The Knowledge Matters Podcast

Welcome to the inaugural episode of the six-part Knowledge Matters Podcast series, "Reading Comprehension Revisited," where education writer and host, Natalie Wexler, tackles one of the most pressing issues in education: the reading crisis. Natalie poses essential questions: Why do students from low-income backgrounds typically score lower on reading tests? Why do improvements in the early grades fade out as students adva...

In the second episode of "The Knowledge Matters Podcast: Reading Comprehension Revisited", host Natalie Wexler dives into persistent misconceptions about reading comprehension that have pervaded the education system for decades.

Unpacking the fact that teachers have often believed they were teaching comprehension when, in fact, they weren’t, Natalie explores the overlooked importance of knowledge in reading comp...

In Episode 3 of "The Knowledge Matters Podcast: Reading Comprehension Revisited" you’ll hear from three teachers who’ve experienced the before and after of the shift to using a knowledge-building curriculum in their classrooms.

Abby Boruff, Deloris Fowler, and Kyair Butts are three classroom teachers who are, in some ways, very different. They teach different ages, and different subjects, in different parts of th...

In the last episode of "The Knowledge Matters Podcast: Reading Comprehension Revisited", you heard from three teachers – Abby, Deloris, and Kyair – who talked about their experiences using some of the knowledge-building literacy curricula that have recently been developed. In Episode 4, you’ll hear from them again, and you’ll meet Cassidy Burns, a 3rd grade teacher from Louisiana. They describe how these newer curricula i...

So far in "The Knowledge Matters Podcast: Reading Comprehension Revisited", we've heard from classroom teachers about their experiences making the shift from the standard approach to reading comprehension – which focuses on having kids practice supposedly general skills like “finding the main idea” – to a newer approach. That new approach involves building children's knowledge of the world so they can better und...

American education has a number of serious problems – and our failure to start building kids' knowledge early is a fundamental one. By now you know that reading comprehension is complicated and as you’ll hear, so is the explanation for what has gone wrong with the way American schools have approached it.

In the sixth and final episode of "The Knowledge Matters Podcast: Reading Comprehension Revisited", Nata...

Season 2 of the Knowledge Matters Podcast is coming soon! Teachers and reading experts David and Meredith Liben host “Know Better, Do Better: Comprehension,” a six-part podcast series based on their book of the same name.

With their signature charm and straight talk, David and Meredith take on an urgent problem in American schools today—kids not understanding what they read—and how reading comprehension can be taught more effectivel...

In today’s reading classrooms, too many kids are not alright. One of the biggest challenges is comprehension–or rather, its absence. Students don't understand what they read well enough to think deeply, connect what they are learning to the wider world, and prepare for the futures they want. 

On this episode, hosts David and Meredith Liben break down reading comprehension: they explain what it is and how it works in the mind of...

Imagine reading a story about a trial, but not knowing the meaning of “indicted” or “exonerated.” Without a lot of determination and a dictionary, you’d be lost. The knowledge and vocabulary readers bring to a text substantially determine how readily they comprehend it–a fact that’s just as relevant in ELA as it is in social studies and science class.

In this episode, David and Meredith Liben walk us through the relevant research an...

When’s the last time you finished a chapter of a book and thought, “Hmmm, what was the main idea?” Competent readers don’t ask themselves this question. They’re too busy focusing on the text itself, not the component strategies that help us understand them. 

But that’s not how traditional curriculum and instructional practices work. Instead, they teach reading through a strategy-first approach that focuses on skills like making infe...

How do actual teachers and students “center the text” in reading classrooms? In this episode, David and Meredith Liben get specific with teachers and experts about how read alouds and close reading can connect students of all ages and literacy levels to a text—and to one another.

Two ideas animate the discussion. First, theory is not terribly helpful without practice. And second, learning to read is (and should be!) a social experie...

Have you ever read something and then realized you didn’t totally understand it? That’s the hallmark of a challenging text, and it’s something students encounter all the time.

In this episode, David and Meredith Liben discuss three ways to connect students with sophisticated texts, even if they can’t yet read or comprehend them on their own: juicy sentences, explain your answer, and structured journaling.

First, linguist and language...

Explorers boldly venture into unfamiliar worlds, where confidence, curiosity, knowledge, and persistence are rewarded. When students approach texts like explorers, they bring these same qualities to the task—a mindset cognitive scientists call the “standard of coherence.” Such reading is purposeful, engaging, and expands the reader’s horizons. Reading anywhere, anytime is not just doable. It’s joyful.

In this episode, hosts David an...

Today’s episode is a special bonus—an audio recording of our recent webinar, Knowledge: Why It Matters. We found the conversation so valuable that we wanted to make it accessible in as many ways as possible.

In this episode, StandardsWork’s Chief Program Officer Kristen McQuillan and Baltimore City Public Schools teacher Kyair Butts join Dr. Susan Neuman (New York University) and Dr. Margaret “Moddy” McKeown (University of Pittsburg...

This bonus episode is an audio recording of our most popular webinar ever, Writing: An Unsung Hero of Reading Comprehension. It features familiar voices to listeners of Season 1 of the Knowledge Matters Podcast, best-selling author and host Natalie Wexler, as well as StandardsWork’s Chief Program Officer Kristen McQuillan, Doug Lemov (Teach Like a Champion), and Julia Cooper (SchoolKit).

Their conversation focuses on why writing sho...

How is the Science of Reading connected to the Science of Learning? Join hosts Dylan Wiliam, Doug Lemov, and Natalie Wexler as they delve into the links between the two, both in theory and practice, in Season 3 of the Knowledge Matters Podcast. Across six 30-minute episodes, we’ll explore how long-term memory shapes reading comprehension, why reading whole books is better than excerpts on a screen, and how teaching students to writ...

How can schools and teachers maximize student learning? To answer this question, we need to understand how the human mind works. What needs to be explicitly taught, how many new things can we remember at a time, and what is the role of background knowledge in easing students’ cognitive loads?

Host Dylan Wiliam begins the six-part “Literacy and the Science of Learning” podcast with an accessible overview of cognitive and educational ...

Our memories grow stronger when we work to retrieve them. That’s why flash cards and pop quizzes are effective: they prompt students to recall and access information from their memory bank. What other instructional tools and techniques help students remember what they’ve learned, and how can teachers put these to use?

Host Dylan Wiliam takes a deep dive into four vitally important principles that are rooted in cognitive science and ...

When we read fluently, we recognize words without effort. We also maintain an engaged pace (automaticity) and perceive expression (prosody), all of which support attention and leave working memory free to make meaning from a text. This is a complex achievement, and many students have fractured attention spans. What can educators do to account for interruptions and focus on building fluency, which is key to developing comprehension?

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