Shannon and Mary chat with Dr. Karen Gazith about her new book The Power of Effective Reading Instruction. The conversation flowed through many topics but ultimately what you can gain from our discussion is the gifts we give our readers when we teach with intention. Listen to this episode to gain fresh ideas for enhancing your own reading instruction.
RECOMMENDED RESOURCES AND ONES MENTIONED DURING THE EPISODE
Shannon and Mary chat with Dr. Karen Gazith about her new book The Power of Effective Reading Instruction. The conversation flowed through many topics but ultimately what you can gain from our discussion is the gifts we give our readers when we teach with intention. Listen to this episode to gain fresh ideas for enhancing your own reading instruction.
RECOMMENDED RESOURCES AND ONES MENTIONED DURING THE EPISODE
6.8 Gifts for our Readers with Dr. Karen Gazith
Shannon Betts: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Reading Teachers Lounge. Come join the conversation with other curious teachers as they discover teaching strategies and resources to reach all of their learners. I'm Shannon.
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Welcome to the Reading Teachers Lounge. Mary and I are here today with a very special guest, Dr. Karen Gazith, am I saying your last name correct?
Dr. Karen Gazith: Sounds great. Perfect.
Shannon Betts: And we are so happy to have [00:01:00] you here. We are excited to have met you through the online literacy community and we're looking forward to hearing more about your teaching experience and also your new book that's coming out.
Mary Saghafi: Yeah. Welcome to the reading teachers lounge.
Yeah, tell us a little bit about yourself.
Dr. Karen Gazith: So, absolutely. So started my academic career with a bachelor's in psychology. I'm Canadian, so we did all my schooling in Canada. And then I did my master's in educational psychology and counseling. And then continued on to a PhD in Ed Secondary.
Counseling in the same department at McGill University when I was doing my master's I started off, you know, doing working as a TA like many students do and then started teaching my first course and have been teaching at McGill ever since I've been teaching at McGill for many, many, many years a whole bunch of different courses.
I teach six courses a year, but [00:02:00] one of the courses that I teach and I actually just finished the course this semester last week is a course on reading development. And I've been teaching that course it's at a graduate level and I've been teaching that course for about 10 years. Great.
Mary Saghafi: Well, you have plenty of things to share with us today.
That's wonderful!
Shannon Betts: Love that! My website it's kind of on hiatus right now, but my website, the domain I chose was reading development. com because that's what I'm so interested in. Because I have mostly intervention experience, even though I have homeroom experience from kindergarten through third grade. But then also I have intervention experience from kindergarten through eighth grade, and I understand sort of the continuum of reading development.
And when I meet like a fifth grader, you know, a 10 year old who struggles with reading, I kind of know, like, what are they missing from first grade? What are they missing from second grade? But that's hard to teach like Like it's in my brain and my mom's like, can you just share it with that, with every other teacher, you know?
And I'm like, I don't know how to do that. I think I need to [00:03:00] teach your, take your course know.
Dr. Karen Gazith: It just comes so it comes so naturally, right?
Shannon Betts: It does. I just sort of know like through a few assessments. Okay, the kid's missing this, but like, I don't know like formally how to explain it, but obviously you do.
I would love to hear what's in your course.
Dr. Karen Gazith: I think it comes, yeah, it comes with practice. The other thing I should mention is right from the beginning when I started my doing my master's degree. I started working in a resource room, initially supporting kids, and I've been in schools ever since. So I think the combination of You know, being on faculty at McGill University, but at the same time working in the school system from kindergarten through we have till grade 11, not like great 12 in the States.
But I've always worked in schools. So I think that's kept me honest in the sense of I can't teach anything. That I know is either really not practical or just wouldn't work within the context of the school. So both of those, the, you know, the university and [00:04:00] school, you know that combination has been very helpful for, for me.
Mary Saghafi: I, I'm really interested because I think through your lens, you come from a behavior analyzing background with psychology. And so I often describe teachers. Or two teachers, when you're looking for things, you're looking for behaviors within the kids and what they're doing within their reading developmental stages.
And so I think that describing it in that way and kind of saying, well, you might see a kid do this or. Looking back and reflecting on it. I noticed that, you know, this kid was having a really hard time tracking. And then even when I gave them a way to block out some of that extraneous visual with just a piece of paper, they still couldn't do it independently.
So I wonder what is that telling us to is there something else that they're have they're struggling with. And so I think examples like that might be really helpful to for our listeners, especially who are probably like around your graduate [00:05:00] level of. Who are teachers right now who are saying, I have a whole class of struggling kids.
They're all struggling at different places. So maybe we can kind of make that the overlay of what we talked about today.
Dr. Karen Gazith: Great question. Huge question, right? I mean, we can probably talk about this for the hour. So my orientation is, yeah, is very much response to intervention focused. I, I like order.
I like I think there's a lot of parameters, and I find that when you think in terms of response to intervention, it's very helpful. So to respond to the question. I think of Mattos and few many people who have really been groundbreakers in response to intervention have a couple of guiding questions.
And the first guiding question is what is it that students need to know and be able to do so when I you work with teachers, either my graduate students or, you know, when I do workshops. I will focus [00:06:00] on these questions to provide a framework. So the first is, what is it that students need to know and be able to do?
And in this case, we're talking about reading. So in order for me to know that something isn't right, I have to know what the expectation is at any every grade level. Number one, what is it that kindergarten kids are supposed to be doing? What is it that kids in grade one are supposed to be doing around?
Again, here we're talking specifically reading. And in each grade level, then the second thing I need to look at is how do I teach them well now that I know what they need to be able to know and be able to do what is the most effective evidence based teaching practices around literacy. Starting again, we can start here in kindergarten, but of course, there are so many early signs that indicate that a student is at risk.
And I'm a huge advocate. We can identify that a student is at risk. We do not need a label. We can identify that a student is at risk when they are three or four years old. And [00:07:00] I, like I said, I've been listening to your podcast. We know that kids need to be able to manipulate sounds. And one of the strongest indication as to whether or not a student will develop the foundational principles for strong phonological awareness is their ability to rhyme.
