Transcript Reading Research and the UN-Common Core: A Blueprint for Teaching and Teacher Education? P.

Reading Research and the
UN-Common Core: A
Blueprint for Teaching
and Teacher Education?
P. David Pearson
University of California, Berkeley
Link to slides will be posted at
http://www.scienceandliteracy.org/research/pdavidpearson
Goals for Today
• Remind ourselves of what the Standards are designed to do.
• Examine their potential
• New possibilities: The high road on curriculum, text, and cognitive
challenge
• Explore their dark side: Beware the pot holes, sink holes, and
black holes
• Discuss some defensible positions to take on curriculum,
pedagogy, and teacher education as we move into the all
important implementation phase
Link to slides will be posted at
http://www.scienceandliteracy.org/research/pdavidpearson
What I could, but will NOT talk
about…
• Assessment: Lots to say
• déjà vu all over again
• Scope and Sequence of Standards
• What could and should change over time
• What should remain the same
Survey
Elementary?
Secondary?
College?
What’s the difference
http://www.scienceandliteracy.org/research/pdavidpearson
Elementary Teachers Love
Their kids
Secondary Teachers Love
Their subjects
College Teachers
Love
Themselves
A Confession:
My Relationship with the Standards
Movements
• Member of the Validation Committee of the CCSS
• Background work on text complexity with a grant from Gates
Foundation
• Long (and occasionally checkered) history with standards
going back to
– NBPTS: Standards for Teacher Certification
– IRA/NCTE Standards for English Language Arts
• Research and development work on assessment, especially
the sorts of assessments that are privileged by deeper
learning
What sold me on the standards,
both CCSS and TEKS/CCRS
What the CCSS said about
reading
• Students who meet the Standards readily undertake the close,
attentive, reading that is at the heart of understanding and
enjoying complex works of literature. They habitually perform
the critical reading necessary to pick carefully through the
staggering amount of information available today in print and
digitally. They actively seek the wide, deep, and thoughtful
engagement with high-quality literary and informational texts
that builds knowledge, enlarges experience, and broadens
world views. They reflexively demonstrate the cogent
reasoning and use of evidence essential to both private
deliberation and responsible citizenship in a democratic
republic. (CCSSO/NGA, 2010, p. 3)
Or from the CCRS…
• Academic and business leaders emphasize the importance of
being able to apply these skills across a variety of contexts and
subject matter. They describe 21st century learning and work
environments in which the cross-disciplinary skills are
prerequisites to solving many of the most important problems
students will encounter in college and the workplace. These
problems increasingly require applying knowledge across
disciplines and subject areas and the mastery of a base set of
communication and analysis skills that span subject areas.
Students, then, not only need to possess content knowledge,
but also need to be able to apply key cognitive skills to the
academic tasks presented to them, most of which require
much more than simple recall of factual knowledge. These
cross-disciplinary standards enable students to engage in
deeper levels of thinking across a wide range of subjects.
So what’s not to Like?
• Nothing
• Everything I believe in about literacy learning
What they said about teacher
choice: From the CCSS…
• By emphasizing required achievements, the Standards leave
room for teachers, curriculum developers, and states to
determine how those goals should be reached and what
additional topics should be addressed. Thus, the Standards do
not mandate such things as a particular writing process or the
full range of metacognitive strategies that students may need
to monitor and direct their thinking and learning. Teachers are
thus free to provide students with whatever tools and
knowledge their professional judgment and experience
identify as most helpful for meeting the goals set out in the
Standards. (CCSSO/NGA, 2010, p. 4).
What you said in the CCRS…
• In delineating the knowledge and skills necessary for college
and career readiness, the CCRS do not specify the
performance levels necessary to demonstrate competence.
Without examples of course syllabi, assignments, and student
work to illustrate when or how a standard is met, some
standards could conceivably be interpreted to be at a level
that would challenge graduate students. …
• Examples of course material that illustrate the necessary
performance level for each standard will be made available as
the CCRS are implemented.
