90-Using Questioning and Strategy Instruction to Support Upper Elementary Students with Marianne Rice, Kay Wijekumar, and Kacee Lambright

Hi everyone, it's Judy from the literacy view. And guess what? Faith and I need your help. We're looking for marketing help. The literacy view is growing fast and we're ready to bring on the right person to help us scale. If you understand YouTube, email marketing, social media, or education audiences and want to be affiliated with the top 2% podcast, reach out to us at faith and Judy at the literacyview.com. Once again, faith and Judy at the literacyview.com. Hello everyone and welcome to the literacy view. We're going to go deep tonight into comprehension. We have three superstar researchers with us tonight. We already have had Dr. Marianne Rice and Dr. Casey Lambert, a glam bright, excuse me, on with us before. And now we have Kay Wichikumar. And Dr. Wichikumar is the lead. Let me just say she is the chair, the endowed chair of her department at Texas A&M University. And she is a professor in the department of teaching, learning, and culture in the College of Education and Human Development. Dr. Marianne Rice is an academic researcher, educator, and reading specialist at the department of Educational Psychology at Texas A&M. And Dr. Casey Lambert and I screwed up her name before I'm so sorry is a research specialist. And she is also with the teaching, learning, and culture department at Texas A&M University. And we are so honored to have you here. I'm Faith Borkowski with my co-host Judy Boxner. And tonight we're going to talk about an article that just came out in July. So we are always cutting edge breaking news with you. That's what we do best trying to bridge that research to practice gap and call BS when we hear it. So we're not afraid to do that. The article that just came out is entitled Promoting Inference Generation using questioning and strategy instruction to support upper elementary students. And this was in the reading teacher July 2024. And we have our three researchers here with us. And also a fourth researcher Ashley Stack was part of that work as well. So let's start off with a quote from the article. And it says here and it was by Dr. Cain, I'm just going to pull it out, it was in your research. Researchers found that students' inferencing skills are associated with their reading comprehension skills. Having that children with poor inference generation skills often have comprehension difficulties. How true. I mean, Judy and I have been doing this for a long time. I could tell you that I've taught classrooms grades three, four, and five. So I'm very familiar with those upper elementary school students as well as tutored in reading and writing. And inferences always very difficult, but it generally indicates that there is a comprehension difficulty all around the global comprehension problem. So let's talk about that. I see all of you nodding. So let's start with Marianne first because she was nodding a lot. So we'll open it up with Marianne and then we'll move around and we'll hear from all of you. Yeah, absolutely. So we know that inferencing is a big part of what you do when you're comprehending text because authors can't put everything in the text for the reader because otherwise they would be really long and boring to read every little detail that you needed to understand the text. So you have to fill in sort of gaps that the author leaves for you and make sort of conjectures or guesses about what the author might mean. And sometimes they do that on purpose to sort of drum up the suspense about something that might happen later or in a nonfiction text it might just be because they can't put every last piece of information in. So we know that this is really important for students. And one of the things we wanted to sort of explain in this article in syrup is that there's lots of different types of inferences and different strategies that you might need to implement depending on exactly what inference your students might be struggling with because inference has sort of always been thought of as just, oh, will you take something that you know and you put it with the text and you make a guess, which is one piece of inferencing, but it's more than that. And in fact, that article that you referred to and the researchers that you talked about have shown that even when all students have the same background knowledge because it's a made up scenario and made up background knowledge, there are some students who still can't make those inferences even if they have the background knowledge that they need. So it's not just about background knowledge. There is a skill to inferencing that has to be explicitly taught. I love that you mentioned that because I underline that part in the article specifically because there's a lot of BS out there about background knowledge. And we all know it's important, but I thought that was so unbelievable to see that even when kids have the background knowledge that it's still more difficult than when it's text-based. So Casey, let's go to you. So you have a lot of classroom experience and you're really hands on, could you kind of talk a little bit more about what Mary and just started about that background knowledge piece and where it's important and how it's still more difficult even when kids have background knowledge. Absolutely. So I'll start a little bit with in every school that we visit through this work with the Cat Framework. If you ask teachers, what are your students struggling most with? The answer, 95% of the time, they just struggle with inferences. So what came from working on how do we help teachers really understand how to teach inference strategies, but then when we really started to dig into the literature and knowing there are so many different types of inferences, we can define them in different ways. And those are things that there's that research to practice gap there, right? And that's the first information that is I think missing in some of the professional development. So if teachers were more aware of, hey, this is a knowledge-based inference. And here's what this may look like. Here's a strategy you can use for students when they're struggling with knowledge-based inferences or a text-based inference or a bridging. You know, I mean, I think that is a piece that really, until I had the opportunity to dig into the literature and see the differences and how one strategy may not work for teaching a causal inference or a knowledge-based inference, you know, just understanding better. And as we know, teachers are doing such a great job in the classroom doing the best that they can, but this is more information, I think, can really improve that ongoing question of, how do I help my students infer? So, okay, I'm taking this in and I know you wanted to just hang out a little, but we're not letting you just hang out. So I want you to tell us why it is BS that strategy instruction is, you know, supposed to be thought of as, well, you know, you do it, but it's on the sideline of background knowledge. When, in fact, what I'm hearing Mary Ann and Casey say is it's really important to not only teach it, but to know the different types of inference strategies that are out there and how to question based on the types of inference we're looking at, because I could tell you Judy and I know that there is a lot of BS. All right, could you talk about that? You're on fire today. You are on fire. Kaya, are you ready to talk about the BS? I'm ready. And up to the races, you want to call BS. I'm going to go all out here. So a couple of things related to why I got interested in this interesting work was because when my son was in fifth grade, he came home one day and brought a test that he was given. And when we went for the parent teacher conference, the teacher said to me, well, your son has difficulty making inferences. And I said, can you show me an example of this inference that you're talking about? And he turned out that there was an article about a young man who moved to a new town. And in his apartment, the neighbors had a welcome