much decoding practice can become ‘Why am I reading?’ We lose the ultimate point of why all of us read, which is to learn and to gain meaning.” —Susanne Nobles
“Kids know when a text is worth their time.” —Susanne Nobles
“We want to put a great book in a kid's hands and have them get excited about reading and therefore get good at reading. And it really goes the other way. And so it's once you build that ability to read, then that excitement comes with reading.” —Susanne Nobles
Episode timestamps
02:00 Introduction: Who is Susanne Nobles?
04:00 Overview of ReadWorks
10:00 Article-A-Day Program
12:00 Importance of Topical Coherence
13:00 Why knowledge is important to reading
16:00 Introduction to Decodables
19:00 Text Quality and Evaluation
24:00 Supporting Multilingual Learners
29:00 Audio and Accessibility
33:00 Final Thoughts and Conclusion
*Timestamps are approximate, rounded to nearest minute
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Susanne Nobles (00:00):
The researchers whose shoulders we stand upon
have really dug into what doesit take to build knowledge. And
what we've learned is that it'sthe knowledge schema that we
create.
Susan Lambert (00:16):
This is Susan Lambert, and welcome to Science
of Reading (00:18):
The Podcast from Amplify. We're onto episode six
in our readingreboot—reexamining and building
on foundational literacyconcepts. Last time, we talked
about neurons, neural networks,and the brain science behind
learning to read. Today, we'refocusing on supporting texts,
(00:40):
and why it's critical to bestrategic about text selection.
My guest is Dr. Susanne Nobles,chief academic officer at
ReadWorks. On this episode, shetells us about ReadWorks and
its Article-A-Day program. Theconversation also features
information and advice foreducators regarding quality
text and topical cohesion.
(01:02):
We'll also talk about textselection and supporting
multilingual learners. So now,let me bring Dr. Susanne Nobles
onto the show. Well, Susanne,thank you so much for joining
us on today's episode. I'm soexcited to have you here!
Susanne Nobles (01:19):
Yeah, thanks so much, Susan. I'm really excited
to be here as well! I'velistened to the podcast for a
long time. Excited to be partof it.
Susan Lambert (01:26):
That's amazing.
You know that what we always dois have our guests introduce
themselves to our listeners. SoI would love if you could
introduce yourself. Maybe talka little bit about your
background, and how you landedat ReadWorks.
Susanne Nobles (01:40):
Sure, happy to.
Susanne Nobles, I'm the chiefacademic officer here at
ReadWorks. My background isthat I've been in education my
whole career. I was, for over20 years, a classroom teacher,
school administrator, Englishteacher. Mostly in Virginia.
(02:01):
And when my family moved, I wasalso in what I affectionately
call my latent-life PhD work.
We moved. I had to leave theschool where I was teaching.
Finished up my PhD. And movedinto education, nonprofit work,
focused on helping ed techdevelopers really imbue
research across their productdevelopment cycle. Got to know
(02:23):
ReadWorks actually throughthat, tangentially. Wanted to
get back into the ELA space,and landed here at ReadWorks,
doing the research, productdevelopment work, pedagogy work
for five years now here.
Susan Lambert (02:36):
That's so amazing to hear that story,
because I know lots of ourlisteners probably know
something about ReadWorks. Manyof them probably use the texts
that you offer. But for them toknow that nope , it's really
somebody that's passionateabout research. And passionate
about literature, that hasactually come to lead. What's
happening there at ReadWorks?
(02:58):
Can you tell us a little bitabout ReadWorks? Who you are,
what you do, what resources youprovide?
Susanne Nobles (03:05):
Yeah, yes.
ReadWorks is a nonprofit, and Ilike to start there, 'cause
we're ed tech . But we reallyare a nonprofit first and
foremost. And so, our missionis to help teachers. And I
start there as well. We are notdirect to student. We always go
with and in partnership withthe teacher. And our focus is
(03:27):
building students' backgroundknowledge and vocabulary in
support of readingcomprehension. So, as a
nonprofit , we are a hundredpercent free. Yes, really.
There's no paywall.
Susan Lambert (03:37):
Amazing, amazing.
Susanne Nobles (03:39):
And we are intentionally supplemental. We
provide, as you referencedalready, Susan, over 6,000
texts in our library, on adiverse range of subjects, to
be used in any classroom, fromK to adult learners, science,
history, ELA, in any way tobuild into that curriculum that
(04:00):
already exists, what resourcesare already there to enrich the
knowledge and vocabularyreading that students can do.
So that's who we are.
Susan Lambert (04:09):
That's amazing.
Besides those texts that youprovide, you do a few other
things. Don't you?
Susanne Nobles (04:17):
Yes, yes .
Thank you for the prompt. We dothese 6,000 texts. We then hand
curate them into differentkinds of text sets. While
teachers can come on and dothat great search for the
perfect text, that takes time.
We want to be able to providethem really easily crafted
(04:38):
sets, that they can eithercombine with novel studies,
they can bring into a year-longScope & Sequence around the
Next Generation ScienceStandards. We have alignments
as well with knowledge-buildingcurricula. Bringing together
our texts, that are nonfictionand fiction, and blending them
in a way that supports thecontent already happening in a
(05:02):
class. Because that's how youlearn best, is through that
bigger schema of conceptuallyrelated learning.
Susan Lambert (05:09):
And we're gonna talk a little bit about that
idea of topical cohesion, whyknowledge and vocabulary are so
important. We'll sort of putthat on the side and not go
there yet. But, I'd love foryou to talk just a little bit
about your impact, becausesince you've been there at
ReadWorks, you've really beentrying to study the impact that
(05:29):
your texts and your approachsort of have. Can you talk
about that recent study thatyou did?
Susanne Nobles (05:35):
Sure. Yeah. I'm excited to . We do, to
your point, Susan, we havespent many years building up
our research . We've alwaysbeen built on research,
existing research. So, buildingup the study to make sure that
what we built does what we hopeit does. And that's really
important. Implementation isthe key. Nothing does it by
(05:56):
itself. It's how thatimplementation happens. Our
latest study was a clustered,randomized control study.
Susan Lambert (06:04):
Ooh , fancy words.
Susanne Nobles (06:05):
Yes, fancy words. A clustered, randomized
trial study. A CRT instead ofan RCT. And it was this past
school year, on ourknowledge-building routine
called Article-A-Day. This isone of those hand-curated text
set routines. Quick overview ofthat. It is what it sounds
like. We have weekly text setswhere students can read an
(06:28):
article a day. There's awriting component, there's a
speaking component, bringingtogether reading, writing, and
speaking. This past schoolyear, we worked with fourth
grade teachers around thenation, actually California,
New York, Colorado. And theyimplemented Article-A-Day for
nine weeks and focused onscience knowledge. So that was
(06:50):
this focus area. And then wetested students on their growth
in science knowledge andvocabulary. Our finding, which
was very exciting, validatingof Article-A-Day, is that
students in our experimentalgroup improved by approximately
11% on their science backgroundknowledge from pre to post.
That is three more questionscorrectly out of 28. What is
(07:14):
really powerful about that isthat in contrast, students in
the control group showed nonoticeable improvement. So,
this was from zero to thatimprovement. It really shows
the positive impact ofArticle-A-Day on students'
knowledge building, which wasthe goal of us building this
routine. A different findingthough, that we're very excited
(07:35):
about as well, is that allstudents, regardless of group,
showed increased engagement andmotivation throughout the
study. We saw this in what wecall their Book of Knowledge
entries. This is the writingcomponent. So students read an
article a day. And then theywrite in their Book of
Knowledge what they learned.
