Rich Talk about Text

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Rich Talk about Text

• P. David Pearson
• Graduate School of Education
• University of California, Berkeley

www.scienceandliteracy.org
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Reminders from Scott

• Close Reading
• What do you think?
• What makes you think so?
• Teachers, like readers, develop both a text base
  and a situation model for the PD we offer to
  them.
• Hence the variability in uptake and
  implementation.
• Stay the course, just in time feedback
• Teaching for Cognitive Engagement

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www.scienceandliteracy.org

• Look for presentations by me
• Also a site to learn more about the work I am
  doing on science and literacy with primary grade
  kids.

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Some assumptions

• You have in place a program of comprehension
  instruction for skills and strategies
• Reciprocal Teaching
• Transactional Strategies Instruction
• You have taken a position on what sort of
  assessments you are you going to use to assess
  students growth in reading
• I like performance assessments--open ended, but

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This is a goal

• For every child
• In every classroom
• In every grade
• Being satisfied with good decoding and word
  recognition is not enough
• Being satisfied with great fluency is not enough
• It is comprehension, understanding, enjoyment,
  and insight for every child.

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Talk about Text

• An environment rich in high-quality talk about
  text.
• teacher-to-student
• student-to-student talk.
• Many levels
• Text base clarifying and connecting
• Situation model relating, interpreting
• Critique and evaluation

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We have pretty good models and research on this
score

• Instructional Conversations
• Questioning the Author
• Junior Great Books

Efferent

• Book Club
• Literature Circle
• Grand Conversations

Aesthetic-Expressive

• Collaborative Reasoning
• Paidea Seminar
• Philosophy for Children

Critical Analytic
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Murphy et al Meta-analysis

• Whats the underlying theory of all of these
  interventions?

Change talk focus and distribution
Change understanding of text at hand
Change comprehension repertoire
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Summary findings

• Pre-post effects are more impressive than
  comparative effects.

• Most things work to a degree
• Kids get better with helpand maybe without it

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Summary findings

• Effects are more impressive on researcher
  designed than distal measures.

• Transfer is hard
• or
• Standardized tests are insensitive.

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Summary findings

• Stronger effects on talk than comprehension.

• Changes in participation are a necessary but not
  a sufficient condition for comp

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Summary findings

• Some evidence of you get what you pay for,
  especially for critical thinking.

• Probably means you gotta do it all
• Literal
• Inferential
• Critical

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Summary findings

• Seems to be more important for average and low
  achievers

• Ironically, most of us spend more discussion time
  with the high achievers
• Beware self-delusion

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Summary findings

• Time matters longer is better

• Stay the course
• Ironically, we tend to discard things rapidly

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Research failing

• Some dont measure comprehension
• Dont measure many types of comprehension

• Insist on measures of talk and comprehension.
• Measure many kinds of comprehension, including
  stuff not directly taught.

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A great example from New Standards
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Toughest Problem Promoting higher level talk
about text

• In our CIERA work, the good news is that when we
  see it, it improves learning and achievement,
  but
• The bad news is that we dont see it very much

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Supporting talk about text
www.scienceandliteracy.org
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Same teacher--more scaffolding
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Different Teacher--More Novice Kids Even more
scaffolding
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The nature and amount of scaffolding is a matter
of being responsive
Context
Individuals
Groups
Texts and Tasks
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Gradual Release of Responsibility
100
With any luck, we move this way (-----gt) over
time.
Teacher Responsibility
But we are always prepared to slide up and down
the diagonal.
Gradual Release of Responsibility
0
0
100
Student Responsibility
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Changing Teacher Roles
High Teacher Low Teacher Low Student High
Student
Explicit Instruction
Modeling
Scaffolding
Facilitating
Au and Raphael
Participating
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From Duke Pearson
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The Rand Model
A variant of Kintschs model
Sociocultural
Reader
Text
Activity
Context
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Questions for Stories

• Read the text for the big ideas
• Generate some probes to get at them
• Go from general to specific
• So what is important about this story?
• So is this story more about the plot or the
  characters?
• So what does this story tell us about how human
  beings look out for one another?
• Go for Response before Comprehension
• Go for comprehension to support response or
  claims facts in the service of claims about the
  worldAccountable Talk
• Work for a unified understanding of plot,
  character, feelings, motives.
• Somewhere Somebody Wanted a Problem Solved

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Generating Questions for Expository Pieces

• Read the text
• Record what you think are the big ideas
• Read it again, looking for connections among the
  big ideas
• Generate a set of questions that will get you the
  big ideas and the connections between them.

