Shorts

Special Education is like the Wild West of #edreform. Here's a tip: if it don't work for SWDs, then chances r it aint workin for other kids.

Schools will not be fixed merely via pedagogy. Content is the heart. Content knowledge and the content delivered. #edreform #CommonCore

Does the concept of hysteresis apply to public schools? If so, caution must be taken when altering school communities: http://bit.ly/wRaotM

In my thinking, and writing, I attempt to avoid categorization. Yet deliberate eclecticism detracts from blog stats and Klout scores. O well

Deep learning is about transgressing borders erected by tradition and complacency. But one must first become cognizant of said borders

Forget iPads. Give every student a Raspberry Pi. They need to become comfortable with command lines. We need more hackers, not consumers.

If we can grow rice at high yields without using chemicals, can we raise student achievement w/o harming communities? http://buff.ly/XfRpbN

Maybe this is an inane thought, but what if NOLA ed improvement is due solely to physical dispersion, rather than charter conversion?

@mandercorn Meaning, that the simple mechanism of dispersing students irregardless of geographical boundaries (hence, diversity) is key

@mandercorn Rather than the (I think misguided) common inference that charter schools are inherently more effective

We are entering an era of increasing turbulence. Climate, economy, and politics. Chaos and complexity must be understood across domains

At a PD by @DTWillingham today. What he's saying is quite disruptive comparative to US norms: curriculum should sequentially build knowledge

@DTWillingham imagine if we put our focus and energy as a school/district towards the study of carefully selected texts & topics.

@DTWillingham it sounds deceptively simple, yet it would overturn nearly every rote process and approach currently relied upon by schools

If we can do this with giant flying sheets of metal, pretty sure we can figure out how to teach all kids to read. It requires a dedication to figuring out why failure occurs when it does, and what we can do systematically to address it. https://x.com/SimonCalder/status/947799731513823232

Too many teachers operate from the perspective of "my kids can't," rather than "I don't yet know how to." This is a fundamental shift in mindset that leads to continuous improvement.

Likewise, too many administrators operate under "our teachers can't," rather than "I need to figure out how to better support them."

Just had a thought the other day. Why do our public representatives need to be real people? If their function is to listen to and balance the needs of their constituency, why not make a virtual representative, an algorithmic avatar?

It sounds silly, but consider how the primary issues we run into with representatives are issues of human fallibility, corruption, and trust. A virtual representative would impartially reflect aggregate constituent views.

There's already work being done on building Liquid Democracy processes atop blockchains. This may not be as sci fi crazy as it sounds. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23531424-500-bitcoin-tech-to-put-political-power-in-the-hands-of-voters/

Also, this would remove all of the nonsense about electing a public representative just based upon completely irrelevant and superficial traits, such as the way he or she looks or talks.

I'm studying the topic of acoustics in schools. Learning about signal-to-noise ratios and reverberation times. What stands out to me the most is that standards for acoustics are not compulsory, and older schools most definitely were not designed with acoustics in mind.

Acoustical treatments are not prohibitively expensive, but I have never heard them discussed, even in a school with an open classroom plan that makes learning especially challenging. Why would we make it harder for our most vulnerable students to learn?

This follows a theme on most matters of the physical environment for learning. They are of secondary, cosmetic concern. Yet research (and commonsense) is quite clear on the impact of factors such as acoustics, temperature, greenery, fresh air, and lighting.

I spoke recently with a pre-k teacher of students with autism. She can speak directly to the influence of the physical environment. One student would 'stem' off the fluorescent lighting. When she got light covers that removed flickering, the stemming ceased.

I am not a person with autism, but I cringe when I'm in most public school hallways during passing periods. The reverberating noise is deafening. Just think of our most sensitive students experiencing this every single day for years upon years of their most formative period.

Some problems with the trite takeaways from this study. Territoriality and sitting in the same seat may lead more to complacency, rather than learning. Real learning requires some discomfort. https://qz.com/1349508/ via @qz

So I went to each individual state website to see how they label their ESEA mandated 3-8 reading/language arts #assessments.

Here is the list: https://docs.google.com/document/d/11n2BxNjeIOox8KyEcUFopk526yq7dAeeMXO861onIjw/edit?usp=sharing

@AchieveInc @edcommission @ed1stconsulting #testing

This is interesting to me because it's really quite revealing of the confusion in the we have between ELA as a subject and literacy as a set of general skills

ELA as a subject, one would think, would mean much more than just general skills. There's specific knowledge and study of genres, literature and literary techniques, historical epochs and literary canons, critical methods, etc

But because tests are labeled ELA, despite their general nature, literacy then falls under ELA, thus watering down what was once a rich subject

The irony being that our reading scores remain stagnant both on PISA and NAEP because we've completely confused ourselves about what we mean by literacy and thus flub how we teach it.

92% of states refer to their tests as ELA. 12% include the word "literacy"

Thread. Some thoughts on the important new study from Chetty et al. which shows that where a child grows up matters—down to the micro-level https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/01/upshot/maps-neighborhoods-shape-child-poverty.html @emilymbadger @qdbui

Why? Because if you live on a lower floor, you're exposed to more chronic noise. http://psycnet.apa.org/record/1974-08197-001 Such findings have been replicated for sources like proximity to airports, trains, etc. Growing up with constant exposure to a source of pollution impacts outcomes.

There's a few points from other research to add to Chetty's data: a 1973 study of the Bridge Apartments in the Heights—a quartet of high rises bestride the highway that leads to the GWB—found that literally what floor a child lives on determines reading ability.

As part of my job working with schools, I take buses and walk all across the Bronx, from the East River to Westchester Creek, from Woodstock to University Heights. And it's endlessly fascinating to me just how much of a difference a block can make.

Another area of research, which Chetty et al.'s confirms, is the impact of the historical legacy of a neighborhood. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322679394_Towards_Conceptualizing_and_Empirically_Examining_Legacy_of_Place_An_Exploratory_Consideration_of_Historic_Neighborhood_Characteristics_on_Contemporary_Dropout_Behavior We have to not only look at the present characteristics of a community, but it's past.

There's so many other variables of a neighborhood that have been demonstrated to influence health and learning, such as greenery. A longitudinal study in 2016 found that green space in urban neighborhoods in So Cal reduced aggressive behavior in teens. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27343886

Because the very floor in a particular building that a child is raised in, the particular room in a school where the child is taught how to read, can influence outcomes. It's that specific. Environment and context matters.

