# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What the Science Says About How Kids Learn to Read

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How the Brain Learns to Read - Prof. Stanislas Dehaene

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In this special Reading Rockets video series, reading expert Linda Farrell works one-on-one with students in grades K-3 to help ensure that they master the skills they need to become proficient readers.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Welcome to the University of Florida Literacy Institute (UFLI, pronounced "you fly"). UFLI is an ongoing effort by UF faculty, students, and staff to improve literacy outcomes for children learning to read.

The work of UFLI focuses on two main areas: teacher development and reader development. The place where those two overlap ... that is where the work of UFLI lives. Our programs and resources are designed to help teachers become more confident and more successful in their capacity to help kids learn to read. We do this through:

Academic programs for both pre-service and practicing educators to develop the skills and knowledge necessary to be effective reading teachers

Professional learning opportunities to help classroom reading teachers, instructional coaches, and school leaders expand their knowledge, enhance their teaching practices, and build capacity in their schools

Resources for teachers, parents, and teacher educators to use in their reading instruction

Much, much more!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
UF Literacy Institute | Where teacher development and reader development overlap

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Welcome to the University of Florida Literacy Institute (UFLI, pronounced "you fly"). UFLI is an ongoing effort by UF faculty, students, and staff to improve literacy outcomes for children learning to read. The work of UFLI focuses on two main areas: teacher development and reader development. The place where those two overlap ...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Join us on Wednesday, September 13, at 6:30 p.m. CT, when Laura Stewart, Chief Academic Officer and Anella Wetter, Chief Sales Officer, will showcase a different approach to assessment and intervention instruction that eliminates the 'now what'.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Literacy Webinars for Teachers and Educators | 95 Percent Group

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Our literacy webinars for teachers and educators can help drive change in your school or district. Dive into our recorded literacy webinars here.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Video representations of the sounds of American English, included with Voyager Passport and LANGUAGE! Live reading interventions

# data[].attributes.headline
Lose the Rules: Reading and Writing Multisyllabic Words

# data[].attributes.subject
Lose the Rules: Reading and Writing Multisyllabic Words

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Hunter - Lose the Rules: Reading and Spelling Multi-syllable Words Made Easy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Science of Reading: The Podcast, hosted by Susan Lambert, delivers the latest insights from researchers and practitioners in early reading. Listen today!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
READ Podcast | Research Education Advocacy | Child Development

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Produced with The Windward School, host Danielle Scorrano interviews researchers, thought leaders + practitioners in education + child development.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Listen to this audio documentary on the Educate podcast. Subscribe now.

Molly Woodworth was a kid who seemed to do well at everything: good grades, in the gifted and talented program. But she couldn't read very well.

"There was no rhyme or reason to reading for me," she said. "When a teacher would dictate a word and say, 'Tell me how you think you can spell it,' I sat there with my mouth open while other kids gave spellings, and I thought, 'How do they even know where to begin?' I was totally lost."

Woodworth went to public school in Owosso, Michigan, in the 1990s. She says sounds and letters just didn't make sense to her, and she doesn't remember anyone teaching her how to read. So she came up with her own strategies to get through text.

Strategy 1: Memorize as many words as possible. "Words were like pictures to me," she said. "I had a really good memory."

Strategy 2: Guess the words based on context. If she came across a word she didn't have in her visual memory bank, she'd look at the first letter and come up with a word that seemed to make sense. Reading was kind of like a game of 20 Questions: What word could this be?

Strategy 3: If all else failed, she'd skip the words she didn't know.

Most of the time, she could get the gist of what she was reading. But getting through text took forever. "I hated reading because it was taxing," she said. "I'd get through a chapter and my brain hurt by the end of it. I wasn't excited to learn."

No one knew how much she struggled, not even her parents. Her reading strategies were her "dirty little secrets."

Woodworth, who now works in accounting, 1 says she's still not a very good reader and tears up when she talks about it. Reading "influences every aspect of your life," she said. She's determined to make sure her own kids get off to a better start than she did.

That's why she was so alarmed to see how her oldest child, Claire, was being taught to read in school.

As long as this disproven theory remains part of American education, many kids will likely struggle to learn how to read.

A couple of years ago, Woodworth was volunteering in Claire's kindergarten classroom. The class was reading a book together and the teacher was telling the children to practice the strategies that good readers use.

The teacher said, "If you don't know the word, just look at this picture up here," Woodworth recalled. "There was a fox and a bear in the picture. And the word was bear, and she said, 'Look at the first letter. It's a "b." Is it fox or bear?'"

Woodworth was stunned. "I thought, 'Oh my God, those are my strategies.' Those are the things I taught myself to look like a good reader, not the things that good readers do," she said. "These kids were being taught my dirty little secrets."

She went to the teacher and expressed her concerns. The teacher told her she was teaching reading the way the curriculum told her to.

Woodworth had stumbled on to American education's own little secret about reading: Elementary schools across the country are teaching children to be poor readers - and educators may not even know it.

For decades, reading instruction in American schools has been rooted in a flawed theory about how reading works, a theory that was debunked decades ago by cognitive scientists, yet remains deeply embedded in teaching practices and curriculum materials. As a result, the strategies that struggling readers use to get by - memorizing words, using context to guess words, skipping words they don't know - are the strategies that many beginning readers are taught in school. This makes it harder for many kids to learn how to read, and children who don't get off to a good start in reading find it difficult to ever master the process. 2

A shocking number of kids in the United States can't read very well. A third of all fourth-graders can't read at a basic level, and most students are still not proficient readers by the time they finish high school.
Percentage of U.S. fourth-graders below basic level in reading
When kids struggle to learn how to read, it can lead to a downward spiral in which behavior, vocabulary, knowledge and other cognitive skills are eventually affected by slow reading development. 3 A disproportionate number of poor readers become high school dropouts and end up in the criminal justice system. 4

The fact that a disproven theory about how reading works is still driving the way many children are taught to read is part of the problem. School districts spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on curriculum materials that include this theory. Teachers are taught the theory in their teacher preparation programs and on the job. As long as this disproven theory remains part of American education, many kids will likely struggle to learn how to read.
Percentage of U.S. 12th-graders proficient in reading
The origins

The theory is known as "three cueing." The name comes from the notion that readers use three different kinds of information - or "cues" - to identify words as they are reading.

The theory was first proposed in 1967, when an education professor named Ken Goodman presented a paper at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association in New York City.

In the paper, 5 Goodman rejected the idea that reading is a precise process that involves exact or detailed perception of letters or words. Instead, he argued that as people read, they make predictions about the words on the page using these three cues:

graphic cues (what do the letters tell you about what the word might be?)

syntactic cues (what kind of word could it be, for example, a noun or a verb?)

semantic cues (what word would make sense here, based on the context?)

Goodman concluded that:

Skill in reading involves not greater precision, but more accurate first guesses based on better sampling techniques, greater control over language structure, broadened experiences and increased conceptual development. As the child develops reading skill and speed, he uses increasingly fewer graphic cues.

Goodman's proposal became the theoretical basis for a new approach to teaching reading that would soon take hold in American schools.

Previously, the question of how to teach reading had focused on one of two basic ideas.

One idea is that reading is a visual memory process. The teaching method associated with this idea is known as "whole word." The whole word approach was perhaps best embodied in the "Dick and Jane" books that first appeared in the 1930s. The books rely on word repetition, and pictures to support the meaning of the text. The idea is that if you see words enough, you eventually store them in your memory as visual images.

The other idea is that reading requires knowledge of the relationships between sounds and letters. Children learn to read by sounding out words. This approach is known as phonics. It goes way back, popularized in the 1800s with the McGuffey readers.

These two ideas - whole word and phonics - had been taking turns as the favored way to teach reading until Goodman came along with what came to be known among educators as the "three-cueing system."

In the cueing theory of how reading works, when a child comes to a word she doesn't know, the teacher encourages her to think of a word that makes sense and asks: Does it look right? Does it sound right? If a word checks out on the basis of those questions, the child is getting it. She's on the path to skilled reading.

Teachers may not know the term "three cueing," but they're probably familiar with "MSV." M stands for using meaning to figure out what a word is, S for using sentence structure and V for using visual information (i.e., the letters in the words). MSV is a cueing idea that can be traced back to the late Marie Clay, a developmental psychologist from New Zealand who first laid out her theories about reading in a dissertation in the 1960s. 6

Clay developed her cueing theory independently of Goodman, but they met several times and had similar ideas about the reading process. Their theories were based on observational research. They would listen to children read, note the kinds of errors they made, and use that information to identify a child's reading difficulties. For example, a child who says "horse" when the word was "house" is probably relying too much on visual, or graphic, cues. A teacher in this case would encourage the child to pay more attention to what word would make sense in the sentence.

Goodman and Clay believed that letters were the least reliable of the three cues, and that as people became better readers, they no longer needed to pay attention to all the letters in words. "In efficient word perception the reader relies mostly on the sentence and its meaning and some selected features of the forms of words," Clay wrote. 7 For Goodman, accurate word recognition was not necessarily the goal of reading. The goal was to comprehend text. 8 If the sentences were making sense, the reader must be getting the words right, or right enough.

These ideas soon became the foundation for how reading was taught in many schools. Goodman's three-cueing idea formed the theoretical basis of an approach known as "whole language" that by the late 1980s had taken hold throughout America. 9 Clay built her cueing ideas into a reading intervention program for struggling first-graders called Reading Recovery. It was implemented across New Zealand in the 1980s and went on to become one of the world's most widely used reading intervention programs. 10

But while cueing was taking hold in schools, scientists were busy studying the cognitive processes involved in reading words. And they came to different conclusions about how people read. 11

Scientists take on three cueing

It was the early 1970s, and Keith Stanovich was working on his doctorate in psychology at the University of Michigan. He thought the reading field was ready for an infusion of knowledge from the "cognitive revolution" that was underway in psychology. Stanovich had a background in experimental science and an interest in learning and cognition due in part to the influence of his wife, Paula, who was a special education teacher.

Stanovich wanted to understand how people read words. 12 He knew about Goodman's work and thought he was probably right that as people become better readers, they relied more on their knowledge of vocabulary and language structure to read words and didn't need to pay as much attention to the letters.

So, in 1975, Stanovich and a fellow graduate student set out to test the idea in their lab. They recruited readers of various ages and abilities and gave them a series of word-reading tasks. Their hypothesis was that skilled readers rely more on contextual cues to recognize words than poor readers, who probably weren't as good at using context.

They couldn't have been more wrong.

"To our surprise, all of our research results pointed in the opposite direction," Stanovich wrote. "It was the poorer readers, not the more skilled readers, who were more reliant on context to facilitate word recognition." 13

The skilled readers could instantly recognize words without relying on context. Other researchers have confirmed these findings with similar experiments. It turns out that the ability to read words in isolation quickly and accurately is the hallmark of being a skilled reader. This is now one of the most consistent and well-replicated findings in all of reading research. 14

Other studies revealed further problems with the cueing theory: 15

Skilled readers don't scan words and sample from the graphic cues in an incidental way; instead, they very quickly recognize a word as a sequence of letters. That's how good readers instantly know the difference between "house" and "horse," for example.

Experiments that force people to use context to predict words show that even skilled readers can correctly guess only a fraction of the words; this is one reason people who rely on context to identify words are poor readers.

Weak word recognition skills are the most common and debilitating source of reading problems. 16

The results of these studies are not controversial or contested among scientists who study reading. The findings have been incorporated into every major scientific model of how reading works.

But cueing is still alive and well in schools.

Picture Power!

It's not hard to find examples of the cueing system. A quick search on Google, Pinterest or Teachers Pay Teachers turns up plenty of lesson plans, teaching guides and classroom posters. One popular poster has cute cartoon characters to remind children they have lots of strategies to use when they're stuck on a word, including looking at the picture (Eagle Eye), getting their lips ready to try the first sound (Lips the Fish), or just skipping the word altogether (Skippy Frog).

There are videos online where you can see cueing in action. In one video posted on The Teaching Channel, 17 a kindergarten teacher in Oakland, California, instructs her students to use "picture power" to identify the words on the page. The goal of the lesson, according to the teacher, is for the students to "use the picture and a first sound to determine an unknown word in their book."

The class reads a book together called "In the Garden." On each page, there's a picture of something you might find in a garden. It's what's known as a predictable book; the sentences are all the same except for the last word.

