In this episode of Science of Reading: The Podcast, Susan Lambert is joined by University of Oregon College of Education Professor and Ann Swindells Chair in Education Gina Biancarosa, Ed.D., to explore how best to assess for comprehension. Gina elaborates on her extensive work developing more precise and informative measurements of reading comprehension and discusses think-aloud research, demonstrating how to infer for coherence, and examining how students who are struggling with comprehension tend to rely too heavily on making inferences or paraphrasing.

Show notes:

• Submit your questions on comprehension!
• Access free, high-quality resources at our brand new, companion professional learning page.
• Connect with Gina on LinkedIn.
• Read “Diagnostic and Instructionally Relevant Measurement of Reading Comprehension”
• Resources:
• Listen to Season 2 of Amplify’s Beyond My Years podcast.
• Join our community Facebook group.
• Connect with Susan Lambert.

Quotes:

"A lot of what we know about reading comprehension comes from think-alouds where you ask someone to tell you what they're thinking as they read." —Gina Biancarosa, Ed.D

"To model reading comprehension, [try] thinking aloud in front of a classroom of students in a way that is instructive for them, and also authentic to the reading process." —Gina Biancarosa, Ed.D.

"Students are making causal inferences in their daily lives, when they watch movies, and when they're hearing stories. And so what we're really trying to do is get them to generalize these behaviors that they engage in outside of the task of reading, during reading." —Gina Biancarosa, Ed.D.

Episode Timestamps:
02:00 Introduction: Gina Biancarosa, Ed.D. and comprehension assessment
08:00 How do we assess comprehension?
14:00 Think-aloud research
21:00 MOCCA (Multiple-Choice Online Causal Comprehension Assessment)
24:00 Causal coherence
30:00 Paraphrasers and elaborators
33:00 Comprehension assessment research
39:00 Professional development and comprehension assessment
42:00 Closing thoughts
*Timestamps are approximate, rounded to nearest minute

In this episode of Science of Reading: The Podcast, Susan Lambert is joined by Northwestern University Professor of Education, Social Policy, and Psychology David Rapp. David’s research focuses on language and memory, and his conversation with Susan gives insight into how memory is connected to comprehension. The first half of the episode is spent defining comprehension as a process, a product, and a higher-order cognitive process. David then digs into how that definition informs the ways in which educators assess comprehension and where they can look for potential failure points. One of these failure points includes misinformation. David addresses what happens when misinformation is stored in long-term memory. He details the issues this can cause for student comprehension, and he gives guidance on how to prevent and correct them.

Show notes:

• Submit your questions on comprehension!
• Access free, high-quality resources at our brand new, companion professional learning page.
• Check out David Rapp's lab.
• Resources:
  • Listen to Season 2 of Amplify’s Beyond My Years podcast.
• Join our community Facebook group.
• Connect with Susan Lambert.

Quotes:

“Once the information is in memory, you can't really get rid of it. What you can try to do is make other memories more powerful, more likely to resonate to things.” —David Rapp, Ph.D.

“Sometimes our most effective processes actually lead us to misunderstand. For example, you're really good at encoding information to memory, that's great, except if you're exposed to inaccurate ideas, that's a problem.” —David Rapp, Ph.D.

“It feels easy for us to comprehend texts if we're well practiced at it, it feels easy, but it's actually a lot of cognitive operations going on behind the scenes and a lot of years of practice.” —David Rapp, Ph.D.

“In terms of being exposed to misinformation, we see even if people have been exposed to inaccurate ideas, even once, it's encoded into memory, it's potentially gonna be there to influence you.” —David Rapp, Ph.D.

Episode Timestamps
02:00 Introduction: Who is David Rapp?
04:00 Defining reading comprehension
05:00 Comprehension as a process vs a product
08:00 Comprehension as a higher order cognitive process
12:00 Coherence
18:00 Memory activation and misinformation
21:00 Consequences of misinformation
25:00 Correcting misinformation
28:00 Preventing misinformation
36:00 The evolution of thinking on comprehension
40:00 Current research
45:00 Closing thoughts and encouragement to dig into research
*Timestamps are approximate, rounded to nearest minute

In this episode of Science of Reading: The Podcast, Susan Lambert is joined by Doug Lemov, former teacher and school principal, to discuss how teachers can identify when disfluency is actually the root cause for students’ struggles with comprehension—and what they can do about it. Using his new book, The Teach Like a Champion Guide to the Science of Reading, to guide the discussion, Susan and Doug address building attention stamina, the argument for reading whole books, and the value of expressive read-alouds. Finally, Doug ends the episode asserting that humans are meant to live in community, and that a deeper level of comprehension is unlocked through deep empathic connection to text and the experience of reading with others.

Show notes:

• Listen to Season 2 of the Beyond My Years podcast for solutions to common teaching challenges directly from seasoned educators.
• Connect with Doug Lemov:
  • X: @Doug_Lemov
• Resources:
  • Read: The Teach Like a Champion Guide to the Science of Reading
  • Watch: Gabby Woolf’s Dr. Jekyll Lesson and the Power of Reading Fluency
  • Listen: ”Phonology as a settled science”
  • Listen: ”The plea to preserve deep reading, with Maryanne Wolf, Ed.D.”
  • Listen: ”Writing the way to better reading, with Judith Hochman, Ed.D.”
  • Listen: ”The joy of reading aloud, with Molly Ness”
  • Download: cComprehension 101 Bundle
• Submit your questions on comprehension!
• Join our community Facebook Group: www.facebook.com/groups/scienceofreading
• Connect with Susan Lambert: www.linkedin.com/in/susan-lambert-b1512761/

Quotes:

“If you're not a fluent reader, you can't be a deep reader.”—Doug Lemov

“The research is clear that when you start to read expressively externally, then your internal reading voice while reading silently is much more expressive and therefore infused with more meaning.”—Doug Lemov

Episode Timestamps
03:00 Introduction: Doug Lemov
05:00 The importance of the middle grades
07:00 Book: The Teach like a Champion Guide to the Science of Reading
13:00 How to build attention stamina
16:00 Background knowledge and vocabulary
19:00 Writing’s impact on memory and reading
22:00 The value in reading whole books
25:00 Embracing smaller writing assignments
27:00 Fluency deep dive
30:00 Working memory
35:00 Troubleshooting fluency
39:00 Expressive reading
41:00 Read-alouds
44:00 Reading as a social act
52:00 The argument for books
*Timestamps are approximate, rounded to nearest minute