So it will be interesting to see how these and other factors are rediscovered in Chetty et al.'s data. Such factors compound, which is why it is so complex. But look first and foremost at quality of life factors. Then look at the history of the building, the block, the zone.

A school can adopt standards-aligned, high quality curriculum for various subjects but remain completely incoherent. Literacy is the responsibility of a whole school. @chingos @Standards_Work @chiefsforchange @mpolikoff @EdReports https://schoolecosystem.org/2018/11/03/supporting-the-development-of-clear-and-coherent-literacy-instruction-in-schools/

Please read this @NewYorker piece on noise pollution. And then please think also about noise pollution and it's effect on learning. Some our school environments are the worst acoustical design there is.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/13/is-noise-pollution-the-next-big-public-health-crisis/amp#referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From%20%251%24s

I work with one "open classroom" school where teachers are literally shouting at their students.

Think about it for a second. Our instruction relies upon hearing what is said. And yet in many classrooms students can't hear 25% of what a teacher says.

It's almost like we've designed some schools to make it as difficult to hear as we could. This only puts our most vulnerable students further behind.

A perfect example, just to illustrate: think of a typical public school cafeteria or stairwell. The sound reverberates. Noise begets noise once kids are in such poorly designed acoustical spaces.

I've been spreading the gospel of the Simple View of Reading. Such a useful lens, especially for educators working with students with disabilities. It clarifies how to understand psycho-ed reading information

Knowing the research on repetitive spaced retrieval and self-quizzing has made watching my 2 year old acquire spoken language especially interesting... I'm seeing how he keeps practicing words as he interacts with the world, over and over again.

One problem in the current resurgence of attention on problems w reading instruction: we need to be clear about distinction between skills that can be mastered sequentially (word reading) and knowledge/schema that is complex and cumulative (language).

Self-monitoring for comprehension is different than being unable to efficiently decode words. Word recognition should not be a problem solving strategy. https://x.com/DoctorSam7/status/1163568549299924992

We need as much valid and objective data as we can get to make an IEP. Such a critical piece. But we also need a team of adults discussing, monitoring, and updating that plan in coordination with the student and family to make it come alive. https://x.com/carriemelago/status/1189887617208397824

Did you know that NYC stopped testing hearing in 2009? We need to bring them back as a universal screen. Especially given what we now know about the phonological basis for learning to read. https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/what-new-york-city-misses-by-not-doing-hearing-tests-on-students

Big problem with adopting newer "high quality curriculum": gaps in outcomes are increasing. Teachers need further support in how to scaffold more effectively and engage students in a productive struggle. https://t.co/jjDZfiAChB

I finished training on the PAST with an 8th grade self-contained class, and began working with the teacher to try and figure out how to incorporate phonemic practice into core instruction. This will be tough, but here's the good part . . .(thread)

One of the students I administered the PAST to today, after I was ready to move into the testing asked, "Why are we doing this?" I stopped and realized I hadn't been explaining the purpose of this, and that students should know. . . especially 8th grade students

This class, by the way, is presenting with severe reading needs. We've got a lot of work ahead of us. But now we can see the way. Rime word walls. Station or small group work that can incorporate PA drills with fluency work with grade-level text. Ideas? Send em my way!

When we explored the phonological basis of word reading and practiced some examples of phonological instruction, and we began brainstorming together, she said, "it's becoming clearer to me how I can help this class."

He taught me the narrative that I now will preface every PAST with. 1) Explain the purpose and 2) "We're going to play some word games that move from easier to harder, so if you feel like you're getting stuck, that's OK!"

So I gave an executive summary of the phonological basis of word recognition, and explained that we needed to see what help he might need with hearing and speaking of the sounds in words, so he could read more fluently. He then was ready to do the testing.

Correct and accurate D1 and E2, but 0s on D2 and E3. Then a mix of onset-rime, tapering off at basic phoneme level.

Finally got to assess the 6th grade student using the PAST today who was a catalyst for my push to learn and apply Equipped for Reading Success. He follows a pattern at the syllable level of phonemic awareness that I've started to notice, wondering if others have seen it...

How to design daily activities for his teacher/para that can bridge grade-level work and severe foundational remediation. How to remediate for letter-sound proficiency in middle school. The list goes on...

Such a sweet boy, who spoke with me for a while about his struggles with reading. I really want to help him. But I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed with everything I need to know that I still don't know...

It's fascinating to watch the reactivity of entrenched speakers, PD organizations, and some educators to a recent resurgence of sci on lfoundational reading. Anyone committed to equity should be talking about how we teach reading in K-2 and how we can effectively intervene 3-12. https://x.com/markseidenberg/status/1203341625998659585

Disability, parenting, socioeconomic status, etc...none of that is an excuse. Decoding can be taught to mastery from K-2 for nearly all but the most rare and severe challenges due to hearing/speech impairment.

It's unacceptable that so many children, most especially in historically underresourced and segregated neighborhoods, are moving through our school systems unable to fluently and accurately decode. Most especially because decoding skills are constrained and achievable.

For all our kids. End rant. I got so worked up jabbing my fingers at my phone for this thread that I sent my phone spinning down the length of the bus. You're welcome.

So the reason so many of us are now focused on calling out fuzzy, ineffective practices K-2 that are not fully aligned to what reading research on decoding has revealed is BECAUSE WE CAN TEACH ALL STUDENTS TO DECODE. And currently, we aren't. We need to know better to do better.

Language comprehension and meaning-- the bailiwick of the current backlash--on the other hand, is much more complex and difficult to get right, requiring linguistically and print rich environments, sustained exposure to schema building curriculum, executive function ability, etc.

It's such a great feeling when you talk with someone who understands literacy but hasn't been introduced to orthographic mapping yet, and you see everything begin to "click" for them. It's not the visual memory--its the phonological memory! Aha!

I was rereading Equipped for Reading Success chapter in word study techniques this morning, and another threshold concept began to clarify for me: the importance of the rime. It's the memory link to spoken language that gets broken in straightforward decoding.

