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"Does all of this mean that something like summarizing is a transferable skill? I would say no—at least, not in the sense that riding a bike is, or decoding words. Background knowledge is still crucial. The fact that students can create a good summary of a text on a topic they know a lot about doesn’t mean they’ll automatically be able to write one about a topic that’s unfamiliar. Still, if they’ve been explicitly taught how to create a summary, they’ll be in a much better position to tackle summarizing anything."

I'm thinking about this statement and its application to a student attempting to "get the gist" from this paragraph:

Yodeling developed in the Swiss Alps as a means of communication across mountainous landscapes where voices needed to carry long distances. Alpine herders and villagers used yodeling to call to one another or to communicate with livestock over valleys and rugged terrain, where direct communication wasn’t possible. The unique sound of yodeling, which involves rapid shifts between chest and head voice to create a distinct “yodel” effect, allowed for loud, echoing calls that could be heard from afar. Over time, yodeling became woven into the cultural identity of Alpine communities, evolving from practical signaling into an art form for entertainment and expression.

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In the most recent Teaching Literacy Podcast, https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep57-inferences-with-dr-marianne-rice/id1482475731?i=1000672184530, Marianne Rice discusses the different types of inferences from her recent study, Rice, M., Wijekumar, K., Lambright, K., & Bristow, A. (2023). Inferencing in Reading Comprehension: Examining Variations in Definition, Instruction, and Assessment.

Here's how ChatGPT summarizes them:

In "Inferencing in Reading Comprehension," Rice and colleagues (2023) discuss multiple types of inferencing that are essential to reading comprehension, beyond the basic text-based and knowledge-based inferences. The authors highlight four key types:

Text-Connecting Inferences: These are made by linking information within the text to enhance understanding of details that are not directly explained but implied through nearby sentences or phrases.

Gap-Filling Inferences: Readers use background knowledge to fill in missing information that the text assumes the reader will understand, such as cultural references or assumed events.

Predictive Inferences: These involve anticipating future events or outcomes based on clues given in the text, helping the reader engage actively with the storyline or text development.

Evaluative Inferences: This type requires readers to assess or interpret characters’ actions, motivations, or the author's intentions, encouraging a deeper level of critical thinking.

You state:

"Biologically primary skills or abilities are those that human beings have evolved to do naturally, like speaking one’s native language or walking. We don’t need to teach kids to do those things—and maybe we actually can’t. Making inferences, as I’ve argued before falls into this category (and David Geary mentions it as an example of a biologically primary skill)."

Would you classify all four of these types of inferences as biologically primary?

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I'm saying the basic underlying process of making inferences is biologically primary. Babies can make inferences based on facial expressions. Preschoolers can make inferences about statements in oral language.

Obviously, young children are not necessarily making all the kinds of inferences you list. As I say in the post, kids may well need to be guided to make inferences about texts -- although they're almost certainly making "gap-filling inferences" if they listen to or read simple stories.

But I'm not saying all students will just naturally make all these kinds of inferences. What I'm saying is that I think the best way to enable students to make inferences about text is to guide them to do so in the context of particular texts that are part of the curriculum, rather than through explicit instruction and practice in making inferences in the abstract.

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Thank you for clarifying. It seems to me that teaching strategies "through explicit instruction and practice in making inferences in the abstract," is now widely accepted as ineffective and is turning into a straw man argument, just like the argument that the science of reading only advocates for phonics instruction is a straw man argument. What would be really helpful is expanding upon statements like this one:

“Visualizing,” “predicting,” and “activating background knowledge” all strike me as abilities kids pick up naturally, like inferencing, but don’t always realize they need to apply to understand text. I don’t think these things need to be taught explicitly, in the abstract, but students will probably need to be guided repeatedly to do those things when they’re appropriate to a particular text.

Most of us who have taught upper elementary would agree that our students "need to be guided repeatedly" to make the four types of inference listed, and many of us would call this guidance explicit teaching within the context of teaching a particular text.

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Nov 1·edited Nov 1

Natalie- I appreciate the language you have provided, biologically primary and biologically secondary, to various types of comprehension skills. This leans into the work of researchers such as Archer and Liljedhal that many think are contradictory of each other. Our elementary teachers are especially conflicted when hearing about discovery based learning in math and science and explicit instruction in literacy. We need to help educators see that instruction in a given content need not be either explicit or implicit, but that there are times for each type of instruction. All literacy instruction need not be explicit, for example. There are some skills that are implicit and can be developed. I appreciate Archer's continuum of explicit instruction and believe that comprehension skills can be placed along this continuum, using biologically primary and biologically secondary skills as a guiding factor.

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McKeown is essentially advocating for implicit comprehension instruction while comprehension strategies are explicit. They both aim for the same type of active and engaged reading (the QtA queries are very similar to 'get the gist' in comprehension strategy routines). So yes - same goal but different means. Either is fine at the end of the day, but comprehension strategy instruction has significantly more research behind it. Yes, QtA has one study showing it to be more effective than a particular type of comprehension strategy instruction, but that doesn't negate the hundreds of studies showing comprehension strategy instruction to be effective (of which a lot are a different type of instruction that what was compared to in the McKeown study).

