Making Reading a Social Experience | Know Better, Do Better

[MUSIC] What most of us do for our nieces, nephews, children, grandchildren, neighbors, kids we babysit, we read aloud to them in interactive ways. We let them ask questions and talk. Some people read aloud in utero. Most people read aloud to their infants when they're just developing babbling phoneme sounds. And they read aloud full-length chapter books, beautiful picture books, nonfiction, fiction, stories from other lands. They read, they read, they read to their own kids. But then we come into school and say, our kids aren't ready for this if they're too young. Well, the younger you can read aloud in school. Certainly, kindergarten or pre-K, those rich interactive read alouds grown knowledge and grow vocabulary and grow a sense of myself as a reader that is essential for what we're talking about here. [MUSIC] I'm Meredith Leven. And I'm David Leven. Welcome to episode four of the Knowledge Matters podcast. Theory is not terribly helpful without practice. In this session and in the rest of our program, we're going to go into explicit practices that you can do that reflect how the mind approaches comprehension. Hearing from teachers about what they've done for creating the conditions for all students to comprehend successfully and confidently. The goal here is that children, students can do all these things independent of adults. We are not always with our students. We want to send them out into the world as successful, healthy, confident readers. So we want them to read for themselves and then we want them to understand the propositions and how they connect each other in the networks. And then we want them to develop situation models all by themselves. But it is a potent pathway to simultaneously or even before reading instruction has formally started to give students access to all this through read aloud. [MUSIC] Knowledge is good, as you know, if you've been listening to our podcast, but teachers are also good. In this episode, you're going to hear from some absolutely superb teachers about how they keep text at the center and the instructional tools they use to do that. First we want you to hear from Patty Collins, a third and fourth grade combined class teacher from a small elementary school nearby us actually in Vermont. Read alouds are essential in her classroom because they help all her students access and comprehend the text no matter their current reading level. One of the challenges that all teachers face is working with complex texts when you have range of students. I teach a multi-age classroom with third and fourth graders. I have students who range from the first to the 99th percentile on standard measures. And one of the ways that I help them access text is I read out loud. I read with my students. I read out loud to model for my students. I provide all of the texts on my Google Classroom site so that they can go in and use a tool like learning Ally or a read aloud so that they all have the ability to listen to the texts that is available for all of my students so they can choose to use the read aloud or they can choose to read it by themselves. My students read with partners. They read in mixed groups. They also read in more unified groups where they're reading with kids who are having some of the same struggles that they are and I'm there to support them. When you read aloud or when they're on where there are text programs are the kids also following along in addition to hearing it. Yes. I require that they follow along with me because I'm trying to model fluent reading and I want them to see that pacing and I feel that with their hands and their eyes. I actually think that students have the right to access grade level text. I think it is my duty and responsibility as a teacher to ensure that every single student in my class has the joy of reading something that is for them. Instead of being asked to have it watered down. Margaret McCown shared some things to be careful of when doing read alouds with younger students. She also gave some great questions to ask your students to keep them focused on the text, text at the center whether they are reading it or hearing it. We're jumping into our conversation with Margaret McCown as she's telling a story about doing read alouds with her frequent collaborator is a bell back. When we first took our show on the road, Isabella and I were doing read alouds with kindergarten first graders. We learned a couple things. One is they will answer from the pictures because that's easier than listening to all these words. They will answer from their knowledge whether or not it connects to the words that are coming from the text. We knew we had to be careful of that. We did a couple things. We would read. We would not show the pictures. We picked out books where the pictures didn't have to be seen to have the story understood. We would read a couple pages, have the talk, and then we would show the pictures. We had one hilarious incident where teachers doing this and then she asked a question. It was a little bit of a complex story and one boy raised his hand and said, "I bet if you showed us the pictures, we'd be able to answer that." It was so funny to the point of, "I remember this wonderful story called Socrates." It was about this dog and this parents had died. On the cover, it's a dog with glasses on. I began to read about his sad background story and I said, "What do we know about Socrates so far?" He needs glasses. What? It was just the picture on the cover. It is that same thing. It's taking his students and saying, "Okay, pay attention to the word." Now listen again. They get used to the idea that it's the words, that reading is about the words. That's one of the biggest things that reading aloud and talking about the story does for you. The thing is, the things to do are not that complicated, but they get you into having to make a lot of on-the-spot decisions. You can start out any text by reading a little and then saying, "What's going on there?" or, "What was