The children have been taught to memorize the words "look," "at," and "the." The challenge is getting the last word in the sentence. The lesson plan tells the teacher to cover up the word with a sticky note.

In the video, the wiggly kindergarteners sitting cross-legged on the floor come to a page with a picture of a butterfly. The teacher tells the kids that she's guessing the word is going to be butterfly. She uncovers the word to check on the accuracy of her guess.

"Look at that," she tells the children, pointing to the first letter of the word. "It starts with the /b/ /b/ /b/." The class reads the sentence together as the teacher points to the words. "Look at the butterfly!" they yell out excitedly.

This lesson comes from "Units of Study for Teaching Reading," more commonly known as "reader's workshop." 18 According to the lesson plan, this lesson teaches children to "know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words." 19

But the children were not taught to decode words in this lesson. They were taught to guess words using pictures and patterns - hallmarks of the three-cueing system.

The author of Units of Study for Teaching Reading, Lucy Calkins, often refers to cueing in her published work. 20 She uses the term MSV - the meaning, structure and visual idea that originally came from Clay in New Zealand.

Then there is Fountas and Pinnell Literacy, started by Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell, teachers who learned the MSV concept from Clay in the 1980s. 21

Fountas and Pinnell have written several books about teaching reading, including a best-seller about a widely used instructional approach called "Guided Reading." They also created a reading assessment system that uses what are called "leveled books." 22 Children start with predictable books like "In the Garden" and move up levels as they're able to "read" the words. But many of the words in those books - butterfly, caterpillar - are words that beginning readers haven't been taught to decode yet. One purpose of the books is to teach children that when they get to a word they don't know, they can use context to figure it out.

When put into practice in the classroom, these approaches can cause problems for children when they are learning to read.

'That is not reading'

Margaret Goldberg, a teacher and literacy coach in the Oakland Unified School District, remembers a moment when she realized what a problem the three-cueing approach was. She was with a first-grader named Rodney when he came to a page with a picture of a girl licking an ice cream cone and a dog licking a bone.

The text said: "My little dog likes to eat with me."

But Rodney said: "My dog likes to lick his bone."

Rodney breezed right through it, unaware that he hadn't read the sentence on the page.

Goldberg realized lots of her students couldn't actually read the words in their books; instead, they were memorizing sentence patterns and using the pictures to guess. One little boy exclaimed, "I can read this book with my eyes shut!"

"Oh no," Goldberg thought. "That is not reading."

Goldberg had been hired by the Oakland schools in 2015 to help struggling readers by teaching a Fountas and Pinnell program called "Leveled Literacy Intervention" that uses leveled books and the cueing approach. 23

Around the same time, Goldberg was trained in a program that uses a different strategy for teaching children how to read words. The program is called "Systematic Instruction in Phonological Awareness, Phonics, and Sight Words," or SIPPS. 24 It's a phonics program that teaches children how to sound out words and uses what are known as "decodable books." Most words in the books have spelling patterns that kids have been taught in their phonics lessons.

Goldberg decided to teach some of her students using the phonics program and some of her students using three cueing. And she began to notice differences between the two groups of kids. "Not just in their abilities to read," she said, "but in the way they approached their reading."

Goldberg and a colleague recorded first-graders talking about what makes them good readers.

One video shows Mia, on the left, who was in the phonics program. Mia says she's a good reader because she looks at the words and sounds them out. JaBrea, on the right, was taught the cueing system. JaBrea says: "I look at the pictures and I read it."

Courtesy of Margaret Goldberg, Oakland Unified School District

It was clear to Goldberg after just a few months of teaching both approaches that the students learning phonics were doing better. "One of the things that I still struggle with is a lot of guilt," she said.

She thinks the students who learned three cueing were actually harmed by the approach. "I did lasting damage to these kids. It was so hard to ever get them to stop looking at a picture to guess what a word would be. It was so hard to ever get them to slow down and sound a word out because they had had this experience of knowing that you predict what you read before you read it."

Goldberg soon discovered the decades of scientific evidence against cueing. 25 She was shocked. She had never come across any of this science in her teacher preparation or on the job.

And she started to wonder why not.

Balanced Literacy

People have been arguing for centuries about how children should be taught to read. The fight has mostly focused on whether to teach phonics.

The whole language movement of the late 20th century was perhaps the zenith of the anti-phonics argument. 26 Phonics instruction was seen as tedious, time-consuming and ultimately unnecessary. Why? Because - according to the three-cueing theory - readers can use other, more reliable cues to figure out what the words say. 27

Marilyn Adams came across this belief in the early 1990s. She's a cognitive and developmental psychologist who had just written a book summarizing the research on how children learn to read. 28 One big takeaway from the book is that becoming a skilled reader of English requires knowledge of sound-spelling correspondences. 29 Another big takeaway is that many kids were not being taught this in school.

Soon after the book was published, Adams was describing her findings to a group of teachers and state education officials in Sacramento, California. She was sensing discomfort and confusion in the room. "And I just stopped and said, 'What is it that I'm missing?'" she recalled. "'What is it that we need to talk about? Help me.'"

A woman raised her hand and asked: "What does this have to do with the three-cueing system?" Marilyn didn't know what the three-cueing system was. "I think I blew all of their fuses that I did not [know what it was] since this was so fundamental to being an elementary reading teacher," she said. "How could I present myself to them as an expert on reading and not know about this?"

The teachers drew her a Venn diagram of the three-cueing system. It looked something like this:

Adams thought this diagram made perfect sense. The research clearly shows that readers use all of these cues to understand what they're reading.

But Adams soon figured out the disconnect. Teachers understood these cues not just as the way readers construct meaning from text, but as the way readers actually identify the words on the page. And they thought that teaching kids to decode or sound out words was not necessary.

"The most important thing was for the children to understand and enjoy the text," Adams said. "And from that understanding and joy of reading, the words on the page would just pop out at them."

She would explain to teachers at every opportunity that explicitly teaching children about the relationships between sounds and letters is essential to ensure all kids get off to a good start in reading. But she got tons of pushback from teachers. "They didn't want to teach phonics!" she recalled in frustration.

In 1998, Adams wrote a book chapter about how the three-cueing system conflicts with what researchers have figured out about reading. She hoped it would help put three cueing to rest. 30

By this time, the scientific research on reading was gaining traction. In 2000, a national panel convened by Congress to review the evidence on how to teach reading came out with a report. 31 It identified several essential components of reading instruction, including vocabulary, comprehension and phonics. The evidence that phonics instruction enhances children's success in learning how to read was clear and compelling. National reports on reading a few years later in the United Kingdom and Australia came to the same conclusion. 32

"When I got into the classroom and someone told me to use this practice, I didn't question it."-Stacey Cherny

Eventually, many whole language supporters accepted the weight of the scientific evidence about the importance of phonics instruction. They started adding phonics to their books and materials and renamed their approach "balanced literacy."

But they didn't get rid of the three-cueing system.

Balanced literacy proponents will tell you their approach is a mix of phonics instruction with plenty of time for kids to read and enjoy books. But look carefully at the materials and you'll see that's not really what balanced literacy is mixing. Instead, it's mixing a bunch of different ideas about how kids learn to read. It's a little bit of whole word instruction with long lists of words for kids to memorize. It's a little bit of phonics. And fundamentally, it's the idea that children should be taught to read using the three-cueing system.

And it turns out cueing may actually prevent kids from focusing on words in the way they need to become skilled readers.

Mapping the words

To understand why cueing can get in the way of children's reading development, it's essential to understand how our brains process the words we see.

Reading scientists have known for decades that the hallmark of being a skilled reader is the ability to instantly and accurately recognize words. 33 If you're a skilled reader, your brain has gotten so good at reading words that you process the word "chair" faster than you process a picture of a chair. 34 You know tens of thousands of words instantly, on sight. How did you learn to do that?

It happens through a process called "orthographic mapping." 35 This occurs when you pay attention to the details of a written word and link the word's pronunciation and meaning with its sequence of letters. 36 A child knows the meaning and pronunciation of "pony." The word gets mapped to his memory when he links the sounds /p/ /o/ /n/ /y/ to the written word "pony."

That requires an awareness of the speech sounds in words and an understanding of how those sounds are represented by letters. 37 In other words, you need phonics skills.

Here's what happens when a reader who has good phonics skills comes to a word she doesn't recognize in print. She stops at the word and sounds it out. If it's a word she knows the meaning of, she has now linked the spelling of the word with its pronunciation. If she doesn't know the meaning of the word, she can use context to try to figure it out.

By about second grade, a typically developing reader needs just a few exposures to a word through understanding both the pronunciation and the spelling for that word to be stored in her memory. 38 She doesn't know that word because she memorized it as a visual image. She knows that word because at some point she successfully sounded it out.

The more words she stores in her memory this way, the more she can focus on the meaning of what she's reading; she'll eventually be using less brain power to identify words and will be able to devote more brain power to comprehending what she's reading. 39

But when children don't have good phonics skills, the process is different.

"They sample from the letters because they're not good at sounding them out," said David Kilpatrick, a psychology professor at SUNY Cortland and the author of a book about preventing reading difficulties. 40 "And they use context."

In other words, when people don't have good phonics skills, they use the cueing system.

"The three-cueing system is the way poor readers read," said Kilpatrick.

And if teachers use the cueing system to teach reading, Kilpatrick says they're not just teaching children the habits of poor readers, they are actually impeding the orthographic mapping process. 41

"The minute you ask them just to pay attention to the first letter or look at the picture, look at the context, you're drawing their attention away from the very thing that they need to interact with in order for them to read the word [and] remember the word," Kilpatrick said. In this way, he said, three cueing can actually prevent the critical learning that's necessary for a child to become a skilled reader.

In many balanced literacy classrooms, children are taught phonics and the cueing system. Some kids who are taught both approaches realize pretty quickly that sounding out a word is the most efficient and reliable way to know what it is. Those kids tend to have an easier time understanding the ways that sounds and letters relate. They'll drop the cueing strategies and begin building that big bank of instantly known words that is so necessary for skilled reading.

But some children will skip the sounding out if they're taught they have other options. Phonics is challenging for many kids. The cueing strategies seem quicker and easier at first. And by using context and memorizing a bunch of words, many children can look like good readers - until they get to about third grade, when their books begin to have more words, longer words, and fewer pictures. Then they're stuck. They haven't developed their sounding-out skills. Their bank of known words is limited. Reading is slow and laborious and they don't like it, so they don't do it if they don't have to. While their peers who mastered decoding early are reading and teaching themselves new words every day, the kids who clung to the cueing approach are falling further and further behind. 42

These poor reading habits, once ingrained at a young age, can follow kids into high school. Some kids who were taught the cueing approach never become good readers. Not because they're incapable of learning to read well but because they were taught the strategies of struggling readers.

'So what if they use the picture?'

Once Margaret Goldberg discovered the cognitive science evidence against cueing, she wanted her colleagues in the Oakland school district to know about it too.

Over the past two years, Goldberg and a fellow literacy coach named Lani Mednick have been leading a grant-funded pilot project to improve reading achievement in the Oakland schools. 43

They have their work cut out for them. Nearly half the district's third-graders are below grade level in reading. Goldberg and Mednick want to raise questions about how kids in Oakland are being taught to read.

They meet every couple weeks with literacy coaches from the 10 elementary schools in the pilot program. They read and discuss articles about the scientific research on reading. At a meeting in March, the coaches watched the video of the "picture power" lesson.

"This teacher meant well," Mednick said to the coaches after they watched the lesson. "It seemed like she believed this lesson would ensure her students would be on the road toward reading."

Mednick wanted the coaches to consider the beliefs about reading that would lead to the creation of a lesson like "picture power." The Oakland schools purchased the Units of Study for Teaching Reading series, which includes the "picture power" lesson, as part of a balanced literacy initiative the district began about 10 years ago. The district also bought the Fountas and Pinnell assessment system.

The coaches saw right away that "picture power" was designed to teach kids the cueing system. But they said many teachers don't see any problem with cueing. After all, one of the cues is to look at the letters in the word. What's wrong with teaching kids lots of different strategies to figure out unknown words? 44

"I remember before we started looking at the science and everything, I thought to myself, 'Reading is so hard for kids, so what if they use the picture?'" said Soraya Sajous-Brooks, the early literacy coach at Prescott Elementary School in West Oakland. "Like, use everything you've got."