barbecue for the family. And the question was asked, why did Tommy not go out during the barbecue? So the answer choices were that he was anti-social. Two was that he was sick and three was something else and something else. And my son had asthma and he was always advised to stay away from smoky barbecue pets because it always triggered an asthma attack. So he chose that the child was sick and that's why he didn't go out. So that's the inference he made based on his background knowledge. But it turns out that what the teacher was looking for was an answer based on the background knowledge of the person who wrote the passage. Okay. So now that person's inference was that this child was anti-social, completely different things. And actually my son's answer was perfectly legitimate based on his background knowledge. So again, going back to this background knowledge business, I call BS on people who say, oh, you can combine just your background knowledge with what stated in the text and then go forward as if it's your background that matters. And this is what tricks up a lot of the children in this course because these standardized tests that they're taking require the child to place themselves in the role of the person who wrote that question, not their background knowledge. You going to a classroom with 25 kids, they all have 25 different backgrounds. You may be able to give them some general guidance about what they're looking for, but that's not how the questions are framed. So this goes beyond what has been discussed already. And again, I think I'm very keen on having a sort of an organic classroom based conversation where teachers guide the thinking behind these inferences without having a whole sheet of definitions about these things. I'm always afraid of things getting turned into procedural activities. And inference cannot be turned into a procedural activity because of so many unknown factors. In fact, many of these inferences have kind of an overlapping flavor to them. So you've got to balance this. I mean, this is where the teacher's knowledge and the teacher's knowledge of the child is such an important role in actually cementing their skills in a manner that is necessary. We can't turn this into, if it's just a type of inference, go do this. It's just not that clear cut. I love that. I love that. For someone who wanted to hang in the background, man, you're getting a big cheers. I saw Judy holding up that button and I'm agreeing. That was great. Judy, I saw you nodding away. Now, I know you're thinking about your own situation, working in New York City schools, thinking about kids, all different types of background knowledge. Could you see kids making an error like that? I could see it. Kid, it doesn't matter where they live, making that same type of error, thinking about what they're reading from their own perspective rather than the writer's perspective. What are your thoughts on that? Let's take a quick break. Hey, no BS Besties. It's Judy from The Literacy View and we're looking for sponsors. So you know how core value is. We do not want a sponsor that is a curriculum publishing company. We want to stay unbiased, unafraid and unaffiliated. However, we are looking for amazing partners and sponsors that are not curriculum publishing companies. So if you know somebody that would want to partner with The Literacy View, which is now in the top 2% of podcasts in the industry, reach out to faith and Judy at TheLiteracyView.com. Once again, faith and Judy at TheLiteracyView.com. We're looking for sponsors that would appeal to educators, possibly make our lives easier, make sure hacks, teach or travel, the world of possibilities is wide open. So if you're interested in sponsoring or partnering with The Literacy View, contact us at faith and Judy at TheLiteracyView.com. Faith and Judy at TheLiteracyView.com. We want sponsors that would definitely appeal to our target audience and make our lives better. Well, so all of this is so interesting to me. So I work a lot with the K2 bracket. So it's really important for kids to start working on these things when they're young so that this becomes easier for them as they get to third grade, fourth grade and fifth grade. We can't just wait till kids crack the code. Want to talk about the difference between looking at inference strategies when it's text space versus knowledge space. Some people out there will not understand the difference. So if maybe one of you could define what that means and then we could discuss that. Who would like to jump in and start? I'll jump in and start. The idea is really helping, you know, there isn't one, like K mentioned, one way that we've figured out is the perfect way to classify inferences. So it's more about helping teachers understand that there are a lot of things that are actually that actually require students to make inferences when they're reading. And so understanding that there's some differences there, but that we don't focus just on one type of inference, leaving students to figure out how to make these other type of inferences without being explicitly taught how to do so. So text based inferences are ones where students have all the information that they might need in the text to answer a question or to come to a conclusion, but they're spread out throughout the text or they have to put the pieces of the information together to come to the conclusion that I need to draw. So it doesn't require your own background knowledge, but it's still not explicitly stated into the text or still having to put some pieces together in a logical fashion to come to a conclusion. Whereas a knowledge based inference, there is some piece of information that you have to bring to the question or to the text to understand it. It is nowhere in the text, right? The author doesn't put it anywhere in there, so there is some piece of knowledge that you're going to have to have in order to understand the text. Whereas the text base, it's all there, but you got to find it and put it together, right? And so researchers shown that those text based inferences are a little bit easier for students as you might expect because the information is there. Whereas the knowledge base, we have to consider what the students know and do they have the knowledge needed in order to do that and then show them how to activate that knowledge. Bring it to the text. Is that the right knowledge that I need to answer this question? All those complicated things that Kay was mentioning that her son was trying to navigate, right? So text base is a little easier. So we put in the article that help teachers understand if you have students who are struggling with inferencing in particular, starting with those text base inferences, starts putting those pieces together for them. Like, how do I do this? How do I draw these conclusions where you can show them everything in the text before moving onto those knowledge based inferences that are much more complicated, right? So, you know, as a teacher, I would always tell kids that you're a detective with inference. And so the more information you have, the easier it is to answer an inference question when you have very little information that you're absorbing, it's hard to answer an inference question. So, Casey, could you maybe tell us a little bit about how this is done? So what would be a strategy for knowledge based versus text based? Well, wow. Let's do both. Yay. Yes. And you guys jump in. So really quickly before you jump into that, I think it's also important to know that in a textbook analysis, we found that two thirds of the texts are written as narrative, right? And then one third is the expository. And then if you think about students generally struggle most with making meaning of expository text because of the lack of background knowledge or potentially a lack of background knowledge. So in that way, knowing that the textbooks are organized in such a way that they're going to be more familiar or have more exposure to the narrative text, one of those strategies we can think about is providing a variety of genres. So students have the