that all about?" You can use that kind of question any time. But then what happens is kids say something and then you've got to work with that. If it's completely off-base, what do you do? You might say, "What did the authors say to give you that idea to see where is it that the kids are coming from?" Or you might say, "Well, let's look at that again and go reread a sentence or two, but you have to decide that every single time based on what the kids give you in response." That's interesting because I went to kindergarten when we started the school from eighth grade, which is a little if you have made a leap into hell. It was so humbling. I learned so much. I loved reading aloud. I loved picture books. I loved chapter books more. I used to get hassled by the other teachers that I was pushing the kids by reading chapter books. I'd come and see if I'm pushing them or not. Because you share the language with kids, you talk to them about it, and of course they can get it. Of course they can get it. We all do it with our own children and home on our laps. Right. For some reason, we're reluctant to walk into the room and believe those kids in front of us can do the same stuff. Or what will happen is a read aloud is the time for kids to zone out and for the teacher to read them a lovely story. And so there's not necessarily a comprehension goal there. And often kids don't understand that that's what they're supposed to be doing. It's kind of quiet time and we'll see some nice pictures. I always say the teachers what I talk about read aloud is this is not just the time for the sweat to dry from recess. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Don't waste the opportunity. I mean, sometimes if you want to do that on a Friday afternoon fine. But don't waste the opportunity. And it's not like kids are going to hate it because it's that much work. You know, getting them involved in the line was they like that. Oh, absolutely. It was our favorite time and day for sure. Yeah. So a couple things I'd like to touch on. What you're really asking is what the students are making of the text. First of all, that's really important. We need to know what they're getting from it in order to know what to do about it. The other thing is we're really less interested in influencing the comprehension of any specific text that's being read. Then in influencing the process, building strengths and ability in that the process of going through a text. And I think sometimes that gets confused because the end goal seems to be we're reading a text. I want kids to understand it. But then what happens teachers kind of push themselves to make sure kids understand it. So then they'll ask them such leading questions that the kids will be able to answer them. And then the teacher feels like, oh, it's so they did understand it. Yeah. Really go for the kids building the understanding. And if it doesn't happen sometimes in text, that's fine. Because then you can address whatever you saw happening in the next text or you can just take on the next text and build. those habits again and sometimes you know you leave a text that wasn't quite understood and then maybe later you can go back to it but don't feel like you have to force an understanding of every text that's being read and then the last thing is that you know understanding new content is an easy for kids and so often it will seem like a lesson is going to arrive because you know the kids just don't seem to be really picking up on it and what I always say to teachers when they're struggling is you know if you ask questions and the kids could answer them easily and you went through all the text really easily you're not teaching them anything you're just having them do what they could already do before they came into your classroom if you're really teaching them if you're really building their ability then it's going to be it's going to take work and it's going to be hard because this is new stuff that they're becoming able to do. One of the things that's huge is to notice is for you to notice when there is a connective that helped you make a key connection between propositions. We do it seamlessly as mature and competent readers. Our students need to learn to do that same kind of noticing. This is crucial for English language learners, for multilingual students who are coming might be learning to read for comprehension in English while they're also mastering the English language. So it's really important to think about connectives or draw students attention to a key connective happening if you have multilingual learners in your room. The other thing I just want to say is this kind of socially constructed learning, this language rich environment that we argue for over and over in the book and that we're trying to make the case for here it is the most rewarding for everybody. It creates that intellectual vibrant classroom that we're all seeking. David and I have had really fun and inspiring conversations with a number of dual language and multilingual language teachers over the years. Let's hear from elementary school teacher Desiree Garcia about why she uses read alouds in her bilingual classroom. These are going to be kindergarteners you're hearing about. The kids take everything they learn in that Spanish classroom and they bring it over it even onto the English side and what happens is I see this they just want to know why for everything. They want to question everything around them. They're so excited to learn anything you whether it's in science, literacy, math, all across subject areas and I know that's because they're getting rich read alouds and it's just sparking their imaginations and being able to access great books in both languages has made all the difference and it's just so beautiful to see how much they've grown and how their vocabulary is exploded in both languages and they own that learning and they take it with them and they go home and they share it with their families and you know their parents tell us what the kids are learning and it's just