And, on average, all studentswrote a third more words. So
(07:58):
they increase their wordproduction by 33%, during the
last week compared to the firstweek. We all know writing is
hard. And it's hard to getstudents to, by choice, do more
writing. And we do know, fromteacher report and knowing how
the teachers were implementingthis, this was not a
requirement. Teachers were notsaying you have to write more.
(08:20):
So that increased motivationthrough Article-A-Day was
really exciting to see studentsbuilding that confidence in
their reading. Excitement aboutwhat they were learning in
order to increase those Book ofKnowledge entries.
Susan Lambert (08:34):
Yeah. That is really, really exciting. We
talk a lot about buildingknowledge and building
vocabulary helps with readingcomprehension. We pay less
attention to the fact that italso helps with writing
composition. You can't reallywrite well about something that
you don't know anything about,or have the words to
communicate about. So youactually saw that
representation grow.
Susanne Nobles (08:55):
Yeah, yeah. And we had heard anecdotally from
teachers that students reallygot into their Books of
Knowledge. To see thatquantitatively was really very
powerful, because it doesprove, Susan, exactly what
you're saying. That whenstudents have something to say,
they do want to say it.
Susan Lambert (09:15):
So can I ask you a little bit about this article
of the day? Is that, did I getthat right?
Susanne Nobles (09:20):
Article-A-Day.
Susan Lambert (09:22):
Article -a-Day?
OK. I'm assuming, becauseReadWorks is all free and
available to any educator, thata teacher can sign up for
Article-A-Day. And,logistically, what does that
look like in their inbox?
Susanne Nobles (09:34):
A teacher signs up for their free account. We
have a Scope & Sequence ofArticle-A-Day, from
kindergarten through eighthgrade, where teachers can sign
up for an email where we sendthem, each month, sets. And
they can digitally assign, orprint, or they can go on to our
(09:54):
website and see the whole year.
In a few clicks, assign a wholeyear of Article-A-Day. Those
topics are relatedchronologically to the school
year. You would have, forexample, in April, we have our
Earth Day texts and our naturetexts. Or teachers can go in
and search by subject and tieArticle-A-Day, for that week,
(10:16):
that month, to what they'restudying in class.
Susan Lambert (10:19):
So they can actually use it as an extension
of the content that they'reactually covering in their own
classroom.
Susanne Nobles (10:24):
Yes.
Susan Lambert (10:24):
That's really exciting. And that coherency is
really important. We're gonnaget to that in a minute. But
how many do you track? How manypeople actually engage with
your Article-A-Day program?
Susanne Nobles (10:38):
It's tens of thousands of teachers. I
believe it was between 30,000and 40,000 last year.
Susan Lambert (10:45):
Wow!
Susanne Nobles (10:47):
It is great! We have many, many resources,
which we will study all of themin our research agenda, but
upwards of 800,000 teachers douse us a year.
Susan Lambert (10:59):
Wow.
Susanne Nobles (10:59):
So, there are many ways that teachers use us.
Article-A-Day is one of thosekey ways.
Susan Lambert (11:05):
That's great.
And what we will do is actuallylink our listeners in the show
notes to all of this so that ifthey're not familiar, they can
just be one click away. Let'stalk a little bit about this
text selection. You talked alittle bit about articles that
are related to each other. So,Article-A-Day they read, and
(11:25):
maybe the next day they readanother one that's similar. Why
is that important to sort ofhave this topical coherence?
Susanne Nobles (11:33):
The researchers whose shoulders we stand upon
have really dug into what doesit take to build knowledge.
What we've learned is that it'sthe knowledge schema that we
create. When a student reads aninitial text, for example, on a
(11:54):
bird , they may hear aboutwings, and then they read about
flying, and then theyunderstand that wings support
flying, and that there'sfeathers. So they're building
that knowledge. Our brainsretain, I'll use the Natalie
Wexler phrase of, "likeVelcro," really pull that
knowledge together. There'salso repetition of vocabulary,
(12:16):
either specific vocabulary orword families. They're starting
to piece together the wordsthat come with a knowledge
area, with a content area. Andall of that creates the ability
for us to retain that learningfirst, and then to start to put
it to our long-term memorysecond. And that gets us to why
knowledge is even important toreading, which I can tell you
(12:39):
all about now. If, Ishould go there.
Susan Lambert (12:41):
Please, please.
Yes, please go there.
Susanne Nobles (12:42):
So, we know the Science of Reading, we know
Scarborough's Reading Rope.
We're sitting on the languagecomprehension side of that
reading rope . That's wherebackground knowledge and
vocabulary sit. And whatresearch has shown is that
knowledge supports readers inmaking inferences that are
there, because there's gaps ineverything we read. An author
(13:03):
doesn't tell us every detailthat we would need to
understand. And we must, asreaders, fill those gaps. So
when we know many, many things,we are more likely to have the
knowledge to fill those gaps.
And when we know things well,we can activate that knowledge
automatically during reading,which frees up our working
(13:24):
memory to do the harder part ofreading, which is to piece
together across paragraphs, andacross an entire text. And then
to make those deeper inferencesonce we have filled all of
those gaps. That's whyknowledge and vocabulary are so
critical. And no teacher, nocurriculum can do it all for
(13:46):
students. That's why we existin that supplementary space,
because more is always better.
We're there to help make thateasier.
Susan Lambert (13:55):
That's great.
And we recently had Hugh Cattson who talked a lot about the
same thing, about backgroundknowledge. The way you
explained it was beautiful, butit was a real "Aha!" for me
that sometimes, and many times,inferencing is automatic.
Because you have enoughknowledge to be able to
(14:17):
activate that, which meansthose easier inferences, I
don't know how else to say it,with the background knowledge
can come really quickly. Sothat was a real "Aha!" for me.
I never thought about thatbefore, that inferencing
actually could be automatic.
Susanne Nobles (14:32):
Yeah. And it's such a good point, Susan, to
make, because often those of usthat teach reading were good
readers. We don't remember thestruggles. For us, well, for
me, I shouldn't speak for you,but for me I read a lot. I
enjoyed reading, and gained allthat knowledge, and am not
(14:53):
aware of the inferences thatI'm making. I don't think about
those. It can be hard toremember that there's a lot
going into my reading todaythat I didn't have all along.
Susan Lambert (15:05):
Yeah, yeah.
Susanne Nobles (15:06):
That is happening really automatically.
Susan Lambert (15:09):
Or you were building all along, right?
Susanne Nobles (15:10):
Yes.
Susan Lambert (15:11):
That's the really exciting part of the
upper part of Scarborough'sRope, is that those language
skills continue to developthroughout our lifetime. And
the more we know about a topic,the more we can learn. And the
more, subsequently then, weknow about the topic. As long
as you're a lifelong learner,that never, ever, ever stops.
(15:34):
On a side note, did yourecently introduce some
decodables as well into yourcollection?
Susanne Nobles (15:42):
We did. Yeah.
We're very excited about these.
We have written nonfictiondecodables. They are content
rich. They are buildingknowledge while students are
practicing those phonicsskills. We have them for K to
grade two. Still 100% free. Andwe have aligned them to
Article-A-Day. Working to buildknowledge, even when students
(16:04):
are at the listening level, sothey can listen to
Article-A-Day. That highersyntax, higher complexity of
text structure, higherlanguage. Build that knowledge.
