“Teachers are time poor” | Know Better, Do Better

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

In this episode, David and Meredith Liben walk us through the relevant research and talk with three teachers whose innovative practices intentionally build vocabulary and knowledge across subjects:

• Erin Hanrahan, an 8th-grade ELA teacher who makes time for vocabulary-building exercises before students dive in to books on real-world issues
• Sean Morrisey, a 5th-grade teacher who includes vocabulary lessons that purposefully relate to multiple subjects throughout the school day
• Staci McDougall, a 3rd-grade teacher who leads close reads of challenging texts, then uses students’ love of multimedia to put new vocabulary to use

David and Meredith also discuss the difference between topics and themes. Many teachers may approach these as interchangeable opportunities to connect texts across a unit. But reading a series of texts on a single topic, such as immigration, the solar system, or sea mammals, yield greater Tier 2 vocabulary growth than reading texts connected by a shared theme, like friendship, loyalty, and survival.

This episode talks about influential research regarding the longer-term benefits of reading and comprehension. In their article What Reading Does for the Mind, Anne E. Cunningham and Keith E. Stanovich report that all kids—no matter their reading level—benefit from a volume of reading. And cognitive psychologist Chuck Perfetti has shown that the more a reader knows about a word (its spelling, orthography, pronunciation), the more likely they are to be a successful comprehender.

And finally, this episode talks joy! The teachers featured in this episode share specific examples linking better student comprehension with love for words and reading.

The research and artifacts mentioned in this episode are all posted on the Knowledge Matters Podcast website. 

Key Quote: “If my students are learning ‘sh’ - like the ‘-tion’ sound, I'm purposely picking Tier 2 words like ‘ambition’ or picking words that come up in science, like ‘conservation,’ and in social studies, ‘segregation.’ . . It’s more of an efficient way for kids to learn.” (Morrisey)

This podcast is produced by the Knowledge Matters Campaign and StandardsWork. Follow the Knowledge Matters Campaign on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Search #knowledgematters and join this important conversation. If you'd like to get in touch with David and Meredith, you can contact them through their website, readingdoneright.org.

Production by Tressa Versteeg. Original music and sound engineering by Aidan Shea. Narration recorded at Bamboo Recording Studios.

Transcript

David Liben
I was working in a school with first grade at the end of last - last year and we were talking about everything that's in this word. And the kids were really into it. They loved the idea that a word is not just essentially a unitary construct. That there's all these things - the etymology of the word, the spelling of the word. And one of the teachers said, “That's so perfect. We want kids to get excited about words in the knowledge of words.” 

And at the end, and these two little girls come up to me. And they said, “Can we ask a question?” I said, “Well, of course.” And they said, “How come you're missing a tooth on the front of your mouth?” I was really disappointed because I thought they would have some deep question having to do with the history of words or the like. But that's, that's kids and they’re part of - they’re part of what we do. 

Meredith Liben 
I'm Meredith Liben.

David Liben
And I am still David Liben. Welcome to Episode 2 of the Knowledge Matters Podcast.

Meredith Liben
Today, we're talking about the crucial impacts vocabulary and knowledge have on reading comprehension and the roles they play in students’ understanding. You'll hear from a number of teachers about how they incorporate vocabulary into their classroom in creative ways that don't take time away from other instruction, but actually make the rest of the instruction clearer and more purposeful.

David Liben
We're gonna start with middle school English teacher, Erin Hanrahan. Erin focuses her reading units on world issues. And this specific vocabulary - meaning tier two and tier three - that goes with them. When we spoke with her, she just wrapped up a unit on the justice system. Here's Erin.

Erin Hanrahan
We read the young readers edition of Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson, which tells the story of a man who's wrongfully incarcerated and put on death row for a murder he didn't commit. And so kids, um kids love that book, they really respond to that book. It talks about tons of issues in the justice system. But before we start reading it, I gave them a bunch of terms this year. Some of which are familiar like: arrest, bail. And some of which were maybe new like: incarceration, exoneration, acquittal.

