ISABEL BECK: Good afternoon, it feels like the afternoon, it's not though, it's the

Transcription

1 ISABEL BECK: Good afternoon, it feels like the afternoon, it's not though, it's the morning. So I'm going to start. The three Cs -- except I need my equipment. Oh, here it is. Okay, we'll see -- the three Cs and V of comprehension instruction, do you know what the three Cs are? Anybody? Nobody -- unless you know them -- I mean, if you've seen it. Nope? Good. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Bless you. ISABEL BECK: That's Penn State floor I think. Penn State. Okay, you'll see. Well, we're going to start with what's going on as a reader's reading something. Well, what a reader is trying to do, a good reader, is build a coherent representation of what's going on. We don't -- you read here, and you come out with ideas. But as you read, you connect parts, and that's really important because you don't come out with a list of sentences or a list of events, you come out with something connected, and that's the core of comprehension. And what readers do is they move through texts striving for comprehension -- for coherence. If things aren't making sense they may see if they missed something because they want to connect the ideas -- that's a goal of understanding something. You wouldn't understand language if you told it to them in separate, individual sentences. And what they do is focus on the content at hand. They stay on that content and they follow it through, and if they have to they go back to see if they need to connect something they didn't, and that's the connecting. So the three Cs are about there. It's coherence, content, and connection. Okay, this is just an iteration of the same thing. If you're going to be the teacher that supports it then you need to focus on what's being discussed at the end of the kid's

2 nose and connecting what they've just read with the reading. It -- rather than make it so hard and so difficult and this strategy and that, deal with what's at the end of their nose and help them connect it. Now, meaningful talk about text has been shown to enhance comprehension, there are lots of studies. And discussion that's going to do that, meaningful talk which we mean is discussion, someone's not just talking meaningfully, people are talking together. That kind of talk needs to feature open questions, like, how does he -- how do you think the author wants is making -- how's the author making you feel about the two boys? Let's that they were having a dialogue. So, open questions, more student talk than teacher talk. And teacher's responses that are based on what the kids say, and that's the hardest part. When you go in with a typical lesson, you have questions, you ask the questions, if it's not okay, you get her to help, if not then you say okay and you tell them. If you go in with the ideas that you'd like them to understand, you open up the possibilities that they're going to tell you crazy things. So, I have seen one teacher after another go on videotape -- go, now what am I going to do with this? But for the most part, they come along very quickly. Point is that you are letting them take the lead and you're then using it. This is comprehension instruction. Get to third grade, that kid in the front wants to tell the teacher something about what they're reading, the kid in the background is back there with the texts. I guess he didn't know what the answer -- the response to that question is, and that's great that he looks back. We're not -- the text is an ally, we don't want it to be, you know, a problem. Now this is -- in kindergarten, with the read aloud, and you'll see, they'll be reading -- the kid -- the teacher will read aloud, and

3 then interrupt herself for a comment or question. And if there's anything I learned and did know but learn with many underscores, the interruption, or the interspersing of questions and responses within a text is just gigantically important. It makes all the difference, rather than assign the text, answer questions, check them with a teacher. And you'll see that. So these kids are listening to Dr. DeSota and she's asked them something -- no, not yet. Here's a senior high schooler, or junior high school. And you see they've moved the chairs around, the teachers up there in the right somewhere, but that's comprehension instruction. Now, what I showed you were discussion-based, or sometimes called contentbased approaches. Discuss what's at the end of your nose, help the kids make connections throughout. There are other groups that do it, Instructional Conversations in California, Collaborative Reasoning in Illinois, Dialogical Instruction I think is Illinois, Junior Grade Books is around everywhere, and Questioning the Author is the work that we've been doing at the University of Pittsburgh. They're all to one way or another discussion-based and they focus on what's there. So, what question -- I'm going to use Questioning the Author, what it does, it provides a process that the teacher and the kids can use to together work through building a coherent representation of the text. It does that. The major features is -- are interspersed reading and discussion, open questions that prompt discussion, and focused discussion on the text, which means don't take that discussion off to Aunt Sally's farm. Keep it here. Now, there's a much more well-known approach to comprehension, which is strategies instruction. How many of you know about that? Raise your hand. Really raise your hand, it's important for me to see. Right. Right. And