opportunity to be asked questions to think through what's happening in the text. And how can I use some of the knowledge from those expository texts? If the text book's not offering as many texts or passages, then how can a teacher adapt by adding in additional expository texts or just a variety of genres would be one of the strategies that we mentioned in the article that being really first and foremost students named a variety of genres and then what we're seeing is that's not necessarily the case in some of the textbooks. I also wanted to point out really quickly too in looking and you might have seen this in the article, but it's fascinating to really grasp that 50 to 90% of the questions on reading comprehension assessment are and princess. So what do we do? Are we our students with this skill in the ability to think through and use the strategies to understand what's going on in this expository passage? How do I make meeting? And of course, I would say the best way is to start with thinking about the text structure, right? If we help students find that underlying text structure, whatever passage they're reading, be that narrative or expository, then we have an opportunity to help students find, okay, well, there was a problem in there, which then leads to why was that a problem? We can use text-based, we can also use knowledge-based inferences once we've identified that text structure. So I'm listening to this and I can help with thing that years ago when I was a class from teacher, we used to gather books together based on a theme. And this was a very popular way to teach in the whole language years. And that was a positive. That was one of the positives of whole language, but of course, we threw the baby out with the bath water. But I remember working in the curriculum office gathering books together for a particular theme. So if it was February and it was, you know, Chinese New Year, we were getting fairy tales, folktales related to this and then nonfiction books paired with fiction books. And you know, and they got the vocabulary. And that's what I want to talk about now in your article. You talked about context cues and that's really influencing for vocabulary. Okay, could you talk a little bit about that? The importance of using the context, which is really inference to build vocabulary. Yeah, and all three of us frequently discussed how for varying degrees of background knowledge that children bring in just about anything could actually become an inference also. So a child has very little background and they don't see these kind of pad passages that you were describing and get multiple experiences of using the same vocabulary word in different contexts or, you know, seeing all those applications of that vocabulary. Then for children without that background, it becomes very difficult to actually comprehend because they can't make the inference about what that means in that context. So if you talk about, you know, giving a child who's a bilingual child and give them a passage that says there was a patient patient in the doctor's waiting room, there's going to be major confusion with them wondering what the heck is going on here. The word patient is being used twice with completely different meanings and requires inferences for the one term and another term all within the same context. So going back to what you brought up, the way we approached the cap framework which you already heard about and the inference thing is to actually highly encourage the use of multiple text pad passages. For example, we have a science passage about roller coasters and we pair that with a poem about roller coasters so that we build familiarity for the child on the terminology that's very unfamiliar to them. Potential kinetic energy is something that's not familiar to them. It's not in their regular days' lingual. But by seeing it in a poem and then seeing it in their science context. So going back to the inference again, depending on the various backgrounds that the children bring, you have to have the ability to understand what that word means in that context. And it's a very important thing. So within the cat framework and the instruction we provide, we do pre-teach specific vocabulary words for that very reason. So that if you give them synonyms, antonyms and usage in the context, then when they come across it, it is no longer a pure inference. They're at least somewhat familiar with it and they can actually build on it. And overall, I think that the suggestions that have been made between Mary Ann, Casey and both of you fits perfectly with what we intend to do. It's fascinating. I mean, I love what you're doing in Texas A&M. We just to mention to our audience, we had an episode with Casey and Mary Ann about main idea and the meta-analysis on inference. And so we're going to post that episode in the show notes so that people could go back and go a little bit deeper into this subject. Judy, what are some of your thoughts? Questions, concerns, any comments about what you've been hearing and how it might apply to the work that you're doing? So I just want to once again give Kay a shout out. Your examples are just so on point. It shows that you really have experience working with kids. You're not just talking about research from a research standpoint. It's so practical and just makes so much sense. And I appreciate you also giving that lens to how this could affect our English language learners because in the schools that I support, we have many kids that are really poor. We have many kids that English is not their first language. So I think that's such an important concept of puzzle as well. I think that what's really hard for me is that I think that a lot of teachers don't realize how hard inferencing is for so many kids. And I think what's concerning me a little bit is that there's such a heavy focus right now on teaching kids how to track the code in schools. And I saw that especially in one classroom that there were many kids that they did great on their screeners in the area of being able to decode, but those very same kids underperformed in the area of comprehension. And I knew that because I looked at the screeners of where they were using the cadients, where they should have been, and where they landed. And that shows me that I think as a nation, we still have a lot of work to do in reading comprehension and the other pillars of instruction. I think that so many people are right now, you know, taking what they're learning about the science of reading and applying it to phonemic awareness, phonics, maybe to fluency. But I think that equal amount of attention needs to be given to the pillar of comprehension and vocabulary because the goal of reading is to be able to abstract meaning, right, and to understand. And I think that for a long time in the balance literacy days, which I was a big part of, because when I was teaching that, you know, the model that was being followed, I think we always knew what the word inference was. We always used it, but I don't think we taught it that well. I think we just always asked a variety of questions. And once we said, okay, this is a literal question. This is an inferential question. This is maybe a text to self-connection. We thought we were done. But I think the really important piece of what, you know, I saw in this article, and I love that as researchers, you've thought about us teachers because I am still a teacher in the field, you broke it down to a little bit deeper as to what does that mean for me as a classroom teacher. What does that mean to me as an instructor? How do I take this information and bridge that gap of learning? And I don't think that that's an area that a lot of people are feeling as successful as they may want to be, especially in the K2 breath it as well, right? There's such a heavy emphasis on these things in three to five. Why? Because we've got to take that state test. We've got to take that state test. We're going to do this. We're going to book, you know, any of that might look differently in K2, right? It's attacking the code, but are we still doing those read