What Will the Future Bring? A Narrow Window of Opportunity to Get Comprehension Instruction Right !!!

1. Slides posted at www.scienceandliteracy.org P. David PearsonUC Berkeley What Will the Future Bring? A Narrow Window of Opportunity to Get Comprehension Instruction Right!!!

2. A Confluence of Opportunity • A model of comprehension processes • The Construction-Integration model of Walter Kintsch. • A framework that can be used to shape instruction in a productive and flexible manner • The Four Resources Model of Peter Freebody and Allan Luke • A policy lever that can be used to frame the accountability system to which we hitch our wagon • The Common Core Standards for English Language Arts • An assessment framework that could shape the terms of our accountability system • The National Assessment of Educational Progress • A new rhetorical frame • Deeper Learning

3. Could the Stars be Aligned? Let’s unpack each of these components a little See how they fit together See where they might take us in terms of curriculum and pedagogy Discuss the ways in which it could all unravel

4. THE CONFLUENCE… Common Core Kintsch Four Resources NAEP

5. The Common Core Standards…

6. Just to remind us College and Career Readiness Standards Common Core State Standards (grade by grade) Assessments to measure their mastery

7. 10 recurring standards for College and Career Readiness Show up grade after grade In more complex applications to more sophisticated texts Across the disciplines of literature, science, and social studies

8. Affordances of the CCS • An uplifting vision based on our best research on the nature of reading comprehension • Focus on results rather than means • Integrated model of literacy • Shared responsibility (text in subject matter learning)

9. An Uplifting Vision: ELA CCSS Students who meet the Standards readily undertake the close, attentive, reading that is at the heart of understanding and enjoying complex works of literature. They habitually perform the critical reading necessary to pick carefully through the staggering amount of information available today in print and digitally. They actively seek the wide, deep, and thoughtful engagement with high-quality literary and informational texts that builds knowledge, enlarges experience, and broadens world views. They reflexively demonstrate the cogent reasoning and use of evidence essential to both private deliberation and responsible citizenship in a democratic republic.

10. Focus on results rather than means* • Why? • Leave a place for each lower level to add its own signature • Some decisions about means really are local • Appropriate role for a larger body politic • Balance between our goals and our methods *This is one issue on which there is reason to be concerned. Pick up later.

11. From the ELA Standards Document… By emphasizing required achievements, the Standards leave room for teachers, curriculum developers, and states to determine how those goals should be reached and what additional topics should be addressed. Thus, the Standards do not mandate such things as a particular writing process or the full range of metacognitive strategies that students may need to monitor and direct their thinking and learning. Teachers are thus free to provide students with whatever tools and knowledge their professional judgment and experience identify as most helpful for meeting the goals set out in the Standards.”

12. Integrated Model of Literacy • Two views of integration • Integrated Language Arts • Integration between ELA and disciplines • The CCSS are better on the interdisciplinary than on the ELA integration • Corresponds to the actual uses to which reading and writing are put. • Reading, writing, and language always serve specific purposes • Reading and writing, not generically, • But about something in particular

13. The something in particular What reading, writing and language look like in a domain The information for a particular topic or unit or chapter The information in a particular text

14. Our current view of curriculum Social Studies Language Arts Mathematics Science

15. A model I like: Tools by Disciplines Academic Disciplines……….. Language Tools 

16. Early: Tools dominate Academic Disciplines……….. Language Tools 

17. Later: Disciplines dominate Academic Disciplines……….. Language Tools 

18. Weaving is even a better metaphor than a matrix Language Writing Reading math literature Social studies Science 

19. Reading Writing Language Literature Social Studies Science Mathematics

20. Shared Responsibility • English and Subject Matter • What we said before, reading and writing are always situated in a topic and a purpose. • Knowledge fuels comprehension and writing. • Reading and writing, along with experience and instruction, fuel knowledge. • Reading and writing and language work better when they are “tools” for the acquisition of • Knowledge • Insight • Joy

23. Why sharing now? • The gap for college and workplace readiness • The increasing demands of an informational society • Finally addressing a problem that has always been there • Increasing awareness among disciplinary scholars • April 23, 2010 edition of Science.

24. The historical pathway to Kintsch’s Construction Integration Model

25. Reader Text Reading Comprehension Context Most models of reading have tried to explain how reader factors, text factors and context factors interact when readers make meaning.