As you head home for the holiday weekend, don't forget the magic of the rime! And no, I'm not referring to hoarfrost. https://schoolecosystem.org/2019/12/20/the-magic-of-the-rime-mapping-sounds-to-letters/ #phonemicawareness #scienceofreading

A1: Throwing a bunch of random passages at students and asking them to practice MC strategies isn't going to magically help them become better readers. Kids need to read and discuss texts that are meaningful to them and that will expand their knowledge and vocabulary. #elachat

"It’s ironic that Black English speech is still dismissed and devalued as being linguistically broken, and at the same time is one of the richest sources of lexical innovation in English."

https://daily.jstor.org/black-english-matters/

We need to reconcile an asset based view of AAVE with the teaching of early reading. Seems like there's a tension there. How can we leverage the linguistic beauty of AAVE to learn to decode written English? What are those onramps between AAVE phonology and standard orthography?

I'm beginning to think of The Simple View of Reading in a slightly different way -- I find it helpful to view fluency as the glue between word-level recognition and language comprehension. Thoughts? https://t.co/yGcDX0nrUM

Honestly, if you are a teacher and developing your own lessons right now, STOP. There is an overabundance of free and well-developed online materials already out there. It's just a matter of selection and connecting your students to it.

Let's think beyond online learning when it comes to remote learning. Let's think about how to get books in the hands of kids at home who need it the most.

We’re now in the business of building daily habits, not just in keeping kids in a chair and delivering content. https://schoolecosystem.org/2020/03/18/remote-learning-social-distancing/

What does a culturally responsive and sustaining approach mean right now? It means helping your students process what is happening to them and to their world right now. Please don't just start throwing random passages at them right now. State tests are off the table.

Thinking out loud: I'm wondering whether remote learning needs to lessen a focus on an "instructional core" and instead focus on small group/individual intervention and more opportunities for project-based enrichment. Seems like remote is more suited for those types of learning.

I've gotten into more than few small spats here on Twitter about the nitty gritty of things: what is research-based practice, whether onset-rime is worth teaching, etc. It's all in service of the learning. There's so much more we need to research and figure out in practice.

I've been trying out The PAST phonemic awareness screener and other tools, and sharing pieces of my learning with various small audiences. There's been ups and downs on this journey. It's a tough burden to ask any individual teacher to shoulder, I've found. It's been piecemeal.

I've been on a learning trajectory since that post, reading Louisa Moats, Jeanne Chall, Words Their Way, Alfred Tatum, and many posts and research papers. I've been tapping into the learning of our Universal Literacy coaches, my excellent critical friends here on Twitter....

At the beginning of this school year I wrote about reading, and all the things I've been learning that I didn't know before.

Much in our world has changed since then.

But what we need to do to equip our children to read has not.

https://schoolecosystem.org/2019/08/22/learning-how-kids-learn-to-read/

Please welcome our Bronx ELA Liaisons from District 9. We want to build a shared understanding of the science of reading, culturally responsive teaching, and what can be done within an MTSS model to disrupt and invert the literacy outcomes of our district. #BronxELAchampions

I'm so excited to begin this collective learning journey within my district. We need champions for literacy for our students who are unafraid to confront the data, have a deep love for the communities we serve, and are willing to fight against norms that aren't working for all.

After the shift to remote learning, without the exhaustion of a daily commute on various buses and trains and the time I usually spend in individual schools and classrooms, I've discovered an opportunity to bring teachers in schools across my district together around this.

Just "visited" an elementary school doing solid live instruction each day and keeping their kids engaged and learning by working cohesively as a team. It isn't about synchronous vs. asynchronous instruction. It's about "by any means possible," people.

@MsJasmineMN's response also pushed me to see how making superficial connections to police brutality and racial injustice and coopting Black voices because it's news du jour can be damaging. https://x.com/MsJasmineMN/status/1270086882228043778

This response really got me thinking. I tweeted the original article w/o critical reflection, and I was going to use Hammond's interview myself in an upcoming PD, where I'm trying to link SOR to culturally responsive teaching. I'm rethinking how I want to engage participants https://x.com/Ready4rigor/status/1270194275838341122

I believe strongly that equity work is teaching kids to read, write, and foster critical consciousness about what they read and experience. Trying to bring these threads all together.

@MicheleCaracapp has also got me thinking a lot about how we need to be very careful about how we frame the use of universal screeners and targeted support and instruction. I believe we need to do both -- meet kids where they are, but use that info to scaffold grade-level texts.

Are we considering what students and their families bring to the table and responding to their experiences and knowledge? Are we looking through the remedial lens of a deficit model, or are we planning how we can accelerate learning with grade-level content and expectations?

I view the science of reading as deeply connected to the work of culturally responsive and sustaining education, but there are so many ways that framing of SOR through that lens can go wrong. What texts do we teach? Why?

How about we use this time of school closure to invest in improving school buildings to ensure healthy indoor environments? To provide adequate access to natural light, install HEPA air filters, and add acoustic dampening to reduce noise?

I was going to write a book about the impact of the physical environment on learning, and then life happened, so I'm sharing this chapter on the importance of acoustics instead. https://schoolecosystem.org/2020/09/06/the-influence-of-acoustics-on-learning/

Here's another chapter of that never-to-be-finished book: The Influence of Greenery on Learning. Inequitable access to greenspace (and clean air) should be one of the defining issues of this moment. https://schoolecosystem.org/2020/09/10/the-influence-of-greenery-on-learning/

It never fails to fascinate me that the impulse so many have when a child needs MORE language and literacy is to provide them with FEWER opportunities to engage with meaningful texts.

Instead of giving students less, what if we gave them more? What if we hosted a daily textual and linguistic feast? https://wp.me/pcrIPG-108

I just finished War and Peace the other night. . . well, decided I was finished, there are 2 epilogues and I realized the 2nd was completely unnecessary so I stopped there. The book is powerful, and gripping. I was captivated the entire time. And to think I put it down 20 yrs ago

This is a thread about War and Peace, and also my father's death. And maybe other things, I don't know, I'm grieving. Something about the power of books often so blithely dismissed as too old or outdated. 1/n

I thought of this description when I spoke with my father on the phone the next night for what I did not yet know would be the final time. He didn't want to talk, so my mother talk most of the time. When he did speak, he sounded distant, weary, and I later thought of this passage

"...but it was obvious that he failed to understand, not because he lacked the power to do so but because he understood something else; something the living did not and could not understand; and which wholly occupied his mind."