So when the child is three years old, if they're not laughing when you're reading them, You know, any, any rhyming book and a bit later on when they're around four years old, there should be able to generate rhymes. They haven't yet even experienced any challenge, but we have an incredible ability to identify not that they have a label.
Not necessary to label them, but we know that they, there is a risk factor. The other thing that I often say is, many kids will appear early on as though they are poor readers because they can't manipulate sounds early on. They're having difficulty with rhyming, they're struggling with phonemic awareness.
Many of those kids [00:08:00] are going to be okay. So, you know, if you say around 30 percent of the kids, at least, will appear as though they're having difficulty. Some kids with good instruction will be okay, other kids will need a lot more instruction because they do have some sort of reading challenge. I don't know who's going to grow out of it and who isn't.
So I could wait and not intervene with anybody. And that's the way to fail model, which Makes absolutely no sense, but we followed it for decades, or I can say these kids are at risk, and therefore I should intervene with everybody. The only way we know who's at risk is if we have a very clear sense of what that reading trajectory is.
If we don't know what that reading trajectory is, we wouldn't know that that kids are struggling. The other thing that is very, very important is for [00:09:00] many different reasons, but there are certain, you know, when we look at the neurobiology of the reading brain. There's certain markers that will enable kids to do a wonderful job visually memorizing words.
We, and those kids are at such a disadvantage. So, It will appear as though these young kids are reading. They're in grade one, they're in grade two. We think they're readers, and that's part of the problem with balanced literacy. We think that they're readers, and they're not actually decoding, they're just so magnificent at visual memory because of the neurobiology of, you know, the brain of somebody with dyslexia.
Shannon Betts: But their capacity taps out at some point.
Dr. Karen Gazith: Correct. That's the challenge. So what happens if you're not reading by the end of grade three, there's a one in [00:10:00] 17 chance that you will become a proficient reader, not because you can't, but because unfortunately, reading instruction has come to an end by the end of second or third grade.
So these poor kids. appear to be reading. There's loads of pictures on the page. Pictures are associated with words and my visual memory is so strong. I look like a reader. By the time I get to grade three and grade four, many, many, many of my students, of my graduate students will tell me they all seem to have kids in grade five and they'll say, how did this child get to grade five without?
Decoding and this is how and if we know going back to your question and feel free to cut me off at any time. We all love talking about reading so we can talk about it forever. If we know that this is a challenge and we know the trajectory. of reading development. We know [00:11:00] that kids at risk have very strong visual memory.
There is the easiest way, and I did hear you speaking about this in one of your podcasts, the easiest way to identify if a student is decoding is to give them nonsense words. So if I know that they should be decoding early on, certainly simple CBC words in grade one, and I think that they're decoding, but I know that kids with dyslexia have that incredible ability to visually memorize words, then I know that that's a particular problem.
I will use DIBLs, Akkadians, whatever universal screening you have to see whether or not they're reading nonsense words. It takes minutes and immediately. We can differentiate between those kids who are decoding and those kids who are visually memorizing. So, very, very, very important to know that trajectory.
And then we move on from, again, I've heard you speak about it so many [00:12:00] times, but from the phonemic awareness, phonemic awareness to phonics, and then we have to focus on vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension.
Shannon Betts: I wish. Perfectly stated. Yes. Amazing. I don't know what it's like in, in Canadian reading standards, but I know in, you know, the common core and then other states here in the United States, they renamed them not common core, but it's basically the same language. And the phonemic awareness standards are only in like the pre K and kindergarten grade levels.
And so if you don't have experience teaching those grades, it's like, you don't, you're not aware of how important those Blending and segment skills are and that is one of my huge frustrations, like I almost wish they would put like sort of asterisks on the second and third and first, second and third grade standards.
It says students must still be able to blend in segments. Can make sure that they can do that because otherwise the teachers, you know, like Just sort of the, Oh, the kindergarten teacher [00:13:00] taught it. They got it. And then it's never seen again. And then you also said reading instruction comes to an end, you know, about third grade.
And I think what you were saying was decoding, decoding reading instruction, because now they're being taught more, you know, vocabulary, morphology, comprehension strategies, but. You know, and then the teachers also have those upper grade levels are more experienced teaching those aspects of reading as opposed to the decoding pieces of reading.
Dr. Karen Gazith: Yeah, we say early on you learn to read later on you read to learn. But if I haven't learned to read. I can't use my reading skills to make sense of
text.
Shannon Betts: I found the most effective upper grade teachers are ones that have had kindergarten and first grade experience because they know then to do those look fors.
And let me make sure and assess for these things. Or if I have a student with reading breaking down, let me check for these things as well. Those foundational skills.
Dr. Karen Gazith: Yeah, the only [00:14:00] thing I will say about that, though, is that in preschool and kindergarten, and I don't know, maybe some of my language is Canadian, so you'll, I don't even know the That's the exact
language we use.
Shannon Betts: Okay. I think that's interesting.
Dr. Karen Gazith: Okay. So in, in preschool and in kindergarten, there should, and of course at home, there has to be a very, very strong emphasis on phonemic awareness. I say, you know, the child says, I want to go to the bathroom. You say, okay, sure. But what are the sounds you hear in dog, right?
I want to drink water. No problem. But what are the sounds you hear in cat? We obsess over it and we're constantly focusing on how language breaks down into parts and eventually how you map that onto letters or graphemes. But what I, what is very important for teachers to know, because I think most teachers do a really good job and sometimes it's just a matter of sort of maybe doing a little bit of tweaking.
Students who haven't mastered phonemic awareness in grade one, it's [00:15:00] important that teachers Keep an eye out for phonemic awareness, but there's, you know, advanced phonemic awareness into grade one that replaces phonics is very, very, very problematic. So we have to be careful. 'cause I have seen that in some schools where teachers think they didn't master it in kindergarten, all of grade one is gonna be spent on phonemic awareness in.