4 it -- kids are explicitly taught strategies with the idea that they could be applied to any text. Like they're taught to summarize a text or to ask questions as they read, or -- and they practice those procedures on small texts and then they put them together, multiple strategies are used. Now when strategies came in, in the early 80s I think, it was the early 80s, it took off like wildfire except there were several prominent researchers who said, wait a minute guys, and Carver was one of them. And his point was that if the teacher helped the kids understand the text in front of them, which is my recommendation, the socalled comprehension strategies would take care of themselves. If you could understand what you're reading, that's the goal. And then, [Inaudible] Reynolds makes the point that working with those strategies might have a cognitive negative feature, and that is when you're -- when you re employing a strategy, you shift your thinking from what this thing in front of you is about to what -- to engaging in a strategy. And that, these authors are saying, suggests that it is not unlikely that -- and you're reducing your mental resources, because the mental resources are limited, whether you're Einstein or a four-year-old kid. So if you take some of those that go beyond the text to try to figure out some strategy that will take you back to the text, question is, are you turning your attention to the wrong way? Shouldn't it stay on the text? Well, they're just [inaudible]. So let's distinguish what these two approaches are. In strategies, strategies encourages students to execute specific routines like summarizing, making inference, generating a question. And they also -- it also says to be conscious of your mental processes. Any of you aware that in those instructions it's saying so, what are you

5 doing now, what do you need to do, very conscious. That's a very funny problem in learning psychology. To what extent does a learner need to be able to articulate what they're doing in contrast to doing it? Now, I know that I -- when I first started to put my foot in the so-called being a reading expert, I learned that although I read sitting, and can, and citizen, and couldn't correctly, I did not know the rule of a hard and soft C. I learned it fast -- I didn't want anyone to know that because I was in a place where people were talking about it. Question is, did I know -- or did I need to know the rule? What do you think? What do you think? That if you know, you don't need to know the rule? Well I think that's right mostly. There's another study, I don't think it's bad to know rules, but it doesn't mean that if you know the -- but I think it's bad if you know the rule -- don't know the rule, but know the behavior, and are confident, go ahead. There is a study that I can't find that I can hear it as I well as I know that -- they took good writers, maybe senior high kids, good writers who punctuated very well, and they taught them some of the rules for the punctuation and they did more poorly when they had that [inaudible]. Anyway, that's an interesting aside. But content directs in contrast to thinking about the processes and engaging the processes that are one or two steps away from the text, that content discussion approach directs the kids attention towards the content and how they're fitting together -- connecting. The teacher might -- so, she asks a question, response, and she might say, well, how does that connect with what happened in this first page, when somebody was doing something? That's very important, because think about coming out of the text reading, sending your eyes over squiggles, and coming out with a bunch

6 of sentences, or clauses, or ideas, in contrast to something that hangs together. Strategies approaches -- we re trying to set this up as literature. Okay. It is a fact that if you look through the literature, you will find that strategy approaches are better than traditional instruction. Now, what's traditional instruction? Teacher gives an assignment, kids read the content, kids answer the question, teacher -- no, kids read it, they come back, they answer the questions, teacher comes in and that's it. Okay. Second one, it's in the research, you can find -- discussion is better than traditional -- discussion is better than traditional instruction, okay. Content approach is better than traditional instruction. So traditional instruction has some egg on its face. Then comes the question, could it be that anything is better than traditional instruction? Why do you need someone that has a master's degree to say, read this, answer these questions? Here are the answers. Good idea, good question. Well, could anything be better than traditional instruction? Yeah, and I think that's why all those others are getting findings, because anything is better. And here's the question, but are some non-traditional approaches better than others? And that has never happened till -- I'll be telling you, my colleagues and I did a grueling five-year study which is published 2009, July 2009, it s almost a year out, took us five years to do it, in Reading Research Quarterly. So lots of what I'm telling you comes from that. So, that's the name of the article. When I say five years is the first year, we had to get a slight design to get money. In the second year, we had to -- we got the money. The third year, we went into the schools, and the fourth year, we did it again in the same grades, and the fifth year, we wrote it up. So I mean, it wasn't like we were slow, okay, it's just what you had to do. So that's rethinking comprehension instruction and

7 the first head-to-head look at two innovative approaches, strategies and questioning the author. Okay, so what our methodology was is we took the last unit of the Basel that was in the school, five stories, all narratives, and we ran the study in like October, November, and December. So the kids had not read those. And we inserted questioning the author questions. So what's happening here, you know, they're open. And at the same places in another set, we inserted strategies. This is a good place to make a summary, you know, summarize this. And then, on the Basel program, what we did is kept the Basel questions but actually dressed it up to the point that we took out some of the questions like, does anyone ever had an experience like going down the Amazon, or something, I guess if they had that I'd ask it too. But, try -- in other words, very often Basel took what -- quite far away from the story, doesn't mean that you should go far away eventually, but on a first reading to try to get what's happening there, keep your eye -- you know, find out what the author is saying then. So we took that out. So they were kind of streamlined. We can't say that we we re exactly the way the Basel had developed it. Just to get the -- a good feel for the content. So at a stop, this interspersed questions. This might be a place where the strategies would stop, they would be the same place. This is good place to stop and summarize. So you summarize back there, okay, I say. Was that a good summary? Because what I want is to make sure that you're well-oiled in how to do a summary. So, is that a good summary? Yeah, well, why? If it wasn't, well, you think -- so what do we do when we summarize if you see some hesitation. But notice that it's nothing about the content. Over the content, it's just -- what just happened. And if it is important, why might that be important? And that often leads you to a connection.

