Rich Talk about Text
P. David Pearson
Graduate School of Education
University of California,
Berkeley
www.scienceandliteracy.org
Reminders from Scott
• Close Reading
– What do you think?
– What makes you think so?
• Teachers, like readers, develop both a text base
and a situation model for the PD we offer to
them.
– Hence the variability in uptake and implementation.
– Stay the course, just in time feedback…
• Teaching for Cognitive Engagement
www.scienceandliteracy.org
• Look for presentations by me
• Also a site to learn more about the work I
am doing on science and literacy with
primary grade kids.
Some assumptions
• You have in place a program of comprehension
instruction for skills and strategies
– Reciprocal Teaching
– Transactional Strategies Instruction
• You have taken a position on what sort of
assessments you are you going to use to assess
students’ growth in reading
– I like performance assessments--open ended, but…
This is a goal
•
•
•
•
For every child
In every classroom
In every grade
Being satisfied with good decoding and word
recognition is not enough
• Being satisfied with great fluency is not enough
• It is comprehension, understanding, enjoyment,
and insight for every child.
Talk about Text
• An environment rich in high-quality talk
about text.
– teacher-to-student
– student-to-student talk.
• Many levels
– Text base: clarifying and connecting
– Situation model: relating, interpreting
– Critique and evaluation
We have pretty good models
and research on this score
•Instructional Conversations
•Questioning the Author
•Junior Great Books
Aesthetic-Expressive
•Collaborative Reasoning
•Paidea Seminar
•Philosophy for Children
Efferent
•Book Club
•Literature Circle
•Grand Conversations
Critical Analytic
Murphy et al Meta-analysis
• What’s the underlying theory of all of
these interventions?
Change talk:
focus and
distribution
Change
understanding
of text at hand
Change
comprehension
repertoire
Summary findings
• Pre-post effects
are more
impressive than
comparative
effects.
• Most things work
to a degree
• Kids get better
with help…and
maybe without it
Summary findings
• Effects are more
impressive on
researcher
designed than
distal measures.
• Transfer is hard
• or
• Standardized tests
are insensitive.
Summary findings
• Stronger effects
on talk than
comprehension.
• Changes in
participation are a
necessary but not a
sufficient condition
for comp
Summary findings
• Some evidence of
you get what you
pay for, especially
for critical
thinking.
• Probably means you
gotta do it all…
• Literal
• Inferential
• Critical
Summary findings
• Seems to be more
important for
average and low
achievers
• Ironically, most of us
spend more
discussion time with
the high achievers
• Beware self-delusion
Summary findings
• Time matters:
longer is better
• Stay the course
• Ironically, we tend to
discard things
rapidly
Research failing
• Some don’t
measure
comprehension
• Don’t measure
many types of
comprehension
• Insist on measures of
talk and
comprehension.
• Measure many kinds
of comprehension,
including stuff not
directly taught.
A great example from New
Standards
Toughest Problem: Promoting
higher level talk about text
• In our CIERA work, the good news is
that when we see it, it improves learning
and achievement, but…
• The bad news is that we don’t see it very
much
Supporting talk about text
Conversational Move
Defini tion
Exampl e (Student talk)
Scaffolds (Teacher talk)
Restating
Repeating a previous contribution
Can someone say that in a different way?
Inviting
Inviting a participant to contribute
Linda said that the fish was sad,
because he was lonely.
IΥd like to hear w hat George thinks.
Acknowledging or
validating
Recognizing a response without
agreeing or disagreeing
Focusing/refocusing
Making a metacomm ent about the
course of the conversation
Agreeing
Disagreeing
Extending oneΥsown or anotherΥs
assertion
Elaborating
Requesting clarification
or elaboration
Providing an example
Signaling a change
Providing evidence
Posing a question to the
group
I can see why you said that.
I get what youΥre saying.
I hadnΥt thought of that.
We were talking about the reasons that
Frank ran away from h ome.
I agree, becauseΙ
Yeah.
ThatΥs right, becauseΙ
I see what youΥre saying, butΙ
But what aboutΙ?
I disagree, becauseΙ
I agree with Juan that the fish was
lonely, and I think that he...
AlsoΙ
What do you mean? Can you say mo re
about that? What makes you think that?
Providing an example from inside
of the text or outside to support
oneΥs own or anotherΥsassertion.
Examples can be explanatory or
evidentiary
Changing the direction of the
conversation
For exampleΙ
ItΥslike whenΙ
Supporting oneΥs own or
anotherΥsassertions with evidence
I agree with Julie that the fish was sad.
You can see his sad face in the picture
on page 3.
I want to talk ab out the mo ther.
Does anyone thinkΙ ?
www.scienceandliteracy.org
Do you want to invite anyone else to add to what you
said?
Do you get what Juan is trying to say here?
I think IΥve lost track of the question we were trying to
answer. Can anyone help me here?
Does anyone agree with Juan? (agreeing)
Does anyone want to disagree?
Does anyone see it another way?
Do you all see this the same way as Juan?
Does anyone want to say something mo re about that?
Who can think of another solution or another reason?
Does anyone want to raise any questions about the point
that Juan is trying to make?
Anyone find anything confusing in this part of the story?
Can you give an example of Ι from the story?
Has anything like this ever happened to you or someone
you know?
Can you think of an example from another story by this
author?
Does anyone want to change the subject?
Are you ready to move on?
Does anyone want to ask a different question?
Why do you think that?
Anything in the story to support that idea?
Can you point to something in the text that makes you
think that?
Do you have a question for the group?
Same teacher--more scaffolding
Different Teacher--More Novice
Kids: Even more scaffolding
The nature and amount of
scaffolding is a matter of being
responsive…
Individuals
Groups
Texts and Tasks
Context
Gradual Release of Responsibility
100
With any luck, we move this way (----->) over time.