You know in the expense of of the time that needs to be spent on phonics, so you don't have to forget about phonemic awareness, and you can still make sure that you're focusing on how words break into parts and into individual particles or sounds, but it is extremely important that in grade one we start mapping them Sound to letter or grapheme.
So, you know, we have to keep an eye on that phonemic awareness, but it's, it's critical that we [00:16:00] start that mapping of letter to sound.
Shannon Betts: Well, you're doing that segmenting when you do that sound mapping. Absolutely. Yeah. And then you're doing the blending when they're, you know, reading decodable text. So it can be embedded in that authentic, you know, task.
Absolutely. Yeah.
Mary Saghafi: Yeah, I agree. I think that what you're also saying too is that there are some kids who really need it explicitly taught that when you are sounding out a word that has three sounds, it may have five letters and you really need them to know, but look, these letters, this letter cluster makes a sound, you know, punch is p
u, u, u, n, n, n, ch
But that's five letters.
We need to make sure that they're really clear about it. And sometimes an over explanation is needed for some kids and some kids are really ready to move on. And so you have to be really aware of those kids who need it and that you're not losing the rest of your class also. So that's. I think that's the really big tricky part.
And yeah, I [00:17:00] often, because I'm an interventionist, I'm overemphasizing that the general ed teachers really do need to be so explicit, but also you don't want to lose the rest of your class. You don't want to bore them too, too much. And so you know, how can you make it more challenging for other students?
How can you extend?
Dr. Karen Gazith: So I'm glad we're still talking about that. Yeah, I think that's important. Just I would say just a note that I've seen about that. And I think this came the concern sometimes about, you know, boring our kids came as a result of I think we find some of this stuff boring. Kids don't, right?
I have a whole bunch of expressions. One of my favorite expressions is the expert blind spot. The better you do something, the more difficult it is to teach because it's very hard for you to break it down. And I've heard in your podcast, you talk a lot about explicit teaching, which I absolutely love, and it is so essential.
But sometimes we [00:18:00] feel like it doesn't need to be broken down because we forget we are not six years old. We don't have our six year old brain and it's hard to think back. But even though it may feel boring for us. It's not boring for our kids. So, you know, and, and explicit teaching is so, so, so important.
And I heard you talk about it all the time. I do, we do, you do one, you do many. So, you know, the explicit teaching is great.
Mary Saghafi: But when we find too, right. So if you feel like your kids are finding it boring and the routine is boring, changing up your routine a bit. Might be really helpful. So I really, I'm so glad that you touched on this and I love this expert blind spot.
I'm going to start to use that more often too, because I think that's what I've been trying to reiterate is that reading is so complicated. We do it at a subconscious level as adults were proficient readers. So, when you, and again I think this is what we sort of started talking about [00:19:00] too. When we learn to teach in our pre service training, we could make really good teacher, really good readers, even better readers.
We could make average readers better comprehenders, but taking a non reader and turning them into a reader is challenging. And so when we're talking about those kids, especially at this young critical stage, I love this rule of the first grade age six. Really making sure that you're introducing the letters.
I think that we need to really make that really clear. I think a lot of teachers are confused about phonological awareness, too. About when to introduce letters and when not to introduce letters. So I'm glad that we're clarifying all this right now.
Dr. Karen Gazith: It's great. So I would say, you know, once, you know, near the end of kindergarten, they need to be, you know, knowing the sounds of the phonemes.
And then we're really getting into mapping the letter to the sound in grade one. And there's a good pattern that you, you teach. And there's some rules for when and how [00:20:00] you teach. And I have all of that in the book, but it, you know, it's important that we teach a letter sound and then make sure that it's learned to mastery.
And then another letter sound, a vowel has to go in there just one at a time, not more than that. And then another, another consonant and. What I often say, when I'm working with teachers and when I work with kids, as soon as they can put a couple of sounds together to form a word, I make sure to say, you are now a reader.
And it's very important that we use that. You are now a reader. This is, this is exactly what readers do. You got it. You're doing it. You are a reader. And again, when you say to somebody who struggled, you're a reader, what you're saying is, Your identity now should be that identity of a reader, not someone who struggled to read, and I'll often say, you figured it out, you got the code, way to go, now we're just going to layer on, now we're going to add to it, but it's that [00:21:00] very, very explicit.
You know, modeling one sound and then a second one and really helping them. And there are many, many, many ways to help kids just to add a lot of kids who struggle to read, have difficulty, not only with phonological awareness, but also with naming speed and naming speed is the ability to quickly. Rapidly access the name of objects, and there are, you know, many kids with dyslexia who don't only have difficulty with phonological awareness, which is the sound pattern of language, but also with naming speed and how that affects their reading.
Is they just like they can't remember that this is called a cup and they'll call it a thing, but then be able to tell you 100 different facts about the thing. They just can't remember what it's called and how it implicates reading is they can't remember the [00:22:00] name or the sound of the letter. Because remembering the name and the sound again is naming speed.
It's quick access of some arbitrary name of something, which is exactly what they struggle with. So there are many ways to help kids who have for naming speed and. And Going back to the assessment once we know what their area of difficulty is, we're able to hone in and provide support. And Mary, like you said, to make sure the kids on board.
We do the assessments and we know the ones who were solidly at a grade one at a grade two. There's no reason why we can't give them more advanced, you know, books to read and continue to teach them comprehension, you know, obviously, fluency and all the other areas of the big five.
Shannon Betts: You brought up so many good points.
First off, Mary has talked a lot about, you know, the letter naming fluency assessment being like a really good screener to kind of know about future [00:23:00] reading success. But I love how you explained why that is the case and like what's happening with that automatic retrieval. I also appreciate like what you said about You know, that you say, okay, now you're a reader.
I call that, I call it the reading club. And I say, the kids are part of the reading club and the club of readers around the world. And they really like that. And then you've also quite a few times brought up fun. Like you even said it with rhyming. You said, if students will laugh when you make rhyming things, when they're just even three and four years old, and then when they have, you know, it seems boring to us, but when they have work, that's just right, I have seen this.
