The Knowledge Matters Podcast

• Natalie Wexler on How Writing Promotes Clear Thinking | Literacy and the Science of Learning

  “Teaching students to write clearly was actually teaching them to think clearly.” In the Season 3 finale, host Natalie Wexler brings listeners inside Monroe City Schools, a high-poverty Louisiana district where educators have paired a content-rich curriculum with explicit writing instruction. This combination has not only helped students become fluent writers but also expanded their ability  to understand complex content and think analytically.For writing instruction to work, the curriculum needs to dive deeply into specific topics. “It’s hard to build a complex paragraph and sentence structure around something that’s a relatively simple idea. You're able to use those higher-leverage strategies when the content gives you something to work with,” explains the district’s former chief academic officer, Serena White.Monroe City Schools had been using the content-rich Louisiana Guidebooks curriculum for several years, and many students were able to understand lessons, read the texts, and participate in class discussions. But writing was a different story: “when it came down to actually composing and expository writing, they struggled greatly. . . Many times they just wouldn’t put anything,” White explains.In 2017, she came across The Writing Revolution, a guide to an explicit method of writing instruction grounded in cognitive science. Wexler co-authored the book and is on the advisory board of the organization that provides training in the method. It has three crucial characteristics, Wexler explains.First, writing activities are embedded in the content of the curriculum, across subject areas. Second, grammar and rules of syntax are taught in the context of students’ own writing. And third, the heavy cognitive load that writing imposes is lightened so that students can enjoy the potential cognitive benefits of writing, like retrieval practice and elaboration. After the district adopted the method, teachers began to see changes for all students, including those who struggled the most. Students were writing in complete sentences, outlining and drafting coherent essays, and tackling written responses on standardized tests with confidence, says teacher Tamla South. Teacher Justin Overacker adds:“You’re helping students write with clarity and with purpose and confidence across disciplines. And let's be real: these are skills that are very essential for college and career and life.”Like most educators, those in Monroe weren’t familiar with cognitive science. They just wanted to teach their kids how to write. Their experience shows that even if teachers haven’t learned about concepts like retrieval practice, they can provide their students with all the benefits of science-informed instruction—and equip them for success in school and beyond—by adopting an explicit, carefully sequenced method of writing instruction.This podcast is produced by the Knowledge Matters Campaign and StandardsWork. Follow the Knowledge Matters Campaign on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Search #knowledgematters to join the conversation.Production by Tressa Versteeg. Original music and sound engineering by Aidan Shea.

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• Natalie Wexler on Memory and the Writing Effect | Literacy and the Science of Learning

  Writing is hard—and teaching writing is even harder. But science tells us it’s well worth the effort, because writing flexes the mental muscles that nurture literacy and learning.Host Natalie Wexler connects cognitive science to specific writing practices that transfer information from working to long-term memory and require students to retrieve and elaborate on that information. She’s joined by psychologists John Sweller and Jeffrey Karpicke, whose research has identified effective instructional and academic strategies for teaching, learning, and lightening students’ cognitive loads.“Writing isn't just a product—it’s part of the process of learning. In fact, evidence shows that having students write about what they’re learning can result in dramatic cognitive benefits,” Wexler says.Learning and putting new information to use is a two-way process: students must first transfer new information from working to long-term memory. Then they must be able to remember that information by retrieving it from their memory stores. Writing supports both. Karpicke describes an experiment in which college students read science texts in different conditions. Compared to students who read the text once, twice or created a concept map, students who read the text once and then wrote down everything they remembered, recalled significantly more about the topic a week later. Many studies have found the same result: writing boosts memory. But not all writing has the same impact. Writing prompts that require elaboration, such as “how” or “why” questions, help expand and strengthen understanding by drawing new connections to the material. And writing is not equally effective for all students. Inexperienced writers can be so cognitively overwhelmed by the task of writing that it actually impedes learning.Wexler explains how teachers can ease the cognitive burden on students who are learning to write. First, they can ask students to write about content they've already learned about, so they don’t have to juggle new information in working memory along with the cognitive demands of writing. That approach also helps deepen students’ knowledge of curriculum content.Sweller describes how teachers also can provide opportunities for “deliberate practice,” which can make foundational literacy skills automatic. For example, students who have mastered spelling rules don’t have to think about spelling when they write. Higher-order writing skills never become completely automatic, but practice helps. For example, students who practice distinguishing between complete sentences and fragments, with feedback from a teacher, eventually “develop a gut sense of what makes a sentence a sentence,” Wexler notes.These processes work together to enhance student writing—which accelerates literacy and knowledge—not as an end-product, but an active part of the learning process.This podcast is produced by the Knowledge Matters Campaign and StandardsWork. Follow the Knowledge Matters Campaign on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Search #knowledgematters to join the conversation.Production by Tressa Versteeg. Original music and sound engineering by Aidan Shea.