"In his words, his tone, and especially in that calm, almost antagonistic look could be felt an estrangement from everything belonging to this world, terrible in one who is alive. Evidently only with an effort did he understand anything living; . . . "

because I thought it was boring! I just didn't give it a chance. Anyway, there's those scenes with Prince Andrew as he is dying, and Natasha and Princess Mary realize that he is dying because he becomes distant. . .

Not quite sure what this thread was really about, but there it is. I feel a bit better.

War and Peace gave me an lens for a deeper understanding of real life. That's what great books do. I encourage you to pick it up and read it, in case you have been thinking it was too this or too that.

But thinking back to that last call, and how before saying goodbye that night, he asked for the phone back from my mother and said, "I love you" one final time. It clearly took him a lot of effort.

But of course, I pushed it aside in my mind, and carried on, as we do. Then received the terrible news today that he had died suddenly in the night. He has been battling cancer and receiving chemo, but he seemed to be handling it well. All it took was 2 days.

"With a great effort he tried to return to life and to see things from their point of view. ...'Yes, to them it must seem sad!" he thought. "But how simple it is.'"

This idea that the "science of reading" focuses only on phonics is reductionist and sets up a straw man.

The science of reading includes the understanding that language comprehension is just as important to reading as word-level recognition & decoding.

https://co.chalkbeat.org/2020/12/15/22174706/colorado-emphasis-phonics-reading-hurt-english-language-learners

I definitely get the need to stress that both are important and not to lose sight of that. But the "science of reading" ain't the fall guy here, folks.

Can you imagine how equity in reading outcomes might be achieved if health insurance covered dyslexia evaluation and intervention?

Let's start advocating.

https://www.contemporarypediatrics.com/view/a-pediatrician-s-role-in-dyslexia-where-theory-meets-practice

@JoAnneSimonBK52 I wonder how we could partner with pediatrics to make this happen along with senate Bill S4341?

The forces in our field that would deny students opportunities and access to grade-level expectations, knowledge, and texts is strong. And it is perpetrated under the guise of care and concern.

I feel like writing remains so strangely segregated from reading, both in research and in practice. Yet the irony is that writing is the very technology that enables reading to exist. It's like we have everything backward.

It's genuinely frightening to realize that reading is the "easier" ability to teach and acquire than writing.

Sometimes, you just need to be willing to appear stupid to get to the truth. (Psst, tell students this. Asking questions is how everyone gets smarter!)

I am a big proponent of the Simple View of Reading, but one consequence is that it positions phonology as solely related to decoding, when it also relates to oral language development. This may cause unnecessary debates about phonology instruction.

Clearly, they are deeply interrelated, but a narrow focus on phonemic awareness loses sight of the fact that language development at the word, sentence, and discourse levels is ongoing beyond decoding development.

So there's two strands here in working with speech sounds: the speech sounds necessary for morphological, syntactical, and semantic language development and articulation, and the speech sounds necessary for decoding and encoding.

I think the debates that position synthetic phonics proponents against linguistics approaches loses the forest for the trees. This isn't just about efficiency. This is about ensuring all students gain the opportunity to develop linguistic and cognitive flexibility and proficiency

Phonology is not only about developing the abstraction of phonemic awareness necessary for decoding and encoding writing systems. It is also about the ability to hear and speak the sounds of the language. And language ability is far less constrained and linear than decoding.

This internecine fighting about phonics vs. linguistics approaches seems like a waste of energy to me. We're not only developing students' reading abilities in the early years. We're also developing their language abilities -- and that work continues all throughout education.

So: when we teach decoding and encoding, focus first and foremost on phonemic awareness from the start. Makes total sense. But: when we teach oral language (are we teaching this? If we need to ask, that's part of the problem), we need to instruct at different grain sizes.

The more I learn about learning to read and write, the more I see the importance in a concurrent and ongoing stress on language development. https://languageliteracy.blog/2021/03/14/phonology-how-it-relates-to-language-and-literacy/

As schools and districts now shift to figuring out how to best spend the federal windfall, they would be well advised to invest in acoustical treatment, more access to greenery, and better air purification. These will reap benefits for the long haul. https://wp.me/p47B5n-13T

I find it fascinating that in a nation of 13,000 school districts we talk about the notion of a "canon." Which district's canon are we referring to, now?

While reading 'Bear Came Along' tonight, my 4 year old asked about some marshy type of plant in a picture. After I explained what a "marsh" is, he asked, "Is that like where Martians are?" Really cool to see phonological and morphological awareness develop in real-time.

How about all educators gain access to relevant journals based on their area of speciality or grade-band?

It's really quite absurd that research is meant to expand knowledge, and there is constant decrying how educators don't know the research, but most articles are behind a paywall.

Yes, I get that you can email the author, but that avoids the underlying issue.

We need better ways

What if the beautiful theory that the brain is not born to read is not quite accurate? What if language development actually is enhanced by writing systems? I'm worried it's just a precious and convenient to theory. I should note it's one of my go-tos, so that's why I'm worried.

We often talk about the challenges of written language, rather than about the enhancements to our thinking and communicative ability that the technology can afford us.

Look, it just needs to be said sometimes as a friendly reminder:

A school can have evidence-based programs in place and get horrific results.

A school can use all the fuzzy stuff and get strong results.

We undervalue execution and coherency and organizational culture.

I'm saying this as much to remind myself, as someone strongly committed to research and evidence. I just have seen too many contradictions in practice.

Leadership and commitment and a shared purpose drives excellence, not just whether something on paper is "aligned" or not.

I don't think we talk enough about how general learning ideologies are so often driven by a secondary lens, and don't make any sense at an early elementary level.

The reason there is no established morphology scope and sequence is because what morphemes you teach should be based on what words you teach, and the words you teach should be based on the texts you read. . .

"There is no silver bullet, no easy fix, no technological potion that will magically enable all kids to learn the preferred civic, academic, and social wisdom we’d wish them to ingest." Unless, of course, it's decodables and sound walls. (J/king) http://schoolecosystem.org/2021/07/16/what-will-it-take-to-improve-our-schools/

. . . not to mention many higher-level skills such as genre and text structure knowledge, executive function, text comprehension, even pragmatics (how do they choose to communicate in this medium to this audience on this task)?