8 So our methodology. All fifth graders in one school, six fifth grades and we could do it methodologically to be able to get all your classrooms both control and experiment out of the same school, it was like a blessing, that doesn't -- it doesn't happen too often in someone's career. I mean, you can make up for not doing it -- having to go to several schools, but when you have it this way it's really wonderful. So the six classrooms, the teachers chose from lots, and there were two content, two strategies, and two Basels. We did it for two years. Classroom I think took about three months to set -- I don't know, and the next year a new fifth grade classes. Well, there are more results than this but let me tell you about it. SVT is called sentence verification task. And what it is is something that was done by a man named John Lawyer at the University of Massachusetts. And it's very validated that's why we use it. He'll ask a question from a selection and then there'll be four answers. And they may be all the right answer, it's a paraphrase of what the -- what is said in the text. Another set will be a verbatim one. Another set of four will be the one -- something about the syntax will have been changed. So it's very easy to administer because you can administer to a group and it has good validity. Well, is it -- and we gave it after each story. Five times. Actually later, we gave it a little more because we had -- we added some expository material. Anyway, there's no difference. Both the strategies -- all three of the strategies, the content, and the Basels did the same. Well, why do I think that? And they all did well. Better than you would have expected these kids -- these kids came from the school district. Pennsylvania has -- at that time had 501 school districts and only one was under federal jurisdiction for -- to have it integrated. So all kinds of things and new

9 populations were, you know, coming together. And we worked in that district. And all the kids in all the classrooms did rather well. And our hypothesis, and it happened again the second year, is that this interrupted questions, even if they weren't the best, even if they took you away, the kids weren't sitting there doing it themselves, and there was some engagement with the ideas. We think there was an optimal engagement, but the other ones, there was an engagement with the ideas, unlike traditional instruction. Now, both -- all these kids had come from a Basel that had strategies in them. They're in fifth grade now, so they probably had it first, second, third, fourth. The strategies group we gave extra strategies. So we assumed that they would do better than our group who didn't get a whole year more. They didn't. They both did the same. It was a good test too. Now, recall of narratives. Content group did very much better, I'll show you that. Lesson discourse, I'll show you some of that. We tape recorded, I don't know if all but certainly 80% of all these lessons, and transcribed them, so we could look at what was going on. And what you see -- you see a huge difference in what the teacher is saying, what the kids are saying, how it flows. Then we started coding it and saw huge differences, the positive being towards the content, the discussion group. And positive -- who decides it's positive? Things in the literature like kids should -- you know, teachers shouldn't do all the talking. That's like, you know, you don't need another study to find that out. Things like that, they were set -- they were face valid things that all of us would agree to. And we got very different discourse, so that what the kids were doing created very different environments, very different flow of language, very different what they're talking about.

10 And then recall, transfer. We gave them a text that they had never seen before, expository text, and did not instruct them before or anything, just had them read it, and they did better on that. So, that's a really good finding -- findings. To see it another way, a narrative text content was better in strategies both in year one and year two. An expository text not used. Well, why would there be no difference? Something's wrong. Well, I can tell you this. Oh, I guess I know. There was no difference with the other group. Now, expository text, this -- couple texts, one was about how insects communicate with each other and how they know they're mating, and they let off these pheromones. I don't know what the science teacher [inaudible]. And their smells, and it's new material for the kids. It's written very nicely. But it's new materials for the kids, and that's what it was. Anytime we gave it to any group and asked for recall we got no differences. Kids recalled about the same thing. When we realized that this is not a narrative, this is all new material, so they don't know what to tell you that's important. So after they recalled it all, we would say, could you tell us some more about the pheromones. We probed them. All came out. So that in other words, if you probe them, the material is there, they did do much better. And again, you had on the transfer test content better than strategies. These are significant findings. Another thing we did that we found so interesting that will give you some insight into what those classrooms felt like, we calculated the amount of talk per student. So I say something, and the next thing a student pipes in, and we figure out the amount of talk -- amount of words, and then we average that. And then, once we have that, we also figure out how much of that talk was about the text? Or did it go -- remember this is the first time you're reading this text. And why talk? Well it is the case that what Mr.