My entire 20 something year career when they have just right work. It is fun. Like, I will give students like if I, you know, lower the vocabulary work to the level that they actually, you know, is their developmental level. They'll go, this was so much fun and it could be like the most boring worksheet but they're like this was great and it's because they were bored in class when it was at the frustration level and they couldn't be successful but when they [00:24:00] have sort of the access to be successful at something, it
becomes fun for them.
Dr. Karen Gazith: I have to say something I so agree with that and I just to accentuate that point, it is so important. A lot of the conversations I have with reading teachers is the only way to improve as a reader is to read text at your level of proficiency. ZPD.
Shannon Betts: I am all about ZPD.
Dr. Karen Gazith: Absolutely has to be within your zone and it has to be your level of proficiency.
People laugh at me, but you know, the class novel is very, very, very problematic. I'm just, I don't understand the class novel. Idea or practice, because what ends up happening is number one, we focus too much on the content of the novel, which quite frankly, to the reading [00:25:00] process, I'm going to say is irrelevant.
Our job is to give you the tools so that you could read anything without me. Narrative, expository, when we focus on the class novel, way too much time is going into what the book is about. Which is really no part of, you have to be, I have to give you the tools to be able to do that, whether it's this book or some other book, but I often say, if we would have the same experience through seeing a film, there's something wrong.
That's not the goal. The goal is to teach kids how to read independent of you. The other problem is, not everyone is interested in the book that you chose. But the biggest problem is, Like I said, your reading will only improve if you're reading at your proficiency level, especially for struggling readers.
So if I choose a class novel, and this is a novel I chose because we're in grade 4, and this is a grade 4 novel, [00:26:00] for many of the kids, they don't have the vocabulary, certainly for English language learners, but for many other kids, if you don't read, it is going to impact your vocabulary. And that is, you know, and the only way to improve one important way to improve your vocabulary is not the only way but is to read.
But if you're not a great reader, of course, you don't have the motivation to read. So what ends up happening is the teacher has to do a lot of the reading of the novel, which it ends up being like we're seeing the film and. You're not becoming a better reader if, and there's, you know, percentages, you have to be reading 95 percent of the words correctly.
You have to know about 90 to 95 percent of the vocabulary. So if you're, if it's not at your level, your reading isn't improving. It is so important that kids. Read text, and I will make a plug for expository text. Narrative is great, but we have to start doing a lot more expository fact based text. And [00:27:00] the reading has to be at the student's proficiency level for their reading to continuously improve.
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Mary Saghafi: That's so well stated. And as soon as you even said it, Shannon is clapping like have your students reading at their [00:29:00] level because that's how you make improvements. And so Yes, and we do love decodable text for this reason. There also can be another developmental layer to that. It doesn't need to be a very small reader.
It may need to be to help practice. It just depends on what the level is that those kids are at. So I'm so glad that that you're saying that and it can be very exciting. And I also have to agree to in a, in a future upcoming episode, we talk a lot about books that are, that maybe teachers choose that were something that was positive for them as a, as a reader when they were young, and they may not have the same effect in the classroom 20 plus years later.
And so that's also a good introspective thing to take, like why, what's the purpose of reading to learn new things. Is this the most appropriate use of our time? Are you going to get the most bang for your buck reading this text that you have [00:30:00] selected as a teacher? I love it. I think it's perfect.
Dr. Karen Gazith: Yeah, really great.
And I know, you know, the book Think Aloud that I believe I wrote a little summary for and I think it's a wonderful book. And there is great benefit of reading to kids for them to learn stuff because there is a lack of knowledge. that kids have, right? They, they're getting very, you know, micro in terms of what they're learning and they really need to learn more about the world and reading to them for that purpose is important.
But whenever we do anything, we have to know what the purpose is. So I'm reading to you because I want you to learn about the relationship between the sun, the earth and the moon, and we're going to learn about gravity and that. That's the purpose, which is wonderful, but if my purpose is for you to improve your reading, then the text has to be completely predictable, decodable, and again we're talking about those early grades, but that's essential if I want my kids to become more proficient.[00:31:00]
Shannon Betts: I think what you're talking about with the intentionality, I wrote what you said, you said, our job is to give you the tools to read anything without me. And I think sometimes we lose sight of that. You know, we find a cutesy activity or, you know, sometimes things are just time fillers because we as teachers have to do some other things.
And, but we really need to be intentional because. Every activity we're choosing, every text we're choosing is for the students to be able to do this independently. And so we need to be, you know, I know you definitely believe in gradual release responsibility like we do. And so we have to have that in, in mind of like, where is this piece of it?
Is it more me doing it and showing you and explaining to you how I think? So that then, but then also doing a lot more of that guided practice and independent practice so that we're, you know, lessening the students dependence on us. Cause I have been in those classrooms where that teacher is mainly doing the bulk of the, of the thinking.[00:32:00]
And so then, you know, like what's, what are the students doing? They're daydreaming and they're sketching in their notebooks and it's like a waste of an hour or multiple weeks of class.
Dr. Karen Gazith: Yeah, yeah. And a good example of that is background knowledge. So I was in a class where, nothing wrong with this, but again, I think we have to be intentional, where the teacher was saying, we're going to be reading a book about, and it was a particular, I don't even remember what the, what the situation was, but we're going to be reading a book about, and then the teacher said, let me tell you about, let me give you background knowledge.
There's nothing wrong with that. That's fine. But ultimately we have to. Again, leave ourselves behind with the students. So one of the things I do with my students, as I say, the best teachers give their students gifts. And what does it mean to give a gift to give a gift means that eventually I've taught you so well that you will be able to master these strategies independent of me.
That's what a gift is. I give it to you. And I'm [00:33:00] not holding on to it. I actually I give it to you. It's yours and you can use it independent of me. And when we teach well and you, you know, you alluded to it. I mean, the greatest teaching teachers actually open up their prefrontal cortex and are actually showing.