beautiful. Before you started implementing this kind of curriculum you did not have that kind of nature of discussion etc. Yes, I've never had a group of students or front of me who are so curious and using such people, vocabulary words and just having debates with each other about information. They're looking at books and they're truly like finding this information. It's true ownership of learning. What about your enjoyment of teaching as you made this shift? There's no forcing anything. The kids are coming with so many ideas from the typical rich read alouds that were giving them that they truly are sitting on the rug and they are having a conversation with each other because they just are so knowledgeable about what they're talking about and then they're questioning what they're talking about and they're figuring out the answers by themselves and I get to step back and listen to them and then help guide them in the direction that they're interests lie in and that's amazing. There is no way to get better at this than by doing it and I mean that it to layers. For us as teachers, if this is new to you, this way of teaching and noticing the text first and then thinking about the interactions and how you're going to bring your students attention to those, no matter what your materials are, when you have a grade level text that you're reading with students, you need to read it yourself and you need to decide what the sticky parts of that text are and really think about those. Even if you have beautiful materials that have great questions, you need to have read that text and thought about it in terms of your students and students need in a social way to do this work for themselves in the hard text, the grade level text and they need to do this out loud a lot. But what we're really talking about is close reading. That is taking grade level text, some chunk of grade level text. You prepare to do it with your students and then you bring it to the students and really let them sink their teeth into it and try to see these connectives try to do this hard work all by themselves. So close reading can be done with passages, stand-alone passages rather or it could be done with full length works as well, with a narrative fiction or informational text. Choose a passage that is particularly important to the chapter or particularly important to the book and especially if that passage is complex grade level text, that's ideal for close reading. It could be a couple of paragraphs or it could be four or five paragraphs depending upon the complexity of the passage and it's important to the chapter or important to the full length work. For example, we used to have students read a chapter a day at home with questions that were queuing up for the next day. This was, we did not have a program. This is when we were selecting our own full length books. And the questions were though carefully crafted to point at the most important parts of the chapter or the most challenging parts of the chapter. But our discussion the next day, our close reading focused on the parts of the text that mattered most for either moving the information and learning and plot if it was a novel which it often was, moving those things forward or the places that we suspected students would get tripped up. So making no mistake, you can do this with whole length works on your own but the really good materials that we highlight on the Knowledge Matters campaign website have spent a lot of time with thinking carefully through these things for you. So they have created these opportunities for your students that you can take, modify and internalize and be sure that your students are getting this experience day after day. There are two more teachers we want you to hear from today. Middle school teacher Kei-Ambuds, a former Baltimore City teacher of the year, an upper elementary school teacher Katie Scotty. We talked to them about the power close reading has had in their classrooms and above all how it has brought their students confidence. How do you feel close reading has changed the nature of student learning? Especially when it comes to improving your students comprehension. One big benefit that I've really seen as far as close reading and comprehension is students build more confidence with multiple at-bats. The first time we read, maybe we try to organize what's going on with what's happening students might be a little unsure as far as building a literal understanding of what's happening but a second and a third read not only do they know more because they're building a knowledge of the topic but they're really more confident with it so I'll sort of hit a knowledge home run if you will. One of the aspects that I enjoy most about close reading is going back and layering on text annotations and having students leave tracks of their thinking. So it's really fun for me especially with middle schoolers because they have so much to say they have a lot of big feelings and they have a lot of big thoughts about the text and sometimes it's best to express those but I enjoy seeing their metacognition. What are they thinking? Why are they thinking that? And doing those multiple passes, there's multiple at-bats with the text allows students to see their thinking. Yeah, one of the things going off of what Kier just said, I think teacher and attitude impact student attitude and to be honest when we first started working and doing close reading work, a worry of mine was the kids are going to be bored with this. Why are we reading the same text multiple times? But what we're seeing is that students are more excited about reading because they know what we're reading about. They're familiar with the vocabulary words. They're familiar with the background knowledge. Close reading has made my students deeper thinkers and has made their comprehension increase in terms of them being able to cite evidence from the text, ask Kier level questions, answer higher level questions. And so they're more eager to read and to talk about it and to participate in discussion. And