Tag Archives: reading to learn

Should I Know or Just Google It?

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A daily deluge of information from more than a thousand possible media sources requires a person to either have a broad background knowledge or constantly Google everything that is not familiar.  What a gift children receive from schools that intentionally teach a breadth and depth of academic subjects.  While graduation plans focus on post-secondary and career goals, it is a child’s knowledge of a broad range of subjects developed in grades 4 – 12, when they read to learn, that serves them on a daily basis in life after school. 

Today’s news – a case in point.

News comes to us in snippets.  Quick, short bursts of information that assume we have contextual knowledge within which to understand the momentary news flash.

  • The Houthis in Yemen are attacking merchant vessels in the Red Sea.  The Houthis, backed by Iran, are supporting the Palestinian cause in Gaza. 
  • The jet stream has drifted so far north that temps in Alaska will be in the 40s in January. 
  • Ozempic, developed to control type 2 diabetes, can assist others in dramatic weight loss. 
  • More than 350,000 jobs were added to the US economy in the past month.
  • The House may refuse to consider a bi-partisan bill passed by the Senate and kill an attempt to resolve border problems.

Being informed about current events requires an ever-broadening background knowledge of geography, politics, culture and religion, history, climate, meteorology, and prescriptive medicine to name only a few topics.  The news snippets jump from one to another so quickly and without providing context that a casual observer can easily throw up their hands with a “This is too much for me!”.  Of course, this is said assuming folks want to be informed. 

Scaffolds and spirals power background knowledge development.

Good curricular design in schools is built upon a planned instruction of subjects at the right time and at the right developmental level.  Coupled with teaching strategies that reinforce, expand, and grow a child’s knowledge base, children gain an active and working contextual knowledge of their world.  Graduates obviously do not know everything; they are not walking encyclopedias.  But their background knowledge is adequate for them to know that the issue of Israel and an independent Palestinian state has been a continuing and unresolved conflict since the end of WW2.  They know where the Red Sea is on the globe and how the Red Sea fits into global maritime routes.  And they know that the west-to-east jet stream directs weather patterns across North America and a jet stream across Alaska will cause the lower 48 states to have warmer to hotter temperatures.

Instruction of background knowledge is scaffolded beginning in early elementary classes so that all children have access to general information. Scaffolding ensures that all children receive developmentally appropriate learning.  Initial instruction provides facts that are developed into generalizations and generalizations are applied to newer information so that similarities and differences can be analyzed and evaluated.  Across grade levels information is spiraled from simple facts to increasingly complex and sophisticated knowledge.  Although children learn about United State history in elementary, middle school, and high school, each new rung on the social studies spiral causes more extensive understanding and consideration of our historical events and their importance to what is happening in our country today.

Taken as a whole, social studies, sciences, the arts, language and communications, human relationships each play a part in completing a child’s background knowledge.  It is impossible to sort out, to overvalue or devalue any educational experience, as all experiences lead to a better educated graduate – one who is prepared for a greater understanding of their world.

What knowledge is essential?

Robert Marzano in “Building Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement: Research on What Works in Schools (ASCD, 2004) wrote that our capacity to access and use background knowledge relies upon innate fluid intelligence and the frequency and repetition of our academic experiences or intentional learning episodes.  Marzano provides educators in this work and others with both the research and the “game plan” for instructional designs that will teach all children a wealth of content knowledge.  He addresses how educators can develop deep and meaningful academic experiences that will enrich a child’s mental storehouse of background knowledge.  In the book’s appendix, Marzano categorizes background/content knowledge in groupings that make learning of associated facts more effective and efficient.  I am a great fan of Marzano and his clinical approach to presenting strategies for improving the education of all children. 

The issue of fluid intelligence is child centric.  Ken Jennings, the GOAT of TV’s Jeopardy! may best personify the combination of fluid intelligence and intentional learning.  His quick-fire knowledge of trivia displays a phenomenal cache of specific AND background knowledge and his gift of instant recall.

Another author, E. D. Hirsch, Jr., wrote and later updated his take on “Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know”.  Hirsch makes a compelling argument that for a person today to understand current events and trends in the news a person must have contextual background knowledge.  Without background everything is new news.  A reading of Cultural Literacy is a wonderful checkpoint of what one knows, knew but forgot, or should relearn. 

Google and Siri are great!

When I was a child, my parents invested in a set of encyclopedias.  Our 1958 set of the Compton’s Encyclopedia truly was a financial investment as well as the purchase of “the” family source for things we did not know about.  We “dog eared” too many pages believing that turning down the corner of the page would always allow us to get right back to the latest facts we had learned.  Whether at home or in a library, sets of encyclopedias were our go to source for information.  However, like the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature, encyclopedias and almanacs were as up to date as the day of the first printing and today they are museum pieces.

The Internet and search engines changed the world.  With a few keystrokes or spoken words, facts and information are at our fingertips.  Many children today tell me that it is not worth their time to study school subjects, because Google or Siri will tell them what they need to know.  In fact, I often am told that a college education is a waste of time and money, because “Google will tell me everything I need to know”.