We did a pilot study thisspring. Teacher reported
average student data, so let mejust state that from the start.
But students outperformed theirpredicted growth on their
(16:28):
decoding by using Article-A-Dayand decodables. Based on their
ongoing DIBELS scores, theyoutperform themselves using
these resources. We are workingwith an external researcher to
set up a formal study to, wehope, quantify those positive
findings for this school year.
Susan Lambert (16:44):
That's really exciting. And, I think that the
important thing there is thatyou just said, "Not just
decodables, but decodables thatare content rich ." But also
giving kids access to the textsthat they can't yet read
through a listeningenvironment. We forget that
(17:05):
reading aloud to kids, orhaving kids listen to texts,
actually helps develop and growtheir knowledge and vocabulary.
That's great.
Susanne Nobles (17:13):
And one of the things that teachers reported
from this past spring, again onthat engagement and motivation
side of things, is that thestudents gaining that knowledge
from Article-A-Day made themexcited to tackle the
decodable, and to talk aboutthe decodable as, I mean not
literature, it's not fiction,but as something they've read
for meaning and not just forpracticing words. They then
(17:38):
found that their students wereexcited for their next DIBELS
in ways they hadn't seenbefore. It brought meaning to
their reading in a way that isso exciting for us, because,
sometimes, I have a fear that alot of too much decoding
practice can become, "Why am Ireading?" We lose the ultimate
(18:00):
point of why all of us read,which is to learn and to gain
meaning.
Susan Lambert (18:03):
Yeah, or enjoy text. Hugh Catts reminded me of
that. Decodable practice is agreat instructional practice.
But, getting kids excited abouttopics, there's nothing like
arming our early learners withreally rich content and
(18:26):
information . They love tolearn.
Susanne Nobles (18:27):
Yes, yes.
Susan Lambert (18:28):
They LOVE to learn at that age. So let's
talk a little bit about textquality, because I know you
think about that a lot asyou're evaluating texts, as you
are identifying high-qualitytexts, as you're having authors
write high-quality text. So,how do you think about text
quality and evaluate that?
(18:48):
What's the ReadWorks process toget high-quality text?
Susanne Nobles (18:53):
Yeah, we spend countless hours thinking about
this. I do wanna start bycalling out that high quality
and free don't usually go handin hand . We work really,
really hard to continually havethe highest-quality texts. So,
before we even start to createor curate texts, we combine our
(19:18):
research-based focus onbuilding knowledge with a deep
awareness of our library andthe topics and voices that we
wanna elevate. I begin there,because for us, producing
high-quality content does startwith ensuring our products are
inclusive and reflective ofeveryone who uses them. We have
developed an in-depth andinternal, this isn't externally
(19:39):
visible on our site, but aninternal tagging system to
evaluate the strengths and thenthe gaps within our library.
Because it's important that ourcontent provides those windows
and mirrors for all of ourreaders. We know that that work
is continual. We're never gonnabe done with that work. And so,
that's where we begin, is withwhat is the quality content
(20:00):
that is needed? Where are welacking? Where are those gaps
in our library? Once we'veidentified that need for new
texts, every ReadWorks textgoes through several rounds of
review before being published.
It's written, and then many,many rounds of review. With our
content team reviewing factualaccuracy, going to multiple
(20:22):
reputable sites to make surewe've captured the factual
accuracy from the perspectiveof the population we're writing
about. The gradeappropriateness of the content,
we look across at nationalstandards on where content
falls in curricula . Now,that's not a singular answer,
but it gives us a good kind ofballpark. The flow of the
(20:45):
language, the grammar. And sofrom that initial conception,
looking at our library, to thewriting, editing, sensitivity
review, fact-checking, it cantake weeks, and in some cases
months, for trickier text for anew article to pass through the
sequence of review. And I saythat, because we're a
particular kind of library. Wework to be very evergreen. We
(21:06):
do not have new texts appear onour site every day. We're not
drawing from another source,and really putting out current
event texts. We're reallylooking to have that knowledge
building happening in both ournonfiction and fiction, in deep
ways. And then it doesn't endat publication. We are
continually reviewing content,going back to older content,
(21:28):
revising it, bringing it up todate. I will call out here our
great museum and culturalpartners that are our experts
in many particularly of ourscience fields. The National
Fish and Wildlife Foundation,we have AMNH , the American
Museum of Natural History inNew York City, the
International Quilt Museum. Imean, go on to our site, and
(21:50):
just put quilt into the searchbar, and it's just astounding.
We learn so much from all thesetexts ourselves, but the world
of quilting and the culturaland societal impact of it is
... you'll learn a lot.
Susan Lambert (22:03):
I might just do that. That's really
interesting. I remember when Iwas a third grade teacher, it
was really hard for me to findresources where kids could dig
into something that wasinteresting to them, or
tangential to something thatwas interesting to them, in the
classroom. So this must be agreat research mechanism too,
(22:25):
for not just adults but forkids.
Susanne Nobles (22:27):
It, it is, yes.
I opened by saying that we'realways through the teacher. A
teacher sets up a digitalclass, o r does the printing.
In our digital class, we dohave a student library space.
If a teacher's using usdigitally, there is a space for
the students to go where theycan search. And it's a
(22:47):
wonderful research resource.
We're like a controlledclassroom library, and they can
put in a topic, and pull up allthe nonfiction passages we
have. We do cap it to twogrades above. So they're not
gonna see all the way to 12thgrade material if they're a
fourth grader. So it's acontrolled space for great
research.
Susan Lambert (23:08):
How exciting.
How are you thinking abouteducators supporting our
multilingual learners? I'm sureyou've probably already thought
about that a lot. Help usunderstand that.
Susanne Nobles (23:20):
Our focus priority communities are the
ones that have fewer resources.
As a nonprofit, we're free toeverybody, but we really want
to support the teachers thatdon't necessarily have all the
resources as other districts.
And, in our partnership withthose districts, we hear daily
(23:43):
of the really rich,multicultural, and multilingual
classrooms that they have. Justthis summer, so brand new,
exciting, we released 65 newSpanish-English paired texts.
We have f ocused on Spanish,because, as all the data shows,
that's the predominantlanguage. And reaching as many
(24:05):
as we can, as soon as we can.
We'd love to work in otherlanguages, with the funding to
do that. But, what is superinteresting to me about these,
and my colleagues, NathalieKarimian and then M anjula R
aman really led this work, soshout out to them, they a re
(24:27):
not translations. That's whereI w anna start right now. These
are authentic, Spanish-languagepassages that build knowledge
and vocabulary in a student'shome language, i n Spanish, and
they're paired with anEnglish-language passage on a
conceptually related topic.
What this is doing isleveraging s tudents' existing
(24:49):
Spanish-language skills toenhance their English reading
comprehension, and reallyintegrating their language
systems in that way. Researchshows that we bring the
linguistic skills of all thelanguages we have, to bear,
coming together to help us moveour reading forward. And
(25:09):
ReadWorks' mission is toimprove reading in English. And
to do that, really drawing uponthose students'
Spanish-language skills, sorry,their linguistic assets. That's
a lot of S's coming together.
We've just had such greatuptake of these. We partnered
with Vanderbilt University,working with their professors
there, and then talentedSpanish-speaking authors that
(25:30):
come from different places, sot heir writing a nd their
heritage language. It is reallyallowing students that access
to different language varietiesthat they may be familiar with,
and to just bring them in indifferent ways. It's exciting.