But she's come to understand that cueing sends the message to kids that they don't need to sound out words. Her students would get phonics instruction in one part of the day. Then they'd go reader's workshop and be taught that when they come to a word they don't know, they have lots of strategies. They can sound it out. They can also check the first letter, look at the picture, think of a word that makes sense.

Teaching cueing and phonics doesn't work, Sajous-Brooks said. "One negates the other."

Goldberg and Mednick want to show the district there's a better way to teach reading. Schools in the pilot project used grant money to buy new materials that steer clear of the three-cueing idea. Two charter school networks in Oakland are working on similar projects to move their schools away from cueing.

To see what it looks like, I visited a first-grade classroom at a charter school in Oakland called Achieve Academy. 45

One part of the day was explicit phonics instruction. 46 The students were divided into small groups based on their skill level. They met with their teacher, Andrea Ruiz, at a kidney-shaped table in a corner of the classroom. The lowest-level group worked on identifying the speech sounds in words like "skin" and "skip." The highest-level group learned how verbs like "spy" and "cry" are spelled as "spied' and 'cried" in the past tense.

There were also vocabulary lessons. 47 The entire class gathered on a rug at the front of the classroom to talk about a book Ms. Ruiz read out loud to them. One of the words in the book was "prey."

"What animals are a chameleon's prey?" Ms. Ruiz asked the children. "Or we can also ask, what animals do chameleons hunt for food?"

The kids turned and talked to each other. "A chameleon's prey are bugs and insects and other chameleons and mice and birds," a little boy explained to his classmate. "That's it."

Other vocabulary words these first-graders had learned were posted on cards around the classroom. They included: wander, persevere, squint and scrumptious. The kids weren't expected to read those words yet. The idea is to build their oral vocabulary so that when they can read those words, they know what the words mean.

This comes straight from the scientific research, which shows that reading comprehension is the product of two things. 48 First, a child needs to be able to sound out a word. Second, the child needs to know the meaning of the word she just sounded out. So, in a first-grade classroom that's following the research, you will see explicit phonics instruction and also lessons that build oral vocabulary and background knowledge. And you will see kids practicing what they've been taught.

After their vocabulary lesson, the kids did "buddy reading." They retreated to various spots around the classroom to read books to each other. I found Belinda sitting on an adult chair at the back of the classroom, her little legs swinging. Across from her was her buddy Steven, decked out in a yellow and blue plaid shirt tucked neatly into his jeans. He held the book and pointed to the words while Belinda read.

"Ellen /m/," Belinda paused, sounding out the word "meets." She was reading a decodable book about some kids who visit a farm. Almost all of the words in the book contain spelling patterns she'd been taught in her phonics lessons.

"I am a farm here," Belinda read.

Steven did a double-take. "A farmer here," he said gently. Steven's job as Belinda's reading buddy was to help her if she missed a word or got stuck. But that didn't happen much because Belinda had been taught how to read the words. She didn't need any help from the pictures, either. She barely glanced at them as she read.

To be clear, there's nothing wrong with pictures. They're great to look at and talk about, and they can help a child comprehend the meaning of a story. Context - including a picture if there is one - helps us understand what we're reading all the time. But if a child is being taught to use context to identify words, she's being taught to read like a poor reader.

Many educators don't know this because the cognitive science research has not made its way into many schools and schools of education. 49

Ruiz didn't know about this research until the Oakland pilot project. "I didn't really know anything about how kids learn to read when I started teaching," she said. It was a relief when she came to Oakland and the curriculum spelled out that kids use meaning, structure and visual cues to figure out words. "Because I came from not having anything, I was like, 'Oh, there's a way we should teach this,'" she said.

I heard this from other educators. Cueing was appealing because they didn't know what else to do.

"When I got into the classroom and someone told me to use this practice, I didn't question it," said Stacey Cherny, a former teacher who's now principal of an elementary school in Pennsylvania. She says many teachers aren't taught what they need to know about the structure of the English language to be able to teach phonics well. She says phonics can be intimidating; three cueing isn't.

Another reason cueing holds on is that it seems to work for some children. But researchers estimate there's a percentage of kids - perhaps about 40 percent - who will learn to read no matter how they're taught. 50 According to Kilpatrick, children who learn to read with cueing are succeeding in spite of the instruction, not because of it.

Goldberg hopes the pilot project in Oakland will convince the district to drop all instructional materials that include cueing.

When asked about this, the Oakland superintendent's office responded with a written statement that there isn't enough evidence from the pilot project to make curriculum changes for the entire district and that the Oakland schools remain committed to balanced literacy.

Oakland's situation is no different from many other districts across the country that have invested millions of dollars in materials that include cueing.

"It feels like everyone's trusting somebody else to have done their due diligence," Goldberg said. "Classroom teachers are trusting that the materials they're being handed will work. The people who purchase the materials are trusting if they were on the market, that they will work. We're all trusting, and it's a system that is broken."

'My science is different'

If cueing was debunked decades ago by cognitive scientists, why is the idea still in materials that are being sold to schools?

One answer to that question is that school districts still buy the materials. Heinemann, the company that publishes the Fountas and Pinnell and Lucy Calkins' products that the Oakland schools use, earned somewhere in the neighborhood of $500 million in 2018, according to earnings reports. 51

I wanted to know what the authors of those materials make of the cognitive science research. And I wanted to give them a chance to explain the ideas behind their work. I wrote to Calkins, Fountas and Pinnell and asked for interviews. They all declined. Heinemann sent a statement that said every product the company sells is informed by extensive research.

I also asked Ken Goodman for an interview. It's been more than 50 years since he first laid out the three-cueing theory in that 1967 paper. I wanted to know what he thinks of the cognitive science research. Of the major proponents of three cueing I reached out to, he was the only one who agreed to an interview.

I visited Goodman at his home in Tucson, Arizona. He's 91. He uses a scooter to get around, but he's still working. He just finished a new edition of one of his books.

When I asked him what he makes of the cognitive science research, he told me he thinks scientists focus too much on word recognition. He still doesn't believe accurate word recognition is necessary for reading comprehension.

"Word recognition is a preoccupation," he said. "I don't teach word recognition. I teach people to make sense of language. And learning the words is incidental to that."

He brought up the example of a child who comes to the word "horse" and says "pony" instead. His argument is that a child will still understand the meaning of the story because horse and pony are the same concept.

I pressed him on this. First of all, a pony isn't the same thing as a horse. Second, don't you want to make sure that when a child is learning to read, he understands that /p/ /o/ /n/ /y/ says "pony"? And different letters say "horse"?

He dismissed my question.

"The purpose is not to learn words," he said. "The purpose is to make sense."

Cognitive scientists don't dispute that the purpose of reading is to make sense of the text. But the question is: How can you understand what you are reading if you can't accurately read the words? And if quick and accurate word recognition is the hallmark of being a skilled reader, how does a little kid get there?

Goodman rejected the idea that you can make a distinction between skilled readers and unskilled readers; he doesn't like the value judgment that implies. He said dyslexia does not exist - despite lots of evidence that it does. 52 And he said the three-cueing theory is based on years of observational research. In his view, three cueing is perfectly valid, drawn from a different kind of evidence than what scientists collect in their labs.

"My science is different," Goodman said.

This idea that there are different kinds of evidence that lead to different conclusions about how reading works is one reason people continue to disagree about how children should be taught to read. It's important for educators to understand that three cueing is based on theory and observational research and that there's decades of scientific evidence from labs all over the world that converges on a very different idea about skilled reading.

The cognitive science does not provide all the answers about how to teach children to read, but on the question of how skilled readers read words, scientists have amassed a huge body of evidence.

Goldberg thinks it's time for educators across the country to take a close look at all the materials they use to teach reading.

"We should look through the materials and search for evidence of cueing," she said. "And if it's there, don't touch it. Don't let it get near our kids, don't let it get near our classrooms, our teachers."

Share and discuss on Facebook
Support for this program comes from the Spencer Foundation and Lumina Foundation.
Sign up for email notifications
We're interested in hearing what impact APM Reports programs have on you. Has one of our documentaries or podcasts changed how you think about an issue? Has it led you to do something, like start a conversation or try to do something new in your community? Share your impact story.

Enter your address below and we'll let you know when we publish new stories.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How a flawed idea is teaching millions of kids to be poor readers

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
For decades, schools have taught children the strategies of struggling readers, using a theory about reading that cognitive scientists have repeatedly debunked. And many teachers and parents don't know there's anything wrong with it.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Scientific research has shown how children learn to read and how they should be taught. But many educators don’t know the science and, in some cases, actively resist it. As a result, millions of kids are being set up to fail.

# data[].attributes.headline
How to Make Sight Word Instruction and Reading Intervention More Effective

# data[].attributes.subject
How to Make Sight Word Instruction and Reading Intervention More Effective

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Dr. Miles also works closely with New York City's Department of Education and Literacy Trust, an organization that supports literacy initiatives and research on factors that impact the city's most vulnerable students. In this podcast, she talks to us about some really interesting implications of her research on sight word instruction, the intervention Reading Rescue, and the science of reading informed intervention software, Amira Learning.

Here are some key takeaways:

Teach Sight Words in Context and Review Lists with a Critical Eye: In Dr. Miles' paper on Learning to Read on Flashcards published with her colleague, Dr. Linnea Ehri, she uncovered the trouble that students have mastering commonly used classroom sight word lists (like Dolsch and Fry) that feature helping verbs like was, were, has, have, been. These words are harder for students to learn not just because they are phonetically irregular, but because they are non-lexical - meaning they don't have independent meaning from the verb they are supporting. Dr. Miles found that trying to teach these words out of context of the sentence - in a sight word list, for example - is difficult and students did not perform well, especially second language learners. On the contrary, teachers can find greater success by teaching these words (both reading and spelling) within the context of the sentence that ties these words to the verbs they are supporting.

Ensure Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Fluency, Vocabulary, and Comprehension is Present in all Literacy Instruction and Intervention: In Dr. Miles' paper on the effectiveness of the reading intervention program Reading Rescue, she found that that the program was not only effective in bringing students to benchmark, but other students also benefited by having teachers in their school who were trained in the eight PD sessions offered to teachers who use the program. In addition, it's important to use programs that are not only research-based but evidence-based. That means that the programs commit to research demonstrate evidence that the program is effective.

Use Evidence-Based Intervention Software that Embeds the Science of Reading into the Curriculum: Dr. Miles chats about an assessment, screening, and intervention software called Amira that supports students with reading and writing instruction aligned with the science of reading.

Learn more about our guests and other items mentioned in the podcast:

Reading Rescue is a reading intervention for struggling first graders.

Amira Learning is a reading app that supports students through assessment, screening, and intervention.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How to Make Sight Word Instruction and Reading Intervention More Effective - Glean Education

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Dr. Miles also works closely with New York City's Department of Education and Literacy Trust, an organization that supports literacy initiatives and research on factors that impact the city's most vulnerable students. In this podcast, she talks to us about some really interesting implications of her research on sight word instruction, the intervention Reading Rescue, and the science of reading informed intervention software, Amira Learning.

# data[].attributes.headline
Moats, Teaching Reading is Rocket Science

# data[].attributes.subject
Moats, Teaching Reading is Rocket Science

# data[].attributes.headline
LETRS What Does the Brain Do When it Reads

# data[].attributes.subject
LETRS What Does the Brain Do When it Reads

# data[].attributes.headline
Reading as Liberation: Five Literacy Accelerators

# data[].attributes.subject
Reading as Liberation: Five Literacy Accelerators

# data[].attributes.headline
Ehri's Phases, How Children Learn to Read Words

# data[].attributes.subject
Ehri's Phases, How Children Learn to Read Words

# data[].attributes.headline
Duke, Science of Reading Comprehension Instruction

# data[].attributes.subject
Duke, Science of Reading Comprehension Instruction

# data[].attributes.headline
Duke & Cartwright, Science of Reading Progresses

# data[].attributes.subject
Duke & Cartwright, Science of Reading Progresses

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
No One Gets to Own the Term “The Science of Reading” | Teachers College Reading and Writing Project

# data[].attributes.headline
Put Reading First, Summary of National Reading Panel 

# data[].attributes.subject
Put Reading First, Summary of National Reading Panel 

# data[].attributes.headline
What Research Tells Us About Reading, Comprehension, & Comprehension Instruction 

# data[].attributes.subject
What Research Tells Us About Reading, Comprehension, & Comprehension Instruction 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
References

Click the "References" link above to hide these references.

