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Harriett Janetos's avatar

"It shouldn’t take very long to help students understand a concept like 'making predictions' or 'summarizing.”'The studies that support such instruction generally last no more than six weeks, and a prominent reading expert has concluded that students accrue all the benefits they’re going to get from it after just ten sessions, which is equivalent to two weeks.

So why have them “practice” these skills and strategies month after month, year after year? Why not have them start applying those strategies to content in subjects like social studies, science, and literature as soon as possible, so that they’re using them to acquire, deepen, and retain new knowledge?"

I would take this one step further and say that the strategy 'practice' actually comes through APPLICATION to text. There doesn't need to be a six-week period of isolated strategy instruction. What there needs to be at the beginning of introducing a strategy is more 'We do together' rather than 'You do' (using Anita Archer's lesson structure of "I do, we do, you do") as analysis and discussion of the text is scaffolded--with the hope that students can eventually apply the strategy independently as they read.

Thank you for adding clarifications to Tim Shanahan's piece--both very important.

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Sandie Barrie Blackley's avatar

Knowledge-building involves, in part, learning new words. Here is a fascinating study about the relationship between teachers' use of academic words and their 2nd grade students' vocabulary. They say, "Our findings demonstrate that, at present, students have only limited access on average to academic language or the grade-level vocabulary in the curriculum, during the oral instruction and discussion from their teachers."

Wanzek, J., Wood, C., & Schatschneider, C. (2023). Teacher Vocabulary Use and Student Language and Literacy Achievement. JSHR, ePub Ahead of Issue,1-14

https://doi.org/23814764000300140072

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