Another great saying is it's very easy to teach what you know, it's much more difficult to, it's much more difficult to teach your capacity to learn and the different steps that are inherent in becoming proficient, and that's what master teachers do. They are so focused on showing modeling for teachers and again it's guided practice, it's scaffolding.
I want my students, I'm going to be so intentional. Another thing I say often, when students roll their eyes, it is the greatest compliment to the teacher. When you teach well, step by step, and you start at the student's level, again, Zone Approximal Development, so the student right away, [00:34:00] I'm going to help you.
I'm going to give you an enormous amount of support, which we often think a challenge is good as a start, which is actually not the case. I need to give you an enormous amount of support so that you feel capable before you actually are. And as, and I'm going to teach you very, very systematically, explicit teaching.
I do, we do, you do one, you do many. And I'm going to pull back. And again, that's what master teachers are able to, you know, gauge is how do I pull back at what point do I pull back and for which students so that along the way, they're feeling like very capable learners and all the while I'm being extremely explicit in my teaching.
So students are rolling their eyes because they're going, I know the steps to this comprehension strategy.
Shannon Betts: My very best math lesson in my entire career, I can name it. It was when the new standards rolled out and I'll be honest, I [00:35:00] wasn't as totally prepared as I should have been that day for instruction and we got to line plots.
And I had never learned line plots, and we had never taught it before because it was kind of brand new to the third grade standards. And so I walked the students. Through. I was just like, okay, GLAS, I don't know this either. . And so I showed them how to look at the left hand side of the textbook, which is always the teaching side of the textbook, you know, and the right side is the practice.
So I went through sentence by sentence, okay, the book is telling me a line plot. Is this okay? This is what I'm interpreting from what they're telling me. Okay, so a line plot is this. And so then I looked at the illustration. I'm like, okay, this is what a line plot looks like to me. And then I was illustrating it on the board, and then I was going through the example problems and I talked.
Through the class through that for like maybe 20, 25 minutes, then we all did the exercises together and they were checking my work because I was new to learning line plots, and they were new to learning line plots. What amazed, what was so amazing about that lesson is for the rest of the year they knew how to read the left hand side of the textbook and [00:36:00] learn from the textbook without me.
Because I had taught them step by step how to get brand new knowledge from a page that you didn't know before. And so anyway, well, I felt like I'd given them, like you said, a gift. I'd given them a gift because, like, no matter what kind of teaching they got in the future, they could have the gift of the textbook and know, oh, I can learn from this tool myself.
This is how I do it.
Dr. Karen Gazith: That's a great example of the expert blind spot because you were learning with them. So you were breaking everything down into very, very manageable pieces. And what experts, what math experts tend to do often is they leave out critical steps because For them, it just comes so naturally and it's hard for them to break it into those pieces.
And when, and you were able to do that because you were learning it with them. So you, you needed those pieces, you needed to do it step by step. So you were showing [00:37:00] them. Really how to master line plot step by step. So just we always have to be aware of of that expert blind spot.
Mary Saghafi: I have a kind of a different visual.
I love Shannon's breaking down a lesson because I think that's very real world. This is a little more abstract, but I have this beautiful painting. That's an illustration of a beach and on the beach are scattered letters and you may have seen this before. And if you haven't. I have a few copies and I will happily post it.
It's an Irish author and I cannot think of his name to give him credit but we'll definitely put it in the notes. Anyhow, there's letters scattered across the beach, and there are several students who have figured out the letters are a FT and they are just out Sailing away. And there are, there's one student who's still stuck on the beach and he is trying to collect the letters and is just really not even close to the letters that he needs.
But I think that that's such a good visual of the gift of reading and letting it go away. [00:38:00] And so I've always seen it as more of a struggle of this child on the beach that I need to teach. I'm reimagining it as the rest of the readers are really sailing away. And I think that that's a really beautiful visual as well.
So I'll make sure that I post to that too.
Shannon Betts: So that's like, well, our goal is parents, right? You know that we're trying to like help the baby birds, like fly themselves and, you know, leave the nest, even though it breaks our heart when they don't need us anymore. But that's our, that should be our goal as teachers too.
Dr. Karen Gazith: Absolutely. Yeah. But that doesn't come easily. And that comes from a lot of very, very explicit, guided, step by step teaching. Always starting with explaining the why, because our brains must have meaning. The purpose for reading, yes. Have to have the purpose there, but we have to teach it step, really step by step.
And we're, you know, the big five of reading, critical [00:39:00] elements. That have to be part of every literacy classroom. And once they master the letter, the letter sound, we know that we have to move them into fluency, of course, vocabulary we're doing constantly from the minute they're born. And the other thing is comprehension, which again, reading comprehension is, obviously they have to become fluent readers to master reading comprehension, but comprehension as a skill, which is making meaning from text should begin.
You know, obviously it happens also as soon as we start reading to our young kids and continues in in the early grades and even preschool as we read to them, and we could be teaching them comprehension strategies right away, even before they have the proficiency to read on their own and make sense of text.
So, you know, we should always be focusing on those very explicit comprehension strategies.
Shannon Betts: I think you brought up a good point earlier, you said that like [00:40:00] we shouldn't spoon feed all of the background knowledge to students for an early for another episode I was interviewing Wiley Blevins and he we were talking about that very specific thing.
And he was saying that Timothy Shanahan has really been honing on that point. And basically saying like if we provide all the background knowledge and this, there's nothing left for the students to learn from the text. Because we've given it to them.
Dr. Karen Gazith: Absolutely. I have a good visual in the in the book that, of course, you know, we will plug just as a good author of solution tree.
But we have to leave our voice behind in our students. And I tell that to my graduate students all the time. If you're reading a book. And I'm helping you, right? And you know, my question is, you know, what color was the dog? That's a very unhealthy, unhelpful question, because I'm going to read another book, and what color is the dog is not going to help me.