1. Anderson, R.C., Hiebert, E.H., Scott, J.A., & Wilkinson, I.A.G. (1985). Becoming a nation of readers: The report of the Commission on Reading. Washington, DC: The National Institute of Education.

2. Durkin, D. (1978-1979). What classroom observations reveal about reading comprehension instruction. Reading Research Quarterly, 15, 481-533.

3. Dole, J. A., Duffy, G. G., Roehler, L. R., & Pearson, P. D. (1991). Moving from the old to the new: Research on reading comprehension instruction. Review of Educational Research, 61, 239-264.

4. Heilman, A. W., Blair, T. R., & Rupley, W. R. (1998). Principles and practices of teaching reading. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill/Prentice-Hall.

5 Baker, L., & Brown, A.L. (1984). Metacognitive skills in reading. In P.D. Pearson (Ed.), Handbook of reading research (pp. 353-394). New York: Longman; Paris, S.G., Wasik, B.A., & Turner, J. C. (1991). The development of strategic readers. In R. Barr, M.L. Kamil, P. Mosenthal, & P.D. Pearson (Eds.), Handbook of Reading Research (Vol. 2, 609-640). New York: Longman.

6 Dole et al., 1991.

7 Pressley, M., & Afflerbach, P. (1995). Verbal protocols of reading: The nature of constructively responsive reading. Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

8 Paris, S. C., Wasik, B. A., & Turner, J. C. (1991). The development of strategic readers. In R. Barr, M. L. Kamil, P. B. Mosenthal, & P. D. Pearson (Eds.), Handbook of reading research (Vol. 2, pp. 609-640). New York: Longman.

9 Paris, S.G., Lipson, M.Y., & Wixson, K.K. (1983). Becoming a strategic reader. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 8, 293-316.

10 Palincsar, A. S., & Brown, A. L. (1984). Reciprocal teaching of comprehension-fostering and comprehensionmonitoring activities. Cognition & Instruction, 2, 117-175.

11 Palincsar & Brown, 1984.

12 Pressley & Afflerbach, 1995.

13 Adams, M. J. (1990). Beginning to read: Thinking and learning about print. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

14 Cunningham, A. E., & Stanovich, K. E. (1998). What reading does for the mind. American Educator, 22, 8-15.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What Research Tells Us About Reading, Comprehension, and Comprehension Instruction

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Click the "References" link above to hide these references. 1. Anderson, R.C., Hiebert, E.H., Scott, J.A., & Wilkinson, I.A.G. (1985). Becoming a nation of readers: The report of the Commission on Reading. Washington, DC: The National Institute of Education. 2. Durkin, D. (1978-1979). What classroom observations reveal about reading comprehension instruction.

# data[].attributes.headline
Ask the Cognitive Scientist, How Children Learn

# data[].attributes.subject
Ask the Cognitive Scientist, How Children Learn

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Question: Is it useful for teachers to know the basic science of how children learn? I thought it was, but a professor in my teacher education program disagreed; what teachers need to know, she said, are research-based findings about what works in classrooms. She thought there's not much point in learning abstract science that doesn't directly apply to classrooms.

Answer: There's no doubt that research bearing directly on classroom practice is crucial. But I respectfully disagree with your professor and maintain that it's useful for educators also to know the basic science around children's cognition, emotion, and motivation, because beliefs about what children are like inevitably influence your practice. Everyone has such beliefs; the purpose of learning the science would be to broaden and deepen that knowledge, and to disabuse you of any misconceptions you might have. Still, not everything of concern to scientists is valuable to educators.

Scientific knowledge can influence educational practice in more than one way. Sometimes the applications are overt, as when scientific descriptions of how children learn offer new ideas for instructional methods. For example, researchers have described the learning benefits of spacing out practice, ¹ and some educators have sought to incorporate that finding into their classrooms.

Science can also influence education through the use of scientific methods to evaluate the effectiveness of different educational practices. Scientists have a lot of experience designing experiments and can offer useful techniques to help decide whether, for example, two reading programs differ in how much they motivate children to read independently.

Both types of applications are overt and self-conscious. They are what researchers usually call "applied science." That contrasts with "basic science," research that is conducted not with the aim of improving education, but with the aim of providing a scientific description of the world. In this case, the basic science of concern tells us about how children learn, their emotional lives, and what motivates them. It's a scientific view of what kids are like and how they develop. That basic scientific knowledge is the third avenue through which science can influence educational practice.

An educator's practice is, of course, influenced by her beliefs about what children are like. Teachers try to tune their practice to what they believe to be children's nature, in the perfectly reasonable belief that teaching will be more successful if it accounts for the way children learn. These beliefs influence not only planning but also teachers' in-the-moment reactions and responses when something unexpected happens in the classroom. Furthermore, beliefs influence our receptiveness to new ideas. ² When a vendor offers a new product, for example, or an administrator suggests a new classroom practice, teachers evaluate it in light of their beliefs about children.

Scientific findings provide one (but obviously not the only) source of information contributing to educators' beliefs about the nature of children. Researchers and practitioners have written about the scientific backing of these beliefs, typically when they think there's widespread misinformation about the scientific credibility of some finding. For example, a number of articles have appeared in the last 10 years pointing out the frail scientific basis for learning styles. ³*

Here I want to make a different point: some statements concerning children's learning are perfectly sound scientifically but should not influence educational decisions. That includes some statements that seem like they ought to have a direct bearing on classrooms. In this article, I will describe three types of statements scientists make, only one of which ought to influence teaching practice. Even that type of statement, we'll see, can be misapplied.

Three Types of Scientific Statements

To appreciate these three types of scientific statements and how they differ, we need a brief introduction to the scientific method. Again, we're not talking about applied science, which sets a goal of changing something (in this case, improving education). Rather, we're talking about the method of basic science, which sets the goal of describing something (in this case, how children think and learn, what motivates them, how they experience emotions, and so on). This research is mostly conducted by scientists who don't think about education at all.

Basic science operates in a four-step cycle, as shown in Figure 1. First, a scientist gathers observations about the world. Next, the scientist attempts to summarize the observations with a small set of general statements-a theory. In the third step, the theory is used to generate predictions about phenomena that have not yet been observed. In the final step, the scientist conducts experiments to test the prediction. The result of the test constitutes a new observation about the world, and the cycle continues.

Consider psychologist Jean Piaget. He famously observed his own children at play to glean insights into their thinking. ⁴ Based on those observations, he developed his theory of cognitive development, proposing that children move through a sequence of four stages, characterized by (among other things) increasing ability to use abstract thought. To test predictions of the theory, Piaget conducted experiments by asking children to perform carefully devised tasks. For example, in one task, children were to solve problems with a balance scale, using weights with differing characteristics. 5

This brief summary of the scientific method illustrates two types of statements that are important to our purposes. First, there are observations of the world-for example, observing that children between 2 and 6 years old typically fail to understand that liquid does not change volume when it is poured into a differently shaped vessel (see Figure 2).

Psychologists are especially interested in observations that they see consistently, even if children vary in background and age, and even if they complete different tasks in different contexts. For example, the observation that task performance improves with practice seems so universally observed, we assume it must reflect a very deep truth about the nature of learning. I'll call that type of observation an empirical generalization, and I will argue it's especially useful to educators.

The second type of statement is theoretical. Theoretical statements are much more abstract and general than empirical observations. They are meant to summarize many existing empirical generalizations and can be used to predict what ought to happen in novel situations. For example, one feature of the second stage of development in Piaget's theory of cognitive development is centration; children focus on just one characteristic of a complex situation. Centration captures the observation about liquid and volume: children conclude that a narrow vessel holds more liquid because they focus on just one feature of the liquid-its height in the vessel.

Scientists make a third type of statement-epistemic-that's not captured in Figure 1, and indeed scientists only occasionally explicitly make this type of statement. Scientists inevitably make assumptions about the nature of whatever is under study. Piaget made assumptions about the nature of knowledge: What does it mean for the child to know something? Should we just say, as Piaget did, that the child has a "belief" about the amount of liquid in a vessel? Or perhaps we're starting off wrong by assuming that we can talk about what the child knows independent of the social context in which the child does his thinking? Or perhaps we'd be better off creating a theory of brain states rather than of beliefs; after all, isn't what we're calling a belief really a product of the brain? Or maybe it's a bad idea to talk about beliefs or brain states, given that we can't adequately measure either one. Maybe we should focus on what the child does instead.

You can see that unless you make some assumptions, it's impossible to create a theory or even to describe what you think you observe. Assumptions shape how you describe what you observe and what you think a theory ought to look like. In the case of the psychology of thought, these are epistemic assumptions, statements about the nature of thought and knowledge.

The distinctions among these three types of statements scientists make-empirical generalizations, theoretical statements, and epistemic assumptions-may sound a little esoteric, but they are important to educators. In considering whether scientific findings should influence their practice, they (appropriately) ask whether the science is sound, because sometimes it's not. For example, many practitioners have been told for years that there is scientific proof that younger students can multitask effectively, but that's not actually the case. ⁶

The point of this article is that scientists make lots of statements that are scientifically sound, but even if the statement is scientifically sound, it's not always useful to educators. Recognizing the distinctions among empirical observations, theoretical statements, and epistemic assumptions is crucial to understanding when and how scientific statements may be useful.

Empirical Generalizations

I suggest that empirical generalizations have the greatest potential to be useful to educators. These are observations of how children think or feel in particular circumstances that are consistent across tasks, age, contexts, and subject matter. Their power comes from the fact that they tell us what most kids are like most of the time. Although it's natural for educators to be interested in how children differ (so as to be sure to meet the needs of each child), children actually have much in common. ⁷ The basic architecture of the mind is not wildly different from child to child, and we can identify some of the consistencies regarding how attention is deployed, how learning operates, and so on. Indeed, over the years, these "Ask the Cognitive Scientist" columns in American Educator have emphasized such consistencies and what they might imply for the classroom ( see the table here).

Empirical generalizations like those in the table allow educators to predict how children will likely respond in a particular situation, and use that information to shape their practice. That said, this application is not always straightforward.

Empirical generalizations don't offer an infallible guide for what to do. There are two ways they might be mistakenly understood as prescriptive. First, empirical observations could be seen as laws that must not be violated. For example, research shows that when people are rewarded for a behavior, they may engage in the behavior to earn the reward, but their motivation may actually decrease once the rewards are discontinued. ⁸ Yet, that shouldn't be taken to mean that rewards are never useful or appropriate. A teacher may recognize the risk of a tangible reward and nevertheless decide it's the right classroom decision for other reasons. For example, you may offer a small reward to prompt a decidedly nonreader to give a book a try, in the hopes that the student will be surprised by how much he or she likes the book after all. 9 Empirical generalizations usually apply to one aspect of a complex situation, but educators must consider all aspects of the situation.

Second, many empirical generalizations concern student thought, not teaching behavior, and the way to prompt that student thought may not be obvious. Consider this empirical generalization: memory is more enduring when students think about the meaning of the content and relate it to things they already know. ¹⁰ Fine, but what are you supposed to do to prompt this sort of mental activity in students? One possibility is to set tasks for students (e.g., answering questions or making comparisons) that can only be completed if they think about meaning. This sort of teaching is often called "active learning," because students are, it appears, more actively engaged in the learning process, in contrast to when they simply listen to a lecture.

But it's a mistake to equate activity we can see with mental activity. Students may be engaged in a hands-on activity that is rather mindless-for example, executing the steps listed in a biology lab without really thinking about them. And they may think deeply about the content of a carefully put together lecture, even if they appear to be merely sitting. This example offers another illustration of the possible misinterpretation of empirical generalizations. Sometimes they are generalizations of how students react to specific things teachers do, but other times they are generalizations about the consequences of particular mental activity on the part of the student. The two should not be confused.

Theoretical Statements

Theoretical statements would seem to be invaluable for practitioners. The purpose of a theory is to integrate and coordinate observations. So if, as I suggested in the previous section, empirical generalizations are valuable to educators, statements from theories should be still better: each summarizes many empirical generalizations.