And so then we got some definitions, and we built a timeline, and we put it on a word wall. Um. We would mix it up and kids would be on teams, and eventually we would say like, “Okay, here are your words, here are your words, put yourself in order, you know, in the order in which they happen.” So that by the time we start Just Mercy, and kids read about Walter Macmillan being put on death row before his trial, they have the capacity to recognize that that's unjust and to be horrified for him, right. Otherwise, they don't have that empathy if they don't know what the author's talking about. 

So they’d say, “Wait, he wasn't even indicted, yet.” You know, and they're using these words - indictment was one of the terms that they weren't familiar with in the beginning. And now they're owning those words, and they're able to talk about what's happening in the book. And I think it really helps them empathize with the main character, and to put themselves in his shoes and kind of care about the text more.

David Liben
That’s really, really cool. 

Meredith Liben
That - yeah. Especially that connection, which I think I've never heard made that clearly - uh, the connection between needing to know something before you can have empathy.

Erin Hanrahan
Well, yeah, it's helped - It certainly helped me appreciate it. Because, you know, I give them a survey before the unit. And I'll ask them just opinion questions like, on a scale of one to four, how fair do you think our justice system is? Or should the death penalty exist? And what questions do you have? And they answer, but on the questions, they're often like, IDK, you know, I don't know anything about the justice system. 

And by halfway through the book, kids are writing these paragraphs about: I never knew that kids as young as 13 could be tried as adults. And, you know, they have all of this knowledge and this empathy and they're really outraged. Which 13-year-olds are really good at being outraged [laughs].

Meredith Liben
Do you see a connection between the access you've given with fluency and the insights and word and world knowledge you're providing your kids? Is that strengthening this year because of that access that fluency is giving? Or have you not really seen that? 

Erin Hanrahan
I think so. You know, there are kids who always kind of had that access, and maybe come in with more background knowledge, whether their parents or lawyers or whatever.

But for other kids, it really is amazing to see. And they'll do these research projects at the end. and sometimes kids will pick up on one term that was like a vocabulary term, like, bail. Last year, I had a student say, “Well, I don't really get that because you're supposed to be innocent until proven guilty. And so what is this idea?” And that turned into his whole research project. And we were looking at how, you know, New York State is thinking about doing away with bail. And he talked to someone from the National Bail Project. And it was like - I think it was really cool to see how deep he dove into that, basically, vocabulary word. [laughs]

Meredith Liben
The cash bail story that you just heard from Erin really illustrates how knowledge builds on knowledge. And vocabulary is how we name the ideas we know. So there's this interplay between them that is just crucial. 

David Liben
It turns out that after a great deal of research, we have determined that reading has a lot to do with words. Chuck Perfetti is a cognitive psychologist who has been studying the psychology between - about word recognition, part of foundational skills and word meaning for quite a while. But the lexical quality hypothesis, which is about 30 years old now - or more - is that the more - the more a reader knows about a word, the more likely they are to be a successful comprehender. 

But what does that mean? The more you know about a word. What that means is the more you know about its spelling, or its orthography. It’s pronunciation, or its phonology. And its meaning, or its semantics. But you can even go beyond that. In the area of foundational skills, you're talking about its phonemes and, and its syllables. The more you know about the word, the more likely you are to take that word and integrate it into the meaning of this sentence. And therefore, the more likely you are to comprehender the sentence, and as you move on to the next sentence, rinse and repeat. 

Meredith Liben
And the other fact - and this is something I wish was more widely accepted and not resisted - Morphology often drives the spelling of English words. We all talk - or we too often talk about how impossible English is and how there are - there is no rhyme or reason. Well, there is a rhyme or reason, there's the pho - the phonetic makeup of the word that drives spelling, and also the morphology. 

Words all have meanings, and that meaning is driven through their morphemes. Morphemes are the smallest unit of a word that has meaning. It can be as, as small as the S at the end of a word making the word plural. That's morphology. When you take verbs from present to past tense by adding -ED or some other ending, that's morphology. 