alouds? Are we still doing, I really like how the article mentioned those think of louds and modeling? What the article didn't touch on that much is what does the width portion in the gradual release look like in showing how to do these things in terms of inferencing? There was a lot about modeling, but what would that look like in the width or we do portion of a lesson if anybody could give me some practical info? Yeah, I'll jump in. We know that for inferencing, like you said, the modeling piece is key and it's something that has been in some ways and some of that is just, as you said, time sometimes and where the focus is, but a lot of these strategies that we mentioned are perfectly appropriate in the K2 space if you're doing a read aloud, right? You could still stop and model your thinking about these questions. When you're trying to release that back to the student, some of that might be for the keyword piece in there, you might have highlighted some things in the text for the student that you know they're going to need. You start with that and so you're like, "Okay, here's the inference question you're going to answer," and you've highlighted those key pieces. Then you seek in the student, go find those and put those together themselves. You're still helping them a little bit. You're still scaffolding, reminding them to use those keywords by highlighting or underlining code words that they're going to need those keywords in there. That's one way to do that, gradually release. Then as they get better at that, then you stop doing that piece. They do it all in there and they go find the keywords themselves and put it together. For the graphic organizer, you might have pieces of it filled in. You might go and fill in the part with the text clues for them. Pull out that important information and then have them write their own background knowledge piece. A big piece of that is then when they make that inference. This is a piece people don't tell us kids like K-Sun don't make wrong inferences but they don't maybe make the best inference or the inference that they're looking for. We have to teach them why that is and how inferences can look different. Then showing them, "Oh, you activated this background knowledge, but there's other knowledge that would also be really important in talking through that. Give them the chance to see what are they going to activate and then scaffold. Here's some other information that you need that would also help you make this inference." Those help, Judy. I think that helps, but I think the struggle in a lot of situations is, even with those graphic organizers, right? Principles get very attached, very often to products. So kids writing is a more complex skill than being able to verbalize something for some kids. Now there's this new level of pressure. Are we expecting kids to be able to verbalize their thinking for the inference or what the inference is or will we now also expect them to be able to write that down? That's a very different thing for a lot of kids or do we just differentiate and say, "Oh, for the kids that can go do it, but for the kids that can just articulate it." I think that there's this overattachment to artifacts in schools and being able to show that the graduate release and the independent produces a product. How do we memorialize that for kids that are still trying to track the code? Yeah, I think with your younger students or writing, you know that writing it down is going to add an extra layer that's going to take that focus away from the deep thinking that we want them to do with inferencing, that you can take that piece off. So they're talking about it with a neighbor. You're writing it on the board for them in ways in a small group or that kind of thing. Take that piece off if the writing is too difficult and it's going to cause them to lose their train of thought or lessen their thoughts because they don't want to write all those thoughts down. We certainly don't want writing to become a hindrance to the thinking for students. You do have to differentiate. That's where what you might do in third grade might look very different than fifth grade. It's a spectrum. We were trying to hit a variety of grade levels, but I used to do this when I taught kindergarten too. And we would just do it on the board together and just trying to get those ideas and show them the thinking that is behind this and that we're not just, you know, reading words on the page to read words on the page. We're trying to understand this text and think deeply about the text. And like you said, sometimes we use those terms like make connections or make predictions. All of those are inferences. Right. So let's call them what they are. They're all inferences. None of that information is in the text. Students when they're making predictions, making connections, they're making inferences. Right. And I just want to say, listening to you, I think that often teachers are assuming that kids are just able to just piece this all together and you don't really need that explicit instruction to be able to do this. That if you have enough knowledge, they'll be able to make those inferences and draw conclusions without any scaffolding, which is mentioned in the article, "K, I cut you off. I'm very sorry. What are you going to say?" Yeah. You better be careful, Faith. She might pull BS on you for cutting a roll out. No, actually, I was going to extend what you brought up. Or you know, I'm very much in favor of these pad passages having children. So when you talk about this, you know, I do, we do, you do kind of situation, your transfer responsibility back to the child. A perfect place is to have those graphic organizers, the way Mary Anne described, and have that filled out for one type of story. And you read a second one the next day or something like that, and allow the children to make it themselves, you know, so that you're actually allowing that child to practice that strategy, that logic that was applied in the previous example with the teacher modeling it now for the student to also practice that. And of course, it's a little tricky business to find things that are called low road transfer, right? Things that are very similar to the first passage you read so that the child is just applying the strategy. A high road transfer is when you pick up something that's much more complicated and, you know, allow the child to really rise to the challenge. So there are different degrees of gradual release, and teachers should be fully aware of it, and they're really prepared to deliver that. And also because I mean, you might have a child who's pretty advanced, who could go for that high road transfer, but you also need to make sure that all the children have the ability to practice that with a very similar sounding passage. And you know, the nice thing about the new. Hey, can I ask you a question? Can I ask you a question? When you say a similar type of passage, would you say it would have to be on the same topic if we were getting practice on it or. Or it could be a different topic. It could be a different topic, but when you take a narrative text, which is very popular in schools, you could find another similar story. And what I was going to. They also is that with the new large language models like Chagy PT, you could actually feed it one passage or a story. And I ask you to produce something very similar for you to allow the child to actually practice with independent practice, so to speak. So I mean, we have some really, really nice innovations that are coming down the pike that will actually make life easy for the teachers to do exactly what Julie brought up. Interesting. You know, I think practice, I heard you say that word many times. And I think that that's the key in everything. I don't care which pillar we're talking about. Practice, practice, practice. That's. We're not giving kids enough practice, and we're just kind of exposing them almost like just spray painting quickly and not really going deep enough into that practice point. So I want to get back to Casey, because she was quiet for a little