Gradual Release of Responsibility
0
0
Student Responsibility
100
Changing Teacher Roles
High Teacher
Low Teacher
Low Student
High Student
Explicit Instruction
Modeling
Scaffolding
Facilitating
Au and Raphael
Participating
From Duke & Pearson
The Rand
Model
Sociocultural
Reader
Text
Activity
Context
A variant of
Kintsch’s model
Questions for Stories
• Read the text for the big ideas
• Generate some probes to get at them
– Go from general to specific
• So what is important about this story?
• So is this story more about the plot or the characters?
• So what does this story tell us about how human beings look out
for one another?
– Go for Response before Comprehension
– Go for comprehension to support response or claims: facts in
the service of claims about the world—Accountable Talk
– Work for a unified understanding of plot, character, feelings,
motives.
• Somewhere Somebody Wanted a Problem Solved…
Generating Questions for
Expository Pieces
• Read the text
• Record what you think are the big ideas
• Read it again, looking for connections
among the big ideas*
• Generate a set of questions that will get
you the big ideas and the connections
between them.
*When you can’t find big ideas and relations among
them, question whether to use the text!
Talk, Skills and Strategies
• Conversations about stories and informational
texts can be a context in which a lot of good
strategy instruction CAN occur, if we are
willing to seize teachable moments (just in time
teaching) to show kids how to use strategies to
solve problems and make text sensible.
• That’s the genius of Instructional
Conversations
• That’s what happens in good RT conversations.
Contextualizing what I have
said
•
•
•
•
A good model
Solid instruction
Thoughtful assessment
Supportive instructional environment
What that supportive context
can do...
Daniella using all the cues
This is a Formula for a
Renaissance (maybe a revival?)
www.scienceandliteracy.org
Opportunity
• A great deal of time spent actually
reading:
The nature of texts
• The texts are interesting and comprehensible and
sufficiently varied so that all students can find texts to
relate to (interest and motivation).
• Daily, students read texts that are personally
interesting and easy to read. Why? So that students
can consolidate their learning of skills and strategies.
• Also on a daily basis, students read, with teacher
support, more challenging texts. Why? In order to
stretch their knowledge and skill repertoire.
Establish tomorrow’s prior knowledge.
The nature of texts in
effective programs
1. While common sense suggests that some of these texts
should allow students to apply the decoding and
comprehension skills they are learning, there is
precious little evidence to support the creation and use
of special instructional texts for this purpose.
2. The current corpus of
children’s books contains
numerous texts that provide
many of the opportunities
students need.
Opportunity
• The big ruckus from the National
Reading Panel
• Should we promote independent reading?
What people think NRP says
• Don’t provide time for independent
reading.
What NRP really says
• The evidence is too sketchy to draw any
conclusion one way or another…
– About school-based programs to promote
independent reading
• DEAR
• SSSR
My own view
• The lack of credible evidence one way or
another is no basis for getting rid of programs
that have other virtues
• Is reading the only phenomenon in human
experience that doesn’t get better with practice
• If you do it, do it right and do it well
– Make sure kids have things to read
– Make sure kids DO read
– Provide incentives and support
Comprehension Activities in K
and early 1
• In the context of teacher read alouds
• Why?
– Texts that merit the sort of engagement and
depth of thinking we want to promote.
– Finesse the decoding issue
• Warning: You can’t stay there forever.
Must get to texts kids read themselves
Authenticity
• Experience reading real texts for real
reasons.
Beware the textoid problem
• When we select texts that have been
especially written to permit some sort of
skill activity
• We run the risk of reifying these texts
• Making real something that isn’t
• They only exist on tests and workbook
materials designed to get you ready to
take the tests.
Sue’s grandmother lives on a farm. Ellen’s
grandmother lives in the city. Sue’s
grandmother, who just turned 55, phones Sue
every month. Ellen’s grandmother, who is also
55, sends Ellen e-mails several times a week.
Both grandmothers love their granddaughters.
• How are Sue and Ellen’s grandmothers alike?
– They both love their granddaughters
– They both use e-mail
– They both live on a farm
• How are they different?
– They live in different places
– They have different color hair
– They are different ages
Range
• Experience reading at least the range of text
genres that we wish students to comprehend.
– Substantial experience reading and writing it.
– No automatic transfer across genres
A special note on the narrative
centrism in primary instruction
• Why shouldn’t we just focus on stories?
• We surely want to include instruction and
activities in response to stories, but…
• We don’t want to limit our instruction and
activities to stories
– The range issue
– The power of information
– Individual differences in preference and interest
Vocabulary/Concept
Development
• It really matters
• Later today
Enabling skills: Decoding,
Fluency, and Monitoring
• Substantial facility in the accurate and
automatic decoding of words.
• Necessary but not sufficient for
comprehension
When rules get in the way…
Writing
• Lots of time spent writing texts for others to
comprehend. Again, students should experience
writing the range of genres we wish them to be
able to comprehend. Their instruction should
emphasize connections between reading and
writing, developing students’ abilities to write
like a reader and read like a writer.
Why Writing Helps Reading
• You can’t write without reading: the writer’s first
reader.
• When you write, you often seek information through
reading
• Writing makes the metaphor “constructing a model of
meaning” completely explicit.
• Writing helps us decide what we really “think” about a
topic (stares back at you).
• Writing makes metacognition transparent (makes
monitoring visible)
Why Writing Helps Reading
• Writing reinforces some reading processes
– An authentic context for phonemic awareness (listen
to the word in parts, match a letter to each part)
– Examining claim and support is like unearthing the
relationship between MI and Details
• By the way, reading helps writing too--by
providing good models of well-crafted prose,
spelling, and punctuation.