That would be true if the purpose of a theory were indeed to integrate and coordinate empirical generalizations. That's the way a practitioner would develop a theory of children's learning, but that's not the purpose to which scientists develop theories. As shown in Figure 1, a key purpose of theories in the scientific process is to generate new predictions. Those predictions will be tested in experiments that thereby create new observations, which are used to refine theories. So it's not enough for a theory to integrate and coordinate existing empirical generalizations. For a scientist, a theory must offer predictions of new, yet-to-be-verified observations. If it doesn't, science doesn't move forward.

The fact that theories go beyond existing data has a couple of implications that make them counterproductive for practitioners to use. First, it is inevitable that some novel predictions derived from a theory will be wrong. As I mentioned earlier, Piaget proposed a comprehensive and highly influential stage theory of cognitive development. Developmental stage theories hold that children's thinking doesn't change gradually but rather is stable for long periods of time and then rapidly reorganizes, which is the shift from one stage to another.

An educator seeking to put Piaget's theory to use might draw the reasonable prediction that certain types of thought are simply beyond the cognitive abilities of some children-they haven't reached the right stage of development yet. Offering that work to the child would be developmentally inappropriate. But research since Piaget's death in 1980 indicates that development does not proceed in stages. ¹¹ That prediction was wrong.

A second, related problem is that theories have a shelf life. Science operates in a cycle, as shown in Figure 1, and as we make more and more observations of the world, it becomes more and more likely that our current theories will fail to account for all of them. Every scientist accepts that our best theories should be viewed as contingent; even remarkably successful theories like Isaac Newton's law of universal gravitation eventually are shown to be wanting and are superseded.

Contemporary educational psychology textbooks often summarize influential theories like Piaget's theory of cognitive development, Erik Erikson's theory of personality development, ¹² Lawrence Kohlberg's theory of moral development, ¹³ and Lev Vygotsky's theory of learning. ¹⁴ But all of these theories are decades old, and the textbooks that present them always include several pages of explanation regarding ways in which the theories are known to be inadequate.

So when an educator's practice is guided by the best-available scientific theory, that educator adopts some beliefs that will be proven wrong in time. The only questions are how many of the beliefs are wrong, and when will we know they are wrong. Empirical generalizations, in contrast, are not predictions but are summaries of things that scientists have observed. Theories will come and go, but the empirical generalizations that theories are meant to account for are much more likely to be seen as accurate decades later. For example, the last century has seen a lot of theories seeking to explain why practice helps memory, and few scientists are fully satisfied with any of them. But every scientist agrees that practice helps memory.

Epistemic Assumptions

Consider statements like "learning is social," "everybody learns differently," "knowledge is constructed," and "learning is natural." Each represents an assumption about the nature of learning or knowledge. These are not empirical generalizations or theoretical statements; they are more general, and they are not grounded in observations of the world-they are assumptions.

The generality of the statements is obvious when you consider the many ways they could play out in a theory. "Learning is social," for example, might be taken to mean that our social environment provides learning opportunities-we can learn from our peers, and the characteristics of our peers determine what we learn. Or this statement might refer to something more profound, the assumption that our perception of the world is bound by our social group and our culture-what we learn depends on how we interpret our experiences, and that interpretation of events is shaped by our social environment. Or, it might imply an altogether different definition of learning. I may know very little about automobile repair, but if my wife does, then I have ready access to that knowledge. So don't I, in a sense, "know" about automobile repair? Perhaps it's a mistake to think of "knowledge" as residing solely in the mind of an individual. Knowledge may be accessible across social networks, and that should be recognized in our definition, and in our theories of knowledge and learning.

If a statement like "learning is social" can be interpreted in so many ways, does it really mean anything? Yes, but not much. It tells you that a theory of learning must have some social component, otherwise it would be missing something important. It doesn't specify what that social component must be, however, and again, it's an assumption and so is not proven. Epistemic assumptions are important because they do provide broad outlines to theory. For example, they dictate how knowledge will be defined in your theory, and they might prompt you to include some social component in it. Also, researchers often make, without reflection, the same assumptions that others do. 15 For example, many early cognitive psychologists assumed that emotion didn't have much to do with thinking, an assumption that, it later became clear, was wrong. ¹⁶

Scientists ought to, at least on occasion, contemplate whether the epistemic assumptions they make are defensible. Practitioners needn't do so, but they ought to be concerned that epistemic assumptions are confusable with empirical generalizations. "Learning is social" may sound similar to "kids learn best in social situations," but now that we're alert to the difference, we see that the first is an epistemic assumption (a statement about the nature of learning), whereas the second is an empirical generalization (a summary of many observations of what children actually do).

If you mistake "learning is social" for an empirical generalization, you'll think children should learn in groups rather than on their own. If you mistake "everybody learns differently" for an empirical generalization, you might think that offering the same type of work to a group of children is never a good idea. If you mistake "learning is natural" for an empirical generalization, you might think that any reluctance of a child to learn must be the fault of the school, which has somehow thwarted her natural inclination to learn.

What Does This All Mean for Educators?

Let's recap. I've argued that scientists' work entails three types of statements: observations of the world, theoretical statements, and epistemic assumptions. One particular type of observation, an empirical generalization, has potential value to practitioners. It describes some consistency in the cognitive, emotional, or motivational lives of children. Each is a small slice of "what kids are like."

Groups of theoretical statements are meant to summarize a large number of observations, but they must do more; they must predict new aspects of what kids are like that have not yet been observed. Theoretical statements are not useful to practitioners exactly because they generate predictions that may or may not be true. The third type of statement is an epistemic assumption, which presupposes the nature of learning or knowledge. These statements are too general to provide guidance to practice, but they can mistakenly be misread as empirical generalizations.

How might all this information affect your practice?

Examine your beliefs. This implication is rather obvious. I've argued that some beliefs, although potentially useful to scientists, will not apply to the classroom, so you want to be sure that you're not applying beliefs in ways that don't make sense. Yet analyzing our beliefs can be difficult. As the saying goes, it's like asking a fish to analyze water. Still, we can identify a few signs that can help differentiate empirical generalizations, theoretical statements, and epistemic assumptions.

Starting with the easiest case, epistemic assumptions tend to be simple statements about the nature of learning or knowledge: knowledge is constructed, or learning is fun. Empirical generalizations usually describe how two things go together: rewards reduce intrinsic motivation, or visual imagery improves memory. Theoretical statements can sound similar to empirical generalizations because they may describe how one thing influences another-for example, as children age, their thinking becomes less egocentric. Theoretical statements are usually more general than empirical generalizations, applying to a much broader variety of situations. And, of course, if there's a name attached to the belief, that's a sure tip-off: "Because Dewey thought so" is not a good reason to adopt or abandon a practice.

Lack of basic science doesn't mean a practice is bad. Why do I encourage you to think through whether your beliefs about kids align with findings from basic science? Because I think classroom practices based on those beliefs are more likely to succeed. But a lack of evidence to support something means just that-there's no evidence one way or another. It doesn't mean there's evidence that the practice is ineffective.

This issue has come up frequently when I talk with teachers about learning styles. When I claim that learning-styles theories don't have scientific backing, teachers sometimes think that I'm criticizing the classroom practices they use that are inspired by learning styles. I'm criticizing the theory, not any specific practice. The classroom practice may be terrific, it just doesn't get credibility from basic science.

Here's an analogy. Let's say a Virginia teacher loves New York City and often finds inspiration for lesson plans when she visits. She may think that those lessons tend to be especially engaging and deep for her students. But she would not think that other teachers should capitalize on the special scientific status of New York City-inspired lessons. She would just think, "This is where I find my inspiration." If learning-styles theories, or left and right brain theories, or astrology, or anything else inspires you, great. My point is that your confidence about the quality of such a lesson shouldn't come from a belief that it aligns with how scientists think children learn. Your confidence should come from your professional judgement that the lessons are successful. How they were inspired doesn't affect that one way or another.

Not every classroom practice needs to be mapped onto empirical generalizations. This is a corollary of the idea that it's not a deal breaker if a practice is not aligned with scientific evidence of how children learn. You can't base all your practices on scientific evidence. Scientists don't know enough for educators to be able to do that, even if they wanted to.

Keep learning. One of the great challenges in being a practitioner is that basic science represents a moving target-researchers keep learning more! How can you keep up? One substantial problem is evaluating the quality of the resources you encounter on the web, in books, in professional development sessions, and so on. That's a thorny problem I've written on at length. ¹⁷ In the Resources box on this page, I offer a list of resources on the basic science of children's learning that I have found useful in the past.

Daniel T. Willingham is a professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Virginia. He is the author of When Can You Trust the Experts? How to Tell Good Science from Bad in Education and Why Don't Students Like School? His most recent book is The Reading Mind: A Cognitive Approach to Understanding How the Mind Read s. Readers can pose questions to "Ask the Cognitive Scientist" by sending an email to ae@aft.org. Future columns will try to address readers' questions.

†Suppose a theory integrated and accounted for known empirical generalizations and didn't make any new predictions; would that be useful to educators? Indeed, I think it would, and I think researchers should do more to create such theories. I consider that possibility in my article "A Mental Model of the Learner: Teaching the Basic Science of Educational Psychology to Future Teachers," published in Mind, Brain, and Education in 2017. ( back to article)

Endnotes

1. N. Cepeda et al., "Distributed Practice in Verbal Recall Tasks: A Review and Quantitative Synthesis," Psychological Bulletin 132, no. 3 (2006): 354-380.

2. R. Nickerson, "Confirmation Bias: A Ubiquitous Phenomenon in Many Guises," Review of General Psychology 2, no. 2 (1998): 175-220.

3. D. T. Willingham, E. M. Hughes, and D. G. Dobolyi, "The Scientific Status of Learning Styles Theories," Teaching of Psychology 42, no. 3 (2015).

4. J. Piaget, The Origins of Intelligence in Children (New York: International Universities Press, 1952); and J. Piaget, The Construction of Reality in the Child (New York: Basic Books, 1954).

5. B. Inhelder and J. Piaget, The Growth of Logical Thinking from Childhood to Adolescence (New York: Basic Books, 1958).

6. J. Wood, A. Chaparro, and L. Hickson, "Interaction between Visual Status, Driver Age and Distracters on Daytime Driving Performance," Vision Research 49, no. 17 (2009): 2225-2231.

7. D. T. Willingham and D. Daniel, "Beyond Differentiation: Teaching to What Learners Have in Common," Educational Leadership 2, no. 69 (2012): 16-21.

8. E. L. Deci, R. M. Ryan, and R. Koestner, "A Meta-Analytic Review of Experiments Examining the Effects of Extrinsic Rewards on Intrinsic Motivation," Psychological Bulletin 125, no. 6 (1999): 627-668.

9. D. T. Willingham, "Should Learning Be Its Own Reward?," American Educator 31, no. 4 (Winter 2007-2008): 29-35.

10. F. I. Craik and E. Tulving, "Depth of Processing and the Retention of Words in Episodic Memory," Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 104, no. 3 (1975): 268-294.

11. D. T. Willingham, "What Is Developmentally Appropriate Practice?," American Educator 32, no. 2 (Summer 2008): 34-39.

12. E. H. Erikson, Childhood and Society (New York: Norton, 1950).

13. L. Kohlberg, C. Levine, and A. Hewer, Moral Stages: A Current Formulation and a Response to Critics (Basel, Switzerland: Karger, 1983).

14. L. Vygotsky, Thought and Language (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1962).

15. T. S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962).

16. A. R. Damasio, Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (New York: P. Putnam, 1994).

17. D. T. Willingham, When Can You Trust the Experts? How to Tell Good Science from Bad in Education (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2012).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ask the Cognitive Scientist: Should Teachers Know the Basic Science of How Children Learn?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Question: Is it useful for teachers to know the basic science of how children learn? I thought it was, but a professor in my teacher education program disagreed; what teachers need to know, she said, are research-based findings about what works in classrooms. She thought there's not much point in learning abstract science that doesn't directly apply to classrooms. Answer: There's no doubt that research bearing directly on classroom practice is crucial.

# data[].attributes.headline
Ask the Cognitive Scientist, Students Remember...What They Think About

# data[].attributes.subject
Ask the Cognitive Scientist, Students Remember...What They Think About

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Issue: The teacher presents a strong, coherent lesson in which a set of significant facts is clearly connected to a reasonable conclusion. But, at test time, the students show no understanding of the connections. Some students parrot back the conclusion, but no facts. Others spit back memorized facts, but don't see how they fit together. Though the lesson wasn't taught in a rote way, it seems like rote knowledge is what the students took in. Why do well-integrated, coherent lessons often come back to us in a less meaningful, fragmented form? Can cognitive science help explain why this result is so common-and offer ideas about how to avoid it?

