The talk I gave at the Yale Child Study Center on 12/4/23 was not recorded. I recorded a version with a voiceover on 12/23. It is the same talk, with some additional information. The updated slides are here. The video of the talk itself is here. The links work on the blog post.
I have a short piece about the Science of Reading in Edweek, here. Mae West has entered the conversation. The column is the result of cutting a longer piece to satisfy the publication’s very strict 1000 word limit. Now that it is published I can post a longer version that is less telegraphic. NB: I did not write the headlines, which only partially capture the content. The text says that overteaching may be occurring, that it eats into time for other learning activities, and that the effectiveness of instruction about print depends on learners having adequate knowledge of the spoken language…
The slides from a recent talk at the Yale Child Study Center. It wasn’t recorded; perhaps I’ll do a voiceover if there’s interest. Available here.
This is the third (and thankfully the last) of my posts on the Simple View of Reading and its relevance to instruction. So far I’ve pointed out that the SVR didn’t address what was in the components, how they are learned, or the role of instruction, and that attempts to extend the SVR run into other conceptual and practical problems. As noted previously, I will prepare and post here a tidy PDF version that combines the three posts and includes the proper footnotes and references. Soon. What About the 150 Studies? The Simple View articles didn’t address instructional issues, but…
This is the second of three posts examining the Simple View of Reading, one of the pillars of the “science of reading” (SoR) approach to reading instruction. In the previous post I noted that the SVR makes an important point–that reading involves the child learning how print represents words in the spoken language they already know–and that people expect it to have further implications for instruction. Here I look at the contrast between what the authors of the SVR proposed and how it is being used in the SoR. In the third post I look at what later studies of…
This is one in a series of intermittent posts about issues that arise in trying to use research in cognitive science and neuroscience about reading, language, learning, development and related topics to improve literacy outcomes. This “post” is more like an article, with footnotes and references. I’m going to post it in three bite-sized pieces, plus supporting materials. Some light summer reading! It expands on issues I raised in my previous post, and in talks and articles over the past few years. As a scientist who advocates using research to inform instruction, curricula, and teacher training, I think it is…
Here are the slides from a few recent talks about the challenges facing the “science of reading,” and related topics. I’ve also included links to the talks that are available, and links to websites for the events. Montag Lecture, Atlanta, March 2022, “Efficacy, Efficiency, and Equity: The Goals of Early Reading Instruction”. Slides. Video. Path Forward Summit, Barksdale Reading Institute, November 2021, “The Science of Reading and Literacy Outcomes: Who Needs to Know What?”. Slides. Info. Barksdale talk with reading educators, Barksdale Reading Institute, Nov 10,2021, “What we know about how reading works that’s relevant to teacher education”. Slides. International…
Here’s a link to the recording of a symposium that I highly recommend. The speakers were Kymyona Burk, Emily Hanford, Donna Hejtmanek, and me. It was organized by a center here at UW-Madison because the state legislature seems to be getting serious about legislation related to reading. Heretofore there hasn’t been any forward movement here because of our political polarization. This event turned out to be super. Really stimulating talks by people who know how to communicate (even mine went pretty well!). It’s a great team–I only wish we could take our show on the road. It wouldn’t be as…
I was recently in a group zoom meeting (a groom? a zoup?) with some educators who meet to expand their knowledge of reading research. A guest speaker gave a rambling talk about “science of reading” (SoR) issues. Then an experienced educator whose work includes teaching other teachers, asked: “if a student is a good reader, do we need to continue with phonemic awareness instruction?” My heart sank. Why would a person need to ask this? The goal of teaching children to read is reading, not phonemic awareness. We know that learning to read does not require being able to identify…
Lucy Calkins and her team have published the much-anticipated revisions to her popular K-2 reading curriculum. An EdWeek article asks, are the changes to the materials sufficient? A better question is, sufficient for what? 1. Are the revisions sufficient to get the curriculum approved for adoption in states with “science of reading” laws that require instruction in areas that the previous version neglected or discounted? Probably. I have not seen the revised curriculum yet. I did receive about 50 pages of what looked to be corrected proofs of the K and grade 2 curricula a few months ago, around the…