11 Mercer said has a lot of reality. Learning is in the talk. And I learned that a long time ago when I years ago, when I was taking dictation from a kindergartener who didn't tell you much. So, what did you get for Christmas? This was in January. A guitar. How would we say that? I got a guitar, okay. Nothing. So what color was the guitar? He caught on that he wasn't supposed to say brown and he went, the guitar was brown and black. First order nothing moving. That happened some more times. I was not figuring out prompts that might get him to tell me a little more than blah-blah. And then I did, I said, how do you play it? And he said, well, you put this, you put your little finger here, he said, you put this, I said, well, what's that called? Your little finger, and then you put another finger on this, and I told him what the fingers are, and then you strum it. I said, I took that down, listen to what you said. That's really great. And he said, I don't know I knowed it until I said it. And that's very telling. That s very telling. So this was the number of words in year one and two, the content is, you know, at -- right there on 25% of what kids said, but the strategies were not even half. And you can see the alpha is enormous. Now this is -- of those words, how much was about the text? And you see the content kids stay to the text. Now someone might say, well, that's terrible. Why don't they add their interpretation and everything? Because it's not the place to do it. It's after you know the story and understand it. Too often stories go to the interpretation where any interpretation is right but you don't know if they have the author's interpretation, that -- so that's it. So you can see there's a difference there. If there's anything I learned, it is that interspersed questions are so important. Just -- yeah. Because you are doing it together. You stop the kids and say, let's talk about this. And you re scaffolding it, because you can direct it. It's not a everybody go

12 over there and discuss your ideas, no, no. It's an orchestra leader more orientation and it's I knew that that was good, but I didn't know it how -- as much as I know it now. Now, let me show you how -- what I've done is develop some comments about how interspersed discussions helps students, and then subsequently I'll say how they help teachers. Well, they help students by enabling the kids with poor decoding skills to have access to the text, so there is a lot of oral reading in that. And boy can some of those kids tell you very complicated things that are going on. It really provides an external model. So when you're comprehending, you know this stuff. In contrast to when you're comprehending you can answer these questions, but the questions have -- are not connected. So it is a kind of external model. You know, we wanted to see if kids who were not participating -- oh, eventually we give teachers really good tips about how to get others to participate and teachers can't stand it when they're a bunch of kids who can't participate. And also teachers will have others participate even when the discussion has been held, everybody knows what's going on. If the teacher sees someone who hasn't participated, he or she will call on them. That -- they can't stand it. So we did give them some tips about getting more kids to participate, but that's not what I'm talking about you know, at the moment. What I'm -- I wanted to tell you external model. I had a doctoral student that was going to do a study of the non-participants in these classes. What she would do is have video tape, and then she'd take the kid out and show him a section of video tape in which the kid was not, and the kid knew what was going on. The child really did know what was going on. Well, she got married and she lives in South Carolina now, so that's that. And that -- this is the assisting students in building meaning -- that's helped by the

13 collaboration when you see this much about the text it might be easier for you to add the next connection or something. Now, what it does for the teacher, it enables the teacher to observe confusion right where it's happening. I mean, I have been wrong so many times in the past. When I think a kid is mixed up about something. I remember it was north and south and I thought she meant the fighting on the north and the fighting on the south. And she was just wanting to know which part, where's north and where's south, you know? And I took her all over the map. But you know, the kid that comes in and says, where'd I come from? That actually happened to me, my son came in and I said, well you know, something about the birds and the bees. He said, that's funny, what's his name comes from Wyoming. So. It's hard to know. So -- but when you can observe it, it's more helpful when -- than you can't. And when you're observing it, you know, you can try to get to some of the confusion, and you often can. Is it an idea that's just -- they just don't get the idea? That there were no radios here and there is -- people couldn't communicate, you know? Or The War of the Worlds, they're just -- they get very confused about whether there really are aliens or not. And they don't know how dependent the world was on radios at that time. And so you see that that little piece comes up, and that is a source of their not getting some of the ideas. The meaning of a word, you know, vocabulary is, you know, very dear to me but very hard to anticipate which ones they know and which ones they don't. The one that really knocked me out on fifth grade and I didn't get it was "epidemic," never would have thought of going over it, never -- and it was the one. Attention. It's really -- you know, kids lose attention, and some very much. Well

14 that's a different thing to do, to try to help with that -- then it is by saying, you know why that idea is kind of tricky, da-da-da. That's a different thing. And -- so, they provide basis for deciding or helping or putting something in your mind of how you might work with it. Now, you see those kids raising their hand in the beginning, and I showed you pictures of kids sitting on the floor raising their hand. That -- I swear I did, did I? Okay. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes. ISABEL BECK: Didn't make a big impression I can see. They're very cute. In the primary grades, the kids are not going to learn new words and new ideas from the material that they read because that material is supposed be already understandable through, you know, listening. Therefore, what you're trying to do in the primary grades is have the kids understand the manifestation of language that's -- literacy, that's reading. So you wouldn't put big ideas in. You would teach them big words, but not in conjunction with that. You'd do it with read-alouds. So these kids are having a readaloud with Dr. DeSoto and -- you know the way we used to -- give -- show kindergarten, first grade book, you read like this? And they -- it became very clear they were reading the pictures. So if you withhold the pictures and say, you know, just tell me with the words and then I'll show you the pictures. First they don't like it because kids can recognize what's going on in the room. It's -- you know, they see it. And the picture -- I mean, they could -- if they had to read about what was there, they couldn't do it. If they could see it, they could tell you what -- if they could see a picture of it, it's pretty close to what they can do, what they -- is here now. But we're -- texts are not about the here, now. Mr. -- Dr. DeSoto is not drilling teeth now. So you want them to understand, get meaning -- construct meaning from

