S5 E9 Research to the Classroom - Connecting Reading and Writing Part 1 (The Research)

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Episode Transcript

Jocelyn (00:00):
Hello there, welcome to the Structured Literacy Podcast
.
My name is Jocelyn and I'mreally pleased to be bringing
you the first episode of our newResearch to the Classroom
series.
I'm recording this episode onthe lands of the Palawa people
of Tasmania.
Research to the Classroom isabout bridging the gap between
research and practice.

(00:21):
In each series, we explore akey topic over three connected
episodes.
First, we unpack the researchin an accessible way, then we
provide practical guidance fortaking action in your classroom,
and finally, we chat with apracticing teacher or leader
about their real worldexperience of implementing these

(00:43):
ideas.
Today we're diving into a topicthat I think has enormous
potential to transform literacyinstruction, and that is the
integration of reading andwriting for stronger learning
outcomes.
If you've been following thesuggestions of evidence-informed
practice, this idea ofconnecting reading and writing

(01:04):
may not be new to you, but whatI would like to do is to unpack
it a little bit more so weunderstand the why.
Before we jump into theresearch, let's reflect on
traditional approaches toliteracy instruction.
Historically, literacy blockshave been divided into separate
reading and writing hours, oftenleading to quite

(01:24):
decontextualised instruction inthese areas.
In reading, the focus wastypically on levelled texts and
comprehension strategies,frequently through literature
circles or small group readinginstruction.
In the older grades of reading,the focus of instruction
usually centered on levelledtexts and comprehension

(01:44):
strategies.
Often, literature circles wereused to engage students.
This involved them assumingroles to discuss texts and share
responses.
And while this looked engaging,this student-driven approach
actually contradicts whatcognitive science tells us about
how novices learn best throughfully guided instruction.

(02:05):
It doesn't mean that studentdiscussion can't be an important
part of our approach, but justthat the teacher needs to lead.
In the earlier grades, levelledtexts were used in group
rotations for reading groups and, again, comprehension
strategies were often the focus.
Writing instruction commonlyfollowed a workshop model, a

(02:28):
brief mini-lesson, independentwriting with teacher conferences
and then sharing time.
Though labelled as explicitteaching, these 10-minute
mini-lesson demonstrations thatare then followed by independent
practice fall far short of whatwe now understand explicit
instruction to be.
Now, both approaches that I'vedescribed, or all of them, were

(02:52):
founded on the assumption thatexposure to quality text and
adequate practice time wouldnaturally develop students into
skilled writers, but research inthis space has shown this
assumption is inadequate formeeting all of students' needs.
So let's explore what researchtells us about how reading and

(03:13):
writing are connected.
In their comprehensive review,Fitzgerald and Shanahan in 2000
summarised work onreading-writing relationships
and three views or approaches,shared knowledge, a functional
view and rhetoricalrelationships.
The shared knowledge approach,which has received the most

(03:34):
research attention, indicatesthat reading and writing are
related because they draw on thesame underlying knowledge and
cognitive systems.
We're not saying that readingand writing are the same thing,
but they are definitely related.
Fitzgerald and Shanahanidentified four categories of
knowledge that we use whenreading and writing.

(03:54):
Number one is meta-knowledge.
This includes understanding thepurposes and functions of
reading and writing, knowingthat readers and writers
interact and monitoring our ownmeaning making.
The second idea is about domainknowledge.
This covers both contentknowledge and vocabulary: what
you know about the world and thetopics you're reading and

(04:16):
writing about.
Third, we have knowledge aboutuniversal text attributes, and
this includes understandingthings like phonics or letter-
sound relationships, syntax,grammar and sentence structure
and text format.
Number four is proceduralknowledge, and that's knowing
how to access and use the othertypes of knowledge during

(04:39):
reading and writing.
Building on this foundation,Young-Suk Kim in 2020 proposed
the Interactive Dynamic LiteracyModel.
This framework argues thatreading and writing are
interrelated and developedtogether because they share a
large number of skills andknowledge, same as we've just

(04:59):
heard.
Kim's model is represented as astructure with a foundation with
two pillars supporting a roofof higher level literacy skills.
The foundation of the structureconsists of language,
foundational literacy skills andcognitive skills like working,
memory and executive functioning.
The two pillars represent, onthe left-hand side, word-level

(05:27):
literacy, so reading andspelling, and on the right-hand
side, discourse-level orallanguage, which is that we in
written terms would call thattext-level.
So this is about conversationhow do we have a discussion and
a dialogue with other people?
At the very top is thediscourse-level literacy, so the
roof is the readingcomprehension and the written

(05:47):
composition.
Four ideas come from Kim's model.
Number one is a hierarchicalstructure, and this reflects
what we know from the SimpleView of Reading.
Skills are organisedhierarchically, with higher
level skills building on lowerlevel ones.
We can't just start right in atthe text level, we need to

(06:08):
start at the lower order skills.
Number two is interactiverelationships.
Skills develop interactively,with bi-directional
relationships between manycomponents.
So that means that reading andwriting have effects on each
other, they don't sit separately.
Following from this is thisidea of co-occurring