while. And I want to hear from Casey about the difference between coherence versus elaborative. So that was something that was mentioned in the article. Could you explain what that means in terms of inference, what the difference is, and how teachers can use that knowledge? Yeah, absolutely. So coherence being those where, let's say, faith got a new toy. She really loves that toy or that car, right? So then I'm using pronouns there to hopefully make that connection. So that's helping me to understand the text, right? What is it in that text and am I picking those things up or if I say got a new toy and then I say a car, am I able to make that connection so that is coherent for the reader? And in that elaborative piece, those inferences, right, those are conclusions that readers make by adding in their background knowledge. So we might make an inference, or let's say that we use the cap framework to identify the text structure. We've just said that it's a problem solution text structure. So as I'm thinking about that, if Cinderella had a problem, what was her solution, her fairy godmother, right? So then I'm kind of thinking, what's the theme? Is I've developed what I know is the main idea here and that she did have a problem, then I can elaborate and think of those elaborative inferences by connecting, why did the author share the story of Cinderella? What is the theme of Cinderella? Extending just a little further. And then of course that opportunity to pull in background knowledge. So hopefully that helps. Yeah. So what I think we want to get here is that there are different layers of inference and some types of questions are easier and it's based on the type of text as well as the type of questions you're asking. Is that correct? That is correct. So the easier one would be text-based and coherence. The harder types of questions would be elaborative with knowledge-based. So that's something for teachers to think about that I don't think many teachers will separate the two. I kind of put it into the category of inference. Yeah. I think that is kind of when I first started speaking about what do I hear when we walk into schools? What are your students struggling with? And that's where I think this can be such a powerful tool for teachers to really break apart. Okay. When I'm having conversations with students, when I'm thinking aloud while I'm reading, if I am aware that students are struggling with those knowledge-based inferences or coherence, maybe not so much. But if I'm thinking about the elaborative inferences, what are some things I can be very intentional about in my conversations with students? I think for me, that just opens up opportunities to really be intentional about the conversation. Yeah. I'll jump over with just an example that I like because I'm also an early literacy person like G.B. Right? So if you think about a kid who's struggling with segmenting a CBC word, right? They're really sure you're going to go back and say, well, can they segment just the first initial sound? Right? And they do that piece. Can they segment the final sound, right? And then the middle, and then we can segment all three sounds, right? If we're trying to work on that Phenemicornis. With inferencing, it's just been this broad category. And so helping students think about where what students can do and that there is a bit of a process with this. Some of these have been shown in research to be easier for students than others. So go back. Do I need to work on some of those real tech space coherence inferences first? Okay. No. So we'll move on to some of the more elaborate understanding sort of a progression there can help teachers know where to jump in with students as well. So K, in the article, it mentioned that we have to also teach students to question, not just that teachers are asking the questions, but we have to teach students how to question and use this type of thinking and model the thinking of asking questions. What is your experience in terms of are students able to do that? Well, it's like how hard is it to get students to ask the right questions? They could ask questions, but really to get them on the track of asking the right questions. Yeah. So I'm going to give you a short answer and maybe a little bit longer answer. The short answer is I'm not a fan of some of the, I call BS on some of the strategies out there that say, you know, write down what you want to know and write down what you, like these kinds of things are so vague that children just keep parroting what their friends say. So it's not a very powerful, generative learning activity. Whereas if you use our cat framework, it actually provides some raw materials on which to build on. So that, for example, you take the Cinderella example instead of just saying, you know, what do you want to know? What do you think is going to come? Instead, you said, well, you see there's a problem there. Can you find out what caused the problem? And so you give them some very concrete ways to actually reach into those questions. So that same technique can be applied. And I know that we have quite a few teachers who have expressed how powerful it is when you teach that texture, actually based causal, influencing those kind of, influencing chain. So to speak, causal chain. It actually allows many different children in the classroom to come up with their own perspectives and questions related to that. And I think you need to give them some background and one of the backgrounds that works and effective is to provide that causal, influencing on the problem and solution. Now the slightly longer answer to that question, though, also relates to the fact that if you, you must give children opportunities to practice, practice, practice. And that means you provide multiple. So you read one story on Monday, you read another story on Wednesday, maybe on Friday, you do multiple, influencing activity related to both the stories. And you can compare and contrast and now build further, elaborate of influences based on what you came up with the two of them. And so you're basically building and practicing at the same time, which is a powerful technique. And so I want to emphasize that people who want to do these things should not just cycle through a whole bunch of, you know, influences. That is not an ideal situation. Each child needs the time to really sink into this and learn and apply that in multiple passages and build on it. I also want to say one last thing, so something that was brought up earlier. We use, it's a bit too spider, the little poem as an example as a kindergarten first grade second grade. You can make so many influences with that. Children who are, you know, three, four years old, I can show them how to make an inference without even calling it an inference. I know I do it all the time. And children are most, most ready to understand the causal reasoning behind a lot of things. So I tell people all the time that if you're driving a child somewhere, they're always asking you why questions? Why are we going to grammar sounds? Why are we going to the, why can't I have I spin for dinner? And all those why questions end up with because answers. So that causal relationships they know, but somehow many of our state standards actually unlearn it by forcing kids to put in sequence something when in fact they really can apply their causal inference for their knowledge extensions, you know, their elaborations, their questions. They can actually rely on that. Tell us about the atsypizzy spider. When I read it to you, carry that out. You know, again, I understand and I'm thinking, yeah, that makes sense. But there are people listening who might be asking that question saying, what does she mean? What would she do with the atsypizzy spider? Right. So first I always say, okay, we read the atsypizzy spider. And then I said, the kids, so what happened to the spider? Oh, yeah, I got washed out. Why did the spider get washed out? Oh, it's because of the rain. Or how did the spider get back up again? Or the sun came up and dry. So let's talk about when you run out in the rain. Why? What