So I have to make sure that I ask [00:41:00] very guiding questions. That the student can hold on to no matter what they read. So they're going to keep they're going to hold my voice in their head, but that voice has to be a voice that's going to guide them. So, for example, I, you know, I have a table of. questions that students need to ask themselves about background knowledge.
So, you know, what can I learn from the pictures? What can I learn from the title? What can I learn from the headings, from the subheadings? You know, can I list five things that I know about this? If not, where can I go to get that information? So these are the kinds of gifts that we have to give students.
We have to, I love templates. And as you've heard, I love, you know, teaching step by step very explicitly and eventually they won't need me anymore because they'll be asking themselves these questions about background knowledge and background knowledge is critical to comprehension. [00:42:00]
Shannon Betts: Yeah, I was, as I've been learning more about comprehension myself, I saw the statement that background knowledge enables inferences, and I hadn't really seen it phrased that way, but it makes so much sense, like when it's just directly stated that way that like, Oh yeah, if you don't have background knowledge about this thing, you're not going to recognize the clues that the author left you to be able to make that important inference that you might need to extract the full meaning from what's happening in the text.
Absolutely. Yeah. And thank you also for giving those specific examples of questions because those could be applied to any text whatsoever and they are, you know, they're direct but they're also higher order thinking and that the students, you know, might choose to use which they have to sort of have some metacognition and some self awareness to know like which.
Question to ask when to then be able and then also like where to apply it in the text of like, where am I going to find that information? When would this be the most helpful question to [00:43:00] ask?
Dr. Karen Gazith: Yeah, there's a lot of good research on comprehension strategies. And just to, you know, further what you were saying, we have to teach students those comprehension strategies for the different types of books that they will be reading fact based narrative.
You know, a math problem, a science, a history there. There are generic comprehension strategies, and then there are subject specific or content discipline specific strategies. So we've got to teach those. But the ultimate gift is I'm going to teach you these different strategies. Ultimately, you need to have the metacognitive ability to know which strategies to use under which situation.
So now I'm reading a math problem, what strategies do I need? Now I'm reading a fact based text, fact based text, oh, I learned about text patterns. That would be really helpful now. Or I'm reading a math problem, I should use maybe a PAL [00:44:00] strategy. You know, a shrink the paragraph or circle the numbers. There are so many different strategies.
Ultimately, we have to teach them well with the ultimate goal of the students knowing which strategies to apply under which situation.
Mary Saghafi: Yeah, I, I think that's exactly right. We're we're constantly searching for that one magic one that works really, really well. And I'm sure Shannon, you have also switched some of your strategies as you've been teaching in different years too.
And so I think that, you know, making sure that it's often paired with a visual for students so that you don't always have to say. This is what I'm thinking, but you can say, can anyone look around the room and help find a resource that can help you solve this problem? Explicitly you're still telling the students, Hey, I, I'm here to support you.
You are responsible for figuring out what is the resource to find. Some need it, need a little more hand holding with that too. And that's [00:45:00] okay.
Dr. Karen Gazith: Absolutely. Yeah. That's great. Cause you, at first you teach it very exclusively and then eventually you want them to find the prompts on their own, look around and where is that?
You don't want to constantly be telling them eventually you, you need to pull yourself back and have them find it for themselves.
Shannon Betts: So that then they can show, Oh, I didn't understand this page. I use this strategy and it was able to help me understand because of this.
Dr. Karen Gazith: Absolutely. Yeah, definitely.
Shannon Betts: We did a lot of that early on in my career.
I was an America's Choice school, my first few years of teaching, which I know I'm dating myself saying that. I don't know if you're familiar with that program, but it was like just embedded with like readers and writers workshop. And there were some good points and bad points. They didn't have enough explicit phonics with it.
But it did promote metacognition. And it definitely I mean, we were doing authentic reading and writing tasks just all day long. And we would have this about what [00:46:00] my third graders were having those conversations like, Oh, in this chapter book, I couldn't understand what the character was doing. So I used this strategy and then I was able to understand, and then I could follow the rest of the story.
And to be able to have a student, be able to articulate that. Again, that's like a gift that, you know, will carry on in the future.
Dr. Karen Gazith: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, there's that's why I'm so happy that there's, you know, this podcast and so much work being done on the science of reading. Because there, there really is a pathway to reading.
Now, some kids need a lot more time and maybe some unique strategies and ways to get there. But ultimately, you have to, you know, at the beginning, you have to recognize the sound pattern of language, and then you have to know that words are broken into individual particles or sounds, and then we move into phonics, you have to map the sound to the letters.
So, you know, and then we, you know, vocabulary, obviously, is a critical [00:47:00] part that we're constantly focusing on. Fluency is critical. Fluency is the bridge between decoding and comprehension, and and then, you know, in earnest, like, really teaching those higher level comprehension strategies I have found, and I think it's gotten much better, but what a lot of teachers were doing, thinking that they were teaching comprehension, was they'd be asking students to answer questions, and And that's an assessment.
And I actually, in the podcast, one of the things that I heard, and I don't remember who said it, it was One of one of you on that podcast that teachers often either give activities, it's death by activity. Here's a worksheet, answer questions, and there's no strategy there, right? Or, you know, answer questions, as I said, as an assessment or teachers take on the role as facilitator, which is great later on.
But [00:48:00] when we are actually. Teaching students those comprehension strategies, we have to be very, very, very explicit in our teaching, and we have to recognize that having kids answer questions is an assessment. It's not a strategy. And this is it.
Shannon Betts: Yeah, it's an after the fact it's the product of company and we're already measuring it too late because it's after it's happened.
Right. And so we need to spend a lot more classroom time. I think that also the curriculum resources need to be better. You know, so that teachers don't have to invent all this on their own, but that they have activities that are really well chosen and thoughtful that will help focus on the process of comprehension that before endure reading before reading and during reading thinking, that's where the bulk of the classroom time should be not after the reading.