(06:30):
difficulties.
So students with readingdifficulties often have writing
difficulties and vice versa.
And this is because thoseunderlying skills come from a
foundation of shared knowledge.
Fourth is dynamic relationships, and this is about the
relationships between skillschanging as a function of

(06:51):
development, learnercharacteristics and assessment
methods.
So I'll just run through thosefour points briefly again.
Hierarchical structure, wherewe build from simple to complex,
the interactive nature ofreading and writing, therefore,
we have co-occurringdifficulties very often with
students who struggle, and thenthe relationships between all of

(07:13):
these things changing asstudents develop in skills and
knowledge and as their owndevelopment happens in terms of
their cognitive thinking.
Kim's research found that thesame language and cognitive
skills that predict listeningcomprehension also predict
reading comprehension.
That's not new for us from theSimple View of Reading, so this

(07:35):
is affirming what the SimpleView of Reading found,
suggesting these skills servesimilar functions across modes.
Let's think about a differentside of research now, and that
is strategic processing.
In 2011, Anderson and Briggstook a different but
complementary perspective onthis issue of connecting reading

(07:56):
and writing, and they focusedon the reciprocal cognitive
operations or strategies thatreaders and writers use.
They emphasised that thecognitive processes used in
reading are identical to thoseinvolved in writing, so the
strategies or strategicoperations they identified were

(08:17):
these.
Number one is searching, so themental action of seeking out
information in print.
So when we're reading or we aresearching for ideas to express.
The second strategy ismonitoring, so you check
yourself through your process ofreading and writing when you're
effective.
So when you're reading, doeswhat I think I'm reading make

(08:38):
sense?
And when you're writing, doeswhat I'm writing make sense to a
reader?
The third strategy, and finalone, is self-correcting, so
independently fixing errors whensomething doesn't look right,
sound right or make sense.
These strategic operations drawon the same sources of

(08:59):
information, which are meaning.
In reading, we use meaning tounderstand text and in writing,
we compose to convey meaning.
We also have structure, orsyntax, so in reading we use
structure to group wordstogether, and in writing, we
draw on our knowledge of howlanguage sounds and construct
sentences that make sense.
And then we've got that phonicsinformation.

(09:20):
So we use letter- soundpatterns to decode, and in
writing, we use that sameknowledge to encode.
Their research Research suggeststhat teaching children to make
connections between thesestrategic processes, as in
reading and writing, accelerateslearning, particularly for
struggling readers.
We also have shared knowledgethat spans different

(09:43):
developmental stages.
We heard about this in theInteractive Dynamic Literacy
Model from Young- Suk Sook Kimfrom 2020.
Now let's hear about this sameidea from Fitzgerald and
Shanahan from 2000.
Their research revealed thatthe nature of reading-writing
relationships change over time,and they identified six

(10:06):
developmental stages, each withits own critical markers of
knowledge that readers andwriters use.
Stage one is about the literacyroots, focusing on basic
concepts like functions ofreading and writing,
phonological awareness andconcepts of print.
The ages they put on this isbirth to around age six.
Stage two is learning aboutinitial literacy, focusing on

(10:31):
phonics, basic word recognitionand spelling and simple syntax,
and we see this sitting acrosshere in Australia, the
Foundation Year and Year One.
Stage three is aboutconfirmation and fluency, so
emphasising fluency,automaticity and morphology of
big words, so understanding howthey work and being able to read

(10:54):
and write fluently, and sowe're developing this, really
taking that next step in gradestwo and three.
Stage four is reading andwriting for learning, and we've
heard this before we learn toread and then we read to learn.
Now we continue to build on ourreading capacity, but we do it

(11:14):
differently, both for readingand writing in grades four to
eight, because the focus here isnot on the nuts and bolts
foundational skills, but ratheron vocabulary, discourse, level
comprehension, so that'scomprehending of a whole text
and comprehending what otherpeople say, and the building of
subject-specific knowledge to beused for both reading and

(11:37):
writing.
Stage five is about multipleviewpoints and this is where we
get into that year nine andbeyond element, which is about
developing critical thinking,perspective taking and analysis.
And then stage six they'veidentified as construction and
reconstruction, which is in theuniversity ages, where we're

(12:00):
emphasising synthesis,evaluation and worldview
development.
This developmental perspectivehelps explain why the
relationships between readingand writing skills differ at
different grade levels.
And it helps our team tounderstand why they're doing
what they're doing in the earlyyears as opposed to what they're
doing in grades five and six.
For example, correlationsbetween word reading and
spelling are stronger than thosebetween reading comprehension
and written comprehension,likely because higher level

(12:34):
skills draw on a wider array ofknowledge and abilities.
So we know that buildingspelling proficiency improves
reading dramatically, and sowhen we're talking about the
earlier grades, the result ofthat instruction is that we're
going to have a greater outcomebetween the word level reading

(12:55):
and spelling and a greatersynthesis.
But as students get olderthere's the possibility that
those skills and those differinglevels of achievement tend to
widen.
And I think we see this in ourschools when I'm speaking with
Year Three to Six teachers andask which students do you have

(13:15):
who appear to be actually reallyquite strong readers, but their
writing is weak.
They can name them.
So we see this in action in ourclassroom.
This makes sense.
Now the The implications forinstruction here is that the
research is .
clear Even though reading andwriting are not the same thing,
they draw on largely the sameunderlying skills and knowledge,

(13:35):
and this is where thoseimportant implications sit.
So here's some of thoseimplications.
Number one, one we needintegrated instruction because
it's more efficient andeffective than separated
instruction.
It allows students to applyshared knowledge and strategic
processes across the context.