Just the right balance
• Let the body politic at every level have a voice in the big
overarching goals
• At every level along the way, from the state to the district to
the school to the classroom, leave a little room for each player
to place his or her “signature” on the effort…
• Identity, buy-in, the right kind of political negotiation among
levels within the system…
Another Reason to Support the
Standards: The Text Complexity
Gap…
Why text complexity? The gap for
college and career readiness
Jack Stenner’s (lexile guy) depiction of the 200 lexile gap
Candidate approaches
• Up the ante on text complexity and tell
folks (students and teachers) to try harder
• Up the ante and RAMP UP the scaffolding
and instruction needed to cope with the
additional challenge
• Engineer the increase within a webdelivered program…
• We’ll talk about these later…
Another reason to support
standards…
• Hobson’s Choice…
• Which is worse?
• A single orthodoxy adhered to across the
political entity?
• OR
• 1,000 or 10,000 or 100,000 local
orthodoxies?
So…….
• In 2010, I signed on the dotted line to say the CCSS standards
are worthy of our professional support and implementation
• Ready to go on the road and seek converts.
• But the road to paradise has been a little rocky…
• By the way, no one has asked me to go on the road to sell the
CCRS in Texas
• Until today…
Today’s Agenda
• Focus on a few important questions about standards…
• What do they tell us about the level of challenge we need to
provide in the texts students read?
• Responsibility of readers and teachers…
• What do they tell us about how students should be reading
and understanding text?
• Responsibility of readers and teachers…
• What do they tell us about relationships of literacy to
disciplinary learning—
• what we are beginning to think of as disciplinary literacy?
• Is there anything Texas can or should learn from the CCSS
• Is there anything that the CCSS can or should learn from
Texas?
Comprehension:
How we got to where we are…
• The historical pathway to Kintsch’s Construction Integration
Model and the RAND report
Rand
Reader
Reading
Comprehension
Text
Context
Most models of reading have tried to explain how
reader factors, text factors and context factors
interact when readers make meaning.
Bottom up and New Criticism: Text-centric
Reader
Text
Reading
Comprehension
Context
The bottom up cognitive models of the 60s were very
text centric, as was the “new criticism” model of
literature from the 40s and 50s (I.A. Richards)
Pedagogy for Bottom up and New Criticism: Textcentric
• Since the meaning is in the text, we need to go
dig it out…
• Leads to Questions that
• Interrogate the facts of the text
• Get to the “right” interpretation
• Writerly readings or textual readings
Schema and Reader Response: Reader-centric
Reader
Reading
Comprehension
Text
Context
The schema based cognitive models of the 70s and the
reader response models (Rosenblatt) of the 80s focused
more on reader factors--knowledge or interpretation
mattered most
Pedagogy for Reader-centric
• Since the meaning is largely in the reader,
we need to go dig it out…
• Spend a lot of time on
– Building background knowledge
– Inferences needed to build a coherent model
of meaning
– Readers’ impressions, expressions,
unbridled response
• Readerly readings
A few clarifications of schema
theory…
• Variation along a continuum of top-down vs bottom-up
• Kohlers (1967): Reading is only incidentially textual
• Anderson (1977): specific words/ideas instantiate general
schemata: the text is the trigger to our knowledge stores
• Not completely top down process
Critical literacy models: Context-centric
Reader
Reading
Comprehension
Text
Context
The sociocultural and critical literacy models of the
90s focused on the central role of context
(purpose, situation, discourse community)
Pedagogy for Critical literacy models
• Since the meaning is largely in the context, we
need to go dig it out…
• Questions that get at the social, political and
economic underbelly of the text
– Whose interests are served by this text?
– What is the author trying to get us to believe?
– What features of the text contribute to a particular
interpretation, e.g., that money is evil?
CI: Balance Reader and Text: little c for context
Reader
Reading
Comprehension
Text
Context
In Kintsch’s model, Reader and Text factors are
balanced, and context plays a “background”role--in
purpose and motivation.
Pedagogical implications for CI
• Since the meaning is in this reader text
interface, we need to go dig it out…
• Query the accuracy of the text base.
– What is going on in this part here where it
says…
– What does it mean when it says…
– I was confused by this part…
• Ascertain the situation model.
– So what is going on here?
– What do we know that we didn’t know
before?
Kintchian Model
3
Knowledge Base
Text
1
Text Base
Experience
2
Situation Model
Says
Means
Inside the head
Out in the
world
New and different
• Most important: A new model of the comprehension process
•
•
•
•
Text (what the author left on the page)
Text base (the version a reader creates on a veridical reading)
Knowledge (what the reader brings from prior experience)
Model of meaning for a text
• Dubbed the Situation Model (mental model)
• A model that accounts for all the facts and resources available in the
current situation
What’s inside the Knowledge box?