And that leads me into another way to help make kids care deeply about knowing words in depth, vocabulary in depth. And that is the story - the history of the word, if you will. And that is, that is etymology. And if you can get kids interested in the story and history of a word - where it came from, what language gave rise to that word - that helps them with the practical encoding or spelling of the word, but it also helps them understand deeply how the word took its meaning in English. So these are all the ways words can be known. And they are elements of developing strong vocabulary depth. And we're going to hear from Sean Morrisey on how he makes this come to life in this classroom.

David Liben
Tell us a bit about how you tell your fifth graders into fellow word nerds, caring so deeply about words year after year, um - and you don't look that young, so year after year after year after year. [laughter]

Sean Morrisey 
Uh, I think, I think, for me, vocabulary started maybe a little over 10 years ago. It was actually after a state test. The kids took a state test and my colleagues and I realized one of the questions from the state test, um the students didn't understand because they didn't all know what the word ‘benefit’ meant. So it was kind of an aha moment for me. So I think over the past 10,10 or so years, every year, I try to uh improve my vocabulary instruction. It's been a slow process, but uh, but I think a very meaningful one.

David Liben
I always remember the first high school I worked at in Vermont. And I was talking about tier two vocabulary. And the chairman of the History Department - in, in the back of the room, I clearly remember this - says, That's exactly right. We were sitting with these three girls who've gone through three practice AP History exams. And finally we decided we're going to read the questions with them. And they did not know a lot of the words in the questions.

Sean Morrisey
I - you know, thinking about vocabulary over kind of this - the last 10 years, I've tried to really embed it throughout the school day. One of the hard things for teachers we’re time poor. So it's like, you know, just adding on - like, it's hard for teachers, well, what am I going to take away if I'm adding this on? So trying to embed like in all areas. 

You know, you're talking about, um like, for example, spelling. But like, in fifth grade, the spelling words that I use are more Tier 2 academic words. So if my students are learning like the “sh” - like the “-tion” sound that you know, one way we could spell, "shun" is T-I-O-N. I'm like, purposely picking words like - tier two words like “adaption”, “ambition.” Um, or picking words that like, come up in, in science, like “conservation,” um in social studies, “segregation.” So, you know, um trying to pick like, words that like, I've taught in class or words that I'm going to teach in class. Um. It - it seems like I'm getting - like it's more of an efficient way um for kids to, you know, for kids to learn.

Meredith Liben
One of the maxims that we believe has to be true in classrooms - because we agree with Sean Morrisey, that teachers are, are time poor and the classroom day is truncated, and, and broken up in ways that make it hard - is we always have to see what we can do to integrate the work we do with, with children. 

And there is no doubt, the research is stunningly clear, as we're going to talk about in a few minutes, that growing knowledge grows vocabulary. Both those things are features of successful comprehension. They lie underneath successful comprehension as a sturdy base.

David Liben
One of the most important understandings to come out of research in this area recently is that seri - series of texts on a topic grows knowledge, but it also maximizes tier two vocabulary growth. 

My favorite story was a third grade class that I was observing, that had been studying sea mammals. They came to the first text about dolphins. It says, “The dolphins ascended to the surface.” And then later on it says, “They descended.” And the kids very qu - quickly picked up on the meaning of ascended, because they know that sea mammals have to come to the top of the surface to breathe because they have lungs and - not gills - and therefore they have to come to the top. So the word ascent - ascend was learned very quickly. 

And they know they have to go down to the bottom, because that's where their food is. So they learned “descend” very quickly. In between, by the way, they learned surface  - ascend, descend and surface. Three powerful tier two words. The learning of those words was vastly accelerated by the knowledge that the students had about sea mammals. That connection between growing knowledge and growing tier two vocabulary is essential to reading comprehension growth. 

Meredith Liben
The other thing is that is - can be really confusing if you're fairly new to this universe, is why when we talk about organizing curriculum uh into units, we really emphasize topics as opposed to themes. And we wanted to give some examples of that, David will, and why it's important in terms of building knowledge.