what we've also seen is that it's leveling the playing field. So after implementing close reading, it's harder to tell which students are my higher achieving students and which students are my lower achieving students if you were to walk into my classroom and see a student discussion happening. As close reading to me gives every kid an opportunity to be able to access the text and to be able to talk about it and to write about it and participate in that discussion. Do you have any tips for preparing or modifying questions for close reading? Definitely reading the book first and going through the text and marking stopping points and coming up with some of those pre-plan questions first for your students. And I think it's all about how you approach it. Your mindset as a teacher, you believe in your kids that they all deserve access to this text. It's about how we're going to provide that access through close readings. Give the students a chance and give yourself a chance and don't just immediately say, my students aren't going to be able to do this or this is going to get boring. Because if you're teaching it or presenting it in that way with that mindset, then your students are going to be bored. - Don't be afraid to live in that moment where the discussion feels like it's running long. If students are bringing new pieces, new perspectives, live in that moment, let them have that agency to keep going. As Katie said, absolutely read the text first, right? Understand and know your stopping points. Try to ask more why and how questions and then try to have some of your questions fit the language of the standard because that's what students are seeing on these high-level state assessments. They shouldn't only see those questions as weirdly and oddly phrased as they are only on state assessments. Teachers should try to sprinkle this in throughout and a close read is a great time to do that. How do you tap into the power of social learning with close reading? What I find is that reading is a social experience. When students are reading a text together, you know, in fourth grade, where we love that dog, when the dog passes away, you're having this experience for their students. I mean, my students are crying during that part of the book. And we're talking about loss that they've faced in their own lives and every student deserves access to this high-quality text. So we do love that dog. We also do hatchet. Patchet is a fourth grade favorite, right? When we're reading hatchet, we're talking about Brian's resilience when he's lost in the woods and doesn't think he's gonna ever make it home. There shouldn't be a group in the back reading a different book, even if it's about resilience or about survival. Every student has that access to that same text. They might have different levels of questions. They might be doing some noticing and wonders while students are doing other students are doing a deeper level of analysis. But they're all experiencing the same characters. The same plot. They're all experiencing the same reactions to what happens when Brian sees a bear in the woods. And all students deserve to have that experience and it is reading is a social experience. Have you noticed any issue with stronger readers, either close reading, not addressing them or is that getting bored a little? Any thoughts on that? One thing that I have seen is that the more knowledge students have, then the more they want. So after finishing hatchet, students want to read either more survival stories or they're really into Gary Paulson and want to read more Gary Paulson novels. So if we're thinking about our higher level or gifted students, I think they're actually like eating up close reading and the knowledge building and then they want to go do that on their own instead of just in the classroom. - That is true. Six grade when I taught it module four, shipwrecked at the bottom of the world, they could not get enough of the story of the endurance and shackle tin. They were eating up the knowledge. And I love it because there's so many social media apps out there that can get your kids attention. But when they're talking about your content and hatchet outside of your class, they're going home and say, "My, I want to, you know, pull some books set." You're winning. - And we just need to say, we did this at Family Academy. We named ours Textual Analysis, but Textual Analysis is close reading. And we just have not seen, we've not encountered, we've not read about, no researcher has shown us, we've not seen it in the classroom, any other method other than close reading, socially constructed learning, students of different abilities, all encountering the same grade level text, we have not seen a better way to teach students how to do the hard work of comprehending for themselves. - Next time on the Knowledge Matters podcast, we're going to share more ideas on practical instruction you can use in your classroom. For example, explaining your answer at every point. - But I remember feeling like, ever since every answer had to be explained, every answer had to be proven. It's like we just didn't, we didn't rush. Like at the expense of sometimes I didn't get through it all right, but you spent time in the text and they knew that was important. For more information about this episode, visit the Knowledge Matters website, link to in the show notes. This podcast is produced by the Knowledge Matters campaign. You can learn more about their work at knowledgematterscampaign.org and follow them on Twitter/X, Instagram and Facebook. Search the Knowledge Matters hashtag and join this important conversation. - If you'd like to get in touch with us, personally you can contact us to our website at readingdoneright.org. - Well, if I don't do it, how about I do it again, but you're gonna appear like this. - Oh, how about I edit? - Okay. - You want to mean like? - Yeah, yeah, you do it. - We're better when we work together. - Yeah. - All right, but we're better when we work. - I am working just in much slower pace than you. - Okay.