happens to you? Also, you get wet too. How do you dry out? Or your mum brings you a towel? Okay. So we have this way of connecting them, their life to the atsypizzy spider's behavior. And then you can make inferences. So what happens if you go out in the rain? You are going to get wet. You're not going to, you're not hanging out in the, you know, the spot, but you will still get wet. So you can make inferences. You can build on those things. And so we find that to be a very powerful example that works for a little child, even a third or fourth grader, because they've never thought of it like that. Judy, I could see you running with this in December with your, you know, K1 and 2 kids. And that's such a great example that K gave. I mean, you could be taking all these popular little nursery rhymes and stories and doing something just like that. What are your thoughts? I hope that's definitely true. I mean, some of my go-to favorites for kids that practical or are in first and second grade, I've been having a lot of success with ASAPs, they've been really, really fun to work on things like theme and so forth. And like sometimes I'll cover the theme that's on the bottom of the book and then we'll read it together and we'll both do the process and then we'll do a reveal to see if we got the theme and so forth. I think some of the difficulty that might come into play and I'm hoping you guys can give us some solutions. So a lot of schools are adopting different programs. And many of the programs jump to a different skill or standard every single day. So how do teachers tackle that and you know, like all these programs or curriculums or whatever those programs, they're actually programs and a school's job is to create a better curriculum. I've one of that from the literacy view, Mourin Ruby. But how do we tackle that? Because a lot of these programs in the field, today you're doing theme tomorrow, you're doing authors purpose, then the next day you're doing problem and solution. And this is what the teachers have to deal with. Where is that? Yes. Really? So what do we do? But that's what we're being pleased doing that again because it was a little bit unclear. Casey, say that again, please. I said hit the bullshit button. That's the thing. Right. Yes. But what do we do? That's what we're told we need to do. We need to be rule followers. And 99% of teachers are rules. We are afraid to not follow what we're told to do. We get a pacing calendar. I actually make the pacing calendar for some time. And that's what's on the pacing calendar. And then kids are a set on things that they haven't practice so many times. And now we're looking for mastery. But these are the companies that everybody's saying this is science of reading. We're moving in this direction. This is going to fix all of the problems in the world. It won't, right? What do I do? I think that is such a great common duty. Boxner, you're getting a cheers for that. I guess that makes up for the technical difficulties earlier on. And then we're going to have a conversation with the students. And I'll tell you. No, what? Yeah, I just want to jump in. There's one thing that I did this summer. I'll be, I'm going to say it proudly on the air. So for foundations and so forth, the phonics, I made a scope and sequence for the whole year. I actually did not do the whole year for the knowledge building, comprehension portion. I only went to October because I will be damned if I just go with the flow and not listen to the input from my teachers. Not look at the data that's coming down the pipeline. Not seeing what kids are struggling with. Not seeing what kids need more practice with. So guess what? You only have curriculum maps till October 31st. I'm going to wait and see what the data is telling us. Well, I will go further in encouraging you to take a look at the way we frame it. Mainly because the way these textbooks are operating. They take every state standard and then they slice it up into small units. And then there's a spiral through them in a very arbitrary manner. Right? So they try to get equal parts of everything so that they can tell you that they have checked off the boxes on your state standards. Checking off the boxes does not mean your child has mastered it. And further, by equally emphasizing author's purpose and a main idea. What you're doing is massive destruction to comprehension. All this purpose is a nice to have skill. Nobody goes into the bookstore and picks up a book and says, I wonder why the author wrote this book. They want to know what the book is about, which is your main idea. And so if you don't do the main idea with every passage that you read every single day. You are destroying comprehension because it is one of the foundational pillars of comprehension. Wow. Wow. Okay. Look at you. Faith, I think you found the no BS. I was just going to say that. Okay. Okay. No BS. Holy moly. Yeah. No. I knew you were going to like. She's a no BS. Yeah. She was not afraid of. But part of the problem is honest. People think so much about the state tests when they're thinking about what they're teaching kids. And they just tried and mimic what kind of questions are going to be on the state test. Rather than doing exactly what Kay said, focusing on what's really a priority for kids in their real life. With this approach, what you end up doing is your front load these essential pillars, the main idea extending it to a summary making inferences. Those three are essential pillars. Then you leverage that for authors purpose, a character traits, genres, theme, what's the moral of the story. So those are the extensions to that foundation that you lay up front. And so the bottom line with we've done multiple textbook reviews and highlighted this very arbitrary thing. You know, the spiraling of these skills, which does not work has never worked. So why even buy a new textbook that's going to follow that same pattern. I don't. And on the flip side, when we front load those essential pillars of comprehension, we are getting transformational success for children. 100% pass rates, what's special education students, regular education students, English learners, dyslexic children. And why are we doing that? It's because of the way we are teaching for comprehension, the item that you brought up early. We fluency does not imply comprehension decoding does not imply comprehension. Those are essential prerequisites, but it doesn't mean that you read it as fast as possible. And you're going to get something out of it. Bam, bam, and that's, that's what we need to hear. I am so happy to get the three of you together because this is not the message that people are getting. You know, I know you know that we've had Dr. Leslie Laudon. And she can uses the same expression front loading what comes first. What do you foreground? What's in the background? We have it backwards. And on social media, Leslie was being shot down because there are a group. And really, there are many people out there. I don't want to lump them all together, but there are many people out there who have special interest in keeping a certain narrative going. I know you know what I'm talking about. I see Mary and not in Mary and jump in. Three heads nodding and they're not wide in face. Yeah, you know, we, you know, there's there's no perfect program. There's no perfect textbook out there. And we know that a lot of times these big companies get to have a lot of say in what happens in education. And you know, educator preparation programs are we're doing our very best to try to prepare teachers, but a lot of them are are then going out into schools and being given these materials and like Judy pointed out teachers are typically people who did really well in school, which meant they're real followers, right. They went into teaching because they like to be in school and they're out of you like being in school, you're a real follower. You follow all these rules. So they do what they're told, even if we're trying to do this. So we really do need to try to help teachers understand like and the thing I love about what K and Casey view