15 words because it's not going to be too long when those pictures are going to disappear. So being able to track the story in the meaning. So okay, today we're going to read a new story, the story is called Dr. DeSoto. Take a look at this pic -- that picture. Now, having said what I said, I still so think this is right. How do you see a little mouse as a dentist, I mean that's so unusual that she's saying, you know, take a look at this one. Do you notice anything unusual about this dentist? She's giving it away, he's a mice. He's a mouse, a dentist that's a mouse. Let's read this story. Dr. DeSoto, the dentist did very good work so he had no end of patients. Those close to his own size, moles, chipmunks, and et cetera sat in the regular dentist chair. Larger animals sat on the floor while Dr. De Soto stood on a ladder. For extra-large animals he had a special room. There, Dr. DeSoto was hoisted up to the patient s mouth by his assistant who also happened to be his wife. So the description has been given in words, and now she shows the picture. Do you see how they've hoisted him up? Dr. DeSoto was especially popular with the big animals. He was able to work inside their mouths wearing rubbers to keep his feet dry, and his fingers were so delicate and his drill so dainty they could hardly feel any pain. So here's her question. So why do you think it works so well to have a little animal as a dentist for these animals? And look what she does, so typical. Because probably he's the greatest dentist. But that's not why it works so well, but that's so typical of -- she doesn't know exactly, but he's a good dentist, so she tells him that. No attention to the linguistic material. So teacher says, well -- because probably he is the greatest dentist, the teacher said. And the teacher says, maybe he's a great dentist. And someone says, because

16 he's a mouse. Not a too -- okay. Now she says, I'm going -- she's not getting anything, so I'm going to read it again, and be sure to listen to what the words tell you. And by the way, one of the best movements in teaching is when you get two of -- if you got three, but two messed up responses go back and read it and boy they get it, because they know the question and then attention goes there, whether it's a senior in high school or it's a kindergarten kid. Go back -- oh, let me read this thing to you again, I think she said. I'm going to read it again and be sure to listen to what the words tell you. Dr. DeSoto was especially popular with the big animals. He was able to work inside their mouths wearing rubbers to keep his feet dry, and his fingers were so delicate and his drill so dainty they could hardly feel any pain. So why did the big animals like having him as a dentist? Because he was probably nice. That's the -- if you taught kindergarten, you know how absolutely authentic that is. But -- so, then someone says, because he can work in their mouths. Exactly. And they go on to talk about those that are dangerous and those are timid. Kindergarten -- first -- young kids are so funny, the funniest one of all. I told the graduate class that what had happened when one of -- a teacher I was working with read one of the George stories the first time. And it said, George, you know, is taken from Africa and the man with a yellow hat, you know George, you can't live in this country, you know, yellow hat had -- and now he's in a zoo and, you know, they're very nice to him, but he'd like to get out of the zoo. So the question was, so what do we know about George? And every class, I predicted it, because it's always happened to me, he likes bananas. So, if they bring what's familiar in, and it had nothing to with it. But the funniest one was one called Socrates. Do you know about the -- okay.

17 Oh. Socrates is a puppy whose mother and father are picked up by the dog catcher, and he is alone on the streets, very sad. Now he has red glasses on in the cover, and that will become important eventually, but you read this tearjerker and he's an orphan, he can't find his parents. He's hungry. He has no friends. What do we know about Socrates? He likes glasses. They'll go to what they know. Okay. So the three Cs of comprehension are you strive -- the reader strives for coherence. These things connect, people don't write in disconnected ideas. If they do, we hope -- I hope we don't have to read them. And you're focusing on the content and then the connections, the interspersed questions help the teacher make -- ask the kid to make the connection, well how does this connect with blah-blah-blah. So what's the V of comprehension instruction? Vocabulary. Right. Little Edgar studies hard hoping one day to become a thesaurus. I like that one very, very much. Now let me tell you about the lexical bar. Two authors good ones. What s his name? Nation and Krassen, yeah, starts with a K not a C, had hypothesized a lexical bar and divide, you know. A gulf. Now, the children on the left are talking up and communicating, you can see [inaudible]. But the kid on the right is stymied with some literacy tasks, you can see books and pencil and not a stance that suggests that he's got it. Well, the gulf between conversation, no language, and literate language is great. Even when college graduates are having a conversation, that language is limited to what they would read in a book. For instance, a college -- college graduates having a conversation use one hard word, where it's defined, in their conversation in every no, in every 100 unique words. And that's a pretty long conversation if