One of the richest, and often overlooked, sources of information on students is their writing. Taking time to deeply examine their writing as a team can provide guidance on instructional strengths and needs in phonology, orthography, vocabulary, syntax, motor skills. . . .

If you want to know a student well, take the time to read and examine their writing at a word, sentence, and discourse level. As a team. It will tell you things you don't see in any other source of data. In combination with those other sources, it can be very powerful.

Crazy to think that bi/multilingualism is not only normal but a mandate in some other countries, meanwhile the ongoing struggle to establish bilingual education programs in the U.S.

. . . and to sell you what you never knew you wanted. Of course they will allow bad actors to manipulate truth and dictators to manipulate a populace. A facile vision of social media private enterprise as a utopian fulfillment of democracy/freedom should never have been believed.

And it's ridiculous to expect them not to, while at the same time expecting them to provide you everything for free. Of course they will sell your info to the highest bidder. Of course they will leverage your weaknesses to make you addicted ...

We are facing a reckoning for the Faustian bargain we've made by expecting everything online to be free. You really think a private enterprise like Facebook is actually committed to world peace and connection? They'll sell your soul down the river to make money. . .

We want everything to be free, but won't acknowledge the compromise we make when we join. Maybe it's time to start expecting to pay for the protections we expect.

The missing link in literacy instruction: More frequent opportunities to connect oral language to written language through interactive read-alouds, peer discussion, and shared writing experiences across disciplines.

If we are talking about language and not talking about literacy; or talking about literacy and not talking about language; or if we are not talking about empirical evidence for either . . . . . . then we are not having the conversation that will improve learning.

I dipped my toes into complex adaptive systems thinking on my Schools & Ecosystems blog for a few years, but mostly in relation to physical and social environments of schools -- and just discovered a conceptual bridge to language and literacy! #geekmoment

How about instead of calling it the "science of reading," we call it the science of language and literacy development? Language and literacy development are reciprocal. So much unnecessary tunnel vision out there dividing the two, when we should be surveying all the evidence.

One of the problems with how we understand decoding vs. language/listening comprehension skills: we position phonological awareness under decoding, when phonological awareness is really oral language-based. Decoding (in English) is based primarily on phonemic awareness.

The root of language, literacy, and numeracy is (arguably) naming. The naming of things and places and people, the naming of letters, the naming of numbers. There is some poetry then, perhaps, in that "RAN" is one of the strongest predictors of reading ability.

In this respect it's similar to assessment of reading and language conprehension, which is also highly complex. But writing is arguably even more difficult to untangle.

OK opening a can of worms, but . . . Let's talk about writing assessments in elementary.

Writing performance draws upon a panoply of underlying skills, and assessment is therefore multifaceted -- you could measure any number of given criteria, much of it subjective.

All of it?

Rubrics, which rubrics, how normed? Comparative judgement, how trained what platform? AI automatic grading? Which vendor, how accurate?

Writing assessment is deep. What do you recommend?

So how do we assess writing in a valid and reliable way and gain useful information that will inform instruction?

Is it spelling? Handwriting and motor control? Is it sentence construction, grammatical accuracy? Paragraphs? Genre knowledge? Analysis of prompt and text? Planning?

The problem in education is that everyone just wants strategies they can do in their schools/classrooms tomorrow, when what they really need are better frameworks and deeper knowledge for making better instructional decisions.

First off, why haven't many heard of it yet? And why don't we just call it Speech-Language Impairment (SLI), which is the formal term used for IEPs and services in schools?

It's a rather recent term, not without some debate, that was introduced in 2016 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0158753

Today is #DLDAwarenessDay! Here in the US, Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), seems to not yet be widely known or understood.

So let me try to lay down a few reasons why it has caught my attention, in the hope I can bring it to yours.

A 🧵⬇️

What is the definition of DLD?

DLD is "a language problem that endures into middle childhood and beyond and that has a significant impact on social or educational function."

Sounds important, right?

#Dyslexia has been getting a lot of (warranted!) attention over the last couple of years, resulting in legislation and important investments in early screening.

But did you know that up to 50% of those with dyslexia ALSO have DLD, and vice versa? https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30458538/

By adopting a unified term, which can be recognized internationally, allows for stronger advocacy. This is important because "the lack of awareness among the general population translates into limited resources for addressing the problem."

Why use the new term?

There hasn't been consensus about terms, and the identification used for SLI has been too narrow. DLD is a broader term, which can include SLI, that allows for a diagnosis alongside co-occuring conditions, such as dyslexia, ADHD... https://pubs.asha.org/doi/10.1044/2019_PERSP-19-00083

We need to improve identification of this need from the earliest grades, so we can ensure our instructional core address this need, with intensified supports when needed.

Check out the great work of @TrinaDSpencer2 and others on this: http://www.trinastoolbox.com/

We have many children in our classrooms who need our district, school, and teacher leaders to understand that they need supports with language development.

Wait time after questioning, talking slowly, providing concrete scaffolds to accompany verbal information.

And follow leaders in the US and beyond doing advocacy and research on DLD @tiffanyphogan @larchiba6 @SuzAdlof . . . I know I'm forgetting many here, please tag in more leaders!

"The bottom line is that a young reader must use everything he knows to move through a written text, to read it accurately and understand it." No, the bottom line is that word-level accuracy and automaticity must be developed for text-level comprehension. https://fpblog.fountasandpinnell.com/just-to-clarify-faq-blog-series-q2

I am totally on board with turning "the entire education system upside down" for that 20 percent who aren't learning to read. It's way bigger than 20 percent, by the way. https://x.com/EvidentlyR/status/1457857302170509312

Been seeing a lot about bilingual cognitive advantages lately. . . Listen, there are a lot of very strong reasons to advocate for multilingualism. We don't need a supposed cognitive advantage to make the case. https://x.com/mandercorn/status/1316076278865448960

I may have just spent almost an hour comparing the English word 'precipitation' against its Arabic equivalent, looking at differences in phonology and morphology. Two great resources: https://www.asha.org/practice/multicultural/phono/ https://www.internationalphoneticalphabet.org/ipa-sounds/ipa-chart-with-sounds/

Just finished Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom.