The idea that inferences are natural cognitive actions that we do - and that we don't need to teach them because of that fact - fails to recognise that there are different types of inferences we make when reading, some of which are specialised to reading (see the references below for more information).

I'm always confused when people don't advocate for an approach to comprehension...this post doesn't advocate for QtA, comprehension strategies, or any other approach to reading. When you have lessons, is it just the teacher asking the kids questions and discussing? Are they then summarising at the end? What does a lesson look like (before during and after) sing this approach, Natalie?

Rice, M., Wijekumar, K., Lambright, K., & Bristow, A. (2023). Inferencing in Reading Comprehension: Examining Variations in Definition, Instruction, and Assessment. Technology, Knowledge and Learning. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10758-023-09660-y

Rice, M., & Wijekumar, K. (2024). Inference skills for reading: A meta-analysis of instructional practices. Journal of Educational Psychology, 116(4), 569–589. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000855

Rice, M., Wijekumar, K., Lambright, K., & Stack, A. (2024). Promoting Inference Generation: Using Questioning and Strategy Instruction to Support Upper Elementary Students. The Reading Teacher, 78(2), 121–130. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.2353

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I'm aware there are many studies showing that comprehension strategy instruction is effective, but for a variety of reasons that I have gone into elsewhere, I don't think those studies support the kind of comprehension instruction that goes on in most classrooms. My most recent discussion of that issue can be found in this post: https://nataliewexler.substack.com/p/beyond-reading-comprehension-strategies.

And of course students do need to be guided to understand text, especially complex text -- so I'd say I AM advocating for an approach to comprehension, but that approach would put a text or topic in the foreground and bring in whatever skills or strategies are appropriate to help students understand the particular topic or text.

Teaching kids to summarize, and teaching them explicitly how to write about what they're learning, would be only one way of helping students understand text -- not the only way. Sometimes teachers will ask students to compare and contrast, or predict, or whatever. But what they ask students to do would be determined by the text or the topic, not the "skill of the week."

If you're curious about how The Writing Revolution method works, I would suggest that you take a look at the book. There are lots of ways to integrate writing activities, including summarizing, into instruction across content areas and grade levels.

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Nov 2·edited Nov 2

Thanks for your response. I've read the writing revolution and use some of its resources.

The idea that we should only use strategies that the text requires is a good one, but I'm not sure McKeown or any of the other researchers/approaches you mention would disagree with that statement.

Further, getting the main idea of a text or section of a text is necessary to engage with higher order thinking and analysis, which is why lots of the frameworks have 'get the gist' or 'main idea' as strategies that should be applied to any text that's read. . .

So when you are reading a text and using the strategies that are central to understanding the text, how are you suggesting that be done? The answer to that question would help clarify how your approach differs from others.

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I'm not sure how to answer that question. It's pretty broad! There are lots of ways to use strategies to understand a text, and most of us just do it unconsciously.

Personally, one of the things I do when I want to be sure I'm understanding a text is to take notes on it -- and that's one of the strategies explicitly taught as part of The Writing Revolution method.

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Broad? I thought it was very specific. I'm simply asking how - as teachers - we should actually run a lesson based on your recommendation to teach strategies that are needed for the text which is being read.

Is your recommendation that kids take notes? My understanding is that is a study skills strategy, not a comprehension strategy.

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In my instructional guide to reading (From Sound to Summary: Braiding the Reading Rope to Make Words Make Sense), here's an example of the "paragraph shrinking" process I used with my third graders where they practice how to "get the gist" by coming up with a summary sentence of no more than 15 words for each paragraph to help them summarize the whole article.

Article: Take It From Nature: Scientists are Looking to Nature to Solve Problems—Time for Kids

Focus Question: How have scientists solved problems by copying features in plants and animals?

Paragraph 1: Japan’s bullet train traveled at lightning speed. But zipping out of a tunnel produced a thunderous boom. To solve the train’s noise problem, Eiji Nakatsu looked to the kingfisher bird.

Summary Sentence: The kingfisher bird helped solve the noise problem from Japan’s bullet train. (12 words)

Paragraph 2: Nakatsu is an engineer and a bird-watcher. He studied the kingfisher closely. It could dive through the air and into the water without much of a splash. The bird could do this thanks to its streamlined beak. Nakatsu suggested the train’s nose be modeled after the bird’s beak.

Summary sentence: Japanese engineer Eiji Nakatsu modeled the train’s nose after the kingfisher’s streamlined beak. (13 words)

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Thanks for that. I'm still left wondering if Natalie thinks this is a good idea as you're suggesting that you teach the kids to use the same strategy everytime they read. This seems to contradict her idea of using strategies as they are needed in the text.

For the record, i think your approach is great.

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I use reading skills vocabulary in all kinds of situations with my middle grade students, most of whom are reluctant, or even non, readers. If we watch a video I ask something like "What is the main idea of that Ted Talk?" Or, when starting a lesson I ask them to look at the materials I have prepared and make an inference about the activity we are about to do. I don't know if any of that transfers to reading, but I want them to think about the many different levels of communication happening around them all the time. When we read I talk about reading as another form of communication that they can use to understand the world. 🤷 My students seem receptive to these ideas, even if they don't put them into practice

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