David Liben
Examples of topics include immigration, explorers, the solar system, insects - those would be topics. Sea mammals, as in the example that we related earlier. Themes could be friendship, could be courage, could be, even, survival.

And let's say you have a theme of friendship, the first text might be about a boy who moves to a new neighborhood, and is having trouble making a friend and he finally does make a friend. 

Meredith Liben
You might get one piece about pen pals, one lives in China and one lives in California. You might get a lonely adolescent whose only friend since his mother passed away is his dog. And then you might get friends um cross generational. You might get a girl who lives with her, her grandmother as her caregiver, and they, they have a deep and meaningful friendship. 

These are beautiful stories. And they - and friendship is an important idea - justice, all these themes are important. We're not saying that they're not important. We're talking about what builds knowledge and grows vocabulary. And that is - that as topics that build knowledge and have, have a language, a vocabulary that they use to build that knowledge. And there's a coherence about it when you keep reading on it for a period of time, that allows that knowledge and that vocabulary to deepen and grow exponentially. 

David Liben
But there's another outgrowth of that. You don't need - we talk about complex text all the time. We love complex text. We talked about it right from the beginning when the standards came out. But you don't need to grow - have complex text to grow knowledge. You can grow knowledge with pretty simple text. This is what's behind the dinosaur effect. The - which was on a previous podcast or episode of the Knowledge Matters Campaign. 

Those kids who are reading all about dinosaurs did get to more complex text at some point. But in first grade and second grade, when they knew the difference between Triceratops and Velaroscepters, they probably didn't initially read very complex text. They grew that knowledge with a series of simpler texts. That's what's behind the dinosaur effect, or the horse effect, or the insect effect, or the zombie effect, or the baseball effect. And that's important to understand. You don't need to have complex text to grow knowledge.

Meredith Liben
So that idea of simpler text, at first, to introduce students to a topic, what happens is kids can read more and more complex texts as they become experts, if you will, in that topic. And that is part of why we talk a lot about this idea of text sets, or full length books that linger on a topic as a way of maximizing um knowledge growth, and vocabulary growth. It is really important. And David, do you want to talk more about the volume of reading and why it's important?

David Liben 
If you only read one research, study, read Stanovich and Cunningham, “What Reading Does for the Mind.” It's unique and startling. They looked at - it was a longitudinal study - they looked at data for kids over a 10 year period, I believe, looking at the volume of reading that they did. 

They found a number, a number of things. One, the more kids read, the better readers they were. That kind of makes sense. But that was true, independent of their reading ability. In other words, those kids who read very well, the more they read, the more their reading growth accelerated. But even those kids who were relatively weak readers, the more they read, the more their reading growth accelerated.

Not only that, they found connections between volume of reading and IQ as adults. They found connections between volume of - volume of reading and professional success. They even found connections between volume of reading, and - how should I say this because I worry about it for myself - um, slippage in cognitive capacity as you get older. People who read more had less of a slippage and cognitive capacity as they got older. What more do you need to advocate for a volume of reading for all your students - all your students? Even those who are not yet where you want them to be and where they should be, that volume of reading is, is essential.

Meredith Liben
And one of the challenges that we don't have complete answers to, although we have some teachers that have made some breakthroughs - is how to get kids reading the volume they need on topics on that they stay with a - for a little bit of time enough to grow their knowledge and grow their vocabulary. How can we get that to happen in a widespread way, when homework and reading at home is not commonplace anymore? And class time is truncated and short. Teachers are time poor, as Sean Morrisey will remind us. How on earth do we get kids reading the volume they need to build knowledge of words and the world?

Sean Morrisey
I'm a big fan of using whole class novels. I think having all students discuss and read the same book is quite powerful. You know, if all kids are reading different books, how do you ever have dis - like higher level discussions? You just, you just- it's impossible. Um. So I know like one of the discussions I had a few years ago with a student we're - it was um - the novel was Bud Not Buddy. And so I started using the Reading Reconsidered curriculum a couple years ago. And Reading Reconsidered does a terrific job of embedding nonfiction articles um within - like the - within the novel unit.