Google or ask Siri to know but develop background knowledge to understand. 

I confess to being an avid Googler and asker of Siri.  There are facts and information I do not know or have forgotten and these two are always willing to inform me.  My tablet, phone, and watch are conduits to a world of facts.  I ask and am told, but I do not always understand. 

News about Red Sea connects with me because I live near the bay of Green Bay, WI.  Green Bay is about 17 miles wide from where I live in Door County to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  I was standing at a Door County overlook seeing the coast of the UP in the distance when I Googled the width of the Red Sea near Yemen.  I learned the narrowest width is 20 miles.  I have seen 1000-foot ore boats on the Great Lakes and Maersk cargo ships sea.  A Maersk is about 1300 feet in length.  As I looked to the north over the bay, I could visualize a cargo ship and its vulnerability to attack along the gauntlet of the Red Sea.  Google gave me the Red Sea dimension.  Background knowledge provided a context against which that dimension could be compared and an appreciation of what is happening in the Red Sea today.

Finally, background knowledge helps us to answer “so what” questions.  Facts are just facts outside of the framework of contextual question.  It is a fact that the world produces enough food each year to feed the entire population.  It also is a fact that people die of starvation every day.  Background knowledge sadly fills in the story between these two facts. 

Whenever I am in conversation with children, I listen to what they have to say and almost always respond with “… what do you think (or how do you feel) about that?”.  As children learn new information, we must assist them to put their new learning into context.  It starts with their thinking and feeling.  Once they begin to personally relate to the information, that information moves into Marzano’s field of background knowledge.

A child can Google or ask Siri anything, but only the child can make sense of what Google or Siri says.

Reading Skills Proficiency or Critical, Mindful Reading – What is the Goal?

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Can a student in school become a proficient reader without being a mindful and critical reader? Can a mindful reader lack proficient reading skills? Testable skills? Applicable skills? I thought I knew, but foolish me.

For decades I have fretted reading scores. I pore over our school’s annual results on the statewide academic assessments looking at individual scores, disaggregated groups of scores, and multi-year trends in score patterns. When scores inch up a decimal, I smile. When scores dip a similar decimal, I frown. At the end of poring, everything boils down to cause effect analysis. How is our instructional program in reading affecting student proficiency in reading test score? And, how can improvements in teaching cause children to be better readers? Better readers!

As I sat in a local coffee shop, I eavesdropped on people at the next table sipping, munching and talking. They talked about local issues. Weather, road conditions, the ups and downs of local business, and local gossip. Talk, talk, talk. When the conversation turned to politics and taxes, I leaned a bit closer. Perhaps they would talk about something of substance. I waited and waited until I heard one person say, “I read …”. I was intrigued to hear how this person reported out what she had read. I heard her say “…the article said…”, “… the reports say …”, and “… according to this, the data says …”. Okay. She read for content comprehension. Then, I heard another voice say, “I read a different story that told me …”. Smile. Now, there was a little analysis of what had been read. They were comparing and contrasting what each person understood from their reading. Sip, sip and munch, munch. The first voice said, “…I don’t think I agree with what I read. I think …, because…” and I smiled more broadly. Yes, I heard some evaluation of what she read. She read, understood, considered, analyzed, and evaluated what she read against her own understanding and experience. She gave an alternative interpretation and explained why she favored this alternative. I had listened to a conversation based upon critical and mindful reading. Many smiles. But, were they proficient readers? How had these folks gone about their reading? Did they apply the reading skills taught in school? I did not care. I glanced at them as I left my table. They probably were young adults in their late 20s, no longer in school anywhere, getting together for a morning ritual before moving on to their day. They represented the outcomes of a school education.

At a developmental level, we must pay attention to the assessments of reading proficiencies that populate K-6 schooling. The science of reading tells us that, although we can teach all children to read, reading is not a natural human activity.  It takes time for children to learn to read. And, it takes time for children to advance their reading skills toward being mindful and critical readers. When we combine the science of reading with each student’s proclivities for learning, home and environmental support, and instructional effectiveness, assessments give us guidance as to the what kind, when and to what extent we need to apply teaching and learning exercises. The assessments are checkpoints in a pathway to more important outcomes.  Don’t fret the small stuff, I am learning.

My reconsidered attention now is drawn to the effectiveness of early reading programs in 4K through third grade and how individual children develop decoding and encoding of letters and sounds. I am concerned with their orthographic ability to assemble and spell words and to build those words into vocabulary. I am concerned with reading fluency and a child’s ability to read, understand, make self-corrections in their reading.  I look at their ability to develop rich background knowledge through reading. The snapshot assessments of these explicit skill sets make sense to assure each of the pieces of reading is being taught and learned properly so that children are prepared to be mindful and critical readers later in their schooling and adult lives. Analyzing reading proficiency in the primary grades is how we pay attention to smaller details. They are important signposts of learning but annual, small skill assessments are not the “big duh” outcomes of reading.