Dr. Karen Gazith: Yeah, I loved hearing that when you said the process of comprehension, which is so important. [00:49:00] And another thing that teachers may tend to do, although I see much, much less of this, and you know, we're seeing so much more evidence based practice in reading, which is fantastic. Front loading vocabulary is, is critical.
So 90 percent of the words to understand the text, and you can't use context. If you don't know enough of the words, that's why the class novel may not be the best idea, but rather students reading at their level of proficiency. But front loading vocabulary is going over the words before they read the text.
Sometimes we don't have a choice in more of a content course. We may not be able to choose the text that they're reading, but we could front load vocabulary. If we Read the text or have them read the text and then review the words. You can't back into understanding something. You have to begin with the words.
So there's all kinds of different strategies where you could focus on the vocabulary before they read the text. So once they read [00:50:00] it, they have the vocabulary, which will help them understand. So I love that when you said that the process of comprehension is so critical.
Shannon Betts: Yeah, I'm just learning that myself as I'm learning more about comprehension, you know, because I, I've, I've been guilty in the past of spending more class time on the products of comprehension.
But as I understand the nature of comprehension and just how many cognitive processes are at play and how much language processing is at play it simultaneously, two things came apparent. First, like you said, the fluency is absolutely critical because our brains would explode if the students had to do all of that decoding and all of those cognitive and languages processes at the same time.
I mean, there's just no way our brains could do that at one time. And then the other thing is just how important those You know that it's a process and that also it's an active process that's informed [00:51:00] by the purpose for reading and that if we're reading just for something casual or for a more serious purpose, that's going to really affect our level of comprehension.
So I'm paying more attention to that as I read as an adult to try to make that invisible visible in my mind, because I do have an expert blind spot in this area. And so that I can do a better job of like making that invisible thing that's happening in my brain visible to the students.
Dr. Karen Gazith: Yeah, I love that.
When we make it visible, what does it look like? And what are the steps? And I, you know, I'm often heard saying that teachers are master strategy deliverers. That's what we do, right? I mean, once when we talk about skills, it means you're able to do this. with little thought, like you said, right? But getting there, we have to really focus on the steps.
Every, every skill that we will eventually master requires a series of steps. What do I do first, second, third, especially [00:52:00] when it comes to comprehension. So when we make that visible, When we model it, when we show them the steps, when we create the purpose for reading, right, why are we reading and why are we reading this text now, and then we go through those steps very, very deliberately and gradually give over the responsibility to the students, but it has to be with a text that is at their proficiency level.
Because as you mentioned, if not, there's cognitive overload. I can't struggle with a new strategy that you've just taught me, while at the same time struggling with a text with content that I know nothing about. So you have to focus, like, identify what is it that we're working on. If it's a new strategy, the text has to be at a really simple level, so that all of my cognitive load, my mental energy, is going on that strategy that you're teaching me, and that eventually I have to Learn how to use when I read.
Mary Saghafi: I am so glad the way that you explained it. And I knew that it's at the very [00:53:00] beginning because of your background. You're so great at explaining these behaviors with your background in psychology and things like that. And so that it's really the executive functioning of how do you get through the process and naming it.
So if you have already identified a student who's a poor planner or or who has trouble initiating a task, you're going to want to you. Be explicit in that area with them and see where they need that handholding piece. Because if you have weak executive functioning, And many let's say second graders, they are not fully developed and they won't be fully developed with their executive functioning skills for years and years 25 ish, and they are still learning so again it's opening up your frontal lobe and showing them what the process is.
So I'm so glad we're Just really breaking it down again, because I think that this is something that teachers also need to hear again and again from other adults who are in that same field and they're noticing student behaviors [00:54:00] and bringing it up and having these adult conversations about it without.
Closing your door and teaching all day. It's different. It's, it hits a little differently in your own cognition about what do those behaviors mean? Why are they not able to, you know, pick up a text and look at the, the the titles and the subtitles and make meaning from that. Sometimes it's like, Oh, And this is where you hear it often.
They're just so lazy. They just don't even know how to get it started. And so like having this conversation that that breaks that, that cycle, it makes you an investigator as a teacher. And that's really what we're kind of tasked to do. I'm investigating to see what is the master strategy I need to implement.
Dr. Karen Gazith: Yeah, so it's funny you should say that because I very often say to my graduate students. The best teachers are the best detectives, and we have to do our detective work and I say that, you know, really often. Another great [00:55:00] quote is we have to be the front the prefrontal cortex for students who are struggling with executive functions.
And the other thing that you mentioned, visuals are extremely important. Because of, for example, students who struggle with working memory, and we have expectations that you will need to or be able to hold a whole bunch of different things in mind at the same time to respond to a task. And we know, as you said, students are not fully developed until much later on, but there are certain students who really struggle.
With poor working memory and then what we need to do, whatever it is, times tables or a list of steps that they have to follow. And you know, when they're doing math problem solving or steps that they have to follow for a comprehension strategy when we write it out for them and make sure they look at it and tick off each step.
We're helping them because they are struggling with that representational memory. So anything we can [00:56:00] give them that's visual and then we have to take the time to make sure that they have access to it. Here are the little things, right? So if we say we're going to use our steps that we learned yesterday, we probably are going to have to spend the next 10 minutes making sure that you have the steps, take the time, take it out of your bag, take it out of your desk, find it.
I have a couple of extra copies, put it on your desk. You know, all of these things take time, but I'm, I'm a person of quotes. So I'm constantly spewing different quotes. And another one is when we slow down, we go faster. And I so believe that
Shannon Betts: Mary has said that before. Haven't you, Mary? Oh my goodness.
Y'all are your special ed experiences coming out in everything you're saying.
Mary Saghafi: It's so true. And I think that. For me when I took my graduate courses in special ed, I found a commonality between the people in my, my cohort because I think we all are really good at investigating behaviors and why students are doing what they're doing.
And [00:57:00] I think it also takes that burden out of placing that like negative label as. Lazy or they, they don't care, but is it true that maybe they don't care about this topic at the moment? Right? But still, what is, what is preventing them from accessing this? What's preventing them? So I do think that it's true.