• World knowledge (everyday stuff, including social and
cultural norms)
• Topical knowledge (dogs and canines)
• Disciplinary knowledge (how history or astronomy
works)
• Linguistic knowledge
•
•
•
•
•
Phonology
Lexical and morphological
Syntax
Genre
Pragmatics (how language works in the world): Discourse,
register, academic language, intention
• Orthography (how print relates to speech)
How does a reader build a text
base?
Excerpt from Chapter 8 of Hatchet
“Some of the quills were driven in deeper than
others and they tore when they came out. He
breathed deeply twice, let half of the breath out,
and went back to work. Jerk, pause, jerk — and
three more times before he lay back in the
darkness, done. The pain filled his leg now, and
with it came new waves of self-pity. Sitting alone in
the dark, his leg aching, some mosquitoes finding
him again, he started crying. It was all too much,
just too much, and he couldn’t take it. Not the way
it was.
“I can’t take it this way, alone with no fire and in
the dark, and next time it might be something
worse, maybe a bear, and it wouldn’t be just quills
in the leg, it would be worse. I can’t do this, he
thought, again and again. I can’t. Brian pulled
himself up until he was sitting upright back in the
corner of the cave. He put his head down on his
arms across his knees, with stiffness taking his left
leg, and cried until he was cried out.”
Building a Text Base
• “Some of the quills were driven in (into what?
His leg) deeper than others (other what? Quills)
and they (the quills that were driven in deeper)
tore when they (the deeper-in quills) came out (of
his leg). He (Brian) breathed deeply twice, let
half the breath out, and went back to work (work
on what? Don’t know yet. Suspense. Expect to
find out in next sentence). Jerk, pause, jerk (the
work is jerking quills out) — and three more
times (jerking quills out) he (Brian) lay back in
the darkness, done (all the quills jerked out).
• The pain filled his (Brian’s) leg now, and with it
(the pain) came new waves (what were the old
waves?) of self-pity. (Brian) Sitting alone in the
dark, his (Brian’s) leg aching, some mosquitoes
finding him (Brian) again, he (Brian) started
crying. It (the whole situation Brian was in) was
all too much, just too much, and he (Brian)
couldn’t take it (the situation). Not the way it (the
situation) was. (What way was the situation?
Don’t know yet. Suspense. Expect to find out in the
next paragraph.)
• “I (Brian) can’t take it (the situation) this way (what
way? Still don’t know. Suspense), alone with no fire
and in the dark (now we know “this way” means
“alone with no fire and in the dark”), and next time it
(the next situation) might be something worse (than
this situation), maybe a bear, and it (the problem that
will define the situation) wouldn’t be just quills in the
leg, it (the problem) would be worse (than quills in the
leg).
• I (Brian) can’t do this (deal with the problem situation),
he (Brian) thought, again and again. I (Brian) can’t “do
this (deal with the problem situation).” Brian pulled
himself (Brian) up until he (Brian) was sitting upright
back in the corner of the cave. He (Brian) put his
(Brian’s) head down on his (Brian’s) arms across his
(Brian’s) knees, with stiffness taking his (Brian’s) left leg,
and cried until he (Brian) was cried out.”
Some key moves in building a text
base…
• Processing words and attaching meaning to them
• Using syntax to solidify key relations among ideas
• Microstructure
• Macrostructure
• Resolving reference--things that stand for other
things (mainly pronouns and nouns)
• Using logical connectives (before, after, because, so,
then, when, while, but) to figure out the relations
among ideas
• Inferring omitted connectives (e.g., figuring out that
A is the cause of B) based on PK about the world
• Posing questions for short term resolution
• Identifying ambiguities for later resolution (wait and
see)
So how about building a situation
model?
• The knowledge-comprehension relationship
• We use our knowledge to build a situation model for a text
• The information in the situation model is now available to
become part of our long term memory and store of
knowledge
• To assist in processing the next bit.
Situation Model for Hatchet
Passage
• Integrate
• Text base
• Knowledge Base
• We have the text base
• What might be in the knowledge for a 10-year-old?