26. Bottom up and New Criticism: Text-centric Reader Text Reading Reading Comprehension Context The bottom up cognitive models of the 60s were very text centric, as was the “new criticism” model of literature from the 40s and 50s (I.A. Richards)

27. Pedagogy for Bottom up and New Criticism: Text-centric • Since the meaning is in the text, we need to go dig it out… • Leads to Questions that • Interrogate the facts of the text • Get to the “right” interpretation • Writerly readings or textual readings

28. Reader Schema and Reader Response: Reader-centric Text Reading Comprehension Context The schema based cognitive models of the 70s and the reader response models (Rosenblatt) of the 80s focused more on reader factors--knowledge or interpretation mattered most

29. Pedagogy for Reader-centric • Since the meaning is largely in the reader, we need to go dig it out… • Spend a lot of time on • Building background knowledge • Inferences needed to build a coherent model of meaning • Readers’ impressions, expressions, unbridled response • Readerly readings

30. Critical literacy models: Context-centric Reader Text Reading Reading Comprehension Context The sociocultural models of the 90s focused on the central role of context (purpose, situation, discourse community)

31. Pedagogy for Critical literacy models • Since the meaning is largely in the context, we need to go dig it out… • Questions that get at the social, political and economic underbelly of the text • Whose interests are served by this text? • What is the author trying to get us to believe? • What features of the text contribute to the interpretation that money is evil?

32. CI: Balance Reader and Text: little c for context Reader Text Reading Comprehension Context In Kintsch’s model, Reader and Text factors are balanced, and context plays a “background” role--in purpose and motivation.

33. Pedagogical implications for CI • Since the meaning is in this reader text interface, we need to go dig it out… • Query the accuracy of the text base. • What is going on in this part here where it says… • What does it mean when it says… • I was confused by this part… • Ascertain the situation model. • So what is going on here? • What do you know that we didn’t know before?

34. KintschModel Text 3 Knowledge Base 1 Text Base 2 Situation Model Experience Out in the world Inside the Reader’shead

35. NAEP Locate and Recall Interpret and Integrate Critique and Evaluate

36. Common Core Standards 1-3: Key ideas and details Standards 4-6: Craft and structure Standards 7-9: Integration of knowledge and ideas

37. CCSS NAEP • Key ideas and details • Craft and structure • Integration of knowledge and ideas • Range and level of text complexity • Locate and Recall • Interpret and Integrate • Critique and Evaluate • Complexity is specified but implicit not explicit

38. Consistent with Cognitive Views of Reading Key Ideas and Details Locate and Recall What the text says Decoder Kintsch’sConstruction-Integration Model Build a text base Construct a “situation” model Put the knowledge gained to work by applying it to novel situations. Integration of Knowledge and Ideas Integrate and Interpret Meaning Maker What the text means Craft and Structure What the text does Critique and Evaluate User/Analyst/Critic

39. Says Means Does

40. Context Kintchian Model Text 3 Knowledge Base Reader as Text User/Analyst/Critic Does>>>>>>>>> 1 Text Base 2 Situation Model Experience Reader as Decoder Says Reader as Meaning Maker Means Out in the world Inside the head

41. These consistencies provide… Credibility Stretch Research “patina”

42. How could this all unravel? • We instantiate one or more of the components inaccurately. • My candidates for conspiracies of good intentions • Close Reading: What the right hand giveth the left hand taketh away • Giving up on a tough assessment agenda

43. Close Reading From literature classes What do you think? What makes you think so? All about warranting claims about what the text means. Thrilled when I saw the distribution of the first 9 CCSS But…

44. www.corestandards.org/assets/Publishers_Criteria_for_3-12.pdfwww.corestandards.org/assets/Publishers_Criteria_for_3-12.pdf

45. The nature of the texts • C. Shorter, challenging texts that elicit close reading and re-reading are provided regularly at each grade. • The study of short texts is particularly useful to enable students at a wide range of reading levels to participate in the close analysis of more demanding text. • Such reading focuses on what lies within the four corners of the text.

46. Questions and Tasks • A. A significant percentage of tasks and questions are text dependent. • The standards strongly focus on students gathering evidence, knowledge, and insight from what they read and therefore require that a majority of the questions and tasks that students ask and respond to be based on the text under consideration. Rigorous text-dependent questions require students to demonstrate that they not only can follow the details of what is explicitly stated but also are able to make valid claims that square with all the evidence in the text. • Text-dependent questions do not require information or evidence from outside the text or texts; they establish what follows and what does not follow from the text itself

47. D. Questions and tasks require careful comprehension of the text before asking for further evaluation or interpretation. • The Common Core State Standards call for students to demonstrate a careful understanding of what they read before engaging their opinions, appraisals, or interpretations. Aligned materials should thereforerequirestudents to demonstrate that they have followed the details and logic of an author’s argument before they are asked to evaluate the thesis or compare the thesis to others.

48. Materials make the text the focus of instruction by avoiding features that distract from the text. • Teachers’ guides or students’ editions of curriculum materials should highlight the reading selections. Everything included in the surrounding materials should be thoughtfully considered and justified before being included. • Given the focus of the Common Core State Standards, publishers should be extremely sparing in offering activities that are not text based.