Susan Lambert (25:46):
Yeah. And this must have been an exciting
thing for you to roll out, interms of supporting educators
in the spaces that they need tobe supported in.
Susanne Nobles (25:57):
Yes. Yes. And we have a constant feedback
loop, as I said before. We hearfrom our educators all the
time, which is great. But, wealso go out and ask as well, to
hear from more and more ofthem. These were the two areas,
the teaching of Englishlanguage learners and then the
(26:18):
pre-fluent readers, that we didnot yet have supports built
directly for. And so, stayingin our lane, how can we
supplement and support thisinstruction? Bringing knowledge
building and vocabularybuilding into these
instructional practices in theeasiest way. That we can
(26:42):
develop a routine for teachersto just pick up and use
tomorrow in their classrooms.
Susan Lambert (26:47):
I love that. And I love the focus on biliteracy
that you have here too. Toreally recognize those students
in their home language. To helpthem carry those assets over
into what they're reading. Haveyou put any of those Spanish
resources together in yourArticle-A-Day process or not
(27:10):
yet?
Susanne Nobles (27:11):
Well, you're reading our mind Susan
so that is our goal for nextsummer. We have picked the
English texts that we've beenbuilding out are ones that are
also part of our Article-A-Daysets. We do try before we
launch something to have a fullresource, so that teachers
(27:32):
don't come on and getfrustrated. Our goal for this
coming summer is to haveattached to Article-A-Day sets
topically connected Spanishtexts as those on-ramps for
those Spanish speakers into theArticle-A-Day set. And all of
our texts can be listened to.
So those Spanish speakers canthen listen to the English as
(27:53):
well. So Yes is the shortanswer, and look for it in
summer 2025.
Susan Lambert (27:59):
That's amazing.
And you just, you just made alittle tiny comment that I
think is worth highlighting.
You said all of your texts canbe listened to, is that right?
Susanne Nobles (28:07):
Yes. Yes. We have audio for all of our
texts. The majority of them arehuman-voice audio, but not all
of them. We have ahigh-quality, synthesized
voice, but that's not human. Weare always looking for
volunteers to read,particularly diverse voices. If
I loop this back to the Spanishtext, what's very exciting for
(28:28):
us is the authors of the textsthen read their passages. So
it's their heritage language,and then they recorded the
passage. So when you listen tothe Spanish text, you're
listening to the author readtheir text aloud. And there is
a filter on our site where youcan narrow our library to just
the human-voice audio ones ifyou want.
Susan Lambert (28:47):
That's amazing.
It just makes me think thatindirectly the support that you
have there for potentiallystudents that struggle with the
decoding piece of it, that areolder readers, we don't want to
keep them from the knowledgeand vocabulary development. So
utilizing the recorded text isamazing.
Susanne Nobles (29:10):
Yeah, and to loop back to our decodables,
because they're nonfiction andthey're content rich , they do
not feel baby-ish to olderstudents. We do know that
teachers of older students areusing our decodables. They also
have real-life pictures, notdrawings. So they read like an
article, what they're learningabout. Being able to have these
(29:34):
tech support students who areolder but need to catch up on
some of those skills that theydidn't get when they were
younger. And a teacher can seethe grade level that we put
with it, but the students nevercan. So, whether it's in the
library, whether it's printedout, or in their digital
classroom, the students do notsee a grade level attached to
the text.
Susan Lambert (29:55):
That's amazing.
You've just given some of oureducators that teach older
grades some ideas for utilizingthe resources that you have.
One more thing that you saidtoo is illustrations that go
along with the texts. Do all ofyour texts come with
illustrations?
Susanne Nobles (30:14):
Yes. Yes. We source from public domain
sources, because we're not animage creator. So we have
public domain images that goalong with all of the texts.
And the captions also get readaloud.
Susan Lambert (30:28):
That's exciting, man. For anybody that doesn't
know about ReadWorks, you needto jump in and figure it out!
So, just jumping back to bothtext quality and cohesion. What
advice do you have foreducators as they're thinking
about both the quality of thetext and the cohesiveness of
it?
Susanne Nobles (30:47):
Yeah. I'll start by saying something that
I know many educators know, butI think it bears repeating,
which is that kids know when atext is worth their time. Our
ultimate goal, as teachers ofreading, is to have students
that choose to read. Are theychoosing to read something that
(31:10):
they enjoy? And one of thethings that I know was
frustrating to me as a teacheris that the research doesn't go
the way we want it to. We wantto put a great book in a kid's
hands and have them get excitedabout reading and therefore get
good at reading. And it reallygoes the other way. And so
it's, once you build thatability to read, then that
excitement comes with reading.
(31:32):
Really having that engagementearly on when they're learning
to read is so key, becausethey're not hating reading.
That text quality matters.
Really looking at rich languagethat's saying something. That's
(31:53):
the core of our quality, isthat a student will walk away
feeling respected because theylearn something from that text.
And then the cohesion, to goback to the research,
conceptual threads matter .
That schema matters. Andrepetition matters. Again, we
sit in the supplemental space.
(32:14):
But, if you think about yourcurriculum, more is always
better. The more times weencounter something, the more
likely all of us as humans areto learn it. So, to bring in a
rich text to help your studentsdeepen that grasp of the
knowledge and the vocabulary isalways a win.
Susan Lambert (32:33):
Two really important points that you just
made there. Thank you for that.
And I know that I wish Iwould've had ReadWorks when I
was a classroom teacher. Itwould've helped me a whole lot.
And my kids would've loved it.
Before we let you go, I wannagive you a moment, if you have
any final thoughts for ourlisteners.
Susanne Nobles (32:56):
I will say that yes, I'm here from ReadWorks.
Yes, we're free, please use ourresources. That's why we exist.
But really all the thinkingthat any teacher can do around
putting together that kids arelearning about something rich,
and having something topractice with, and the power
(33:18):
that, that gives students tosay, "Wow! I can learn, I can
use my skills, and I can seethe growth in myself," is just
incredibly exciting whenever weas teachers see that magical
moment happen. We're happy tobe a part of it, and to know
(33:38):
all that teachers are doing tomake that work happen. Thank
you for that, teachers!
Susan Lambert (33:43):
It's not an easy job.
Susanne Nobles (33:46):
It's not an easy job. We have the easy job,
creating these exciting, funtexts.
Susan Lambert (33:52):
Well, thank you, Susanne, for joining us and
telling us all about ReadWorksand the rich research base on
which you're built. Like Isaid, we will link our
listeners in the show notes toall of this information. And so
thank you again for joining.
Susanne Nobles (34:05):
Thank you, Susan .
Susan Lambert (34:07):
That was Dr.
Susanne Nobles, chief academicofficer at ReadWorks. Check out
the show notes for links toconnect with Dr. Nobles, and to
learn much more about ReadWorksand Article-A-Day. Next up in
our reading reboot, we'reexploring the topic of
neuroscience and literacy withDr. Ioulia Kovelman from the
University of Michigan. It'sgoing to be a fascinating
(34:30):
conversation aboutdevelopmental cognitive
neuroscience, and why it can beso valuable for educators to
know more about this work.
Ioulia Kovelman (34:38):
The use of neuroimaging allows us to, for
instance, compare children whomight actually have the same
reading abilities, but may havevery different strategies for
reading.