18 you're using 100 unique words. Yet, children's books have 32, you know, hard words in -- and newspapers have about 55, but you would expect that because of all the foreign words and talking about politics. So, but kids engage in conversation are very literate -- are not -- I mean are verbal. They are not literate until they can comprehend written language and write written language. And everybody's got to get from just conversation to written -- to literacy. And if you don't cross that bar, your opportunities don't go much beyond service careers, professions, working. I mean it's really -- you're stymied. So you have to start early, and you have to do it -- to work a lot. By the way, how many of you have English language learners? So Pennsylvania's really -- only a few. Raise your hands again. Hm, where in Pennsylvania? AUDIENCE MEMBER: I actually teach in New Jersey. ISABEL BECK: Oh, New Jersey. Okay. Where in Pennsylvania? AUDIENCE MEMBER: Kenny Square. Erie ISABEL BECK: Where? AUDIENCE MEMBER: Erie. ISABEL BECK: Boy if I had asked this question two years ago, I would not have had as many. But I go to places where there isn't one hand not up. Okay. So what are results of not crossing? Well I actually can tell you because I didn't cross the bar when I lived in Germany for about 14 months. My husband and I -- my husband was doing research in Munich, and we were living on the economy. And I learned everyday German, apparently with very bad grammar but -- and it's apparently very funny because I don't look like someone that would use bad grammar and then I come out with it. The Germans laugh at me, but anyway they understand me.

19 No -- oh, the people I learned the bad grammar from they understood me perfectly. So -- but my German was not tourist German, I mean, I -- it wasn't, you know, can you tell me where the post office is? No, it was I could talk with my neighbors about the snow that was wet, and she's a little worried because there's some avalanches and her son sometimes isn t so good sense. And I mean that's a pretty complicated, you know, conversation. I could do that. But one time two women that I had met in the shops, in those days you went every day in Europe to the shops. Two women I had met at the shops invited me for coffee. And as we were, you know, small-talking. And then the conversation changed to what was on the first page in the newspapers at the time. And I -- not a chance. Not a chance for me to get it. Well, the other woman who was a teacher, middle school teacher, and knew that I had been a teacher, changed it to teaching. And even there, there was enough -- there were enough vocabulary that I didn't get it. I had -- I knew oral language and everyday conversation, you know, better than tourist language. But I had not crossed the bar. I never read any German. I never wrote any German. I talked with neighbors about the world in front of us looked. So that's the consequence. Now the fact of vocabulary and comprehension are connected goes 150 years with research, I just start a century ago, don't I? Always funny. No, it isn't even a century for 44, no. Is it? It's old, anyway. But it doesn't matter because these have been replicated again and again and what it says, and the first one and that's with adults, is that if you are a good comprehender, you have a big vocabulary. If you have a big vocabulary, you are a good comprehender. In fact, those correlations sometimes go to a point nine, which

20 means it's virtually the same thing. That same correlation was tested with third and sixth graders, but a lot more too. And then, first grade -- and by the way Cunningham and Stanovich are exquisitely good researchers out in the west coast. And actually Cunningham works a lot with special ed, anyway. First grade vocabulary knowledge predicted reading comprehension in junior high school, so that's just stunning. So why do we have the pervasive relationship? We have it in first grade. We have it in sixth grade. We have it in adults, why? Look at it this way. At the beginning of schooling, let's go to the most homogenous neighborhood we possibly can. The kids are in kindergarten. Still in a homogenous neighborhood. Some kids know fewer words that others, it's just the way it is. School ought to boost vocabulary, but kids stay in the same boat. Vocabulary has not until recently had a big role in the schools until recently. And that's -- some researchers -- I mean everybody kind of knew it who was in the vocabulary research world, but there were no data until these people and some others went and observed schools and sampled well, and saw that little attention was given to vocabulary. You know, and people would say, what are you talking about, the classrooms were full of words, they're on the walls, they're all over the place, you know, what are you talking about? Well, think of what vocabulary means in the primary grades. It means sight words, look it -- who's taught first grade, kindergarten? It means going over some of the patterns that you'll have a lot of words with. But, hut. And they will know the meanings of those words. That they should, because you're not teaching them new meanings from the new manifestation of language, they're just learning to read what they already know. And you wouldn't want to put in