Hi there. We are back. Did we miss anything? Molly and I have been recharging ourselves and the website, which is now focused on blog posts and a few other resources (talks, articles, our Reading Meetings). We have a lot of issues on our minds and hope to discuss them here. Consider this a (re)start. If you’re reading this you probably believe, as I do, that literacy outcomes can be improved by using instructional practices and materials that incorporate findings from research on reading, language, learning, development and related topics. Many people are pursuing this goal under the rubric of…
Some of you know that I gave a talk in Atlanta last week that created some, um, friction. It presented under poor conditions and wasn’t recorded properly. I have re-recorded it. It should be available via the Atlanta Speech School soon. Here are the slides. Update: talk is here. I took advantage of the opportunity to make some revisions based on useful feedback. I agree that my comments about LETRS didn’t do justice either to LETRS or to the questions I wanted to raise. Through her research studies, Louisa Moats single-handedly raised awareness of the fact that most teachers lacked…
Recently people on the Internet have asked whether I “believe in the science of reading”. Funnily, I’ve never been asked this before. I’ve devoted my professional career to using scientific methods to investigate reading, language, learning, and other questions. I made a conscious decision to use this approach to address questions that interest me. I consider this a rational choice not a matter of belief. So, I engage in scientific research on reading and have a strong commitment to it, yes. Am I committed to trying to use what we have learned from this research to improve how teachers are…
In the past month I’ve given two talks that are the beginning of a concerted attempt to address some issues about connecting reading research and educational practice to improve literacy outcomes. Connecting research and educational practice is essential. The ongoing effort to make this happen (which I’ve called the “science of reading movement”) is a landmark development in the history of reading pedagogy. However, it is also a work in progress. Education is a massive enterprise with numerous stakeholders whose interests are not all alike. Creating the paths to meaningful change is difficult in this environment. Course corrections may be…
Well, not exactly. But he did say something that captures an important element of learning to read. Terry Gross of Fresh Air is running three shows in remembrance of Mr. Sondheim. In a 2010 interview, Terry asked him a hoary question: which comes first, the music or the lyrics? His answer yielded a small gem. You can listen or read the transcript. Sondheim says, paraphrasing mightily, that neither comes first. You have to work back and forth between them because each influences the other. He says, “So the thing to do is to do [them] together or in tandem, but…
My post about the Fountas and Pinnell (F&P) curriculum takes issue with their emphasis on “word solving,” the use of a variety of strategies to figure words out. I mentioned “get a running start,” taking it as representative of strategies that are inefficient and unreliable. Re-reading the post I wondered whether “get a running start” was from F&P or the Lucy Calkins-TCRWP curriculum, which I’ve also been examining. Both emphasize the use of multiple strategies for reading words. They seem very similar to me in this respect, although they differ in other ways. Nonetheless, I wanted to check the provenance…
Fountas and Pinnell have written a series of blog posts defending their popular curriculum, which is being criticized as based on discredited ideas about how children learn to read. (See Emily Hanford’s post here; EdReports evaluation here, many comments in the blogosphere.) The question is why school systems should continue to invest in the F&P curriculum and other products if they are inadequate. Their blog posts indicate that Fountas and Pinnell (hereafter F&P) have not benefited from ongoing discussions about approaches to reading instruction. They are staying the course. The posts are restatements of their views that add little new…
Teaching reading to African American children: When home and school language differ, an article Mark coauthored with Dr. Julie Washington, is now out in the summer issue of American Educator. The article includes a discussion of African American English and its influence on reading, as well as recommendations for teaching
We hope you are enjoying our Reading Meetings, we certainly are! We especially appreciate the people who join us live and those of you who share your advice and pose interesting questions in the chat. Our goal is for these meetings to be responsive to your needs and so it really helps us to know what our audience is thinking about. After our last meeting on early literacy screening with Dr. Nadine Gaab, Mark took some time to respond to some of the questions and comments that were posted in the chat
Let’s talk about ”background knowledge.” The term refers to things a child knows about the world–about people, events, and situations; categories such as animals and clothing; topics such as animal habitats and how plants grow. These are things we use language to talk and write about. This knowledge provides the “background” or context for understanding a text. Unsurprisingly, there are differing views about the role of background knowledge in early reading.