in the schools is you don't have to throw the textbook out because there's a lot of great passages and then you just have to reframe how you approach the comprehension piece of those passages. So you're just going to do a few front loading teach students how to read the passages write the identify the texture write the main idea, write the summary, make the imprances once they can do that then you can teach them authors purpose, then you can teach them theme and those things make so much more sense. If every passage you read by the time you finish it, you already know the main idea of that passage. How do you deal with the author's purpose if you don't even know what the passage was about. Okay, what's crazy to me is how people kind of said that main idea, you know, those silly main idea questions. I mean, I can't believe when I read this that people say this and people agree with that because read something and not constantly want to get the main idea every paragraph you are trying to get the just the very paragraph until you come up with the big main idea of what you just read. That's how you study world is this happening it I'm losing my mind. I see that people are saying lady, ladies, do you have a margarita or like a bloody bearing for my co host. I think she needs a little something despite that per night. No, I can say you know, sometimes I'm just shaking my head saying like what what planet is this it we've gone in such a different direction. I mean, I think just because my duty said we're talking about science of reading science of reading evidence based we're assuming that the textbooks are evidence based. And yet these types of things are being said everywhere on on literacy podcasts and people are cheering about that, you know, I just don't understand that kind of thinking and yet it's all over the place. I want to just bring up to our audience that we recently had an episode with Dr. Leslie Laud and Nate Joseph about writing and comprehension and just the things that Mary Ann and Casey and K were just talking about. I feel like this is like a layering effect you should go back and watch or listen to that episode as well because the same things were being said. And the same misinterpretations were being made so I would recommend that one last question I have for all of you is and it's something that Judy brought up. And I think that the kids who did not crack the code they're in these upper elementary school grades. They did not crack the code and they're given these passages and their actual word reading is not adequate. So we begin with those upper elementary kids and how do you balance the teaching between the two because I think there are a lot of upper elementary teachers who are struggling with kids who, you know, cannot really get through the reading. And I think that's a great way to get through the learning. Some of them feel they don't have the endurance to get through it. Could you talk a little bit about that? I'll jump in. So, you know, you do have to find a balance. We don't want to not just skip that they would ever break the code and that they're going to be, you know, that's just the way it is. So we definitely have to find a balance, but just like in kindergarten, we don't only focus on breaking the code in first grade only we still have to teach comprehension the same is true. And so if you have a student who is struggling to read the words, you still want to teach these skills on grade level complex texts for them. And so there's several ways you can do that with having things will read the text to them so that it becomes a listening comprehension activity until they're able to read more of the words on the page partner reading so listening to a partner read it to them. There are ways to still teach the complex texts and have them do the comprehension skills practice the comprehension skills on grade level complex, so we're not skipping that piece of it while we're also working on going back and reteaching decoding skills that they did not get in earlier grade levels. And I just think it's probably triage in some school districts like where do we begin, you know, it's so overwhelming when you have so many kids who can't read the words and you're trying to teach from grade level text and it's just, you know, very difficult for teachers today. And so I think it's really hard to read those same difficulties when I taught in those grades. So Judy, any last thoughts before we wrap up any questions, any concerns, what's happening. Yeah, I had a lot, I had a lot of faith. I know we're wrapping up, but one thing was I thought was how do we continue to level the playing field because like, you know, not everybody's knowledge building experiences are the same. And I think it's very very for everybody, depending on where they live, their socioeconomic status and so forth. The other one that I noticed was a comment, I noticed that you guys said that expository text is very important is something we have to focus on that inferencing doesn't happen as easy on those type of text. So that's something I'm going to take away from today. What else, what else the cat method I definitely want to get back into that I know we talked about that a little bit a lot in the other episode. And I think that that might be a great refresher for some of our teachers that may have not listened to that episode to just revisit for a second. And then my last thought hold those publishers accountable we have to start holding them accountable and they need to start listening more to the teachers in the field that they especially need to listen more to people like Mary and to people like Casey to people like K. What are you doing? Why are you doing it? And then the last last thing is I noticed that you guys use two different words that should be focused on when kids are working on these skills and it wasn't who and what what were those two keywords in those are the ones they take away how and why. And don't be vague about saying well ask about the important part of the text because what is the important part of the text so starting with that texture so if it's a cause problem solution the important parts are the cause the problem in the solution your main idea tells you that or if it's a cause and affect the important parts are the cause and the effect those causal relationships. So you have to teach students the important ideas if they're going to ask questions about the text which is the text structure. But again going back to just in the read aloud in the conversations you're having with students when I'm modeling my thinking and I ask I wonder why Cinderella is crying I wonder why her stepsisters are so mean to her right why why why I'm just continually modeling my thinking which then. Results and hopefully students making those connections and those inferences right lots of modeling lots of questioning that is intentionally going to lead to how do I understand how to author organize the text and how can I use that to make those really important connections. So you know in listening to this and wanting to tie it up I just you know Judy asked about the publishers being accountable for what I heard from K and what I remember Leslie saying is well is that this work could be done no matter what program you have that this these are strategies that could be applied to. Any text book any program that's given I think the key is to make the schools aware that whatever you have this has to be the important part not just going by the questions that the textbooks give you that they have to have enough understanding that you don't have to take the questions from the textbook. That you need to not just slice and dice but do it the right way is that K is am I saying this the right way I hope I am absolutely the intentionality plays a huge part and educating the teachers and the administrators on making sure that these foundations are handled is the key to unlocking this mystery that we call comprehension. Because if you actually just follow their scope and sequence you will wind up exactly the same way place you will last year and the year