We're, we're trying really hard to get that hook in to kids who are a little bit more resistant.
Dr. Karen Gazith: Yeah, I don't believe in lazy. I really don't. Just again, like you said, for all the years that I've worked with kids who struggle, it is, you know, it is human natural inclination to want to move forward. We all have it.
We all want to learn. We all want to move forward. And if we're not moving forward, putting one foot in front of the next, there's a reason for it. It's not natural for a student not to want to learn, and, you know, they will want to learn if we become that kind of teacher that breaks things down, right, Shannon, like you said, when you [00:58:00] were learning along with your math students, when we break it down, and we don't give them a choice, but to develop proficiency and move forward, and a lot of that is the way that we, you know, the way that we teach them very, very, you know, step by step, clear purpose, So but using, you know, using explicit teaching, guided practice, all those other wonderful things.
Shannon Betts: I see why you titled your earlier book, teaching with purpose. Yes. And your intentionality comes out with everything you say.
Dr. Karen Gazith: Everything. Yeah. I could just tell you when I was doing my grad, I think I was in a graduate program and I was in a class and we were just three students. You wouldn't have that anymore, but it was I guess a highly focused class and we we had to identify a young child and pick something that we felt that the child needed to learn and then go ahead and teach them and using specific, you know, teaching methodology, and I was working with a five year old who was having.
Every challenge under the sun, [00:59:00] you know, home life, academic, everything you can imagine, language challenges, and we all had to present what we were going to teach the student. I should have known better, but I, you know, I said, I'm going to teach, I'm embarrassed to say it, but why not? And I was teaching him his shapes and the professor who was very tall with like blue piercing eyes looked at me and said one word.
Why? I couldn't answer the question, and that's always stayed with me, and I focus very, very, very much on why we're doing what we're doing. Always have a purpose. I go into class and we're doing, you know, analyzing sentences. We do a lot of that in French. Why? What is the purpose? What do you want the student to be able to do?
And as English teachers, or any language teacher, we want our students to be able to [01:00:00] read, write, and speak. To communicate. Communicate. Speak. Communicate effectively for a purpose, right? To communicate a goal. Like, we don't say, like, hi, pen, right? I mean, that's not, we teach vocabulary. What about the pen?
Right. And yeah, and it's so important that we have a purpose and that when teachers are doing whatever it is that they're doing, they really need to be able to think about how is this helping my students become better communicators, better Oral language communicators, better writers and better readers, because everything we do, and again, the steps could be small, but everything we have to be very, very purposeful in the way that we teach, always thinking about what do we want our students to be able to do the purpose for learning and paying attention.
Shannon Betts: We say that a lot too, on the podcast is like focus on the learning rather than the teaching. Yeah. And [01:01:00] when you do that. You know, a lot of times we say we don't have enough time for that, but like, in there, the classroom time opens up when you ask, when you have that, why in the forefront of your mind, because all of a sudden you see, you know, opportunities for cross curricular activities where you can work on those reading, writing skills in math time, in social studies and science.
And then reading and writing time. So you're basically working on the same standard the entire school day or the entire school week. If you weave those things and make them, make that purpose clear to the students.
Dr. Karen Gazith: Yeah, we need it. Our brains need to know why we're learning what we're learning. We must have purpose.
And as teachers, we need to have purpose, right? Why are we doing what we're doing? What do we want our students to be able to do by the end of this? Sub skill skill.
Shannon Betts: And we've had Mary and I talk a lot because we both have such so much experience working as interventionists, especially with older students.
And we've just seen just so many kids come through, [01:02:00] you know, our practice over the years of just, they become passive at school and that school was just happening to them and that they have no part in it. They're just stuck there for the day. And it's because that purpose has not been. You know, it might have been communicated, but it definitely didn't get heard by the students.
I don't know what the teacher said or didn't say, but definitely the students did not hear it, didn't hear it and didn't. And so that's one of our first approaches besides just working off any make awareness. The second we are assessing funny make awareness. The second we meet a student. The other thing we do is try to awaken, you know, that.
Engagement in the student so that they're less passive so that they have that purpose for learning and that purpose for reading and writing.
Dr. Karen Gazith: Yeah, absolutely. Well said.
Mary Saghafi: I don't have anything to add to that.
Shannon Betts: I know we could talk to you all day. Dr. [01:03:00] Karen . We want to, we want to respect your time. So really appreciate you joining us in the reading teachers lounge.
Mary Saghafi: Yeah, you had so much great information for us. And I'm really excited about your upcoming book as well, too. So we'll make sure.
Dr. Karen Gazith: Yeah. Yeah. So we should probably mention it just so that it's not teaching with purpose.
Shannon Betts: That's the other book that you published
Dr. Karen Gazith: the other book. You know what I'm, I'm obviously, and we can all relate, right?
We're educators, right? We're not, we're not marketers. Sometimes I'll do a workshop with like, you know, 800 people. And I forgot to mention my book. Like we just love what we do. But it is the power of effective reading instruction, how neuroscience informs instruction across all grades and disciplines.
Shannon Betts: And I would say that what the power is, and this is what I think I'm going to call the episode is that it gives the kids this gift that brought, that came up so much in our conversation today, which was the gifts of powerful [01:04:00] reading instruction.
Yeah.
Well, it's coming out at Christmas time. This episode is coming out at Christmas time. So I think it'll be perfect.
Dr. Karen Gazith: Yeah. That's a good. Right on.
Mary Saghafi: Thank you so much for your time today. This was a pleasure. You're always welcome to come back to the Reading Teacher's Lounge. We could chat with you.
Shannon Betts: Thank you for gifting our audience with your experience.
Thank you for gifting your experience to all of the graduate students you work with. And I love also that you, you stay as a practitioner in the schools because I think that that is, that's what Mary and I have always said is a goal for ourselves, that we never want to be removed from students.
Dr. Karen Gazith: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Mary Saghafi: So thank you so much.