We (Mark, Matt Cooper Borkenhagen, and Devin Kearns) have a new paper about the science of reading and education, to be published in an issue of the journal Reading Research Quarterly (RRQ) devoted to this topic. The title is “Lost in Translation? Challenges in Connecting Reading Science and Educational Practice”.
Some of you will want to read the paper. It isn’t very technical but it is nonetheless written mainly for the people who read articles in RRQ. With that in mind, we (my colleague Molly Farry Thorn and I) will be breaking down the major topics in a series of…
This post is available as a PDF. Lucy Calkins has written a manifesto entitled “No One Gets To Own The Term ‘Science Of Reading’”. I am a scientist who studies reading. Her document is not about the science that I know; it is about Lucy Calkins. Dr. Calkins is a prolific pedagogical entrepreneur who has published numerous curricula and supporting materials for teaching reading and writing to children. She is among the most successful, influential reading educators in this country. According to an EdWeek survey published this week, hers is among the 5 most commonly used reading curricula in the country.…
Every scientist has heard the adage, The plural of anecdote is not “data”. Anecdotes have scientific value—they can reveal new phenomena before they’ve been systematically studied—but they’re not facts. They are nonetheless often treated as such, especially if several seem to make a consistent point.* Twitterer Sara Pikelet wittily observed that anecdotes are “small batch artisanal data”. But that’s a joke. Trump’s relentless use of anecdotes (what somebody told him about something, like the golfer and voter fraud) suggests that in the modern era, The plural of anecdote isn’t “data”–it’s “alternative facts”. *Bad use of anecdotes: Koko has had a…
New K-5 teachers are underprepared for the job. There are exceptions, of course, but most programs leading to teacher certification/licensure are grossly inadequate. There’s a deeply entrenched belief that how to teach can’t be taught, and so it isn’t. Teachers are left to learn on the job, which isn’t optimal for them or for their students. I document this in detail my book (LATSS). See also Dana Goldstein’s book “The Teacher Wars”. In the case of reading, for example, teachers aren’t exposed to basic information about how reading relates to speech; linguistic concepts such as phoneme, morpheme, dialect; facts about…
“A low-income family will be less able to buy books and more likely to live in a neighborhood with fewer public libraries, which serve larger populations and contain fewer books that are in worse physical condition than those in middle-class areas.” That’s from p. 116 of my book, but what does the part in bold mean? fewer books, which are also in worse condition, than in middle-class libraries. fewer books in poor condition than in middle-class libraries. I meant the first interpretation, of course. This kind of sentence-level ambiguity—where a sentence (or part of one) is consistent with two interpretations—has…
Concerns about literacy levels in the US and distractions of other technologies are not new. Here’s an amusing illustration: In the late 1950s, Mike Wallace, the late television journalist, hosted a TV interview program that was just like “Charlie Rose” except that it was live and sponsored by Phillip Morris cigarettes, which Wallace chain-smoked on camera. One evening the guest was Bennett Cerf, the co-founder and longtime president of Random House books. Cerf was also a panelist on the popular game show What’s My Line. After discussing the lowbrow character of most television programming, Wallace says, “Bennett, here’s an interesting statistic. According to…
An “important, alarming” new book? “Mr. Seidenberg has that rare knack of sounding reasonable and righteous at the same time.”–a good thing, I hope. Review is here.
Contrary to a headline that sometimes appears over an interview with me in The Atlantic, this is what the book says (more than once): “I must also emphasize that my concerns [about how reading is taught] focus not on teachers—their integrity, commitment, motivation, abilities, effort, sincerity, or intelligence—but rather on what they are taught about child development in general and reading in particular and about the teacher’s role. Responsibility rests with the educators who teach the teachers, shaping their expectations about the profession and curating the ideas and methods to which they are exposed. The people who enter the field…
First coverage of the book, in The Atlantic, which has done a very good job covering education issues for many years. Headline on article is fine: but when you paste the URL, sometimes it comes out like this, which is wrong: Book doesn’t blame teachers at all. It’s the people who teach the teachers who are failing. Far from piling more criticism on teachers, I look at conditions that make a hard job even harder. Media: can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em.