21 words that, if they decoded, they wouldn't even know that they had gotten it. So, they're not going to learn from here. But they're smart enough to be learning those words from resources that use those words. And that's, for the most part, trade books. So, that's -- some of them do not get the trade books. In fact only now since AYP has reading aloud become not only what you do when you have nothing to do but a very specific and important part of the curriculum, is that right? Yeah. So, that's the extent of reading -- of vocabulary for these kids. The middle grades -- I mean, intermediate, middle grades are much more interesting because what you see up there, and again through observations of classrooms, is that those teachers do a great deal of mentioning. Like, they're reading along or say -- and someone is forlorn. And she'll do something, parenthetically, well, forlorn means sad and lonely, and go on. So there's this mentioning of words. And assigning. Look it up in the dictionary and write a sentence using it. And that is not only hated, and actually there's data for that but I can't find this dissertation. Someone did a dissertation by being in a public park in a kind of middle -- upper-middle class neighborhood asking the adults what was their favorite recollection of high school or grade school or -- what was their least favorite. And actually looking the words up in the dictionary and writing the sentence was way down there and as -- you know, it was not liked. It's also foolish because it's a great test. You've not scaffold anything for them to get there. You've had them look it up in the old dictionaries. They don't understand what it's saying. They're no better. Okay, so -- but the big thing is they spend little time discussing the meanings of words. They don't get into it. Now, what's been the result of that kind of vocabulary instruction? Well, it is the

22 case that that kind of vocabulary instruction compared to no vocabulary instruction, that kind of looking it up and mentioning it, makes an impact. A small -- an impact. And on a multiple choice test, an easy multiple choice test, because you know, you can make multiple choice tests, you know, very difficult, and you can virtually tell them the answer. But in a moderately difficult test, multiple choice, kids that have had that kind of instruction do better than kids who have not. They ll get you something. But that kind of instruction has no effect on comprehension. Now these people were looking for studies in which they could find a comprehension effect. And they did find some comprehension effects, but not from that kind of instruction.

23 Now the reason that a little -- or a speck of knowledge doesn t help is that you have to go back to what is comprehension. And it turns out that what you do when you run out eyes over the black squiggles and come out with ideas is a cognitive feat that is as difficult as being a chess master. Now who said that? I didn t, but I repeat it. Two psychologists from Carnegie Mellon University -- you know Carnegie Mellon University? It s right next to us at University of Pittsburg. And they have a superb psychology, learning psychology department. And two psychologists, Pat Carpenter, Marcel Just said that. Because they do task analyses for computers to do things. You know, the grain size is just, you know, miniscule. That the reason reading doesn t get the credit for being such a complex endeavor is that, compared to being a chess master, is that there s so many reading masters. So it s something that s done. But it s something that humans do that is very complicated, very complicated. That s why psychologists have studied reading for well over 100 years, because if they could understand how it works, they would understand human thinking. So it is -- so what helps reading comprehension? Well, having -- being able to say the words -- you know, recognize the words very quickly, decoding. And being able to have very fast, very rapid access to the lexicon, the dictionary in your head, and a very rich, rich

24 representation of it. That s what helps it. Because when you get to using it, you quickly get to your lexicon. And if it s rich, then it s used in a funny way, doesn t bother you because you ve elaborated that meaning. How do you get it? That s what we re going to talk about. Well, Stahl, Fairbanks, and Mezynski both did meta-analysis, and that is you find studies that are good on the topic. Well, that means you have a jury that looks to see if the statistics are within a range of decency or the sample size and that kind of thing, because there s a lot of junk out there, as there is in everything. There s an economics too. When people say, you know, teachers are so terrible, I say [inaudible]. They really did a good job for us, didn t they? It s true! They get a break. Doesn t mean I want teachers to get a break. I want them to be brilliant. And there are brilliant teachers. Okay, that s a different topic. So the things they found out of these not too bad studies when they throw all the studies together is that, in order to get rapid and rich representations, you have to get the learner engaged. You can t just get him associated. You have to get him engaged with the thinking of the meaning of that word. Not just matching it, but engaging with it. I ll show you that. And you need to connect new words with known situations. And you have to do it a lot, frequency. Well, our work, robust instruction, has those features and has shown positive comprehension effects. So there s some listings. They re not complete, but you can find it from that. One of the things in starting this out is -- so in the early 80s, there was a real hullabaloo about the extent to which we would make any impact on children s literacy if we directly taught them words because which words you teach -- moreover,