Response: Rote knowledge is devoid of all meaning (as discussed in my last column, Winter 2002). The knowledge that these students appear to be regurgitating is probably not rote knowledge. It is probably "shallow" knowledge: The students' knowledge has meaning (unlike rote knowledge), in that the students understand each isolated part, but their knowledge lacks the deeper meaning that comes from understanding the relationship among the parts. For reasons noted below, this is a common problem in the early stages of learning about a new topic. But it also has another remediable source, which is the focus of this column.

Cognitive science has shown that what ends up in a learner's memory is not simply the material presented-it is the product of what the learner thought about when he or she encountered the material. This principle illuminates one important origin of shallow knowledge and also suggests how to help students develop deep and interconnected knowledge.

* * *

Let's start with an example of shallow knowledge. Suppose that you are teaching a high school class unit on World War II and develop a lesson on the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Many facts might be included in such a lesson: (a) Japan had aspirations to be a regional power; (b) Japan was engaged in a protracted war with China; (c) because they were at war, European countries could not protect their colonies in the South Pacific; and (d) the attack on Pearl Harbor resulted in a declaration of war on Japan by the United States. The overarching point of this lesson might be to show that the attack on Pearl Harbor was a strategic mistake for the Japanese, given their war aims. (See Figure 1 for a diagram of the lesson.)

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"wysiwyg","fid":"964","link_text":null,"field_deltas":{"1":{}},"fields":{},"attributes":{"alt":"Lesson Diagram","height":"281","width":"387","style":"height: 281px; width: 387px;","class":"media-image media-element file-wysiwyg","data-delta":"1"}}]]

We can see two ways that this meaningful lesson might end up as shallow knowledge in the student's mind. The student might commit to memory some or all of these four facts. But knowing these facts without understanding how they relate to one another and can be integrated to support the conclusion leaves the facts isolated; they are not without meaning, but neither are they as rich as they might be. The student has the trees, but no view of the forest.

Alternatively, the student might commit to memory the conclusion, "The attack on Pearl Harbor, although militarily a successful battle for Japan, was ultimately detrimental to its long-range war plans." But memorizing this conclusion without understanding the reasoning behind it and knowing the supporting facts is empty. It isn't rote-the student knows Japan initiated and won a battle at the place called Pearl Harbor. But the knowledge certainly is "shallow"-it has no connections.*

We have all had students memorize phrases from class or a textbook more or less word-for-word, and although what the student says is accurate, we can't help but wonder whether he or she really understands the ideas those words represent. Let's dig deeper.

Memory Is as Thinking Does

When students parrot back a teacher's or the textbook's words, they are, of course, drawing on memory. Thus, the question of why students end up with shallow knowledge is really a question about the workings of memory. Needless to say, determining what ends up in memory and in what form is a complex question, but there is one factor that trumps most others in determining what is remembered: what you think about when you encounter the material. The fact that the material you are dealing with has meaning does not guarantee that the meaning will be remembered. If you think about that meaning, the meaning will reside in memory. If you don't, it won't. For example, if I teach about Pearl Harbor, some sailing enthusiasts may starting thinking about the ships of the era and pay minimal attention to the rest of the class-just a few minutes after the bell rings they won't remember much about the causes and consequences of Pearl Harbor. Memory is as thinking does.

A classic experiment illustrating this principle was conducted by Thomas Hyde and James Jenkins in 1969. It examined how one thinks about material and the effect of that thinking on memory. Subjects in their experiment listened to a list of words at a rate of one word every two seconds. Different groups of subjects were to perform different tasks upon hearing each word. Some were to rate each word as to whether it made them think of pleasant or unpleasant things, whereas others were asked to count the number of times the letter E appeared in the word. Rating the pleasantness forces the subject to think about the word's meaning; the word garbage is unpleasant because of what it means-what it is associated with in one's memory. Counting Es, on the other hand, forces one to think about the spelling of the word, but not its meaning. Thus, the experimenters manipulated what subjects thought about when they encountered each word. Subjects were not told that their memory for the words would later be tested; they thought they were merely to make the pleasantness or the E-counting judgment.

One other detail of the experiment is especially important. The word list actually consisted of 12 pairs of very highly associated words, such as doctor-nurse, although this fact was not pointed out to any of the subjects. The order in which the words were read was random (except that related words were not allowed to be next to one another in the list).

The results are shown in Figure 2. First look at the left side of the chart, which shows the mean number of words recalled. Memory was much better when subjects made the pleasantness ratings. Thinking about the meaning of material is especially helpful to memory. This finding is consistent across hundreds of other experiments.

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"wysiwyg","fid":"965","link_text":null,"field_deltas":{"2":{}},"fields":{},"attributes":{"alt":"Thinking Abouth Meaning Helps Memory","height":"281","width":"257","style":"height: 281px; width: 257px;","class":"media-image media-element file-wysiwyg","data-delta":"2"}}]]

The right side of the figure shows a measure of clustering-the extent to which subjects paired the associated words as they tried to remember them. When a subject recalled a word (e.g., doctor), what percentage of the time was the next word recalled the highly associated one ( nurse)? As the figure shows, subjects who thought about the word's meaning (i.e., rated pleasantness) not only remembered more words, they tended to remember the related words together, even though the related words did not appear together in the list. The subjects who counted E s did not tend to remember related words together.

These results forcefully make the point that meaningful structure that is in the environment may or may not end up being stored in memory. In the Hyde and Jenkins experiment, the fact that some of the words were related in meaning was largely lost on the subjects who counted Es because thinking about Es did not encourage the subjects to process meaning. Subjects who made the pleasantness ratings tended to group the words together by meaning as they recalled them. Whatever subjects thought about when they heard the words (which, teachers will note, depends on what they were asked to think about) was what ended up in memory.

In the Hyde and Jenkins experiment, the "what they think about" principle is divided into thinking about meaning versus not thinking about meaning. Other experiments show that even if one thinks about meaning, the particular aspect of the meaning that one considers will be stored in memory, and other aspects of meaning will not. For example, in one experiment (Barclay et al., 1974), subjects were presented with words to remember in the context of a sentence. The sentence biased subjects to think of one or another feature of the to-be-remembered word: For example, some subjects read "The man lifted the piano," which encouraged thinking about the fact that pianos are heavy. Other subjects read "The man tuned the piano," which encouraged considering that pianos produce music. In the next phase of the experiment subjects were told that their memory for some of the nouns in the sentences would be tested and that for each sentence they would get a hint. For piano, some subjects were given the hint, "something heavy." If they had read the sentence about lifting the piano, this hint matched the feature they had thought about, but if they read the sentence about tuning the piano, the hint didn't match. (Other subjects saw a hint that matched the piano tuning sentence; that hint was "something with a nice sound.")

The results showed that subjects remembered about three times as many words when the hint for the test matched what subjects had thought about when they first read the word. Again, the point is that what is stored in memory is quite specific to what you think about when you encounter the material. It is not the case that if you think about piano, then piano and all of its features are stored in memory. You might think about its music-producing qualities, its weight, its cost, and so on. Or you might not focus on the referent at all, but rather on the physical properties of the word itself, as when Hyde and Jenkins asked subjects to count E s. In each case, what you think about is what you remember.

* * *

So what does this have to do with shallow knowledge? It shows where shallow knowledge might come from. Meaning that is in the environment won't end up in memory if students don't think about it. Students with shallow knowledge have apparently thought about the material in a shallow way. This conclusion reframes the question we might ask: Why would students think about the material in a shallow way, given that we didn't present it to them that way? Obviously, a student would learn only isolated facts or unsupported conclusions if that is what the teacher taught, but I find it difficult to believe that this is a common practice. The notion that education should emphasize meaning is deeply ingrained in our system and has been for a generation or more. There cannot be many teachers who ask their students to learn facts without concern for a larger picture. So how do students end up with shallow knowledge? There are several possible answers.

1. As noted at the beginning of this article, in one form, shallow knowledge is simply a step on the way to deep knowledge. Consider again the hierarchical diagram shown in Figure 1. I argued that shallow knowledge could either be memorization of the conclusion (top of the hierarchy) without knowing the facts that back it up (bottom of the hierarchy), or memorization of the facts without integrating them into a conclusion. Clearly the sort of deep knowledge we want our students to have is objectively harder to obtain than shallow knowledge, because knowledge of the facts and knowledge of the conclusion and knowledge of their interrelationships are prerequisite to it. We want students to know how the different levels of hierarchy relate to one another; it's not enough to have memorized each level in isolation of the others. That connected knowledge will inevitably be the last thing that the student acquires. Thus, some students' knowledge will be shallow simply because they are not far enough along yet.

2. Other students may effectively quit learning before they reach the deep understanding that is our goal for them. A student may learn the facts about Pearl Harbor and think "All right, I've learned a lot about this stuff." The student is correct (so far as it goes) and simply doesn't realize that there is yet more to do.

3. Students' perception of what they are supposed to learn-and what it means to learn-may contribute to shallow knowledge. A student may seek to memorize definitions and pat phrases word-for-word from the book because the student knows that this information is correct and cannot be contested. When I was in eighth grade, we were given a list of vocabulary terms that we were to define and then study in preparation for a weekly test. A friend defined "cherub" as "an angel of the second order." My friends and I teased him because his definition missed what we thought was the key aspect of the word-that a cherub is small, chubby, and rosy-cheeked. He was unmoved and kept repeating "that's what the dictionary said." He liked the fact that his answer was uncontestable. Students may memorize exactly what the teacher or textbook says in order to be certain that they are correct, and worry less about the extent to which they understand.

4. Despite what was offered to students in the teacher's lesson, the students attended to (thought about) something different-and that's what they remembered.

What Does This Mean for Teachers?

This fundamental principle of memory-memory is as thinking does-yields a clear strategy to encourage deep, meaningful knowledge. If students think about the meaning of material, meaning will end up in memory. How can teachers be sure that students are thinking about meaning?

Obviously there is no one way to ensure that students think about the meaning of material. A compelling story may be appropriate for one lesson, whereas a carefully designed laboratory project works for a second, and a well-structured group discussion for a third. One possible common misconception is that learners can only understand meaning if they themselves construct the meaning in a physically active way. A moment's reflection should tell us that "listening" does not imply passivity or shallowness. We have all been to "active, participatory" workshops that felt like a waste of time, and we have been to lectures where we "just listened" that were gripping and informative. Constructing meaning is a matter of being mentally engaged; being physically engaged might help at times, but it is not necessary.

How can we ensure that students are mentally engaged? While there is still more to learn about applying this research on thinking and memory to teaching, several key principles have emerged to guide teachers in developing assignments, classroom activities, and assessments.

* Anticipate what your lesson will lead students to think about. The direct relationship between thought and memory is so important that it could be used as a self-check for a teacher preparing virtually any assignment: Always try to anticipate what students will be thinking when they are doing the assignment. Doing so may make it clear that some assignments designed with one purpose in mind will achieve another. For example, a teacher once told me that, as part of a unit on the Underground Railroad, he had his students bake biscuits so that they would appreciate what escaped slaves ate most nights. He asked what I thought of the assignment and my reply was that his students will remember baking biscuits. In other words, his students probably thought for 30 seconds about the relation of the baking to the course material, and then spent 30 minutes thinking about measuring flour, mixing dough, and so on.

Another example comes from my recent observation of my nephew as he completed a book report. The teacher asked the students to draw a poster that depicted all of the events of the book. The purpose of the assignment was to have students think of the book as a whole, and to consider how the separate events related to one another. This purpose got lost in the execution. My nephew spent a lot more time thinking about how to draw a good castle than he did about the plot of the book.

* Use discovery learning carefully. The principle above-anticipate the students' thoughts-also illuminates the use and misuse of discovery learning. There is little doubt that students remember material they generate themselves better than material that is handed to them. This "generation effect," as it is called (Slamecka & Graf, 1978), is indeed powerful, and it is due, in part, to forcing the learner to think about the meaning of material (although other techniques can do that as well). Part of the effect does seem to be unique to the actual generation of the answer, over and above thinking about meaning. One might suppose, therefore, that discovery learning should be employed whenever possible. However, given that memory follows thought, one thing is clear: Students will remember incorrect "discoveries" just as well as correct ones.

