The Knowledge Matters Podcast
Join the Knowledge Matters Campaign in this thought-provoking and engaging exploration of the vital role of knowledge-building in education. Each season delves into pressing issues, innovative ideas, and transformative solutions. It’s a must-listen for educators, administrators, parents, and anyone with an interest in the evolving landscape of learning.
Episodes
28 episodes
Massachusetts' Big Move on Elementary History | History Matters Podcast
In Medford, Massachusetts, “social studies is a subject to be valued,” fifth-grade teacher Jennifer Lindsey explains in this episode. “It’s the place to teach kids how to talk to each other and negotiate conversations and digest informat...
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17:03
History Can’t Wait Until High School | History Matters Podcast
In the typical American high school, 9th-grade history students are expected to dive into the historical content, grapple with complex ideas, and engage in deep inquiry. But teenage students often lack the historical knowledge such tasks requir...
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17:19
The Power of Historical Knowledge | History Matters Podcast
The more history young students know, the more they want to know. That’s one of the joyful discoveries that elementary teachers are making in Ouachita Parish, Louisiana. In this episode, guests Angela Barfoot and Lauren Cascio<...
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16:55
What Makes Great Elementary History Curriculum | History Matters Podcast
Teaching history involves balance: too many facts and it’s boring, too few and students don’t have enough information to make sense of what they’ve learned. In this episode, host Barbara Davidson speaks with Sean Dimond, a former middle-...
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15:40
A Case for Teaching History in Elementary School | History Matters Podcast
Elementary schools spend almost no time teaching history. How did we get here, and how can we reprioritize this crucial foundation for literacy and knowledge? Host Barbara Davidson begins the eight-part “History Matters” podcast with a reflecti...
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15:44
Natalie Wexler on How Writing Promotes Clear Thinking | Literacy and the Science of Learning
Season 3 Episode 6 | “Teaching students to write clearly was actually teaching them to think clearly.” In the Season 3 finale, host Natalie Wexler brings listeners inside Monroe C...
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29:20
Natalie Wexler on Memory and the Writing Effect | Literacy and the Science of Learning
Season 3 Episode 5 | Writing is hard—and teaching writing is even harder. But science tells us it’s well worth the effort, because writing flexes the mental muscles that nurture literacy and learning.Host
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23:39
Doug Lemov on the Power of Whole Books | Literacy and the Science of Learning
Season 3 Episode 4 | “The book is in a death struggle with electronic and social media. And right now, it’s losing.”Host Doug Lemov makes a spirited case for reading whole books i...
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26:23
Doug Lemov on Fluency’s Impact on Comprehension | Literacy and the Science of Learning
Season 3 Episode 3 | When we read fluently, we recognize words without effort. We also maintain an engaged pace (automaticity) and perceive expression (prosody), all of which support attention and leave working memory free to make m...
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19:42
Dylan Wiliam on Building Student Knowledge | Literacy and the Science of Learning
Season 3 Episode 2 | Our memories grow stronger when we work to retrieve them. That’s why flash cards and pop quizzes are effective: they prompt students to recall and access information from their memory bank. What other instructio...
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26:16
Dylan Wiliam on How the Brain Learns | Literacy and the Science of Learning
Season 3 Episode 1 | How can schools and teachers maximize student learning? To answer this question, we need to understand how the human mind works. What needs to be explicitly taught, how many new things can we remember at a time,...
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29:51
Trailer | Introducing Season 3: Literacy and the Science of Learning
How is the Science of Reading connected to the Science of Learning? Join hosts Dylan Wiliam, Doug Lemov, and Natalie Wexler as they delve into the links between the two, both in theory and practice, in Season 3 of the Knowledge Matters Podcast....
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3:22
Bonus Episode: Writing: An Unsung Hero of Reading Comprehension
This bonus episode is an audio recording of our most popular webinar ever, Writing: An Unsung Hero of Reading Comprehension. It features familiar voices to listeners of Season 1 of the Knowledge Matters Podcast, best-selling author and host Nat...
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1:01:52
Bonus Episode: Knowledge: An Unsung Hero of Reading Comprehension
Today’s episode is a special bonus—an audio recording of our recent webinar, Knowledge: Why It Matters. We found the conversation so valuable that we wanted to make it accessible in as many ways as possible.In this episode, StandardsWork...
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1:01:20
Building Stamina for Deep Reading | Know Better, Do Better
Season 2 Episode 6 | Explorers boldly venture into unfamiliar worlds, where confidence, curiosity, knowledge, and persistence are rewarded. When students approach texts like explorers, they bring these same qualities to the task—a mindse...
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25:37
How Rich Texts Fuel Stronger Comprehension | Know Better, Do Better
Season 2 Episode 5 | Have you ever read something and then realized you didn’t totally understand it? That’s the hallmark of a challenging text, and it’s something students encounter all the time.In this episode,
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27:07
Making Reading a Social Experience | Know Better, Do Better
Season 2 Episode 4 | How do actual teachers and students “center the text” in reading classrooms? In this episode, David and Meredith Liben get specific with teachers and exper...
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25:12
Why Strategy-First Reading Instruction Holds Students Back | Know Better, Do Better
Season 2 Episode 3 | When’s the last time you finished a chapter of a book and thought, “Hmmm, what was the main idea?” Competent readers don’t ask themselves this question. They’re too busy focusing on the text itself, not the comp...
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24:49
Vocabulary’s Central Role in Developing Strong Readers | Know Better, Do Better
Season 2 Episode 2 | 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 bri...
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30:18
A Reading Comprehension Call to Arms | Know Better, Do Better
Season 2 Episode 1 | In today’s reading classrooms, too many kids are not alright. One of the biggest challenges is comprehension–or rather, its absence. Students don't understand what they read well enough to think deeply, connect ...
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28:24
Trailer | Introducing Season 2: Know Better, Do Better: Comprehension
Season 2 of the Knowledge Matters Podcast is here! Teachers and reading experts David and Meredith Liben host “Know Better, Do Better: Comprehension,” a six-part podcast s...
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3:52
Taking on the Knowledge-Building Challenge | Reading Comprehension Revisited
Season 1 Episode 6 | “Think what a better society we’ll have” | American education has a number of serious problems – and our failure to start building kids' knowledge early is a fundamental one. By now you know that reading comprehensio...
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36:38
Leadership and Literacy Reform | Reading Comprehension Revisited
Season 1 Episode 5 | “Everything was in silos” | So far in "The Knowledge Matters Podcast: Reading Comprehension Revisited", we've heard from classroom teachers about their...
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29:25
