š§µ I fear a significant number of primary leaders are about to make a huge mistake. Itās a completely honest one, and this isnāt an attack, but it is serious enough that we should warn against it. It concerns reading, and what they might be about to do with their SATs dataā¦
Many will be trying to identify domains from the curriculum that this cohort scored poorly on eg retrieval/inference/explanation in the hope that they can target these using tailored question types and try to close the reading gap. An example might be an āinference interventionā
I completely understand the desire to do this, but treating reading like maths is a huge mistake. Setting up āinferenceā or āretrievalā interventions is one of the least evidence-based things you can do, but more importantly, itās one of the least effective too.
We are stuck in a pedagogical landscape that still believes there are such things as ācomprehension skillsā, which can be practised and improved. This, Iām afraid, is just not true. It is also responsible for some of the worst practice in our sector and itās time to end the lie.
If youāre reading this and you oversee a reading curriculum that teaches āinferenceā on one day and āretrievalā on another etc, please donāt get defensive. Iām honestly not trying to shame you or patronise you ā I speak as someone who has been there and wants to share my journey.
Itās an incredibly difficult thing to admit that something you have implemented could be wrong, and the purpose of this thread is to try and summarise the best thinking on this issue and provide a supportive path forward for anyone wanting to transform their reading offer.
First up: 2 slides from a presentation by the brilliant @ReadingShanahan (
tinyurl.com/2ek826ya
@ReadingShanahan They were expecting children who scored lower on the test to show better performance on the more literal (what we might call retrieval) questions and struggle more on the inferential ones. But as you can see, this didnāt (and doesnāt) happen. So they tried somethingā¦
@ReadingShanahan They analysed the data a different way, splitting āliteralā and āinferentialā even further into what they believed were separate skills. If they could show the variance in skills, they could use gap analysis to boost scores, surely? As you can see though, still no differenceā¦
@ReadingShanahan This was an ENORMOUS sample by the way. The ACT concluded that if texts were easy, students could answer any kind of question about them, but with sufficiently complex texts, they couldnāt answer any question types, no matter how simple.
@ReadingShanahan As Tim Shanahan says, āAn odd kind of skill, the performance of which is totally dependent on the contexts in which it is used.ā He goes on to say āIf you are serious about raising reading achievement, there is no point to teaching comprehension skills.ā
@ReadingShanahan @TheReadingApe (there isnāt a more knowledgeable reading expert on Twitter) is equally brutal, and we should make a mantra of it: āthe teaching of comprehension as a skills-based construct has no place in reading education.ā
@ReadingShanahan @TheReadingApe I hope you're starting to believe me. But just in case, let us call our 3rd expert witness, @Suchmo83, author of the seminal text 'The Art & Science of Teaching Primary Reading': "Is language comprehension a skill that can be transferred to a different context? No, it is not."
@ReadingShanahan @TheReadingApe @Suchmo83 "[Most comprehension teaching] is based on the notion that as long as children practise, say, making an inference in a given context, this will improve their ability to make inferences in other contexts. There is *ZERO EVIDENCE* to support the existence of such generic skills..."
@ReadingShanahan @TheReadingApe @Suchmo83 So if the route to excellent reading instruction isn't 'inference on Monday, retrieval on Tuesday' etc, then what is it? There's just no way I can answer this fully in a handful of tweets, so please make sure you read the 3 texts at the end of this thread. However...
@ReadingShanahan @TheReadingApe @Suchmo83 In a nutshell, the first step is realising that a child's 'skill' in comprehension is not something that can be separated from the specific text they are reading. If the child is reading a text about their own family, they are more likely to comprehend it than a text about mine.
@ReadingShanahan @TheReadingApe @Suchmo83 In other words, it is not some imaginary 'inference skill' doing the work, but the child's pre-existing *knowledge* that they bring to the text. A child's comprehension cannot exceed this knowledge: the ones who know most about the world are the ones who comprehend the most.
@ReadingShanahan @TheReadingApe @Suchmo83 Any reading curriculum that wants to improve children's comprehension must be centred on the accrual of background knowledge and vocabulary. The Reading Ape has broken this essential knowledge down into further categories, which I've found helpful:
@ReadingShanahan @TheReadingApe @Suchmo83 a) Topic knowledge (related to topic of text) b) Domain knowledge (related to a disciplinary area e.g. biology) c) Cultural knowledge d) General or world knowledge
@ReadingShanahan @TheReadingApe @Suchmo83 Once your curriculum has figured out how to address this need, it should do something very controversial. Are you ready? Eliminate all 'question types'. That's right, don't think of or label questions in terms of 'inference', 'retrieval', 'explanation' etc. They're not needed.
@ReadingShanahan @TheReadingApe @Suchmo83 Instead, focus *only* on which parts of the text require the most thinking about to comprehend, and design questions accordingly. Without a second thought as to which box they might tick. The goal is COMPREHENSION of the whole text, not covering question types.
@ReadingShanahan @TheReadingApe @Suchmo83 A good reading curriculum must, as an absolute minimum, treat text as something which a child can extract meaning and, dare I venture, wisdom from. The selection of texts should resemble the selection of medicines. Choose the most curative. The ones most conducive to flourishing.
@ReadingShanahan @TheReadingApe @Suchmo83 When you start from a list of reading skills, the text is arbitrary. It doesn't matter what they read, as long as they're practising their skills. Let's make it controversial to put random comprehension worksheets in front of the children in our care.
@ReadingShanahan @TheReadingApe @Suchmo83 If a child asks "Miss, why are we reading this text?" let's have a bloody good answer for them. It should roll off the tip of our tongue and fill them with a sense that no-one in the world cares more about their imagination than the person standing in front of them.
@ReadingShanahan @TheReadingApe @Suchmo83 OK, there is SO much more to say on this topic, but I'll zip it for now. The biggest thing missing from this thread is a discussion of the strategies that may be useful in bringing children to a fuller understanding of the texts they read.
@ReadingShanahan @TheReadingApe @Suchmo83 If you want to find out more about how to move away from skills-based reading instruction to the promised land of what @suchmo83 has termed 'context-first reading', these are your best starting points:
@ReadingShanahan @TheReadingApe @Suchmo83 1. The Art and Science of Teaching Primary Reading by Christopher Such @Suchmo83 https://t.co/DlqpzcDpP4 2. IS READING COMPREHENSION AN ACTUAL THING? by @TheReadingApe https://t.co/AYcDRt6elS 3. Skills or Strategies by @ReadingShanahan https://t.co/IDrtZAzna9 Enjoy & good luck!
uk.bookshop.org/books/the-art-ā¦
thereadingape.com/single-post/20ā¦
shanahanonliteracy.com/blog/comprehenā¦