Considerable care must be taken to ensure that the path of students' thoughts will be a profitable one. For example, advocates of discovery learning often point out that children learn to use some computer software rapidly and effectively merely by "playing around with it." That may be true, but that learning environment is also quite structured in that profitless actions are immediately discouraged by the system not working. In effect, the system is so structured that profitless discoveries are impossible; but few classroom activities can achieve this kind of structure. How much anatomy will students learn by "playing around" with frog dissection? Can one anticipate the thoughts of students who dissect frogs with little direction? Although discovery learning may be powerful in highly structured contexts that make the correct discovery virtually inevitable, in others it is likely to prove unproductive.

* Design reading assignments that require students to actively process the text. Many concrete strategies have been suggested for helping students to get more out of reading that likely have some or all of their effect by making readers think about the meaning of what they are reading. Techniques such as writing outlines, self-examination during learning, review questions, and previews can encourage or require students to integrate the material and to thereby process (i.e., think about) the meaning. These different techniques are more or less effective in different situations, perhaps due to the specific materials being studied (e.g., McDaniel & Einstein, 1989); general principles guiding when each technique should be used have not been forthcoming. Nevertheless, although one technique or another may be more effective for a given lesson or group of students, using any strategy that encourages the processing of meaning is almost always better than not using one.

* Design lessons so that students can't avoid thinking about the lesson's goal. On a more positive note, the "memory is as thinking does" principle can yield steps teachers can take to help students develop deep, interconnected knowledge: Lessons should be directed so that students are very likely to think (or can't help but think) about the goal of the lesson. The goal of the Underground Railroad lesson was not really about biscuits-it was to encourage students to consider the experience of escaped slaves. Therefore, a more effective starting point for that lesson would be to ask students leading questions that encourage consideration of what escaped slaves' experiences would be like, which might include questions of how they would obtain food, and what the constraints were on the food they could get (inexpensive, cooked rapidly, etc.). My nephew would have gotten more out of his book report project if it had emphasized what the teacher was really interested in (the connection among the book's events), perhaps by having the students label the events and connections among them (e.g., this event moves the character towards his goal; this event causes that event) and de-emphasizing the students' artistic contribution by having them use clip art or simply writing the events in words.

* Design tests that lead students to think about and integrate the most important material. The "memory is as thinking does" principle may also be applied to methods of assessing student knowledge: Like lessons, study guides for texts should be developed that force students to think about the goals of the lessons being assessed. For better or worse, some students expend their greatest effort to understand material as they prepare for an examination. Even if you would rather see such students motivated by a passion to learn, you can use the students' motivation to earn a good grade to ensure that they are getting the most out of your lessons. Announcing the general topics to be covered on an exam leaves the specifics of what to learn up to the student. Even if the teacher emphasizes that deep understanding will be tested, the student may misconstrue what is deep or, as noted earlier, the student may quit once some facts have been memorized, believing that he or she has already done quite a bit of studying. Suppose, however, that the teacher provides a list of integrative questions for the students to study from, such as "Describe why the attack on Pearl Harbor was a strategic mistake by Japan, given its war aims." Suppose further that the students know that the examination will consist of five questions from the 30-question list that they have been given, with an essay to be written on each of the five questions. Students will very likely restrict their studying to the 30 question list, but that might be just fine with the teacher if he or she feels that any student who can answer those 30 questions has mastered the material. This method of testing has the advantage of ensuring that while students are highly motivated, they think about the deepest meaning of the material that the teacher intended.

* * *

In summary, in the early stages of learning, students may display "shallow" learning. These students have acquired bits of knowledge that aren't well-integrated into a larger picture. Research tells us that deep, connected knowledge can be encouraged by getting students to think about the interrelation of the various pieces of knowledge that they have acquired. Cognitive science has not progressed to the point that it can issue prescriptions of exactly how that can be achieved-that job is very much in the hands of experienced teachers. But in considering how to encourage students to acquire meaningful knowledge, teachers will do well to keep the "memory is as thinking does" principle in mind.
Daniel T. Willingham is associate professor of cognitive psychology and neuroscience at the University of Virginia and author of Cognition: The Thinking Animal. His research focuses on the role of consciousness in learning. Readers can pose specific questions to:
"Cognitive Scientist," American Educator
555 New Jersey Ave., N.W.
Washington, DC 20001
or e-mail to: amered@aft.org
*My last column (Winter 2002, available at www.aft.org/newspubs/periodicals/ae/winter2002/willingham.cfm) discussed another common problem for students: inflexible knowledge. Like shallow knowledge, inflexible knowledge is meaningful-the catch is that it doesn't translate well to other relevant situations. To extend our World War II example, a student with inflexible knowledge may learn the conclusion and an adequate number of supporting facts, developing a real understanding of Japan's mistake. But, when the history class moved on to study another war, the student may not recognize an analogous strategic mistake. Developing flexible knowledge, such as being able to track strategic mistakes as a theme throughout military history (or to generalize, for example, to corporate history) requires much further study. ( back to article)

References

Barclay, J. R., Bransford, J. D., Franks, J. J., McCarrel, N. S., & Nitsch, K. (1974). Comprehension and semantic flexibility. Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior, 13, 471-481.

Hyde, T. S. & Jenkins, J. J. (1969). Differential effects of incidental tasks on the organization of recall of a list of highly associated words. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 82, 472-481.

McDaniel, M. A. & Einstein, G. O. (1989). Material-appropriate processing: A contextualist approach to reading and studying strategies. Educational Psychology Review, 1, 113-145.

Slamecka, N. J, & Graf, P. (1978). The generation effect: Delineation of a phenomenon. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning & Memor y, 4, 592-604.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ask the Cognitive Scientist: Students Remember...What They Think About

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Issue: The teacher presents a strong, coherent lesson in which a set of significant facts is clearly connected to a reasonable conclusion. But, at test time, the students show no understanding of the connections. Some students parrot back the conclusion, but no facts. Others spit back memorized facts, but don't see how they fit together.

# data[].attributes.headline
Willingham, The Usefulness of Brief Instruction in Reading Comprehension Strategies

# data[].attributes.subject
Willingham, The Usefulness of Brief Instruction in Reading Comprehension Strategies

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
“Knowledge is Good.” So read the motto of the mythical Faber College in the 1978 movie, Animal House. Those of us who work in education would agree, even if we were unable to express ourselves so eloquently. But why, exactly, is knowledge good? When I’ve discussed this question with teachers, many have used the metaphor “It’s grist for the mill.” That is, the goal of education is seen not so much as the accumulation of knowledge, but as the honing of cognitive skills such as thinking critically.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Science of Reading - The Reading League

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Reading League's mission is to advance the understanding and use of evidence-aligned reading instruction through the science of reading.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Explore reading basics as well as the key role of background knowledge and motivation in becoming a lifelong reader and learner. Watch our PBS Launching Young Readers series and try our self-paced Reading 101 course to deepen your understanding.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Downloadable science-backed tools, tips, activities, templates, and more that you can use with children immediately.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Six Shifts Where Science of Reading Meets Balanced Literacy. We provide resources, professional development, and literacy audits for busy literacy educators like you.

# data[].attributes.headline
Seidenberg, Reading Matters: Connecting Science & Education

# data[].attributes.subject
Seidenberg, Reading Matters: Connecting Science & Education

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In a major initiative to empower educators, school leaders, families, and communities in their efforts to support reading, the Florida Center for Reading Research (FCRR) has introduced "The Academy" - a comprehensive platform offering support to use evidence-based tools and resources.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Created by the IRRC, these literacy resources are useful for educators and caregivers for classroom and home literacy learning.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Provide relevant texts that consider complexity, academic success, cultural competence, and critical consciousness.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Resource Library - Haskins Global Literacy Hub

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Trusted online resources for PARENTS and EDUCATORS

# data[].attributes.headline
The Science of Reading, Balanced Literacy, AND English Learners: Spoiler Alert!  It’s not one or the other

# data[].attributes.subject
The Science of Reading, Balanced Literacy, AND English Learners: Spoiler Alert!  It’s not one or the other

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
Rooted Linguistics: Serving Teachers of Multilingual Learners

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Science of Reading, Balanced Literacy, and English Learners

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
If you teach reading you have probably heard of the “Reading Wars”. And if you haven’t, then perhaps you don’t even need to read any further. For those that have, you might feel confused. I,…

# data[].attributes.headline
Consortium on Reaching Excellence, Using the Science of Reading to Improve Literacy Instruction for English Learners by Dr. Claude Goldenberg

# data[].attributes.subject
Consortium on Reaching Excellence, Using the Science of Reading to Improve Literacy Instruction for English Learners by Dr. Claude Goldenberg

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Learning to read and developing as a reader is more complicated in a language you are simultaneously learning to speak and understand than in a language you already know well orally. This is one of the most significant challenges faced by millions of English learners (ELs) who are not in bilingual programs, as well as by their teachers.

During this recorded webinar Dr. Claude Goldenberg shares:

What is known about promoting development in two distinct but related and complex domains: oral language and reading

How the science of reading can be applied to teaching ELs to read and write in English

The importance of English language support and English Language Development instruction to optimize ELs' literacy development

Watch this webinar to build your knowledge of how to help English learners become strong readers in their new language and have equitable opportunities for success.

Fill out the form to watch the webinar.
You will be redirected to the CORE website.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Using the Science of Reading to Improve Literacy Instruction for English Learners - Pivot Learning

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Learning to read and developing as a reader is more complicated in a language you are simultaneously learning to speak and understand than in a language you already know well orally. This is one of the most significant challenges faced by millions of English learners (ELs) who are not in bilingual programs, as well as [...]

# data[].attributes.headline
Enhancing Vocabulary and Comprehension for English Learners

# data[].attributes.subject
Enhancing Vocabulary and Comprehension for English Learners

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Read-Aloud Routine for Building Vocabulary and Comprehension Skills tools guide prekindergarten and K-3 educators in implementing a system for whole-class text reading focused on language and comprehension development for English learners (Giroir, Grimaldo, Vaughn, & Roberts, 2015; Hickman, Pollard-Durodola, & Vaughn, 2004). The key steps of the read-aloud routine include (1) introducing high-utility words within the context of a narrative or informational text (vocabulary, background knowledge); (2) reading the text aloud with students (modeling fluency); and then (3) structuring meaningful interactive, text-based activities that allow for deeper processing of new vocabulary and concepts from the text (vocabulary, comprehension, language development). The read-aloud system incorporates principles of culturally responsive pedagogy by providing guidance to teachers in choosing culturally responsive reading texts and facilitates vocabulary development by connecting new linguistic concepts to students' backgrounds and lived experiences.
Getting Started With the Read-Aloud: Prekindergarten and K-3 Materials for Teachers Sample Lessons and Video Models
English Lesson Plan Sets:

Spanish Lesson Plan Sets:
Professional Development for K-3 Teachers Professional Development for Prekindergarten Teachers
Return to Resources for Educators of English Learners

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Read-Aloud Routine for Building Vocabulary and Comprehension Skills tools guide prekindergarten and K-3 educators in implementing a system for whole-class text reading focused on language and comprehension development for English learners (Giroir, Grimaldo, Vaughn, & Roberts, 2015; Hickman, Pollard-Durodola, & Vaughn, 2004).

# data[].attributes.headline
CORE, Assessing Reading Multiple Measures

# data[].attributes.subject
CORE, Assessing Reading Multiple Measures

# data[].attributes.headline
Duke, Listening to Reading, Watching While Writing Protocol

# data[].attributes.subject
Duke, Listening to Reading, Watching While Writing Protocol

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Listening to Reading-WWW Protocol | nellkduke.org

# data[].attributes.headline
Reading League Curriculum Evaluation Tool

# data[].attributes.subject
Reading League Curriculum Evaluation Tool

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Welcome to the University of Florida Literacy Institute (UFLI, pronounced "you fly"). UFLI is an ongoing effort by UF faculty, students, and staff to improve literacy outcomes for children learning to read.