I highly recommend. The continued resonance of Douglass's voice through the ages is remarkable, and this detailed account of his life is also inspiring. I knew little beyond his own Narrative...

https://g.co/kgs/kfcve7

Narrative was a touchstone for me in my professional development as a teacher. In my 3rd year teaching 5th grade, fed up with the scattered incoherence of my school curriculum (TCRWP), I bulk printed the Narrative and began reading it every day to my students, using CKLA lessons

This biography makes it clear just how amazingly rich and complex this remarkable man's life was. Basically from the minute he was embraced by Garrisonian abolitionists and added to their roadshow, he never stopped traveling and giving speeches until nearly his final breath

When I later cotaught 6-8 grades, his 4th of July Hypocrisy of American Slavery speech was another of my go-tos for close and critical reading. But I knew little of his words or life beyond these texts.

We read every single page. And his words carried the full force of his intellect, insight, and craft into my classroom. His vivid passage describing the painful irony of slaves singing on their way to the Great House Farm through the deep pine woods never fades in force.

Like a musician whose mastery is etched by constant performance on the road, Douglass evolved his oracy to the highest levels of eloquence, passion, pacing, and effect on his listeners. But he also developed his sharp irony and ability to cleave through racist and dim thinking...

I mean, it's crazy to think, his Narrative came out at the beginning of his career, and his Hypocrisy speech was in 1852. . . He died in 1895! So I'd basically been missing a whole body of his work, because he kept producing right up to the end. Much more to read!

He was rarely home, and his ever growing family life was always complicated. But he was able to successfully navigate between races, classes, cultures, and genders in his social life, maintaining deep, intimate and diverse friendships.

In addition, he had decades of experience as a writer and editor, honing his thinking and arguments. That his written voice carries so far through the ages speaks to the depth, range, and discipline of his craft.

...by direct and constant confrontation through his formative barnstorming years. The abolitionists were heckled, fought, and driven from churches, and would give speeches in fields or parks or wherever they could. His time on the road standing and delivering was long

He moved from radical abolitionist outsider to seasoned political insider, yet never lost the flame of raw anger against racism, & he continued to pen and speak jeremiads up to the end that cut through the morass of biased thinking with a clarity of intellect & force of morality

I didn't realize how close to John Brown he was -- he even had to flee the country for a time after Brown's prosecution, nor just how directly connected Douglass was to so many other Black luminaries, like Booker T. Washington, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, and Ida B. Wells.

So much more in the book to talk about, but just want to say this is essential history. Douglass's life spanned a critical period of our past that continues to reverberate today. And the words of his sharpest critiques of our racist society remain painfully accurate.

You began to attune your budding awareness to the prosody of human speech. You began to distinguish the voices of different speakers and between the sounds of different languages.

Language learning begins almost the moment we can hear or feel or move. When you were in the womb, your mother’s heartbeat, sonorous voice, and burbling digestive system bathed you in constant aural stimulation and sparked the rapid development of neural connections in your brain

When our children first come into our schools, whether in pre-K or in kindergarten, they already come with a wide range of unique experiences with language. However, not all have had the same level of exposure to the language of written text . . .

We are born to communicate with and learn from one another, to gesture, to imitate, to assign names and labels, to array things and events and actions into discourse. This amazing ability to learn and communicate is our universal birthright.

After we have entered into the world and the umbilical cord has been cut, language is the interstitial tissue that binds our interactions to the people and objects around us. We cry and wave, we grab and we coo, we point and laugh and babble and shriek.

The academic term for this type of language is “decontextualized” or “abstract” language, and children are exposed to this language whenever an adult reads books aloud to them and talks with them about what they read (“extra-textual talk”).

. . . , a language that tends to be more syntactically complex, with greater use of specialized and infrequent words, greater requirements for inferencing, and glimpses into realms of inquiry that lie beyond the immediate and concrete.

. . . with challenging concepts and ideas. Frankly, I don't think we leverage the power of read-alouds frequently nor effectively enough across our classrooms, and across content areas. #language #readalouds #sharedreading

. . . most especially as disciplinary language grows ever more specialized. The dense yet rich informational texts of social studies and science are ripe for read-alouds, providing opportunities for students to hear complex written text read fluently and engage intellectually. .

These early shared reading experiences improve later reading outcomes and motivation to read. But shared reading shouldn't stop once kids have learned to decode. Read-alouds should continue all the way up through secondary . . .

To commune with the elders. To reckon with capital. To communicate into a void that returns ourselves in reflected potential, a snapshot of a timelessness in which we can almost see beyond our selves into an accumulating consciousness.

Learning a writing system requires the ability to recognize the compositional and combinatorial parts of words and sentences and genres, and to fluently and flexibly use that awareness to step beyond time and space into the realm of abstraction.

"The evidence is overwhelming that when students learn to read written forms that diverge from their spoken vernacular, this has a profoundly detrimental impact on learning to read"

Is this true -- that it is "overwhelming"?

https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/rrq.401 https://t.co/FHb63Lbqkb

"the meta-analysis provides evidence that a more complex relationship between dialect use & literacy exists, one that cannot be explained simply by differences, or mismatches, in speech and print, as suggested by the mismatch/linguistic interference theory."

There is definitely a fair amount of evidence on this, but not sure it's as clear as they claim here. The metaanalysis they cite, for example, makes a more nuanced claim:

I'd also want to dig deeper into how many languages/dialects this effect has been found for. Majority cited appear to be AAVE or Arabic diglossia. Does this finding apply to Chinese dialects and learning to read in Mandarin, for example?

@AndrewWatsonTTB Took on the quest! Some findings above. The quest continues. . .

Is learning a second or third language considered "natural" and acquired via exposure and use? Or does learning a new language require direct and explicit instruction? Or is some measure of both needed, varying based on context of use and individual learning profile?

Reading a 1976 presentation by the Goodmans, "Learning to Read is Natural," and it's a fascinating read to go back to, given that our discussions of reading still go back to such fundamentals (natural vs unnatural, meaning vs. form).

https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED155621.pdf

Goodman dpes make solid points about the need for knowledge of language and creating a language rich environment, as well as on the distinctions between oral and written language.

But the problem in his thinking on early reading instruction is drawn out by Posner and Venezky...

The paper is followed by a transcript of a discussion by attending researchers.