The blurb from the jacket of Hatchet gives a
preview of the book:
Thirteen-year old Brian Robeson is on his way to visit his
father when the single engine plane in which he is flying
crashes. Suddenly, Brian finds himself alone in the
Canadian wilderness with nothing but his clothing, a
tattered windbreaker and the hatchet his mother has
given him as a present — and the dreadful secret that
has been tearing him apart since his parents’ divorce.
But now Brian has no time for anger, self-pity or despair
— it will take all his know-how and determination, and
more courage than he knew he possessed, to survive.
What a reader knows by Chapter 8
Brian is stranded in the Canadian wilderness with a
hatchet and his wits as his only tools for survival. He already
has overcome several obstacles, including surviving the plane
crash, building a small shelter and finding food.
In chapter eight, Brian awakens in the night to realize
that there is an animal in his shelter. He throws his hatchet at
the animal but misses. The hatchet makes sparks when it hits
the wall of the cave. Brian then feels a pain in his leg. He sees
the creature scuttle out of his shelter. Brian figures out that
the animal was a porcupine because there are quills in his leg.
Some prior knowledge that a 5th grader
might bring
•
•
•
•
•
What sparks look like
How it feels to be scared by an animal
How big porcupines are
To survive you have to have food, water and shelter
To survive you have to be strong
An actual retelling of key parts of
chapter 8 from Sam, a 5th grade reader
• The same text for which we just examined the text base…
Why is this model of iteratively constructing
and integrating so important?
• The mental (situation) model is central to knowledge
construction
• Building a mental model transforms new ideas and
information into a form that can be added to memory,
where they endure as knowledge that can be
retrieved in the future. Unless readers build a mental
model, the information they derive from the text is
not likely to connect to their stored knowledge. The
new information will be forgotten or lost.
• Key role of knowledge:
• Knowledge involved in even the most literal of processing
• Knowledge begets comprehension begets knowledge…
• Knowledge is available immediately: dynamic store…
How can we help students build solid text
bases and rich and accurate situation models?
• Do a good job of teaching subject matter in social studies,
science, mathematics, and literature
• Don’t let reading remain our curricular bully!
How can we help students build rich and
accurate mental models?
• Assist students in selecting appropriate
knowledge frameworks to guide their
construction process
• Do everything possible to build as many
connections as possible with other texts,
experiences, knowledge domains
• Do lots of “what does this remind you of?”
• What is this like? How is it different from what it’s
like?
How can we help students build rich and
accurate mental models?
• A different model of guided reading
• Stop every once in a while and give the kids a chance to
construct/revise their current mental model
• Research study:
• interview protocol proved to be very “instructive”
Begin with very general probes
before getting specific
•
•
•
•
•
So what’s going on in this part?
What do we know now that we didn’t know before?
What’s new?
What was the author trying to get us to understand here?
Well!…say something!
Invite and support clarifications of
tricky parts
• Anyone want to share something that was tricky or confusing?
• How about this part here…where it says…?
• I got confused by… What do you think about this part? What
was the author trying to get us to think.
Follow up general probes and invitations for
clarification with specific probes.
• So which of these things happened first? Why is
that important?
• In this paragraph, they use a lot of pronouns.
Let’s check out our understanding of who or what
they refer to..
• Typical discussion questions are OK too--just to
make sure are the tricky parts get clarified.
• View questions as a scaffold for understanding the big
picture not as a quiz.
The general model for guided
reading
• A set for “stock-taking”
• A set for using facts (details) in the service of concepts (main
ideas)
• More specific probes to scaffold the construction of the text
base and situation model
• Results in a pretty good summary of the selection--story,
article, lab report, mathematical representation, etc.
Developing Text Bases and Mental
Models
• Ensure that students have a full “tool” box (set of strategies)
to haul out when things don’t just happen automatically…for
•
•
•
•
Connecting the known to the new
Connecting texts and parts of texts
Working toward coherence among potentially unconnected ideas
Recognizing and resolving ambiguities.