The work of UFLI focuses on two main areas: teacher development and reader development. The place where those two overlap ... that is where the work of UFLI lives. Our programs and resources are designed to help teachers become more confident and more successful in their capacity to help kids learn to read. We do this through:

Academic programs for both pre-service and practicing educators to develop the skills and knowledge necessary to be effective reading teachers

Professional learning opportunities to help classroom reading teachers, instructional coaches, and school leaders expand their knowledge, enhance their teaching practices, and build capacity in their schools

Resources for teachers, parents, and teacher educators to use in their reading instruction

Much, much more!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
UF Literacy Institute | Where teacher development and reader development overlap

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Welcome to the University of Florida Literacy Institute (UFLI, pronounced "you fly"). UFLI is an ongoing effort by UF faculty, students, and staff to improve literacy outcomes for children learning to read. The work of UFLI focuses on two main areas: teacher development and reader development. The place where those two overlap ...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Flyleaf Publishing decodable books provide beginning and struggling readers with abundant opportunities to transfer their newly acquired phonics knowledge to meaningful, engaging, and complex narratives, informational texts, and poetry. Our research-based instructional materials support teachers in explicitly guiding students to develop the skills and habits of competent readers. Our decodable books can authentically stand up to the rigors of both foundational skills and close reading instruction, making them a unique and invaluable resource for teachers and for students, who deserve the guidance that will enable them to become accurate, fluent, comprehensive, and joyful readers.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
decodable books and research-based instructional materials for prek

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Decodable Books: Research Based Readers - Flyleaf Publishing

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Engaging, meaningful, decodable books with fine-art illustrations tied to a systematic phonics scope & sequence.

# data[].attributes.headline
The Right to Read Project: What Do I Do with All These Predictable Books?

# data[].attributes.subject
The Right to Read Project: What Do I Do with All These Predictable Books?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Many teachers have already reorganized our leveled libraries because we learned that, according to Fountas and Pinnell, "levels have no place in classroom libraries." Sorting books into bins labeled by theme or topic is time-consuming, but it's not a difficult task. We immediately see that offering students more choice in their reading materials and teaching them to monitor their own reading for accuracy and comprehension is rewarding. However, books at the lower levels, "predictable books," pose a challenge that is not so easily solved.

Problems with Predictable Books

Predictable books are designed to teach children not to depend on decoding to tackle unfamiliar words-they are purpose-written to teach children to predict, or guess words-so what children do with low-level books is not actually reading. Some students climb up the levels by transitioning away from picture-cues and predictable sentences, but others hold tightly to the guessing strategies that are reinforced by predictable books, and time with these books slows their decoding progress. For beginning readers, decodable books provide a more reliable path to authentic texts, and using them for phonics instruction and fluency practice offers a "helps all, harms none" approach to teaching reading. But what, then, should we do with all our predictable books?!

Rethinking the Instructional Purpose

To repurpose predictable books for activities other than reading, we need to look at them with fresh eyes and new criteria. More important than the level stamped on the back cover is the contents inside.

We can ask ourselves, What are the features of this individual book that make it a useful teaching tool? A single book may have more than one useful feature and it might be repurposed for any number of language development, writing, or art activities.

We've listed out some of the features you might look for in predictable books and have drafted example activities to help with lesson planning. (You'll find descriptions and links to the example activities below this table.)

Predictable Book Types

Types

Activities

Examples

Single sentence per page with a single story word
1. (RE)WRITE THE BOOK
Composing Simple Sentences

Cumulative illustrations
8. TALK AND TURN THE PAGE
Language Development for Beginning English-learners

We've drafted ten lesson examples-one for each of the ten book types-to show how predictable books can be repurposed for instruction designed to build students' oral language, writing skills, and creative abilities. The exemplar texts all come from the Green Kit of Leveled Literacy Intervention (LLI), but any predictable texts with the similar features would work well. Repeating these lessons with multiple books can deepen students' learning and, if you pull away the scaffolds, many of these activities can become literacy centers.
Click on the activity title to see the lesson example.
Composing Simple Sentences

This activity gives students a purpose for composing grammatical sentences that apply the phonics and high-frequency words they have been taught. Books that have a single sentence per page and that include a "story word" to go with the picture (typical in books Levels A and B) work best for this activity.

Narrative Writing

In some predictable books, the pictures are the most interesting part. A book like, Oh No! (Level A) tells nearly the whole story through the illustrations. Discussing the pictures and creating a story requires students to draw inferences, share observations, and tell/write a story in sequential order.

Writing Speech or Thought Bubbles

The illustrations in predictable texts often communicate the personalities, feelings, and interactions of characters and, to the extent the text tells a story, mirror the story's narrative structure. The pictures provide a built-in scaffold for students as they think about and discuss what characters might be saying (or thinking).

Grammar Instruction

The repetitive sentence structure in predictable books can be used to teach students the parts of speech and how to use those parts to compose increasingly complex sentences (orally and/or in writing). Strategies from Guided Language Acquisition Design (GLAD) benefit language learners of all levels.

Sentence Combining

For this activity, students use paired sentences from a predictable text to generate more complex sentences. Depending on students' language and writing ability, you might choose to do more or less sophisticated sentence combining. The difficulty of the activity can also be varied by determining how much of the writing is completed by the teacher or the students

Writing Conventions

At Level C and above, predictable books tend to have punctuation, like quotation marks and commas, as well as text features, such as bolded words and dialog tags. A big book can provide multiple opportunities to show students the written conventions you would like to see in their writing.

Spelling High-frequency Words

This activity is best suited to irregularly spelled high-frequency words, such as do and one. Students get repeated practice identifying, saying, writing, and correctly spelling high-frequency words in the context of complete, grammatical sentences. Focus this activity on words recently taught during reading instruction so students receive extra practice and learn to spell the words correctly for their own writing.

Language Development for Beginning English-learners

In this activity, students have multiple opportunities to point to images and say what they are. Using sentence frames provides students with repeated practice producing complete, grammatical sentences with the vocabulary they are learning.

Vocabulary Picture Cards

This activity previews or reviews vocabulary related to a topic. As you select words for vocabulary cards, target words that are grade-level appropriate and that will be high-utility in and outside of the classroom.

Labeled Collage

Because so many predictable books are on the same topics (gardens, farms, playing, etc.) it's easy to make book sets. A few books on the same topic, preferably each with a different type of illustration, make great raw material for a collage.

Separator

Onward and Upward!

Predictable books are not the best tool for teaching students how to read, but they can be put to good use in class discussions, ELD or writing lessons, literacy centers, and art. The activities we've shared are just a starting place and we'd love to hear what other ideas you have for using predictable books.

Balanced Literacy instructional change leveled books

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What Do I Do with All These Predictable Books?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Many teachers have already reorganized our leveled libraries because we learned that, according to Fountas and Pinnell, "levels have no place in classroom libraries." Sorting books into bins labele...

# data[].attributes.headline
Helping Students with Dyslexia Read Long Words Using Syllables and Morphemes

# data[].attributes.subject
Helping Students with Dyslexia Read Long Words Using Syllables and Morphemes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Decoding Strategies - Blinding Lights - The Weeknd (Parody)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Breaking Closed Syllable Words - Old Town Road - Lil Nas X (Parody)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Breaking Open Syllable Words - bad guy - Billie Eilish (Parody)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Vowel Team Syllables (VT) - Don't Start Now - Dua Lipa (Parody)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Interactive Read Aloud Template and Samples

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
STEPS Small Group Instruction: Focus on Word Accuracy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Texas Center for Learning Disabilities: Vocabulary and Comprehension: Interventions for Upper-Elementary Students With Reading Difficulties

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Texas Center for Learning Disabilities (TCLD) website disseminates resources on learning disabilities to parents, teachers, and researchers.

# data[].attributes.headline
Logic of English Phonogram Cards and Rules

# data[].attributes.subject
Logic of English Phonogram Cards and Rules

# data[].attributes.headline
Designing Classroom Libraries for Knowledge, Vocabulary, and Engagement 

# data[].attributes.subject
Designing Classroom Libraries for Knowledge, Vocabulary, and Engagement 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Conduct a Google Image Search for "classroom libraries" and the screen will fill with brightly colored baskets and neatly printed labels. Zoom into that picture, and more often than not you'll find "reading levels" in alphabetic or numeric form. Maybe the baskets will be interspersed with genre bins, with "fantasy" or "realistic fiction" in colorful block print.
Typical result from a Google Image Search for "classroom libraries"
This is not surprising. Many popular curriculums, professional development resources, and school-based approaches to literacy presume or even require the use of leveled texts to match readers with a specific reading level.

"Leveling Texts" is a ubiquitous practice in American classrooms, however, research shows that students can access higher level texts with high levels of comprehension when they have a strong working knowledge of the topic the text is about. Think about your own working knowledge about, let's say, home repair, and what type of text you might be able to access as a result. Thus, using an approach where students are only allowed to read texts "at their level" may be holding them back from reading books they actually have more interest in, texts that will allow them to develop a love of reading. In fact, in the Fountas and Pinnell blog (Note: Fountas and Pinnell were the original creators of the lettered text-leveling system) it was recently stated that "Telling students to choose by 'level' is not an authentic way to select books to read independently."

The same research points to the fact that students build vocabulary and knowledge when studying content that is conceptually or topically linked - thus allowing them to access increasingly more difficult texts that may be a better match for their interests.

All of this led us to consider the questions: What changes in student motivation and reading behavior could occur when texts for independent reading are arranged by topic? What implications might this have in practice?

And so, the Book Basket Project was born. Several teachers from different schools, states, and settings convened groups of three to five fellow teachers to test the effect of topic-organized libraries in their classrooms. They followed the general approach below:

Sort book baskets into groups that are linked by related content. Wherever possible, ensure that the texts have similar vocabulary and content.

Label the bins based on the topic.

Encourage students to read a full set: ideally, from simplest to most complex.

Ask questions like "What do you want to know about?" and "What have you learned?" instead of "What is your level?"

Help students select texts that they are interested in, and monitor their comprehension to ensure that they are able to access the content.

Teachers were asked to study the impact of the redesigned independent reading strategy and classroom libraries on the engagement, enthusiasm, and motivation of their students, including those below-, on-, and above-grade-level.
Exploring fossils Easy to package, exchange, and trade! "The element of choice has been very motivating for students. They love reading about the topics they are interested in!" "These book baskets have created a joy and excitement for reading like no other. I will continue to use the book baskets to help encourage my students to love books even more! They even wrote their own books to add to some of the topic baskets!" "Students make connections between information they read in each text on the same topic. Seeing knowledge repeated reinforces what they know. The additional knowledge provided in each text adds to what they already learned in the earlier texts." First grade student survey about reading before and after the Book Basket Project. From Ms. Tori Filler's classroom at Exceed Charter School in Brooklyn. First grade student survey after Book Basket Project-same books, just different baskets! From Ms. Tori Filler's classroom From Ms. Tori Filler's classroom at Exceed Charter School in Brooklyn. at Exceed Charter School in Brooklyn. Mobile cart with text sets
Our Book Basket pilot participants used different approaches to put this idea into practice. Some rearranged only their classroom libraries, looking for logical groupings. Others combined with the school librarian or literacy specialist to create portable book bins that could be traded and shared across classrooms. Others added text sets, or created their own, using printable resources that matched the grade level. Texts could be complex, simple, or a range-the key was to allow for student choice and interest, and to combine texts that would allow for students to truly study a topic or concept over time.

Within the first two months, our pilot participants reported seeing dramatic improvements in their classrooms. Students across all groups appeared more motivated, engaged, and enthusiastic about reading.

Teachers also reported a noticeable change in the way students were talking about and responding to texts.

There is continued learning that needs to be done while adopting this approach in the classroom. Supporting students in deciding what they will read independently and continuing to monitor their reading are both important, especially with struggling readers who may be interested in a topic based text far more complex than their decoding or fluency skills at the time. What better motivation for productive struggle, however, than the promise of high-interest reading?

Check out these "before" and "after" videos with the same student whose class participated in the Book Basket Project.

Take a look around your school or classroom. Are you offering the opportunity for all students to become engaged, independent consumers of knowledge and vocabulary? If not, perhaps it is time to make a shift.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Designing Classroom Libraries that Build Knowledge, Vocabulary, and Engagement - Peers and Pedagogy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Conduct a Google Image Search for "classroom libraries" and the screen will fill with brightly colored baskets and neatly printed labels. Zoom into that picture, and more often than not you'll find "reading levels" in alphabetic or numeric form. Maybe the baskets will be interspersed with genre bins, with "fantasy" or "realistic fiction" in colorful [...]