In response to a critique by Jeanne Chall, Ken Goodman states, "In what sense can you teach people to read? And the answer ... is that I don't believe you can."

And therein lies the problem.

...when they focus on the importance of the alphabetic principle, in distinction from logographic learning ("reading" signs in their environment). Venezky points out that kids can not deduce the "arbitrary" basics of the alphabetic principle on their own. https://t.co/uTUhMrEG3l

...that the sublexical metalinguistic awareness required for requires explicit and direct instruction for many kids, as it is not a "natural" aspect of language learning. More to dig in to here, I recommend reading both the paper and the discussion that follows.

Goodman replies "Just as children derive their control of phonology from the use of the functional language, they are going to derive their control of the orthography from their use of the functional written language."

The flaw here is that Goodman refuses to acknowledge...

I'm always perplexed when a conversation (or academic paper, for that matter) is about cognates and is not ALSO a conversation about morphology, and vice versa.

The reason phonics is still being debated today is that the "artificiality" of sublexical units (phonemes & graphemes) strikes all too many as "unnatural," rather than as the awe-inspiring birthright of a remarkable human invention, akin to controlled flame. https://t.co/SMUoYwNnNv

Has anyone studied the potentially differential impacts of a synthetic vs analytic phonics approach for students new to the English language? And if not, why the heck not?

Language and literacy development are on a spectrum from effortless to effortful, with another axis around the individual profile of a child that requires either more explicit instruction or greater opportunities for more independent implicit learning. https://languageliteracy.blog/2022/01/28/a-finale-learning-to-read-and-write-is-a-remarkable-human-feat/

Our goal is to reach optimum encoding of a word across its sounds, spelling, and meaning so that it is anchored in our long-term memory (i.e. fluent, automatic access and retrieval). http://languageliteracy.blog/2022/03/13/an-ontogenesis-model-of-word-learning-in-a-second-language/

We need to stop talking about language as "four modalities."

Communication can be across modalities.

Language is oral. A writing system is a translation of oral language into written form.

Literacy is harder to acquire than language. Reading is NOT equivalent to oracy.

Thinking that reading/writing and oral language are equivalent was the critical misunderstanding of the Goodmans and "whole language"

http://languageliteracy.blog/2022/01/23/the-relation-of-speech-to-reading-and-writing/

How can we innoculate one another against stories that simplify and demonize groups of people, and embrace stories that individuate and complicate our understanding of ourselves and one another? https://languageliteracy.blog/2022/05/15/the-danger-of-the-story-of-white-displacement/

For a small number of children, learning to read and write in English is relatively effortless, while for a great many others, it poses a significant challenge . . .

In other words, learning to read and write is something that must be observed, taught, and practiced, just as learning to hit a baseball, ride a bike, or drive a car. Many children need frequent and structured opportunities to practice and develop foundational literacy skills...

Before the technology of writing systems were invented, people had no need to break words into smaller sound parts and recombine them at high speed in our minds.

...(phonemes) and to fluently combine, read, and transcribe those symbols and sound parts into meaningful words, sentences, and texts (decoding, handwriting, spelling, morphology, syntax, and semantics) is a challenge that is relatively new to our species.

...that requires explicit and systematic phonics instruction and sufficient opportunity to apply and consolidate foundational skills through shared reading, spelling, and handwriting activities. Learning to associate written symbols (graphemes) with small parts of spoken language

They engage in small group and individual hands-on activities and centers to discover and learn about their world and make connections to their own funds of knowledge and experiences.

As students learn, practice, and apply their code-based literacy skills, they also listen to their teachers read-aloud complex disciplinary texts and culturally diverse and representative stories and discuss new ideas, concepts, events, perspectives, and vocabulary with peers.

This means that additional time and opportunity to learn is essential for many students, especially for those at risk of dyslexia. Developing proficiency in reading and writing does NOT mean that enriching content and project-based experiences are left to the side.

...as they will not acquire them simply through exposure. Furthermore, the English language has many irregularities in spelling, and our spoken dialects may not match up directly to their ossified written forms.

Through a comprehensive, structured approach to literacy instruction, all students can gain the skills and agency to be critical thinkers, speakers, readers, and writers.

This is why I'm excited about our NYC initiative to support students at risk for dyslexia.

Today my 3 year old came home and shared the word "metamorphosis" from her class study of caterpillars, while my 5 year old shared the word "bioluminescence" from his class study of fireflies. #universalpreK #NYC #knowledge #vocabulary

Lower class sizes, tutoring, and coaching are backed by research.

But they all require more professionals--and a supporting infrastructure--in a time when schools are both losing enrollment and frequently short staffed.

These tensions need to be acknowledged if their promise is to be actualized for the students and school communities that need them the most.

We all need to stop diminishing and devaluing de/encoding. It's not easy to gain. It's not rote. It does take applied effort over time.

Written language is an amazing feat of our species and every time an individual person gains the ability to read and write, we should celebrate

And when they gain that ability in more than one language . . . exponential celebrations 🎉

A wondering re: multisensory approaches to phonics instruction. Is it possible such approaches can at times add to extraneous cognitive load, rather than reduce it?

Driving a car doesn't make you any more important than a person trying to cross a street or biking on the side. But it does make you far more dangerous. Why do we design roads to elevate the lives of those in cars, and more dangerous to the lives of everyone else?

A school is defined by the very place in which it sits, in that particular community, within that particular state and local policy context, in that specific time.  https://schoolecosystem.wordpress.com/2021/07/16/what-will-it-take-to-improve-our-schools/

Reminding my own self of this again. It's an inmate tendency of our system and of our humanity to add more to try and solve problems, rather than pare down. https://x.com/mandercorn/status/1385712183594700802

The hardest work we do as educators and leaders is when we honestly reflect on whether the lessons or sessions we facilitate have landed in the learning we planned and anticipated.

Much of the time, the honest answer is: not quite. This is why this work is so hard.

The endorphin rush of a well planned and delivered window into eternity is well worth the painstaking chiseling of our shallow egos.

But also, why it's so fulfilling and why those who dedicate their lives to this endeavor so often stick with it well beyond "retirement." Learning and systemic change are mostly incremental, until those little avalanches, those heretofore invisible tipping points, are achieved.

I wonder how much this plays into the everpresence of pedagogies in our schools that pretend that kids will gain mastery of all the hard stuff without the discipline and daily effort of practice?