MONITORING FOR
MEANING…
• For a model of meaning to survive, it must
• Be consistent with the current text base (square with the “facts of
the case” thus far revealed)
• Be consistent with the current knowledge base (square with what
a reader knows to be true about the world)
The Vulnerabilities
• Clumsiness with motivation
• A nod to interest and an assumption that readers are motivated
• Gloss over critical reading
• Assumes a liberal humanist “critical thinking” perspective, not a
post-modern critical theoretical stance
Kintchian Model
3
Knowledge Base
Text
1
Text Base
Reader as Decoder
2
Situation Model
Reader as Meaning Maker
Experience
Says
Means
Inside the head
Out in the
world
Prevailing research-based wisdom
about comprehension…
• Kintsch’s Construction-Integration Model
• Rand Report on Comprehension
Kintsch, W. (1998). Comprehension: A paradigm for cognition. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press.
RAND Reading Study Group. (2002). Reading for understanding: Toward an R&D
program in reading comprehension. Santa Monica, CA: RAND.
Rand
Kintsch’s Construction-Integration
Model
• As you read, for each unit, you
• Construct a Textbase
Says
• Integrate the Text and Knowledge Base
to create a
Mean
Situation Model
s
• Incorporate information from the Situation Model
back into your knowledge base
• Use your knowledge to nudge the world a bit. Does
• Start all over again with the next bit of reading
• C-I-C-I, anon anon
My claim in 2010: The vision of
comprehension in the TEKS or CCSS maps
onto important theoretical, assessment, and
curricular research
• National Assessment of Educational Progress
• Four Resources Model of Freebody and Luke
• Kintsch’s Construction-Integration Model
http://www.scienceandliteracy.org/research/pdavidpearson
Key Ideas and Details
1. Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from
it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn
from the text.
2. Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the
key supporting details and ideas.
3. Analyze how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of
a text.
Craft and Structure
4. Interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text, including determining technical,
connotative, and figurative meanings, and analyze how specific word choices shape
meaning or tone.
5. Analyze the structure of texts, including how specific sentences, paragraphs, and larger
portions of the text (e.g., a section, chapter, scene, or stanza) relate to each other and the
whole.
6. Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of a text.
Integration of Knowledge and Ideas
7. Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media and formats, including visually
and quantitatively, as well as in words.*
8. Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, including the validity of
the reasoning as well as the relevance and sufficiency of the evidence.
9. Analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or topics in order to build
knowledge or to compare the approaches the authors take.
Common Core
• Standards 1-3: Key ideas and details
• Standards 4-6: Craft and structure
• Standards 7-9: Integration of knowledge
and ideas
http://www.scienceandliteracy.org/research/pdavidpearson
TEKS
• Students analyze, make inferences and draw conclusions
about XXX (insert type of text) and provide evidence from text
to support their understanding.
• ANALYZE (unpack the text base)
• MAKE INFERENCES (build a situation model)
• DRAW CONCLUSIONS (situate in the larger scheme of things—
compare, evaluate, critique, use)
• MAKE ARGUMENTS (use evidence to support all of the above)
NAEP
• Locate and Recall
• Interpret and Integrate
• Critique and Evaluate
CCSS
• Key ideas and details
• Craft and structure
• Integration of
knowledge and ideas
TEKS
• ANALYZE
• MAKE INFERENCES
• DRAW CONCLUSIONS
NAEP
• Locate and Recall
• Interpret and
Integrate
• Critique and Evaluate
• Locate and Recall
• Interpret and Integrate
• Critique and Evaluate
Freebody and Luke’s 4
Resources
• Reader as Decoder: Get the message: SAYS
• Reader as Meaning Maker: Integrate with
MEANS
knowledge:
• Reader as Text Analyst: What’s the real
message and how is it crafted
DOES
• Reader as Text Critic: What’s the subtext?
The hidden (or not so hidden) agenda?
Consistent with Cognitive Views of
Reading
Key IdeasDecoder
and Details What the
Locate and Recall
text says
Analyze
Maker and Ideas
Integration ofMeaning
Knowledge
Integrate and Interpret
What theInfer
text means
Craft
and Structure
What Conclude
the text does
Critique and Evaluate
User/Analyst/Critic
For those who want to see everything at
once…
TEKS
Kintsch
4 Resources
NAEP
CCSS
Analyze
Text Base
Decoder
Locate and Recall
Key Ideas and Details
Infer
Situation Model Meaning Maker Interpret and
Integrate
Conclude Put Knowledge
to Work
Text Analyst
Pearson
• Says
• Means
• Does
Critique and
Evaluate
Integration of
Knowledge and Ideas
Craft and Structure
These consistencies provide…
• Credibility
• Stretch
• Research “patina”
I was ready to go on the road to sell these
standards to anyone who would listen
And now… for something
completely different
Why Texas will not be immune
from these pressures
• Publishers will produce special materials for Texas
• But they will bear a strong family resemblance to what they
develop elsewhere
• Close Reading and Text-based questions are everywhere
Text dependency of questions
• Regarding the nature of texts: “A significant
percentage of tasks and questions are text
dependent…Rigorous text-dependent questions
require students to demonstrate that they not
only can follow the details of what is explicitly
stated but also are able to make valid claims
that square with all the evidence in the text.