As I adjust my fretting, I am liking the bigger question of “What can children understand and learn from what they read?”. This is a completely different educational outcome and its assessments, due to their subjectivity, should not lead to fretting. Upper elementary, middle school and high school education provide rich instruction and application of advanced reading skills throughout curricular content areas. At this point, we shift from sub-test analysis to the larger interest of what older children are able to “do” with their reading abilities.  We focus on how they process information, create and test generalization from facts and supporting detail.  We look for critical questioning of sources when they inspect for bias and when they compare and contrast differing material.  We watch carefully when they are confounded by what they read and attempt resolve conflicting points of view or presentation of facts. Schools will continue to take scheduled snapshots of how well children read in these grade levels as part of mandated assessments. And, they also need to look carefully at how children learn from what they read.

Getting one’s pants in a bunch when the data produced by a periodic assessment snapshot does not jive with desired numbers and conclusions may not be as productive as we think it is.  I shall treat those results for what they are. Some assessments look backward at how well children learned and other assessments look forward toward how well children are growing into mindful and critically thinking young adults.

Taken against the big picture of developing mindful and critical readers, I am liking and finding more value in secondary school evaluative assessments of how we want school graduates to be critical and mindful readers. It is like cooking soup. At the early stages of chopping ingredients, we know the nutritional values of what is going into the soup. But, any premature tasting is not of soup; it is checking the process of making soup. Soup is soup when the prep and cooking are completed. The soup of reading should be evaluated when it is served – when graduates leave school for futures in college or career. Make instructional adjustments earlier in the process, but don’t make exclamations about reading achievement until reading is soup to be served. Wait to fret, if fret you must.

The Key To “What If” Is “Whatever It Takes”

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What if? We all ponder our “what ifs”, those long shot wishes that it would be great to realize, yet we know that long shots are more wish than possibility. Half of pondering is considering “what it would take” to make our long shot happen. And, as with most ponders, the magnitude of what it would take dissolves the dream.

Still, we ponder, so ponder this. What if each and every child entering fourth grade could read and comprehend printed information written at or above the fourth grade level? What if teachers for fourth grade students could begin instruction in September with curricular materials that were at or more complex than fourth grade? As fourth grade marks a shift from learning to read to reading to learn, what if all children entered fourth grade capable of reading to learn? What if?

But, once again, there is a huge span between reality and the above “what if.” The reading comprehension level of children entering fourth grade typically ranges from late first grade to sixth grade. Children with special education needs, children living in poverty, and children who entered Kindergarten unready for schooling too0 often enter fourth grade with reading comprehension and other academic skills well below grade level. Most of their fourth grade instruction will be designed to get their skills past the second and maybe the third grade level and, even though they are exposed to the fourth grade instruction their at-grade-level peers receive, they are very likely leave fourth grade with academic achievement that will make their unready for fifth grade. For almost half the children in every elementary grade level, this describes their academic experience in grades K-5. And, after direct reading instruction ends with their passage to middle school, these children will struggle to read almost all printed material presented to them in grades 6 through 12.

So, again, consider the “what if” that describes all children as being proficient third grade readers ready and able to comprehend fourth grade printed materials. If the reading proficiencies of all children are at grade level, how much academic growth will these children be able to achieve in fourth grade? A lot! With regular fourth grade instruction and learning support, most children would be able to attain fifth grade with at grade level achievements.

This is sounding good. But, what would it take for this to happen, for all children to be at grade level as they complete their elementary education? A lot?

Stop your pondering here. Stop thinking about what all children at grade level would mean both for students and for teachers. Instead, be real and think about what it means today for learning achievement to be scattered across multiple grade levels when they begin fourth grade. Think about what it means to children who know they are still being taught second and third grade curricula. Think about what it means to children who are at or above grade level who know that their teacher must split instruction many times before she can address their grade level or advanced learning needs. Think about what the spread of achievement means for teachers as they plan for multiple grade levels of learning in their class.

When you add up all of these “think abouts,” you should come to a simple and ompelling conclusion. Whatever it takes to cause the reading proficiency of all children to be at beyond the fourth grade entry level is worth its expense.

All children reading at grade level certainly is more than worth all of the resources – time, money, modified instruction, assisted learning – we now plow into helping children in middle school through high school whose reading and comprehension abilities are significantly below grade level. This is not to say that all that we now do to cause children who are below grade level to learn is not worthwhile– far from it. No one advocates abandoning their learning. But, what if they were not below grade level?

Causing all children to achieve grade level reading comprehension when enter fourth grade is worth whatever it takes. Once we determine the scope and depth of the necessary whatevers, the next question we face is “What are we prepared to do?” Too often we know what to do but lack the conviction to do it because the whatevers seem overwhelmingly economically, politically and pedagogically difficult. The subsequent blogs will discuss “whatever it takes.”