Susan Lambert (34:50):
We'll also take on some neuroscience-related
questions from our listenermailbag. Remember to submit
your own literacy questions byvisiting
amplify.com/sormailbag. Bysubmitting a question, you
could also win a visit from meto your school. If you know
someone who might like thisreading reboot, please tell a
(35:13):
friend or colleague about theshow. The best way to get new
episodes is to subscribe toScience of Reading: The Podcast
on the podcast platform of yourchoice. And while you're there,
please leave us a rating andreview. You can join the
conversation about this episodein our Facebook discussion
group, Science of Reading (35:31):
The Community. Science of Reading:
The Podcast is brought to youby Amplify. I'm Susan Lambert,
and thank you so much forlistening.
The researchers whose shoulders we stand upon
have really dug into what doesit take to build knowledge. And
what we've learned is that it'sthe knowledge schema that we
create.
Susan Lambert (00:16):
This is Susan Lambert, and welcome to Science
of Reading (00:18):
The Podcast from Amplify. We're onto episode six
in our readingreboot—reexamining and building
on foundational literacyconcepts. Last time, we talked
about neurons, neural networks,and the brain science behind
learning to read. Today, we'refocusing on supporting texts,
(00:40):
and why it's critical to bestrategic about text selection.
My guest is Dr. Susanne Nobles,chief academic officer at
ReadWorks. On this episode, shetells us about ReadWorks and
its Article-A-Day program. Theconversation also features
information and advice foreducators regarding quality
text and topical cohesion.
(01:02):
We'll also talk about textselection and supporting
multilingual learners. So now,let me bring Dr. Susanne Nobles
onto the show. Well, Susanne,thank you so much for joining
us on today's episode. I'm soexcited to have you here!
Susanne Nobles (01:19):
Yeah, thanks so much, Susan. I'm really excited
to be here as well! I'velistened to the podcast for a
long time. Excited to be partof it.
Susan Lambert (01:26):
That's amazing.
You know that what we always dois have our guests introduce
themselves to our listeners. SoI would love if you could
introduce yourself. Maybe talka little bit about your
background, and how you landedat ReadWorks.
Susanne Nobles (01:40):
Sure, happy to.
Susanne Nobles, I'm the chiefacademic officer here at
ReadWorks. My background isthat I've been in education my
whole career. I was, for over20 years, a classroom teacher,
school administrator, Englishteacher. Mostly in Virginia.
(02:01):
And when my family moved, I wasalso in what I affectionately
call my latent-life PhD work.
We moved. I had to leave theschool where I was teaching.
Finished up my PhD. And movedinto education, nonprofit work,
focused on helping ed techdevelopers really imbue
research across their productdevelopment cycle. Got to know
(02:23):
ReadWorks actually throughthat, tangentially. Wanted to
get back into the ELA space,and landed here at ReadWorks,
doing the research, productdevelopment work, pedagogy work
for five years now here.
Susan Lambert (02:36):
That's so amazing to hear that story,
because I know lots of ourlisteners probably know
something about ReadWorks. Manyof them probably use the texts
that you offer. But for them toknow that nope , it's really
somebody that's passionateabout research. And passionate
about literature, that hasactually come to lead. What's
happening there at ReadWorks?
(02:58):
Can you tell us a little bitabout ReadWorks? Who you are,
what you do, what resources youprovide?
Susanne Nobles (03:05):
Yeah, yes.
ReadWorks is a nonprofit, and Ilike to start there, 'cause
we're ed tech . But we reallyare a nonprofit first and
foremost. And so, our missionis to help teachers. And I
start there as well. We are notdirect to student. We always go
with and in partnership withthe teacher. And our focus is
(03:27):
building students' backgroundknowledge and vocabulary in
support of readingcomprehension. So, as a
nonprofit , we are a hundredpercent free. Yes, really.
There's no paywall.
Susan Lambert (03:37):
Amazing, amazing.
Susanne Nobles (03:39):
And we are intentionally supplemental. We
provide, as you referencedalready, Susan, over 6,000
texts in our library, on adiverse range of subjects, to
be used in any classroom, fromK to adult learners, science,
history, ELA, in any way tobuild into that curriculum that
(04:00):
already exists, what resourcesare already there to enrich the
knowledge and vocabularyreading that students can do.
So that's who we are.
Susan Lambert (04:09):
That's amazing.
Besides those texts that youprovide, you do a few other
things. Don't you?
Susanne Nobles (04:17):
Yes, yes .
Thank you for the prompt. We dothese 6,000 texts. We then hand
curate them into differentkinds of text sets. While
teachers can come on and dothat great search for the
perfect text, that takes time.
We want to be able to providethem really easily crafted
(04:38):
sets, that they can eithercombine with novel studies,
they can bring into a year-longScope & Sequence around the
Next Generation ScienceStandards. We have alignments
as well with knowledge-buildingcurricula. Bringing together
our texts, that are nonfictionand fiction, and blending them
in a way that supports thecontent already happening in a
(05:02):
class. Because that's how youlearn best, is through that
bigger schema of conceptuallyrelated learning.
Susan Lambert (05:09):
And we're gonna talk a little bit about that
idea of topical cohesion, whyknowledge and vocabulary are so
important. We'll sort of putthat on the side and not go
there yet. But, I'd love foryou to talk just a little bit
about your impact, becausesince you've been there at
ReadWorks, you've really beentrying to study the impact that
(05:29):
your texts and your approachsort of have. Can you talk
about that recent study thatyou did?
Susanne Nobles (05:35):
Sure. Yeah. I'm excited to
your point, Susan, we havespent many years building up
our research . We've alwaysbeen built on research,
existing research. So, buildingup the study to make sure that
what we built does what we hopeit does. And that's really
important. Implementation isthe key. Nothing does it by
(05:56):
itself. It's how thatimplementation happens. Our
latest study was a clustered,randomized control study.
Susan Lambert (06:04):
Ooh , fancy words.
Susanne Nobles (06:05):
Yes, fancy words. A clustered, randomized
trial study. A CRT instead ofan RCT. And it was this past
school year, on ourknowledge-building routine
called Article-A-Day. This isone of those hand-curated text
set routines. Quick overview ofthat. It is what it sounds
like. We have weekly text setswhere students can read an
(06:28):
article a day. There's awriting component, there's a
speaking component, bringingtogether reading, writing, and
speaking. This past schoolyear, we worked with fourth
grade teachers around thenation, actually California,
New York, Colorado. And theyimplemented Article-A-Day for
nine weeks and focused onscience knowledge. So that was
(06:50):
this focus area. And then wetested students on their growth
in science knowledge andvocabulary. Our finding, which
was very exciting, validatingof Article-A-Day, is that
students in our experimentalgroup improved by approximately
11% on their science backgroundknowledge from pre to post.
That is three more questionscorrectly out of 28. What is
(07:14):
really powerful about that isthat in contrast, students in
the control group showed nonoticeable improvement. So,
this was from zero to thatimprovement. It really shows
the positive impact ofArticle-A-Day on students'
knowledge building, which wasthe goal of us building this
routine. A different findingthough, that we're very excited
(07:35):
about as well, is that allstudents, regardless of group,
showed increased engagement andmotivation throughout the
study. We saw this in what wecall their Book of Knowledge
entries. This is the writingcomponent. So students read an
article a day. And then theywrite in their Book of
Knowledge what they learned.
And, on average, all studentswrote a third more words. So
(07:58):
they increase their wordproduction by 33%, during the
last week compared to the firstweek. We all know writing is
hard. And it's hard to getstudents to, by choice, do more
writing. And we do know, fromteacher report and knowing how
the teachers were implementingthis, this was not a
requirement. Teachers were notsaying you have to write more.