Text-dependent questions do not require
information or evidence from outside the text or
texts; they establish what follows and what does
not follow from the text itself.” (page 6)
Stay close to the text
• Staying close to the text. “Materials make the
text the focus of instruction by avoiding features
that distract from the text. Teachers’ guides or
students’ editions of curriculum materials should
highlight the reading selections…Given the focus
of the Common Core State Standards, publishers
should be extremely sparing in offering activities
that are not text based.”
My concern
• We will operationally define text dependent as literal, factual
questions
• Forgetting that LOTS of other questions/tasks are also text-reliant
• Compare
• What were two reasons pioneers moved west? literal
• What does the author believe about the causes ofintepretive
westward
expansion in the United States?
• How valid is the claim that author X writes from an ideology
of
critical
manifest destiny?
• YOU DON’T NEED A LITERAL FACTUAL QUESTION TO PROMOTE
CLOSE READING…
• Fundamental misunderstanding about reading theory:
• Every action—critical, inferential, or literal—requires the use of prior
I wonder
Coleman and Pimentel
knowledge
to carrywhy
it out…
are so down on prior knowledge?
Text before all else
“The Common Core State Standards call for
students to demonstrate a careful
understanding of what they read before
engaging their opinions, appraisals, or
interpretations. Aligned materials should
therefore require students to demonstrate that
they have followed the details and logic of an
author’s argument before they are asked to
evaluate the thesis or compare the thesis to
others.” (page 9)
My concern
• We will view literal comprehension as a
prerequisite to inferential or critical
comprehension.
• Compare
• We could read text X. Then read text Y. Then
compare them on Z.
• Or just ask them to conduct a comparative
reading of X and Y on Z.
• Sometimes the comparison or critique question
better rationalizes the close reading
Close reading
• The Common Core State Standards place a high
priority on the close, sustained reading of
complex text, beginning with Reading Standard
1. Such reading emphasizes the particular over
the general and strives to focus on what lies
within the four corners of the text.
My concern
• Lots of things lie within the four corners of the text—some general
and some specific. Writers use both all the time.
• How long is something in the text? For the page, the folio, the
chapter, the book?
• Is there a point, say when you are on page 10, at which you can’t tell
the difference between what you knew before you set eyes on the
text and what you learned as you were reading page 3 of the text?
• The text drags prior knowledge along even if you don’t want it to.
• Schema Theory Tenet: Words INSTANTIATE schemata
• Business had been slow since the oil crisis…
• The text cries out for a schema to attach itself to.
• Ideas that don’t connect don’t last long enough to allow learning
(assimilation or accommodation) to occur
• They drop out of memory pretty fast
• In one eye and out the other!
Yet another role for knowledge:
Monitoring
• How do we know that our understanding is good
enough?
• We use two standards…
• Does it square with the textbase I have built thus far in
today’s reading?
• The last clause, sentence, paragraph, page, and more…
• Does it square with what I know to be true about the
world?
So what about Prior
Knowledge
• Why has it taken a beating in the Publishers’ Criteria
• One thought: Too much Indulgence at the trough of prior
knowledge
• Too much Know, not enough Want to Learn and Learn
• Too much picture walk
• Too much story swapping about our experiences with
roadrunners before reading…
• Let’s right the wrongs
• Need a mid course correction not a pendulum swing
• Knowledge in proper perspective?
• Balanced view of knowledge?
• Knowledge in the service of understanding
But asking kids to hold their prior
knowledge at bay…
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Is like
Asking dogs not to bark or
Leaves not to fall.
It’s in the nature of things
Dogs bark.
Leaves fall.
Readers use their prior knowledge to render text sensible and
figure out what to retain for later.
So what’s a body to do?
• Embrace the construct of close reading
• But make sure that it applies to several purposes for reading
• Reading to get the flow of ideas in the piece.