before and the year before and I always give this example to doing PD if I ask you what's the recipe for a pound cake and you tell me you need some flower butter sugar eggs and salt you haven't told me how much of each of those you need right so I just go ahead and buy a pound of butter a pound of salt a pound of sugar a pound of eggs and a pound of baking soda. Because I think you know it's a pound cake after all and you didn't tell me how much it was so I put it all in the thing and I stir it up and I bake it you'll get a hockey puck. So what these people have done is taken the door stage and completely messed it up so we know that the state standards are correct we know they need to know artists purpose character traits main ideas, summaries, inferences, all these things we know that and those are all correct. What they're doing to you through the scope and sequence is to give you the wrong dosage and therein lies the biggest problem and if you don't take charge of the dosage you'll be overdosing on artist purpose and under dosing on main ideas and that's what we have on new BSS new no BSS bestie. Wow. Okay that was awesome. I'm glad you've been all afraid of life. How did Japan not cross before? I think it's good. K says the things that we're all thinking right. The reality is in every professional development session we have a PD tomorrow in every session. K says the things we all feel the wonder about like yes thank you. Just for two seconds can you give the viewers that may have not seen the last episode of quick quick quick quick synopsis of the cat. Absolutely. So the knowledge acquisition and transformation framework is built so that students can get the gist of the text by the teacher introducing the text in a way that hints at the structure. So again that intentionality then pre teaching the vocabulary that may hinder comprehension from there reading the text while inviting students to the comprehension detective think about how the author organized this text after reading the whole text without segmenting little chunks and reading the full text. Then I'm going to work say so what's there a problem in that story was the problem solved in that's going to lead into a conversation about the text structure. Maybe it's a cause and effect it wasn't the problem wasn't solved so we have a cause and effect from there I use those simple sentence stems the problem is the solution is or the cause is the problem is the solution is or the cause is and the effect is and I've just built a main idea in three minutes or less from there I take that main idea that I just wrote using those sentence stems I'm going to extend adding some text evidence. Next evidence to the cause and text evidence to the effect that directly connect back to those pieces now I've built a really nice beautiful summary with information that helps me the reader organize my thinking and then from there I can take that now that I know I have a main idea on summary I knew the gist of the text I can answer a multitude of inference questions by leveraging that main idea and summary to answer those inference questions and there it is in its episode 69 I was looking at it earlier please go back and check it out and reach out we are definitely hosting it in the show notes I encourage everyone to go back to the news. People want to go further on this journey and learn more I know that you guys offered some opportunities to our viewers last time what do we do tomorrow a teacher wakes up they drink the rice coffee and then they want to dig deeper what's their next step. Please visit our website at it dot literacy dot I owe where you will find an amazing interview with K and as she's introducing this powerful reading comprehension strategy it is in the show notes I believe from our earlier visit to the literacy view so that's there we welcome you reach out let us know how we can help. I also want to call attention to the fact that the video that I recently produced directly calls the graphs and charts that showcase where children are struggling the most with their comprehension related to main ideas and summaries and inferences so we provide the data that has been published in the journal dyslexia in the general reading and writing we have gone through and done these textbook analysis that have been published repeatedly so you can see how we have summarized our findings and it tells you the actual data behind the statements that we're making it's very important to us to back up our statements with actual evidence and that we have on our website. And on the literacy dot I owe website down if you scroll down there's a link to a move M O O V which is a free online professional development to learn all about the cat strategy how to implement this in your classroom and once you complete it you get access to a whole host of resources that these lovely ladies have created that will help you implement with whatever textbooks or text passages you use in your classroom. We have over 5,500 resources mostly created by people like Dr. Lambrite and a whole team of staff and there are what we call cat lesson guides for whole series of textbooks out there because we don't tell people not to use the textbook we show them how to leverage those textbooks using the cat framework. Well i'm going to take that training I really am i'm going to take it with you yes we're going to do it take the training duty and then i'm going to grab my cowboy hat because i've been to Texas. You need to get a cowboy hat we're going to go for some barbecue with Marion and Casey and K and we're going to have a good time because I think we need to go to Texas and we have a person because i'm liking everything I hear and this would be one thing in good time. And when you experience the success of using that cat framework your joy is going to be you know multiplied 100 fold. Total game changer i'm going to do it i'm going to see it and i've been in education 38 years and i'm always learning and you know everything that you say i. Pretty i feel I do do and I understand this but I want to go deeper I want to understand this the way you are describing it so that I could share this with others this sounds great. And I think i need to professionally go deeper because i've been so in love with the foundational skill pillars i'm like obsessed with my phonemic awareness obsessed with my phonics obsessed with my phrasing and fluency and you know i want to get. And I want to get better at teaching comprehension not just throwing questions all over the place i want to show that metacognition and the whole process and we're going to wrap up wrap up our show but before we wrap up i have some quick tiny questions ladies quick answers favorite hop and one word answer go okay. God man casey listening to books on audible Mary and i'm hiking right now i moved to the tenet the hill so loving getting out in the mountains here okay next quick question one word answers your favorite Texas food go okay. Baylor University a food food favorite Texas food i don't know barbacute do you like barbacute i'm a vegetarian. See faith you made you made an inference which was incorrect right i'm thinking Texas barbacute it's true i'm so happy. All right Casey what's your favorite Texas food salsa keso and chips. Texas all the way talk of yeah. Thank you ladies for being here this is a woman power episode five powerful passionate women together i love that follow us on the literacy view dot com also please join our Facebook group the literacy view real teachers letting loose subscribe subscribe subscribe to our YouTube channel the literacy view follow us. On Instagram the literacy view follow faith in i on Twitter keep keep keep telling your friends about us that's the biggest compliment share our episodes and researchers we love you you know where to find us keep coming here also new additions to our website if you love what we're doing at the literacy view please donate to our show so we could keep doing this great content without being bought by publishers which we do not want to do so. 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