“Learning to read is a social experience” | Know Better, Do Better

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

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

First, the Libens explore the power of read alouds with three guests, who share real-life examples of interactive ways to engage students with a variety of needs:

• Inclusive classrooms: Patty Collins teaches third and fourth graders reading from the 1st to the 99th percentile. She uses several models of read alouds to give all of her students access to grade-level text, including whole-class, mixed and leveled small groups, and audiobook technology.
• Early learners: Reading and vocabulary expert Margaret McKeown focuses young students on words—not pictures—during read alouds, and avoids leading questions. Teachers can read short passages without showing pictures and ask students “What's going on there?” or “What was that all about?”
• Multilingual students: Desiree Garcia teaches in a bilingual kindergarten classroom where read alouds have fueled an explosion in her students’ vocabulary in both languages. They are excited to share their own ideas and figure out answers by themselves. 

Then, the Libens talk through close reading, where students read a passage multiple times and carefully find the connections and structure that move a text forward. This starts with teachers reading the text themselves, finding what Meredith calls the “sticky parts,” leading a focused discussion on why these passages are particularly important.

Two guests share their experience with close reading: 

• Kyair Butts, a former Baltimore City teacher of the year, uses close reading to give his middle-school students multiple “at bats” that build knowledge and improve vocabulary. He has students annotate the text to leave tracks of their thinking and see how their thinking evolves. 
• Upper elementary teacher Katie Scotti says close reading is “leveling the playing field” between her higher- and lower-achieving students. Reading a text multiple times, and ensuring all students are familiar with the relevant vocabulary and background knowledge, gives every student the chance to understand and talk about a text, including higher-order ideas. While she was worried her students would be bored by close reading, she’s found just the opposite. Kids love it!

Key quote: “Every student has that access to that same text. They might have different levels of questions, they might be doing some noticing and wondering while 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. . . and all students deserve to have that experience. Reading is a social experience.” (Scotti) 

For more information about this episode, visit the Knowledge Matters Podcast website. The research, studies and artifacts mentioned are posted on the Knowledge Matters Campaign curriculum review tool.

This podcast is produced by the Knowledge Matters Campaign and StandardsWork. Follow the Knowledge Matters Campaign on Twitter, 

Transcript

Meredith Liben 
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 grow knowledge and grow vocabulary and grow a sense of myself as a reader, that is essential for what we're talking about here. 

I’m Meredith Liben.  

David Liben
And I’m David Liben. 

Meredith Liben 
Welcome to Episode 4 of the Knowledge Matters podcast.

David Liben
Theory is not terribly helpful without practice. In this session and 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. 

 Meredith Liben 
The goal here is that children, students learn - 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, intact, healthy, confident readers. So// we want them to read for themselves. And then we want them to, 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.

David Liben
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 what it means to center the text for them, and instructional tools they use to do that.   

Meredith Liben 
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 of her students access and comprehend the text - no matter their current reading level.

Patty Collins 
One of the challenges that all teachers face is working with complex texts when you have a range of students. I teach a multi-age classroom with third and fourth graders. I have students who range from the 1st 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 uh, 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 um more unified groups where they're reading with kids who are having some of the same struggles um that they are, and I'm there to support them. 

David Liben
When you read aloud, or when they’re on one of these tech programs. are they kids following along in addition to hearing it?

Patty Collins 
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 feel that with their hands and their eyes. Um 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 um joy of reading something that is for them! Instead of being asked to have it watered down. 

Meredith Liben
Margaret McKeown shared some things to be careful of when doing read alouds with younger students. 

David Liben
She also gave some great questions you can ask your students to keep them focused on the text - text at the center - whether they are reading it or hearing it.  

Meredith Liben
We’re jumping into our conversation with Margaret KcKeown as she tells a story about doing read alouds with her frequent collaborator Isabel Beck.

Margaret McKeown 
When we first took our show on the road, Isabel and I were, you know, doing read alouds with kindergarten and 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. Um. They will answer from their knowledge, whether or not it connects to the words that are coming from the text. So we knew we had to be careful of that. So we did a couple of 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 like, read a couple pages, have the talk, and then we would show the pictures. 

And we had one hilarious incident where a teacher's 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. [laughter] But it, it was so funny to the point of, I remember this wonderful story called Socrates. It was about this dog and its parents had died. And on the cover, it's a dog with glasses on. And so I - I began to read about his sad background story and I said, “What do we know about Socrates so far?” And they said, “He needs glasses.” I'm like, “What?!?” [laughter] It was just the picture on the cover! 

So it is - It is that same thing it's taking kids to and say, “Okay, pay attention to the word - now, listen again.” So they get used to the idea that it's the words. That reading is about the words. That's, 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 anytime. But then what happens is kids say something, and then you got to work with that. You know, if it's completely off base, what do you do? You might say, “Mmm, what did the author say to give you that idea?” to see, where is it 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.

Meredith Liben
That's interesting, because I, I went to kindergarten when we started the school from eighth grade, which is - 

Margaret McKeown 
Ohh. 

Meredith Liben
A leap few have made.

David Liben 
Yeah. A leap into hell. [laughter]

Margaret McKeown 
Yeah. 

Meredith Liben
It was so humbling. I learned so much. Um but I loved reading aloud. I loved picture books, but I loved chapter books more. But I used to get hassled by the other teachers that I was pushing the kids by reading chapter books. And I was just like, “Come and see, like, if I'm pushing them or not.”

Margaret McKeown 
Yeah, because you do - you share the language with kids. You talk to them about it, and of course, they can get it.