25 as an aside, English has more words than any other Western language, and that s because English borrows from the French and the Germans and all that. So you can t possibly teach all the words you need to teach, they need to be literate. And the only way to become literate is to read a lot. And that, by the way, is true. Reading, reading, reading is what produces and extends vocabulary. However, those kids that needed the most do not read. They hate to read. They can t read. And so it s almost like Marie Antoinette, let them eat cake, you know? I m going to eat cake, so you eat cake too, but that s -- it can t be. So my colleagues and I were trying to say, listen, this task is not overwhelming. Think about it in a systematic way. And that s when we developed this framework. It s a heuristic by saying take the reservoir of words that an educated individual has and, you know, let s look at -- they re made up of tiers. You have a tier of words that you learned as a child before you went to school, and everybody learns it whether they even go to school. It s baby and happy and jump and mother and run. I mean, all those words are learned. And if they aren t learned by the time you go to kindergarten, they re picked up very fast for those, okay? So what I just did for the English reading teachers is get a bunch of words off your back. Now go to tier three. Big story, different story there. Many of those words, there are two kinds, are content-specific. They only appear in a specific content isotope. Wadi, you know what a wadi is? See, you live this long and you can get along without it. Wadi is a dry river bed in the desert. Those it is silly to try to teach those

26 words out of the content. So leave them for the content. The other set of words in tier three are words that are used so infrequently that I can t remember how many millions and millions and millions and millions of words you would have to read until you would encounter it once. Well, that leaves tier two and that s not a trivial amount of words. Nor do I believe you have to teach them all because if they were taught regularly and happily and usefully and for several years, 200 a year for three, four years, I think there s reason to believe there will be transfer to ones that were not taught. Now tier two words are more common to written than oral language. They not only can be productive in reading and writing, they are essential for reading and writing. If you don t have a decent grasp of tier two words, you re not going to comprehend and write very well. So tier two words are words that are not stuck within a domain. For instance, potent. You could have -- I come from a baseball town. A potent swing. You can have a potent drink. You can have a potent idea. In contrast, potable. That just means it s safe to drink. So in choosing, I wouldn t teach potable. I would teach potent. You try to teach words that have mileage. And they re conceptually familiar to the kids. We are not teaching new ideas like photosynthesis. We are teaching kids the formal labels, the literal labels of concepts they have under control. I won t do that. Opposite. He s bothering me. Nuisance. They learn them. I m soaking wet. Saturated. I know a little three-year-old that said that. So there is not -- despite what people will tell you, there is not a hierarchy that s necessary. You don t have to know this before you know this.

27 Now, you would have to know something about wetness to learn saturated. But who says that you need to learn saturated after you know soak. You can learn saturated after you know soak. You would need to know wetness. Okay, there are more characters in the written language. They re not the content words in social studies and science, but guys, remember, go look at those content words. They sure support those content words. I said words need not be learned in prescribed order, but there are two criteria. One is that -- or prerequisites. One needs to be able to explain the meaning of the word in words that are not harder than the meaning you re trying to explain. And that s a problem with dictionaries. And the kids need to understand the concepts. So I think this is my next slide, yeah. So what I m going to show you now is I was at IRA several years ago and a woman came up and wanted to give me some papers that they were using a program I developed, which is robust vocabulary in kindergarten. Wanted to give me some papers that some kids in kindergarten had done. They had been studying a unit of robust vocabulary. And now, they re in Bridgeport, Connecticut in an area that has 97% free and reduced lunch. My first book, Bringing Words to Life, do you have that? That s an easy, fun read. Included these photos, these drawings. And I know whatever statement I have about free and reduced lunch, whether it s 96 or 97, came out of that superintendent s mouth because I got the permission from him to use these kids work. So the word that is underlined is the word that they have learned. That word was on the board. Now look what they say. I had no friends and I wanted comforting. Look at the face. you can see. now that s a five-year-old using -- understanding and

28 using words she would not have used. I love this one. I glanced at my baby cousin. You know when you glance, you look quickly. That s why he only saw the head. How about this one? I go to my friend s house every day, and on my first day I was intimidated. Look, that s spelled right because it s on the board, but look at the other spelling. By her house, sometimes that s a good spelling. I am too timid to talk. That five-year-old s in a real poverty area. This one is fun because at five, they are reluctant to ride their bikes without the training wheels. That s about the age they come off. And the next one just makes me happy. It just makes me happy. The rabbit is vain. Will you look at that rabbit? That rabbit in the mirror is so pleased with herself. Can you see that? Now that is a five-year-old s -- what if that happened ever grade they were in? What if every grade they learned 200? I have no doubt. In fact, we have seen some of that happening. Okay, what we were doing then, we go back to research that started this all off, and that is we found things in the Basel that the word selected for instruction were problematic, dumb stuff. Very little instructional treatment and very little follow-up and maintenance. So we changed all that because we wanted -- and called it robust instruction because you wanted to know what we can get for it. We knew we could get something, but it s timely. It costs time to do this rather than to give a definition and say, fill out this work page. So you got to have -- you ought to know what you re getting for your time. So we wanted the study. Robust instruction has features, very quickly and then I ll show them to you. It starts with a meaningful context. Context is very important rather than just a