So when you're talking about the book Bud Not Buddy, it takes place during the Depression. And um the novels revolve around things like Hoovervilles, and sundown towns, even the American Dream. So it's like, the articles put, like the book more in context. And one of my students said after reading that, you know, she mentions about the article, she says um, “It - it made me appreciate the book a lot more. You know, without those articles, I just would not have appreciated that book as much.” Like that was a power - like, I'll never like - that was a powerful moment. So no matter what, for me, when I'm reading some novels, I think you have to put some, some nonfiction articles to kind of set up like the time period, because kids don't have that background knowledge.

And then what I've started to see as, especially like, Number of the Stars is one of the novels that I usually do every year. And you know, during - it's, it's a book that takes place during World War II, and we disc - we discuss the Holocaust. There are hundreds and hundreds of books on that topic. 

So like, you know, in my classroom, I have a fairly big classroom library, it's - I probably have about 10,000 books. Like, I probably have like 100 or 150 distinct um titles that are in that time period. You know, we'll read Number the Stars together, and then I'll have some kids who just want to read more. And by the end of the year, they've read a dozen books in that topic. So like, boy, do they like, really build up their knowledge about the Holocaust and World War II. They've added more expertise, you know. 

Meredith Liben
We've been talking a lot about building knowledge and vocabulary and how you can do that with simple or complex texts.

David Liben
But what actually determines a text complexity? It turns out it's the features of the text itself.

Meredith Liben 
This is the realm of text complexity that we've done lots of work in. And there are features that text has - every text has them - and they can combine in all kinds of unique ways. Each text being its own unique feature. Which led us to the central metaphor of our book and was the inspiration for our front cover. 

David Liben
We chose Kaleidoscope as the metaphor, the driving metaphor of this book because when you take a kaleidoscope and you shift it, you get different, different array of shapes and even a different array of light and a different array of images to a great extent. And you'll see why that works here as well.

What constitutes text features are a number of items in the text: the propositions, the nature of the propositions, how the propositions connect to knowledge. The difficulty of vocabulary in the propositions is a text feature. So more uncommon vocabulary would tend to make a text more complex. However, if the sentences are very simple, that would dilute the complexity of the vocabulary. If ideas across the text need to be connected, the degree to which the author connects them with connecting words, would determine the complexity.

Meredith Liben
And the trick is that these text features interplay with one another, that's the kaleidoscope image, you shift its light and colors, - colored shapes inside that make all the unique patterns. 

David Liben
Complex syntax invariably presents more difficulty - it’s been well studied. But if the words in the complex syntax are simpler, then the complex syntax does not present as much difficulty. Every feature interacts with every other feature. And it's that interaction that determines the difficulty. Not only one feature in itself, but how those features interact across, across the text.

Meredith Liben
But we, we want to say here, that of all the features of, of texts that are present, it is really clear that the biggest uh effects come from what the knowledge demands of the text, and the vocabulary demands of the text. So knowledge and vocabulary are the two most salient features of text that cause difficulty. So therefore, students who have an abundance of knowledge and have - can grow their vocabulary are going to be better off in terms of comprehension. 

As David said earlier, we love complex texts, they can be valuable and enrich your classroom in so many ways.

David Liben
We talked to Staci McDougall, an elementary school teacher, after her school changed its reading curriculum. The change meant using more complex text - and in many cases far more complex text, sometimes even seventh grade level text - in her third grade class.

Meredith Liben
Stacy was initially intimidated. But she trusted the program. She trusted her supervisors and she was getting really good professional development. And she saw the impact it had on her kids reading comprehension over time. It's been incredible. Take a listen. 

David Liben
But can you talk for a minute about your kids love of reading and your kids choosing to read books. Has complex texts made that problematic or anything like that?