(13:56):
Of course, the sensibleconclusion about this is that it
doesn't tax working memory asmuch when you're sharing the
knowledge to apply to twodifferent areas of skill.
The second implication is aboutexplicit connections.
Now, having those explicitconnections between reading and

(14:18):
writing strengthens bothabilities and accelerates
learning, especially forstruggling readers and writers.
Third, think about thathierarchical skill development.
That means we need to ensurefoundational skills are strong
before expecting high levelperformance in either reading or
writing, regardless of thestudent's age.

(14:40):
If you are teaching olderchildren who do not have strong,
automatic and fluentfoundational skills, it is
unreasonable to expect that theyare going to be able to write
you a really strongmulti-paragraph text.
They can engage in theconversation for sure, but if we
want strong multi-paragraphlevel text from our older

(15:01):
writers and comprehension oflonger text for readers, then we
have to make sure that theyhave all of those lower order
skills and knowledge.
The fourth implication issitting around strategic
processing, which says that thisprocessing should be taught
explicitly both across readingand writing, and this helps

(15:23):
students apply the samecognitive operations in both
contexts and remember that thosestrategies were around
searching, monitoring andself-correcting, and I'll say
that again.
So when we're thinking aboutthe connecting and teaching
children to use those cognitiveprocesses for both reading and

(15:43):
writing, we're talking aboutsearching, monitoring and
self-correcting, and that'simportant across both domains of
reading and writing.
Finally, there are developmentalconsiderations.
A Year Two student is not justa smaller Year Five student.
So we have to be very carefulthat in our ambition for quality

(16:07):
practice we're not pushing downthe content.
We're remembering that fromFoundation to Year Two is still
early childhood and we need tobe sensitive to the type of
instruction that is mostvaluable as students progress
and remember that there aredifferent skills emphasised at
different stages.

(16:27):
So, thinking about how doesthis reflect the overall
development and age of mystudents.
I'm not talking about dumbingdown expectations, just making
sure that the instruction we'reproviding is most suitable for
the students in front of us.
The implications of reading andwriting integration extend
beyond just efficiency.

(16:48):
Graham and Nusrat, in 2023,found that when students write
about text they've read, notonly do they enhance their
comprehension of those texts,but they also improve their
writing skills, and there's moreabout this in the next episode,
which is focused on thepractical elements of
integrating reading and writing.

(17:09):
Similarly, reading instructionleads to improvements in writing
quality.
So there are these reciprocalpositive effects that we see and
, as I said, we'll get into thepracticalities of that in the
next episode.
Here's my closing thoughts fornow.
Integrating reading and writingin all layers of language,
Integrating reading and writingin text, layers of language

(17:30):
that's, words, sentences andtext reflects what research
tells us about the nature ofthese two skills and how we can
maximise learning.
Using rich text as the stimulusfor development, for both
comprehension and writing, andapplying core principles from
cognitive science in ourplanning means that we're

(17:50):
setting students up for success.
This is the focus of everytext-based unit that we write.
This integration isn't units,you'll more, .
and if you use our units.
You'll know that One of theconcerns about what people find
in our text-based units is thatthere's not enough recognising
there.
But actually we're aboutworking smarter, recognizing

(18:13):
that we must support studentcognitive load and provide many
opportunities to revisit contentand practice skills in slightly
increasing levels of complexityso that students can get to By
that multi-paragraph level textin a confident way, by

(18:35):
recognising the sharedfoundations and processes of
reading and writing, we cancreate more efficient and
effective instruction thatbenefits all students.
to implement these researchfindings in your classroom.
I'll share specific strategies,lesson structures and planning
approaches that make integratedreading and writing instruction

(18:56):
both manageable and powerful.
Then, in the following episode,we'll hear from a real-life
teacher about how this is comingto life in their school.
Until then, I hope thisexploration of the research has
given you some food for thought.
Check out the reference list.
It is there for you to accesslist, that it you can do some

(19:17):
follow-up reading of your own,or find the transcript on our
website atjocelynsimaeducationcom.
Take a highlighter and explorethat even jocelynseamereducation
.
com.
Remember, small shifts in ourinstruction can lead to
significant gains for ourstudents, but we need to
understand why we're doing whatwe're doing.
Thank you for listening to thisepisode of the Structured

(19:41):
Literacy Podcast.
I'm really happy to be bringingyou another Research to the
Classroom series and I'm excitedto hear about how you have
implemented some of what you'veheard in your own practice.
Until next week, happy teachingeveryone.
Bye.