This more
comprehensive view of close reading is
• Reading to enhance our knowledge base!!!!
actually
moretoconsistent
• Reading
compare (with with
anotherhistorical
text or body ofprecedents
experience or of
knowledge
close reading
from the 1920s through the 1960s.
• Reading to critique
• how good is the argument or the craft or
• what is his bias/slant/perspective)
• All of these approaches interrogate the text as an evidentiary base.
• Embrace the virtuous cycle
• Knowledge begets text comprehension begets knowledge…
More a body can do…
• For the CCSS, Stay closer to the standards than to the
interpretations of the standards we have seen thus far.
• For TEKS and CCRS, Keep on keeping on…
• The model you have works just fine for balancing Text, Task, and
Reader variables
• A BIG TEXAS advantage is the way that you have
sequenced the comprehension skills across grade levels
• RECURRING cognitive moves instantiated in text that
systematically increases in
• Linguistic complexity AND
• Conceptual complexity
• Enact a full model of close reading
• Four Resources works for me
• Just make sure to encompass literal, interpretive, and critical
reading tasks
My sure fire Close Reading Strategy
• What do you think?
• What makes you think so?
• All about warranting claims about what the text
says, means, or does...
• From Mary Uboldi at Healdsburg High School
Use Literacy Tools to Enhance the Development
of Disciplinary Knowledge and Reasoning
• Two views of integration
• Integrated Language Arts
• Integration between ELA and disciplines
• The CCSS are better on the interdisciplinary than on the ELA
integration
• Corresponds to the actual uses to which reading and writing
are put.
• Reading, writing, and language always serve specific purposes
• Reading and writing, not generically,
• But about something in particular
The something in particular
• What reading, writing and language look like in a domain
• The information for a particular topic or unit or chapter
• The information in a particular text
Reading and writing are better when
they are tools not goals
• If we don’t realign the current curricular imbalances,
science and social studies may suffer…
• but ultimately reading and writing will suffer
• reading and writing are not about reading and writing
in general
• they are about reading and writing particular texts
that are grounded in particular experiences
• they both depend upon the existence, the acquisition
and the utilization of knowledge (note the
comprehension revolution!)
• not knowledge in general but knowledge of particular
disciplines, domains of inquiry, topics, patterns,
concepts, and facts
• In short, the very stuff of subject matter curriculum!
NY Times, Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Language Arts
Social Studies
Science
Mathematics
Our current view of curriculum
A model I like: Tools by Disciplines
Academic Disciplines………..
Science
Social
Studies
Mathe- Literature
matics
Reading
Writing
Language

Early: Tools dominate
Academic Disciplines………..
Science
Social
Studies
Mathematics
Literature
Reading
Writing
Language

Later: Disciplines dominate
Academic Disciplines………..
Science Social
Studies
Mathe Literature
matics
Reading
Writing
Language

Weaving is even a better metaphor
than a matrix
Writing
Language
Reading
math
literature
Social studies
Science

Integration is tough…What
happens when you try to
integrate reading and math?
• The evolution of mathematics story
problems during the last 40 years.

1960's
• A peasant sells a bag of potatoes for
$10. His costs amount to 4/5 of his
selling price. What is his profit?

1970's (New Math)
• A farmer exchanges a set P of potatoes with a
set M of money.
• The cardinality of the set M is equal to $10 and
each element of M is worth $1. Draw 10 big
dots representing the elements of M.
• The set C of production costs is comprised of
2 big dots less than the set M.
• Represent C as a subset of M and give the
answer to the question: What is the cardinality
of the set of profits? (Draw everything in red).

1980's
• A farmer sells a bag of potatoes
for $10. His production costs are
$8 and his profit is $2. Underline
the word "potatoes" and discuss
with your classmates.

1990's
• A kapitalist pigg undjustlee akires
$2 on a sak of patatos. Analiz this
tekst and sertch for erors in
speling, contens, grandmar and
ponctuassion, and than ekspress
your vioos regardeng this metid of
geting ritch.
Author unknown

2000's
• Dan was a man.
• Dan had a sack.
• The sack was tan.
• The sack had spuds
• The spuds cost 8.
• Dan got 10 for the tan sack of spuds.
• How much can Dan the man have?