(08:20):
So that increased motivationthrough Article-A-Day was
really exciting to see studentsbuilding that confidence in
their reading. Excitement aboutwhat they were learning in
order to increase those Book ofKnowledge entries.
Susan Lambert (08:34):
Yeah. That is really, really exciting. We
talk a lot about buildingknowledge and building
vocabulary helps with readingcomprehension. We pay less
attention to the fact that italso helps with writing
composition. You can't reallywrite well about something that
you don't know anything about,or have the words to
communicate about. So youactually saw that
representation grow.
Susanne Nobles (08:55):
Yeah, yeah. And we had heard anecdotally from
teachers that students reallygot into their Books of
Knowledge. To see thatquantitatively was really very
powerful, because it doesprove, Susan, exactly what
you're saying. That whenstudents have something to say,
they do want to say it.
Susan Lambert (09:15):
So can I ask you a little bit about this article
of the day? Is that, did I getthat right?
Susanne Nobles (09:20):
Article-A-Day.
Susan Lambert (09:22):
Article -a-Day?
OK. I'm assuming, becauseReadWorks is all free and
available to any educator, thata teacher can sign up for
Article-A-Day. And,logistically, what does that
look like in their inbox?
Susanne Nobles (09:34):
A teacher signs up for their free account. We
have a Scope & Sequence ofArticle-A-Day, from
kindergarten through eighthgrade, where teachers can sign
up for an email where we sendthem, each month, sets. And
they can digitally assign, orprint, or they can go on to our
(09:54):
website and see the whole year.
In a few clicks, assign a wholeyear of Article-A-Day. Those
topics are relatedchronologically to the school
year. You would have, forexample, in April, we have our
Earth Day texts and our naturetexts. Or teachers can go in
and search by subject and tieArticle-A-Day, for that week,
(10:16):
that month, to what they'restudying in class.
Susan Lambert (10:19):
So they can actually use it as an extension
of the content that they'reactually covering in their own
classroom.
Susanne Nobles (10:24):
Yes.
Susan Lambert (10:24):
That's really exciting. And that coherency is
really important. We're gonnaget to that in a minute. But
how many do you track? How manypeople actually engage with
your Article-A-Day program?
Susanne Nobles (10:38):
It's tens of thousands of teachers. I
believe it was between 30,000and 40,000 last year.
Susan Lambert (10:45):
Wow!
Susanne Nobles (10:47):
It is great! We have many, many resources,
which we will study all of themin our research agenda, but
upwards of 800,000 teachers douse us a year.
Susan Lambert (10:59):
Wow.
Susanne Nobles (10:59):
So, there are many ways that teachers use us.
Article-A-Day is one of thosekey ways.
Susan Lambert (11:05):
That's great.
And what we will do is actuallylink our listeners in the show
notes to all of this so that ifthey're not familiar, they can
just be one click away. Let'stalk a little bit about this
text selection. You talked alittle bit about articles that
are related to each other. So,Article-A-Day they read, and
(11:25):
maybe the next day they readanother one that's similar. Why
is that important to sort ofhave this topical coherence?
Susanne Nobles (11:33):
The researchers whose shoulders we stand upon
have really dug into what doesit take to build knowledge.
What we've learned is that it'sthe knowledge schema that we
create. When a student reads aninitial text, for example, on a
(11:54):
bird , they may hear aboutwings, and then they read about
flying, and then theyunderstand that wings support
flying, and that there'sfeathers. So they're building
that knowledge. Our brainsretain, I'll use the Natalie
Wexler phrase of, "likeVelcro," really pull that
knowledge together. There'salso repetition of vocabulary,
(12:16):
either specific vocabulary orword families. They're starting
to piece together the wordsthat come with a knowledge
area, with a content area. Andall of that creates the ability
for us to retain that learningfirst, and then to start to put
it to our long-term memorysecond. And that gets us to why
knowledge is even important toreading, which I can tell you
(12:39):
all about now. If
Susan Lambert (12:41):
Please, please.
Yes, please go there.
Susanne Nobles (12:42):
So, we know the Science of Reading, we know
Scarborough's Reading Rope.
We're sitting on the languagecomprehension side of that
reading rope . That's wherebackground knowledge and
vocabulary sit. And whatresearch has shown is that
knowledge supports readers inmaking inferences that are
there, because there's gaps ineverything we read. An author
(13:03):
doesn't tell us every detailthat we would need to
understand. And we must, asreaders, fill those gaps. So
when we know many, many things,we are more likely to have the
knowledge to fill those gaps.
And when we know things well,we can activate that knowledge
automatically during reading,which frees up our working
(13:24):
memory to do the harder part ofreading, which is to piece
together across paragraphs, andacross an entire text. And then
to make those deeper inferencesonce we have filled all of
those gaps. That's whyknowledge and vocabulary are so
critical. And no teacher, nocurriculum can do it all for
(13:46):
students. That's why we existin that supplementary space,
because more is always better.
We're there to help make thateasier.
Susan Lambert (13:55):
That's great.
And we recently had Hugh Cattson who talked a lot about the
same thing, about backgroundknowledge. The way you
explained it was beautiful, butit was a real "Aha!" for me
that sometimes, and many times,inferencing is automatic.
Because you have enoughknowledge to be able to
(14:17):
activate that, which meansthose easier inferences, I
don't know how else to say it,with the background knowledge
can come really quickly. Sothat was a real "Aha!" for me.
I never thought about thatbefore, that inferencing
actually could be automatic.
Susanne Nobles (14:32):
Yeah. And it's such a good point, Susan, to
make, because often those of usthat teach reading were good
readers. We don't remember thestruggles. For us, well, for
me, I shouldn't speak for you,but for me I read a lot. I
enjoyed reading, and gained allthat knowledge, and am not
(14:53):
aware of the inferences thatI'm making. I don't think about
those. It can be hard toremember that there's a lot
going into my reading todaythat I didn't have all along.
Susan Lambert (15:05):
Yeah, yeah.
Susanne Nobles (15:06):
That is happening really automatically.
Susan Lambert (15:09):
Or you were building all along, right?
Susanne Nobles (15:10):
Yes.
Susan Lambert (15:11):
That's the really exciting part of the
upper part of Scarborough'sRope, is that those language
skills continue to developthroughout our lifetime. And
the more we know about a topic,the more we can learn. And the
more, subsequently then, weknow about the topic. As long
as you're a lifelong learner,that never, ever, ever stops.
(15:34):
On a side note, did yourecently introduce some
decodables as well into yourcollection?
Susanne Nobles (15:42):
We did. Yeah.
We're very excited about these.
We have written nonfictiondecodables. They are content
rich. They are buildingknowledge while students are
practicing those phonicsskills. We have them for K to
grade two. Still 100% free. Andwe have aligned them to
Article-A-Day. Working to buildknowledge, even when students
(16:04):
are at the listening level, sothey can listen to
Article-A-Day. That highersyntax, higher complexity of
text structure, higherlanguage. Build that knowledge.
We did a pilot study thisspring. Teacher reported
average student data, so let mejust state that from the start.
But students outperformed theirpredicted growth on their
(16:28):
decoding by using Article-A-Dayand decodables. Based on their
ongoing DIBELS scores, theyoutperform themselves using
these resources. We are workingwith an external researcher to
set up a formal study to, wehope, quantify those positive
findings for this school year.