Meredith Liben
Of course, they get it. And we all do it with our own children at home on our laps.

Margaret McKeown 
Right.

Meredith Liben
We, for some reason, are reluctant to walk into the room and, and believe those kids in front of us can do the same stuff. 

Margaret McKeown 
Or what will happen is,  a read aloud is a 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. Um. 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. 

Meredith Liben
I always say to teachers, when I talk about read aloud is, this is not just the time for the sweat to dry from recess. [laughs]

Margaret McKeown 
Right. [laughs] Exactly. Yeah, don't waste the - 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, hate it because it's that much work. You know, getting them involved in the language, they like that.

Meredith Liben
Oh absolutely. Oh, it was always our favorite time of day for sure.

Margaret McKeown
Yeah. So a couple things I’d like to really 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, than influencing the process, building strength and ability in 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. No. Really go for the kids building the understanding, and if it doesn't happen sometimes in texts, that's fine! Because then you can address whatever you saw happening in the next text, or you 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. Um. 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 isn't easy for kids. Um. And so often, it, it will seem like a lesson is going awry, because br-r-r-rh, 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 can 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.

Meredith Liben
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 multi language 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, is the most rewarding for everybody. It creates that intellectual, vibrant classroom that we're all seeking. 

Meredith Liben
David and I have had really fun and inspiring conversations with a number of dual language and multi 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. 

Desiree Garcia 
The kids take everything they learned in that Spanish classroom, and they bring it over, 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 new, 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 has 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.

David Liben
Before you started implementing this kind of curriculum, you - you did not have that kind of nature of discussion, etc?

Desiree Garcia
Yes, I've never had a group of students in front of me who are so curious. And using such big 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. 

David Liben
What about your enjoyment um of teaching as you've made this shift?

Desiree Garcia
There's no forcing anything, the kids are coming with so many ideas from these beautiful rich read alouds that we're 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 in their 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 their interests lie in. And that's amazing

Meredith Liben
There is no way to get better at this, than by doing it. And I mean that at two 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 texts, the grade levels texts. 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, and preparing - 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. 

David Liben
So close reading can be done with passages - standalone passages rather, or it could be done with full length works as well, whether 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. And it could be a couple of paragraphs, or it could be four or five paragraphs, depending upon the complexity of the, of the passage and its importance to the chapter importance to the full length work.

Meredith Liben
And 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 ch - 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, the information and learning and plot, if it was a novel, which often was - move, moving those things forward, or the places that we suspected students would get tripped up. 

So make 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.

David Liben
There are two more teachers we want you to hear from today: middle school teacher Kyair Butts, a former Baltimore city teacher of the year, and upper elementary school teacher Katie Scotti. 

Meredith Liben
We talked to them about the incredible impact close reading has made in their classrooms, and above all, how it has brought their students confidence. 

David Liben 
How do you feel close reading has changed the nature of student learning, especially when it comes to improving your students’ comprehension?

Kyair Butts
One big benefit that I've really seen as far as close reading and comprehension is students build more confidence with multiple at bats. So the first time we read and maybe we try to organize what's going on, 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, uh because they're building your knowledge of the topic, and - but they're really more confident with it. So I'll sort of hit a knowledge homerun, if you will.

And 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 texts. 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, those multiple at bats with a text, allows students to see their thinking.

Katie Scotti
Yeah, one of the things - uh going off of what Kyair just said, I think teacher attitude impacts 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. Um. 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 higher 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. Because 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.

David Liben 
Uh, do you have any tips for preparing or modifying questions for close reading?

Katie Scotti 
Definitely reading the book first. And going through the text and marking stopping points. And coming up with some of those pre planned questions first for your students.

And I think it's all about how you approach it. Your mindset as a teacher, you believing 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 yourselves a chance, and don't just immediately say, “My students aren't gonna 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. 

Kyair Butts 
Don't be afraid to live in that moment where the discussion feels like it's running along. 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.

Meredith Liben
How do you tap into the power of social learning with close reading?

Katie Scotti
What I find is that reading is a social experience. When students are reading a text together - you know, in fourth grade we read Love that Dog. When the dog passes away, you're having - you're having this experience with your 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. Hatchet 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 going to ever make it home. There shouldn't be a group in the back reading a different book, even if it's - 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.  

David Liben  
Have you noticed any issue at all with stronger readers - um either close reading not, not addressing them or they’re getting bored a little? Any thoughts on that? 

Katie Scotti
One thing that I have seen is that the more knowledge the 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 Paulsen and want to read more Gary Paulsen novels. So if we're thinking about our higher level, our 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.

Kyair Butts
Yeah. That is true. Sixth grade, when I taught it, Module Four: Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World, they could not get enough of the story of the Endurance and Shackleton. They were eating up the knowledge. And I love it because there's so many social media apps out there uh 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, “Ma, I want, you know, a Paulson book set.” You're winning. 

Meredith Liben
And we just need to say, we - 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.

David Liben
Next time on the Knowledge Matters Podcast, we’ll talk about even more ideas on practical instruction in your classroom, for example explaining your answer at every point.

Rachel Stack 
But I remember feeling like, ever - since every answer had to be explained, every answer and to be proven. 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. 

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 knowledge matters hashtag 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] 

Meredith Liben 
Well if i don’t do it, how bout I do it again?

David Liben 
Well how about I edit? You know what I mean? 

Meredith Liben 
Okay. Yeah, you do it. 

David Liben 
We're better when we work together. 

Meredith Liben 
Yeah. Alright. But we're better when we work.

David Liben 
I am working - just at a much slower pace than you.

Meredith Liben 
[laughs]