When you cant find big ideas and relations
among them, question whether to use the text!
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Talk, Skills and Strategies

• Conversations about stories and informational
  texts can be a context in which a lot of good
  strategy instruction CAN occur, if we are willing
  to seize teachable moments (just in time
  teaching) to show kids how to use strategies to
  solve problems and make text sensible.
• Thats the genius of Instructional Conversations
• Thats what happens in good RT conversations.

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Contextualizing what I have said

• A good model
• Solid instruction
• Thoughtful assessment
• Supportive instructional environment

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What that supportive context can do...
Daniella using all the cues
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This is a Formula for a Renaissance (maybe a
revival?)
Thank you!
www.scienceandliteracy.org
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Opportunity

• A great deal of time spent actually reading

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The nature of texts

• The texts are interesting and comprehensible and
  sufficiently varied so that all students can find
  texts to relate to (interest and motivation).
• Daily, students read texts that are personally
  interesting and easy to read. Why? So that
  students can consolidate their learning of skills
  and strategies.
• Also on a daily basis, students read, with
  teacher support, more challenging texts. Why?
  In order to stretch their knowledge and skill
  repertoire. Establish tomorrows prior knowledge.

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The nature of texts in effective programs

• 1. While common sense suggests that some of these
  texts should allow students to apply the decoding
  and comprehension skills they are learning, there
  is precious little evidence to support the
  creation and use of special instructional texts
  for this purpose.

2. The current corpus of childrens books
contains numerous texts that provide many of the
opportunities students need.
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Opportunity

• The big ruckus from the National Reading Panel
• Should we promote independent reading?

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What people think NRP says

• Dont provide time for independent reading.

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What NRP really says

• The evidence is too sketchy to draw any
  conclusion one way or another
• About school-based programs to promote
  independent reading
• DEAR
• SSSR

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My own view

• The lack of credible evidence one way or another
  is no basis for getting rid of programs that have
  other virtues
• Is reading the only phenomenon in human
  experience that doesnt get better with practice
• If you do it, do it right and do it well
• Make sure kids have things to read
• Make sure kids DO read
• Provide incentives and support

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Comprehension Activities in K and early 1

• In the context of teacher read alouds
• Why?
• Texts that merit the sort of engagement and depth
  of thinking we want to promote.
• Finesse the decoding issue
• Warning You cant stay there forever. Must get
  to texts kids read themselves

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Authenticity

• Experience reading real texts for real reasons.

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Beware the textoid problem

• When we select texts that have been especially
  written to permit some sort of skill activity
• We run the risk of reifying these texts
• Making real something that isnt
• They only exist on tests and workbook materials
  designed to get you ready to take the tests.

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Sues grandmother lives on a farm. Ellens
grandmother lives in the city. Sues
grandmother, who just turned 55, phones Sue every
month. Ellens grandmother, who is also 55,
sends Ellen e-mails several times a week. Both
grandmothers love their granddaughters.

• How are Sue and Ellens grandmothers alike?
• They both love their granddaughters
• They both use e-mail
• They both live on a farm
• How are they different?
• They live in different places
• They have different color hair
• They are different ages

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Range

• Experience reading at least the range of text
  genres that we wish students to comprehend.
• Substantial experience reading and writing it.
• No automatic transfer across genres

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A special note on the narrative centrism in
primary instruction

• Why shouldnt we just focus on stories?
• We surely want to include instruction and
  activities in response to stories, but
• We dont want to limit our instruction and
  activities to stories
• The range issue
• The power of information
• Individual differences in preference and interest

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Vocabulary/Concept Development

• It really matters
• Later today

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Enabling skills Decoding, Fluency, and Monitoring

• Substantial facility in the accurate and
  automatic decoding of words.
• Necessary but not sufficient for comprehension

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When rules get in the way
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Writing

• Lots of time spent writing texts for others to
  comprehend. Again, students should experience
  writing the range of genres we wish them to be
  able to comprehend. Their instruction should
  emphasize connections between reading and
  writing, developing students abilities to write
  like a reader and read like a writer.

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Why Writing Helps Reading

• You cant write without reading the writers
  first reader.
• When you write, you often seek information
  through reading
• Writing makes the metaphor constructing a model
  of meaning completely explicit.
• Writing helps us decide what we really think
  about a topic (stares back at you).
• Writing makes metacognition transparent (makes
  monitoring visible)

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Why Writing Helps Reading

• Writing reinforces some reading processes
• An authentic context for phonemic awareness
  (listen to the word in parts, match a letter to
  each part)
• Examining claim and support is like unearthing
  the relationship between MI and Details
• By the way, reading helps writing too--by
  providing good models of well-crafted prose,
  spelling, and punctuation.