Susan Lambert (16:44):
That's really exciting. And, I think that the
important thing there is thatyou just said, "Not just
decodables, but decodables thatare content rich ." But also
giving kids access to the textsthat they can't yet read
through a listeningenvironment. We forget that
(17:05):
reading aloud to kids, orhaving kids listen to texts,
actually helps develop and growtheir knowledge and vocabulary.
That's great.
Susanne Nobles (17:13):
And one of the things that teachers reported
from this past spring, again onthat engagement and motivation
side of things, is that thestudents gaining that knowledge
from Article-A-Day made themexcited to tackle the
decodable, and to talk aboutthe decodable as, I mean not
literature, it's not fiction,but as something they've read
for meaning and not just forpracticing words. They then
(17:38):
found that their students wereexcited for their next DIBELS
in ways they hadn't seenbefore. It brought meaning to
their reading in a way that isso exciting for us, because,
sometimes, I have a fear that alot of too much decoding
practice can become, "Why am Ireading?" We lose the ultimate
(18:00):
point of why all of us read,which is to learn and to gain
meaning.
Susan Lambert (18:03):
Yeah, or enjoy text. Hugh Catts reminded me of
that. Decodable practice is agreat instructional practice.
But, getting kids excited abouttopics, there's nothing like
arming our early learners withreally rich content and
(18:26):
information . They love tolearn.
Susanne Nobles (18:27):
Yes, yes.
Susan Lambert (18:28):
They LOVE to learn at that age. So let's
talk a little bit about textquality, because I know you
think about that a lot asyou're evaluating texts, as you
are identifying high-qualitytexts, as you're having authors
write high-quality text. So,how do you think about text
quality and evaluate that?
(18:48):
What's the ReadWorks process toget high-quality text?
Susanne Nobles (18:53):
Yeah, we spend countless hours thinking about
this. I do wanna start bycalling out that high quality
and free don't usually go handin hand . We work really,
really hard to continually havethe highest-quality texts. So,
before we even start to createor curate texts, we combine our
(19:18):
research-based focus onbuilding knowledge with a deep
awareness of our library andthe topics and voices that we
wanna elevate. I begin there,because for us, producing
high-quality content does startwith ensuring our products are
inclusive and reflective ofeveryone who uses them. We have
developed an in-depth andinternal, this isn't externally
(19:39):
visible on our site, but aninternal tagging system to
evaluate the strengths and thenthe gaps within our library.
Because it's important that ourcontent provides those windows
and mirrors for all of ourreaders. We know that that work
is continual. We're never gonnabe done with that work. And so,
that's where we begin, is withwhat is the quality content
(20:00):
that is needed? Where are welacking? Where are those gaps
in our library? Once we'veidentified that need for new
texts, every ReadWorks textgoes through several rounds of
review before being published.
It's written, and then many,many rounds of review. With our
content team reviewing factualaccuracy, going to multiple
(20:22):
reputable sites to make surewe've captured the factual
accuracy from the perspectiveof the population we're writing
about. The gradeappropriateness of the content,
we look across at nationalstandards on where content
falls in curricula . Now,that's not a singular answer,
but it gives us a good kind ofballpark. The flow of the
(20:45):
language, the grammar. And sofrom that initial conception,
looking at our library, to thewriting, editing, sensitivity
review, fact-checking, it cantake weeks, and in some cases
months, for trickier text for anew article to pass through the
sequence of review. And I saythat, because we're a
particular kind of library. Wework to be very evergreen. We
(21:06):
do not have new texts appear onour site every day. We're not
drawing from another source,and really putting out current
event texts. We're reallylooking to have that knowledge
building happening in both ournonfiction and fiction, in deep
ways. And then it doesn't endat publication. We are
continually reviewing content,going back to older content,
(21:28):
revising it, bringing it up todate. I will call out here our
great museum and culturalpartners that are our experts
in many particularly of ourscience fields. The National
Fish and Wildlife Foundation,we have AMNH , the American
Museum of Natural History inNew York City, the
International Quilt Museum. Imean, go on to our site, and
(21:50):
just put quilt into the searchbar, and it's just astounding.
We learn so much from all thesetexts ourselves, but the world
of quilting and the culturaland societal impact of it is
... you'll learn a lot.
Susan Lambert (22:03):
I might just do that. That's really
interesting. I remember when Iwas a third grade teacher, it
was really hard for me to findresources where kids could dig
into something that wasinteresting to them, or
tangential to something thatwas interesting to them, in the
classroom. So this must be agreat research mechanism too,
(22:25):
for not just adults but forkids.
Susanne Nobles (22:27):
It, it is, yes.
I opened by saying that we'realways through the teacher. A
teacher sets up a digitalclass, o r does the printing.
In our digital class, we dohave a student library space.
If a teacher's using usdigitally, there is a space for
the students to go where theycan search. And it's a
(22:47):
wonderful research resource.
We're like a controlledclassroom library, and they can
put in a topic, and pull up allthe nonfiction passages we
have. We do cap it to twogrades above. So they're not
gonna see all the way to 12thgrade material if they're a
fourth grader. So it's acontrolled space for great
research.
Susan Lambert (23:08):
How exciting.
How are you thinking abouteducators supporting our
multilingual learners? I'm sureyou've probably already thought
about that a lot. Help usunderstand that.
Susanne Nobles (23:20):
Our focus priority communities are the
ones that have fewer resources.
As a nonprofit, we're free toeverybody, but we really want
to support the teachers thatdon't necessarily have all the
resources as other districts.
And, in our partnership withthose districts, we hear daily
(23:43):
of the really rich,multicultural, and multilingual
classrooms that they have. Justthis summer, so brand new,
exciting, we released 65 newSpanish-English paired texts.
We have f ocused on Spanish,because, as all the data shows,
that's the predominantlanguage. And reaching as many
(24:05):
as we can, as soon as we can.
We'd love to work in otherlanguages, with the funding to
do that. But, what is superinteresting to me about these,
and my colleagues, NathalieKarimian and then M anjula R
aman really led this work, soshout out to them, they a re
(24:27):
not translations. That's whereI w anna start right now. These
are authentic, Spanish-languagepassages that build knowledge
and vocabulary in a student'shome language, i n Spanish, and
they're paired with anEnglish-language passage on a
conceptually related topic.
What this is doing isleveraging s tudents' existing
(24:49):
Spanish-language skills toenhance their English reading
comprehension, and reallyintegrating their language
systems in that way. Researchshows that we bring the
linguistic skills of all thelanguages we have, to bear,
coming together to help us moveour reading forward. And
(25:09):
ReadWorks' mission is toimprove reading in English. And
to do that, really drawing uponthose students'
Spanish-language skills, sorry,their linguistic assets. That's
a lot of S's coming together.
We've just had such greatuptake of these. We partnered
with Vanderbilt University,working with their professors
there, and then talentedSpanish-speaking authors that
(25:30):
come from different places, sot heir writing a nd their
heritage language. It is reallyallowing students that access
to different language varietiesthat they may be familiar with,
and to just bring them in indifferent ways. It's exciting.
Susan Lambert (25:46):
Yeah. And this must have been an exciting
thing for you to roll out, interms of supporting educators
in the spaces that they need tobe supported in.
Susanne Nobles (25:57):
Yes. Yes. And we have a constant feedback
loop, as I said before. We hearfrom our educators all the
time, which is great. But, wealso go out and ask as well, to
hear from more and more ofthem. These were the two areas,
the teaching of Englishlanguage learners and then the
(26:18):
pre-fluent readers, that we didnot yet have supports built
directly for. And so, stayingin our lane, how can we
supplement and support thisinstruction? Bringing knowledge
building and vocabularybuilding into these
instructional practices in theeasiest way. That we can
(26:42):
develop a routine for teachersto just pick up and use
tomorrow in their classrooms.