Staci McDougall
Complex texts has not made it more difficult for kids to love reading. Honestly, because we take the time to sit down, go page by page, and because we do all the language dives as part of the curriculum, um not only do the kids come away very strong as readers, but they feel unintimidated about challenging text in a way that we don't usually see at this age. 

So it's so impressive to me that they pick up these books that have all this really difficult language and difficult concepts, um and they get to the point where they're very comfortable - even if they know they can't read every word in the book - giving it a shot and sitting down and reading it and knowing they're going to work with partners, they're going to work in groups, we're going to work as a whole group. We're going to really take the time necessary to go back and reread and to do whatever it takes to understand these complex texts.

And so I would say, overall, it has uh created a bigger love of reading for kids. Um. I want to acknowledge - teachers say it aloud all the time, and they're not wrong - that the classroom has changed in some ways, and that there are definitely more students for whom stamina with things like self selected silent reading, it's really tough for them. But that being said, when they're grappling with challenging books about challenging topics, and they know something that the adults in their life don't know, and they have something valuable to say, um they're ready to go. They don't mind at all working hard for it. 

David Liben
Can you can you - can you come up with an anecdote with a specific kid that really was illuminating?

Staci McDougall
So one of the favorite lessons, which we're actually in the throes of right now -  so this will be my fourth year uh doing it for EL - is third grade as a public service announcement as a culminating project in our last unit. And so we read and write about the world's water shortage crisis, and also about water pollution and its impact.

And so uh one of the most impactful projects that we do is this live launch of a public service announcement because there's obviously a lot of research involved in learning about these water issues. And they do write a four paragraph essay. But making the script and involving all the multimedia, and all of the speaking and listening that goes into filming yourself, being your best public speaker is just um - the kids really love it. And it's been so impactful.

And I had one student that first year when I had the self contained program before I moved into third grade, who um - I don't want to give away too many details about his disability. And he was so into this public service announcement. And we still use his PSA as one of our model PSAs to this day, because he got up and he - one of his like, special interests was the military. And so he got up and he's sitting at a table like a news anchor and doing all the gestures and, “Calling all military trucks and personnel, We need your help now! We need helicopters to get the pollution out of the water! We need trucks to bring water to people who are in need!” And he just, he popped off in this amazing way, and made this probably one of the best PSAs I've seen in the four years that we've done it. 

And so for me, that's been a powerful example of how great it is to have a well rounded program. And um to give kids different entry points to take their passion and the new knowledge that they've learned and, and bring it as a gift to other people.

David Liben
That's it for this episode. Thank you again for listening.

Meredith Liben
Next time we're talking with Margaret McKeown. We get into how we've been teaching reading comprehension all wrong. 

David Liben
What would you say is, is the appropriate role of reading strategies - Or standards or skills - in instruction?

Meredith Liben 
In instruction?

Margaret McKeown
Okay, well, this will be a very short answer. None. I just wouldn't - I wouldn't. I wouldn't teach strategies. None. Zero, zip. 

Meredith Liben 
For more information about this episode, visit the Knowledge Matters website. linked to in the show notes. This podcast is produced by the Knowledge Matters campaign. You can learn more about their work at knowledge matters campaign.org and follow them on Twitter/X, Instagram, and Facebook. Search the #knowledgematters and join this important conversation.

David Liben
If you'd like to get in touch with us, personally, you can contact us through our website at readingdoneright.org.

[OUTTAKE]

David Liben
Okay, so I don't know how much time you spent playing with kaleidoscopes. But why is the kaleidoscope a driving image? It's even the picture in our - on the cover of a book and it's even on my homepage of my phone. [laughter] 

Meredith Liben
Okay, David - [laughter] 

Barbara Davidson (editor)  
David you definitely dated yourself there.

Meredith Liben 
Dizzy - Dizzy Dave. Homepage of your phone. Wallpaper. [laughter] 

David Liben 
Okay.

Meredith Liben 
This is 75 year old David struggling to talk this morning -

Barbara Davidson (editor) 
To 25 year old teachers 

David Liben 
I was just informed that the homepage of my phone went out with keds sneakers.