Putting content front and centre
It has been troubling me (and I am certainly not the only one) that in recent decades we have lost our way when it comes to teaching reading comprehension. Strategies have been all the rage, and on the surface it seemed to make perfect sense. We thought we were explicitly teaching how to look at a text and interpret it through different lenses. The theory was that once the strategy was mastered, students would be able to apply these strategies to any text thus improving reading comprehension overall.
Unfortunately, we haven’t seen the improved results that we had hoped for.
It seems that we forgot that the main idea (pun intended) of reading is to gain meaningful knowledge about something. We need to make sure that the learning intention within a lesson is about the content we want students to learn about, not a strategy. For example, if reading a non-fiction text about amphibians, then the learning intention should relate to new information about amphibians. Yes, we can still teach students to apply strategies, but we need to remember that they are a tool - not the end product.
“When it comes to improving reading comprehension, strategy instruction may have an upper limit, but building background knowledge does not; the more students know, the broader the range of texts they can comprehend.” - Daniel Willingham & Gail Lovette (2014)
Strategies as the stepping stone to building knowledge
Imagine sitting in your classroom with a room full of students who are actively engaged in their reading comprehension through lively discussion. They then get a chance to write about their ideas and thoughts. It may be a short written task or a longer paragraph or essay. Maybe they have used a venn diagram or a top-down graphic organiser to synthesise their thoughts first, but the end goal is the learning and thinking about the new knowledge. We need to remember that knowledge building is the goal and strategies are the stepping stones that help get us there.
As teachers and school leaders, we need to take a step back and think about how we can support our students to be more knowledgeable readers. A carefully planned sequence of units of study can give our students a step up in their current and future learning. Teaching knowledge as the main event and the strategies as the support act will serve our students better in the long run. They will be able to read in more meaningful ways about a wider range of topics, making connections and applying critical thinking to their reading.
Give them velcro
Let’s think about building knowledge like the hook side of some velcro (as suggested by Natalie Wexler in her brilliant book ‘The Knowledge Gap’). If you have some basic knowledge of a subject, then you are likely to gain a deeper understanding when reading a more complex text about it. It will grip onto your hooks (think Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development). However, if you have nothing to grip onto, no understanding of key words or general ideas of the subject, then it’s like a foreign language. The new knowledge just slips past. No meaningful learning occurs.
Let’s break it down using the Goldilocks Principle:
The ‘too hot porridge’ = loads of knowledge about the subject. This means you are unlikely to learn much more as you are already an expert.
The ‘too cold porridge’ = no knowledge, the vocabulary is unfamiliar and there is no mental image of what the text is communicating. This makes comprehension nearly impossible.
The ‘just right porridge’ = knowing a few things about the subject. This is the optimal situation for comprehension and new learning.
The perfect example
Just as I finally finished rewriting this blog for the umpteenth time, my teacher friend told me the most perfect anecdote that I could not resist sharing here. Her son (who is an avid and highly competent reader) recently read the book “Ground Zero” by Alan Gratz. The story is told by two different characters in different places and 20 years apart. One storyline follows a boy in the Twin Towers on 9/11 and the other character is a girl in Afghanistan 20 years later.
My friends’ son loved the story of the boy (a character and place he was able to relate to and had read about previously) but thought the other storyline was ‘boring’ simply because he had no (or very limited) background knowledge and didn’t really understand what was going on. He had no ‘velcro’ for the story to hook on to. He eventually decided to skip over the chapters that were focused on the second character thus missing half the story and the opportunity to expand his knowledge and understanding of the world.
Luckily his mum was asking him questions about his reading and realised the issue. She then suggested that they read the other chapters together, thereby scaffolding his learning of this new topic and opening up perspectives and further developing his knowledge of the world.
I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a more perfect case study of the importance of building our students' background knowledge in wide ranging content areas.
Let’s take this back to the classroom
As teachers we have a huge influence over what our students are learning about. So rather than design lessons around the strategy, you will find that you will get more bang for your buck if you create a unit of work that builds knowledge of a subject. Find connected texts that allow time for students to dig deeper rather than having to recalibrate to a new topic each day of the week. Once you have a solid subject focus in your reading then you can work in the use of strategies that are most effective in helping students learn about and retain knowledge.
Make the switch
Links & references
Natalie Wexler (2020). The Knowledge Gap: The hidden cause of America's broken education system—and how to fix it.
Tim Shanahan - (2018) - Comprehension Skills or Strategies: Is there a difference and does it matter? https://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/blog/comprehension-skills-or-strategies-is-there-a-difference-and-does-it-matter#sthash.gDIeqViq.dpbs
Daniel Willingham & Gail Lovette (2014) Can Reading Comprehension be Taught http://www.danielwillingham.com/uploads/5/0/0/7/5007325/willingham&lovette_2014_can_reading_comprehension_be_taught_.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0G1HQeHB0HIPNNn8VN54kHjYSgO_dXmmTcn-JF2vW5ZneKUsXS4mAYObA
Scarborough’s Reading Rope (2001)
Looking for some high quality content rich curriculum to use in your classroom for FREE. Take a look at this amazing resource - https://www.coreknowledge.org/
And check out what Dr. Nathaniel Swain, Shane Pearson and Think Forward Educators are doing with this free resource in their read2learn project.
Alan Gratz, Ground Zero (2021)