Susan Lambert (26:47):
I love that. And I love the focus on biliteracy
that you have here too. Toreally recognize those students
in their home language. To helpthem carry those assets over
into what they're reading. Haveyou put any of those Spanish
resources together in yourArticle-A-Day process or not
(27:10):
yet?
Susanne Nobles (27:11):
Well, you're reading our mind Susan
so that is our goal for nextsummer. We have picked the
English texts that we've beenbuilding out are ones that are
also part of our Article-A-Daysets. We do try before we
launch something to have a fullresource, so that teachers
(27:32):
don't come on and getfrustrated. Our goal for this
coming summer is to haveattached to Article-A-Day sets
topically connected Spanishtexts as those on-ramps for
those Spanish speakers into theArticle-A-Day set. And all of
our texts can be listened to.
So those Spanish speakers canthen listen to the English as
(27:53):
well. So Yes is the shortanswer, and look for it in
summer 2025.
Susan Lambert (27:59):
That's amazing.
And you just, you just made alittle tiny comment that I
think is worth highlighting.
You said all of your texts canbe listened to, is that right?
Susanne Nobles (28:07):
Yes. Yes. We have audio for all of our
texts. The majority of them arehuman-voice audio, but not all
of them. We have ahigh-quality, synthesized
voice, but that's not human. Weare always looking for
volunteers to read,particularly diverse voices. If
I loop this back to the Spanishtext, what's very exciting for
(28:28):
us is the authors of the textsthen read their passages. So
it's their heritage language,and then they recorded the
passage. So when you listen tothe Spanish text, you're
listening to the author readtheir text aloud. And there is
a filter on our site where youcan narrow our library to just
the human-voice audio ones ifyou want.
Susan Lambert (28:47):
That's amazing.
It just makes me think thatindirectly the support that you
have there for potentiallystudents that struggle with the
decoding piece of it, that areolder readers, we don't want to
keep them from the knowledgeand vocabulary development. So
utilizing the recorded text isamazing.
Susanne Nobles (29:10):
Yeah, and to loop back to our decodables,
because they're nonfiction andthey're content rich , they do
not feel baby-ish to olderstudents. We do know that
teachers of older students areusing our decodables. They also
have real-life pictures, notdrawings. So they read like an
article, what they're learningabout. Being able to have these
(29:34):
tech support students who areolder but need to catch up on
some of those skills that theydidn't get when they were
younger. And a teacher can seethe grade level that we put
with it, but the students nevercan. So, whether it's in the
library, whether it's printedout, or in their digital
classroom, the students do notsee a grade level attached to
the text.
Susan Lambert (29:55):
That's amazing.
You've just given some of oureducators that teach older
grades some ideas for utilizingthe resources that you have.
One more thing that you saidtoo is illustrations that go
along with the texts. Do all ofyour texts come with
illustrations?
Susanne Nobles (30:14):
Yes. Yes. We source from public domain
sources, because we're not animage creator. So we have
public domain images that goalong with all of the texts.
And the captions also get readaloud.
Susan Lambert (30:28):
That's exciting, man. For anybody that doesn't
know about ReadWorks, you needto jump in and figure it out!
So, just jumping back to bothtext quality and cohesion. What
advice do you have foreducators as they're thinking
about both the quality of thetext and the cohesiveness of
it?
Susanne Nobles (30:47):
Yeah. I'll start by saying something that
I know many educators know, butI think it bears repeating,
which is that kids know when atext is worth their time. Our
ultimate goal, as teachers ofreading, is to have students
that choose to read. Are theychoosing to read something that
(31:10):
they enjoy? And one of thethings that I know was
frustrating to me as a teacheris that the research doesn't go
the way we want it to. We wantto put a great book in a kid's
hands and have them get excitedabout reading and therefore get
good at reading. And it reallygoes the other way. And so
it's, once you build thatability to read, then that
excitement comes with reading.
(31:32):
Really having that engagementearly on when they're learning
to read is so key, becausethey're not hating reading.
That text quality matters.
Really looking at rich languagethat's saying something. That's
(31:53):
the core of our quality, isthat a student will walk away
feeling respected because theylearn something from that text.
And then the cohesion, to goback to the research,
conceptual threads matter .
That schema matters. Andrepetition matters. Again, we
sit in the supplemental space.
(32:14):
But, if you think about yourcurriculum, more is always
better. The more times weencounter something, the more
likely all of us as humans areto learn it. So, to bring in a
rich text to help your studentsdeepen that grasp of the
knowledge and the vocabulary isalways a win.
Susan Lambert (32:33):
Two really important points that you just
made there. Thank you for that.
And I know that I wish Iwould've had ReadWorks when I
was a classroom teacher. Itwould've helped me a whole lot.
And my kids would've loved it.
Before we let you go, I wannagive you a moment, if you have
any final thoughts for ourlisteners.
Susanne Nobles (32:56):
I will say that yes, I'm here from ReadWorks.
Yes, we're free, please use ourresources. That's why we exist.
But really all the thinkingthat any teacher can do around
putting together that kids arelearning about something rich,
and having something topractice with, and the power
(33:18):
that, that gives students tosay, "Wow! I can learn, I can
use my skills, and I can seethe growth in myself," is just
incredibly exciting whenever weas teachers see that magical
moment happen. We're happy tobe a part of it, and to know
(33:38):
all that teachers are doing tomake that work happen. Thank
you for that, teachers!
Susan Lambert (33:43):
It's not an easy job.
Susanne Nobles (33:46):
It's not an easy job. We have the easy job,
creating these exciting, funtexts.
Susan Lambert (33:52):
Well, thank you, Susanne, for joining us and
telling us all about ReadWorksand the rich research base on
which you're built. Like Isaid, we will link our
listeners in the show notes toall of this information. And so
thank you again for joining.
Susanne Nobles (34:05):
Thank you, Susan .
Susan Lambert (34:07):
That was Dr.
Susanne Nobles, chief academicofficer at ReadWorks. Check out
the show notes for links toconnect with Dr. Nobles, and to
learn much more about ReadWorksand Article-A-Day. Next up in
our reading reboot, we'reexploring the topic of
neuroscience and literacy withDr. Ioulia Kovelman from the
University of Michigan. It'sgoing to be a fascinating
(34:30):
conversation aboutdevelopmental cognitive
neuroscience, and why it can beso valuable for educators to
know more about this work.
Ioulia Kovelman (34:38):
The use of neuroimaging allows us to, for
instance, compare children whomight actually have the same
reading abilities, but may havevery different strategies for
reading.
Susan Lambert (34:50):
We'll also take on some neuroscience-related
questions from our listenermailbag. Remember to submit
your own literacy questions byvisiting
amplify.com/sormailbag. Bysubmitting a question, you
could also win a visit from meto your school. If you know
someone who might like thisreading reboot, please tell a
(35:13):
friend or colleague about theshow. The best way to get new
episodes is to subscribe toScience of Reading: The Podcast
on the podcast platform of yourchoice. And while you're there,
please leave us a rating andreview. You can join the
conversation about this episodein our Facebook discussion
group, Science of Reading (35:31):
The Community. Science of Reading:
The Podcast is brought to youby Amplify. I'm Susan Lambert,
and thank you so much forlistening.
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