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• Doug Lemov on the Power of Whole Books | Literacy and the Science of Learning

  “The book is in a death struggle with electronic and social media. And right now, it’s losing.”Host Doug Lemov makes a spirited case for reading whole books in the classroom—especially since today’s students read almost no books outside of school. He’s joined by guests Stephen Sawchuk of Education Week and cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham and speaks with two Texas educators using whole books in their school.“Learning to be able to struggle—to read a challenging text, and to persist with it—is one of the greatest gifts an education can give students,” Lemov says.Sawchuk discusses the trade-offs of a common shift to reading shorter-form excerpts and articles instead of books, which builds attention and stamina because teachers can grow the length of reading assignments over time.“In this drive to respond to the formats that we think kids are most engaged by, we end up further weakening the kinds of text and language structures that kids are exposed to,” Sawchuk says.Willingham explains that books relay stories, which are “psychologically privileged”—our minds more readily understand and remember information contained in stories compared to other kinds of texts. Books also call on readers to actively engage and persist to make meaning. “In this novel, you can't flick your thumb and make something else happen. You kind of need to sit with it and see what you can make of it.”Books also model long-form reflective thinking—which stands in stark contrast to modern social-media posts, where a few words or brief video provide a snapshot of right-now considerations, Lemov notes.“Books are the medium in which people have been doing their best long form thinking for hundreds of years. They are the storehouses of almost every idea that is important to us. Whether it is the seeds of democracy or the foundations of science, chances are it has been communicated and passed down in the form of a book,” he says.A visit to teacher Lori Hughes’ classroom in Amarillo, Texas, shows the benefits of reading books in class together. The way students read orally becomes the way they read silently, and the community activity builds engagement and enthusiasm. Principal Genie Baca notes, “The word I would use more than anything is investment. Whether you're a low reader or a very fluent reader, these kids get so invested in the book and the characters like we've never seen before.”That’s no surprise–as Lemov says, “When what you read is meaningful, you are more likely to read again. But if what you read is an exercise in main-idea-ing, you are likely to choose your phone.”This podcast is produced by the Knowledge Matters Campaign and StandardsWork. Follow the Knowledge Matters Campaign on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Search #knowledgematters to join the conversation.Production by Tressa Versteeg. Original music and sound engineering by Aidan Shea.

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• Doug Lemov on Fluency's Impact on Comprehension | Literacy and the Science of Learning

  When we read fluently, we recognize words without effort. We also maintain an engaged pace (automaticity) and perceive expression (prosody), all of which support attention and leave working memory free to make meaning from a text. This is a complex achievement, and many students have fractured attention spans. What can educators do to account for interruptions and focus on building fluency, which is key to developing comprehension?Host Doug Lemov looks at the science of how we read and the foundational aspects of literacy that teachers can purposefully support in the classroom. Today’s students are surrounded by digital distractions and struggle to focus with stamina, and many schools have responded by teaching shorter texts. But the change in student attention shows that it is malleable.“What if, rather than reducing the attentional demands of what we read, we tried to build up students’ capacity to focus by carefully attending to the details of how they read?”Doug details how educators can curate an environment where students regularly read attentively, thoughtfully, and deeply for sustained periods of time. They can reintroduce reading time in the classroom, have students read hard-copy books together, and build in social exchanges so students are motivated to interact with one another in thoughtful and sustained ways.Researcher and literacy expert David Paige joins the conversation to explain the importance of sustained attention and fluency as it relates to working memory. In particular, oral reading can be a critical teaching tool, and read-alouds are powerful for students of all ages. When students read with prosody, they don’t just understand the meaning of the words in a passage; words begin to sound like spoken language, and students gain a more engaged internal reading “voice.”“We can change students’ reading habits from the outside in.”This podcast is produced by the Knowledge Matters Campaign and StandardsWork. Follow the Knowledge Matters Campaign on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Search #knowledgematters to join the conversation.Production by Tressa Versteeg. Original music and sound engineering by Aidan Shea.

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• Dylan Wiliam on Building Student Knowledge | Literacy and the Science of Learning

  Our memories grow stronger when we work to retrieve them. That’s why flash cards and pop quizzes are effective: they prompt students to recall and access information from their memory bank. What other instructional tools and techniques help students remember what they’ve learned, and how can teachers put these to use?Host Dylan Wiliam takes a deep dive into four vitally important principles that are rooted in cognitive science and receive far less attention than they deserve: retrieval, spacing or distributed practice, metacognition, and interleaving. These concepts are brought to life by guests Patrice Bain and Zach Groshell, educators who have used them in the classroom and written books on the topic.Bain offers a strong overview of memory-building instructional moves, which she calls “power tools.” They include asking students to think about what they’re learning while jotting notes (metacognition), guiding class discussions that focus on material learned a week and more ago (spacing), and teaching varied aspects of related content in a single study session and requiring students to “switch gears” (interleaving).“Too often as teachers we concentrate on putting information into our heads. What if instead we concentrated on pulling information out?”Groshell identifies some common teaching practices where these principles most readily apply: turn-and-talks, exit tickets, and Do Nows, which he recommends include a mix of current, recent, and past content. He also discusses common study techniques that are less effective, like re-reading notes or highlighting a text, because they draw on a student recognizing something familiar, not accessing knowledge from their memory stores. “Recognition and familiarity are really bad cues compared to: if I can retrieve it, if I can have someone test me on it and I can verbalize it or I can write it down. These are much better signs that I'm learning the material.”This podcast is produced by the Knowledge Matters Campaign and StandardsWork. Follow the Knowledge Matters Campaign on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Search #knowledgematters to join the conversation.Production by Tressa Versteeg. Original music and sound engineering by Aidan Shea.

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