Yes -- E.D. Hirsch has said a lot of the same things I say, beginning over 30 years ago, and I have definitely drawn on his work (he features prominently in my book, The Knowledge Gap).
I also was a guest on that podcast -- if you're interested, it's here:
I loved The Knowledge Gap! As a principal I offered to facilitate a voluntary book study on your book and every single teacher in our building joined in to read it. Consequently, teachers began using the free version of CKLA. I will definitely listen to the podcast and I appreciate all of your work on this important topic. Thank you!
This is a super important point out of many you make:
Teachers Need Curriculum That Incorporates Strategies
But even when the strategies recommended in Classroom Instruction are on solid ground, the authors’ summaries of studies often don’t provide enough information to enable teachers to transfer them easily to the classroom. What teachers really need is curriculum that provides rich content for students, in a coherent and logically sequenced manner, and incorporates research-backed instructional strategies in a way that’s likely to work best.
There are very interesting PD statistics about 'transfer to practice' which show that without direct coaching transfer rarely happens. In this case, if there isn't enough information in the book about transfer, that makes it even harder. I recently responded to the pushback on Sold a Story with this piece: Getting Reading Right: On Truths, Truce, and Trust.
For me, trust comes from gleaning where experts intersect with each other and how their recommendations in turn intersect with my classroom experience. I was fortunate to have stumbled upon the science of reading nearly two decades ago through the books by cognitive psychologist Diane McGuinness. She was right, for example, that the notion of an 'r-controlled vowel' is a phonics fabrication, as made-up as three-cueing because the vowels in 'for,' 'far,' and 'fir' are not uniformly ‘controlled’. But she was wrong about dyslexia, so I've looked to Nadine Gaab for guidance in that area. Similarly, Timothy Shanahan, Mark Seidenberg, and Daniel Willingham have helped me contextualize the oft-cited baseball study and have illuminated both the promise and limitations of promoting the background knowledge that Natalie Wexler ardently advocates.
Actually, the way "author's purpose" is "taught" in schools is less amorphous, but I'd say even more reductive. There are basically only three possible answers to the question of author's purpose: to Persuade, to Inform, or to Entertain (the handy mnemonic is "PIE"). These purposes are thought to be mutually exclusive.
I believe this "skill" came to be added to the usual round of comprehension skills (main idea, etc.) after the Common Core led to more nonfiction being taught in elementary schools, which led to the idea that there were "nonfiction skills" that could be directly taught, and "author's purpose" was one of them. But then again, I once saw a second-grader filling out an "author's purpose" worksheet for a comic book he was reading.
Thank you for always being so thought provoking! Have you listened to this? Totally aligns with what you write about.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/education-research-reading-room/id1200068608?i=1000552429349
Yes -- E.D. Hirsch has said a lot of the same things I say, beginning over 30 years ago, and I have definitely drawn on his work (he features prominently in my book, The Knowledge Gap).
I also was a guest on that podcast -- if you're interested, it's here:
https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/errr-034-natalie-wexler-on-the-knowledge-gap/id1200068608?i=1000451771323
I loved The Knowledge Gap! As a principal I offered to facilitate a voluntary book study on your book and every single teacher in our building joined in to read it. Consequently, teachers began using the free version of CKLA. I will definitely listen to the podcast and I appreciate all of your work on this important topic. Thank you!
This is a super important point out of many you make:
Teachers Need Curriculum That Incorporates Strategies
But even when the strategies recommended in Classroom Instruction are on solid ground, the authors’ summaries of studies often don’t provide enough information to enable teachers to transfer them easily to the classroom. What teachers really need is curriculum that provides rich content for students, in a coherent and logically sequenced manner, and incorporates research-backed instructional strategies in a way that’s likely to work best.
There are very interesting PD statistics about 'transfer to practice' which show that without direct coaching transfer rarely happens. In this case, if there isn't enough information in the book about transfer, that makes it even harder. I recently responded to the pushback on Sold a Story with this piece: Getting Reading Right: On Truths, Truce, and Trust.
https://pamelasnow.blogspot.com/2023/01/guest-post-getting-reading-right-on.html
Here's how I addressed transfer to practice:
Trust: Knowing which reading experts to follow
For me, trust comes from gleaning where experts intersect with each other and how their recommendations in turn intersect with my classroom experience. I was fortunate to have stumbled upon the science of reading nearly two decades ago through the books by cognitive psychologist Diane McGuinness. She was right, for example, that the notion of an 'r-controlled vowel' is a phonics fabrication, as made-up as three-cueing because the vowels in 'for,' 'far,' and 'fir' are not uniformly ‘controlled’. But she was wrong about dyslexia, so I've looked to Nadine Gaab for guidance in that area. Similarly, Timothy Shanahan, Mark Seidenberg, and Daniel Willingham have helped me contextualize the oft-cited baseball study and have illuminated both the promise and limitations of promoting the background knowledge that Natalie Wexler ardently advocates.
Actually, the way "author's purpose" is "taught" in schools is less amorphous, but I'd say even more reductive. There are basically only three possible answers to the question of author's purpose: to Persuade, to Inform, or to Entertain (the handy mnemonic is "PIE"). These purposes are thought to be mutually exclusive.
I believe this "skill" came to be added to the usual round of comprehension skills (main idea, etc.) after the Common Core led to more nonfiction being taught in elementary schools, which led to the idea that there were "nonfiction skills" that could be directly taught, and "author's purpose" was one of them. But then again, I once saw a second-grader filling out an "author's purpose" worksheet for a comic book he was reading.