Shared Responsibility for Language
and Literacy Development
•
•
•
•
English and Subject Matter
Rand writing are always situated in a topic and a purpose.
Knowledge fuels comprehension and writing.
Reading and writing, along with experience and instruction,
fuel knowledge.
• Reading and writing and language work better when they are
“tools” for the acquisition of
• Knowledge
• Insight
• Joy
Influential Piece for me…
Teaching Disciplinary Literacy to Adolescents:
Rethinking Content-Area Literacy Instruction.
Timothy and Cynthia Shanahan, Harvard Ed
Review, 2008, 78 (1).
Why sharing now?
•
•
•
•
The gap for college and workplace readiness
The increasing demands of an informational society
Finally addressing a problem that has always been there
Increasing awareness among disciplinary scholars that
they cannot cede disciplinary literacy to the English
curriculum
• April 23, 2010 edition of Science.
Just a word about text
complexity
http://www.scienceandliteracy.org/research/pdavidpearson
How can we scaffold the reading of
complex texts?
• Read it for them? See IRA statement.
• Gradually increase the demand in a program designed to
up the ante when kids appear ready for it. Reading Plus or
Oases
• Reframe the problem:
• not text complexity
• but text access:
• Answer: scaffolds:
IRA Statement
• K-1: Read alouds
• Beyond the beginning reading levels, the CCSS guidelines on text
complexity encourage teachers to engage students in reading at
least some texts they are likely to struggle with in terms of fluency
and reading comprehension. This represents a major shift in
instructional approach.
• To ensure that the interactions with such texts lead to maximum
student learning, teachers must provide significantly greater and
more skillful instructional scaffolding
• employing rereading, explanation, encouragement, and other
supports within lessons.
• To accomplish this shift successfully, teachers must have
• access to appropriate instructional resources and
• professional learning opportunities that support them in providing
such scaffolding.
Scaffolds to cope with
complexity
• Discussion: Collaborative reasoning and problem
solving.
• This is where all we know about collaboration and
social learning come into play
• Vocabulary: Before, During, After
• Inferring word meanings from context,
• clarifying ambiguous or unknown words,
• semantic mapping and any and all categorization activities
Scaffolds to cope with
complexity
• Strategy Instruction
• Strategies are the tools we invoke when our knowledge won’t do
the comprehension for us.
• They compensate for a lack of knowledge
• Think about the TEKS comprehension standards as if they could
be enacted in either an
• Automatic mode
• Strategic mode
• Big issue: teach the standards strategically
• Collaborative synthesis activities
• Summarizing activities
• Text maps
• KWL charts
Resources I trust…
• Lucy Calkins. Pathways to the Common Core, Heinemann
• Doug Fisher, Nancy Frey, and Diane Lapp
• Text Complexity: Raising Rigor in Reading, IRA
• Teaching Students to Read Like a Detective, Solution Tree
• IRA’s website
• S. Neuman and L. Gambrell (Eds.), Quality reading instruction in the
age of Common Core State Standards. Newark, DE: International
Reading Association.
• L. Morrow, T. Shanahan, & K. K. Wixson (Eds.), Teaching with the
Common Core Standards for English Language Arts: What Educators
Need to Know, Grades PreK-2. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
• https://www.teachingchannel.org/
• Watch for work from the Literacy Design Collaborative work on
discipline-based integrated ELA modules, 6-12.
Resources that I’d sift through with a
careful, critical lens to find a few gems…
• Engage NY (too much narrow close
reading)
• Edmodo NY (too much narrow close
reading)
• ASCD (like most, not all, of what I have
seen)
• https://www.teachingchannel.org/
Hopes for standards…
• I’m hangin’ in there for the near term.
• They, both the CCSS and the combination of
TEKS and CCRS are still the best games in town
• They are moving in the right direction in terms of
reading theory and research—deeper learning.
• Hoping that CCSS and CCRS prove to be living
documents
• Regularly revised with advances in
• our knowledge of reading
• research on their “consequences”
So, can the romance between
scholarship and standards survive?
• Fleeting infatuation or long-term commitment?
• Depends on two kinds of leadership
• Leadership among the founders and authors of
the standards to respond to feedback from the
field
• Leadership among those of us who implement
the standards to
• Speak truth to power
• Make and share improvements
http://www.scienceandliteracy.org/research/pdavidpearson