In Hollywood films, the part where the hero or heroine suddenly develops mastery of Kung Fu or something is always a sped up musical interlude. In our culture, we want all the cool benefits without the actual hard work.

Mastery takes disciplined daily effort and practice.

At the same time, we need to hype up the payoffs in gaining those foundational basics. Because once they have that automaticity and fluency, they can jam, they can pick any books they can play with numbers. That's when it gets fun, and that's when lifelong learning becomes real.

Instead, we need to be honest and upfront with our kids that gaining mastery of reading, math, and other disciplinary domains requires a lot of hard work both up front to gain the basics, and for a lifetime to gain mastery.

The "science of reading" has become a loaded term — partly due to how "science" itself may be conceived. http://languageliteracy.blog/2022/08/31/how-you-interpret-the-science-of-reading-depends-on-how-you-think-of-science-part-iii/

It's the pervasive disconnect between what our children are capable of learning and doing and the motley assortment of materials and approaches that are used by so many in our schools.

I deleted an earlier tweet posted in frustration as a parent regarding the curriculum overview presented for his kindergarten class.

I want to be clear here. My issue is not the teacher, nor even the school. https://t.co/DJZjoKBCdJ

Foundational literacy and language skills and disciplinary and world knowledge and experiences should go hand in hand. It's not about having a program for every subject. It's about reading, writing, and talking around shared texts and topics.

My son came home from preK talking about metamorphosis. Now he's saying he doesn't like school and he only wants lunch time and recess.

So as a parent, and as someone who works to support our schools, I'm concerned. Granted, it's just the first full week, so I'll give it time.

So I shouldn't have tweeted in a way that makes it seem like I'm attacking his teacher. It's not about her. It's about a consistent pattern across schools I already well knew that disturbed me and that I have worked to push against that I am now experiencing directly as a parent

Teaching, and leading a school, is extremely hard work, and I don't want what I'm saying misconstrued. We have a lot of hard work to do collectively to ensure we have schools that are both supportive and rich in disciplinary and cross-disciplinary academic learning from Day 1.

There's a tension between multilingual learner advocates and SOR advocates that can be far more exaggerated than it needs to be.

Structured literacy (SOR) provides a great anchor for contrastive analysis, a foundational practice for building cross- and meta-linguistic awareness.

Furthermore, the stress is on explicit instruction of linguistic features, such as morphology and syntax, that are especially important for students learning English as a newer language.

And multicomponent approaches for all who need more supports.

https://www.readingrockets.org/article/structured-literacy-instruction-basics

Structured literacy isn't just about phonics, as it is so often misinterpreted. Approaches that are supportive of MLs--like @GreatCitySchls "3Ls," @ELeducation "language dives," and protocols for oracy--align with a structured literacy approach.

Structuring opportunities for direct instruction and analysis of spoken linguistic features and of how they relate to orthography can benefit all children.

By enhancing those opportunities with connections to students' home languages, MLs can bring their strengths to the table.

A tendency is to jump into immediate action, put in place some singular practice or program or system, and then clap one another on the back and start a new school year without ever having addressed the underlying root of problems that prevent universal success.

One the one hand, teams need to slow down to do deeper analysis and planning at the systems-level. They need to check their biases and assumptions, collect more data, more clearly problems they can change, and refine their theories and designs for action.

Been thinking a lot lately about the balance and tension between systems-level work and classroom-level work within MTSS in a school and district.

A brief 🧵 👇

On the other, teachers, staff, and students need immediate and ongoing guidance and supports across the school community and in classrooms.

Navigating and carrying school teams through these competing tensions seems to be a key aspect of improving outcomes.

We need to slow down teams to speed up instructional efficacy.

Big cities increase segregation because they offer more niches for self-selective interaction.

But the built environment can foster greater diversity of interaction.

Top places of mixing: performing arts centers, stadiums, and theme parks.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.07414

As we all know, our schools are highly segregated due to marginalization, politics, policies, fear, physical distance, and more.

Given such circumstances, in what ways can we work to build more bridges between districts, schools, and neighborhoods, both virtual and physical?

PSA: for an older student who comes to the US and speaks a language other than English, putting them on a laptop to do phonics as a default is not serving them well.

Unless there has been significant interrupted or inconsistent formal education, they will bring foundational literacy and advanced language and knowledge in their home language(s).

Instead, ascertain what they bring in their home language. NY state provides the MLS screener. Or provide a prompt, and ask them to write a response in their home language. If they are constructing words, sentences, and passages in their home language, they are fully literate.

Leverage their home language and literacy to make connections to the spoken and written forms of English. No, you aren't teaching them their language: you are inviting them to share their knowledge. But having at minimum basic awareness of their spoken and written language is key

CUNY-NYSIEB has a great overview of cultural and linguistic aspects of different languages in NY state https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.cuny-nysieb.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/NYSLanguageProfiles.pdf&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwi-j6D0-Yz7AhX2kIkEHb83BY4QFnoECAsQAg&usg=AOvVaw0bVH7exrig1O8zJu1Z4fNt

Using contrastive analysis, you can support students in comparing and contrasting their existing knowledge of the phonology, orthography, morphology, syntax, and meaning in their home language to English, and teach in to the areas that are most dissimilar.

ASHA also has some great resources on the linguistic features of specific languages and dialects https://www.asha.org/practice/multicultural/phono/

If they do require systematic instruction in the alphabetic principle, grapheme-phoneme correspondences, and so on, then by all means provide it. Just don't forget that they also need lots of structured discussion and peer interaction and access to texts in multiple modalities..

and in their home language aligned to core content and topics, when and where available, to support connecting to and building upon their existing conceptual knowledge.

I think there can be a place for F&P RRs in individual classrooms, when used judiciously. But not as a universal school-wide tool. It's inefficient, it's subjective, and most importantly, it takes time and focus away from shared content and language rich, grade-level texts.

Keeping the focus on daily high quality content-rich instruction in a school is always a challenge.

So why do we spend so much time doing F&P running records? For what?

To get a "level" that is not grade-level and takes access away from too many to shared content-rich texts.

"If ONLY teachers would do the miscue analysis!" is the common refrain of running record enthusiasts and the administrators who force them upon everyone. How about we don't waste time with an inefficient analysis based on vibes and faulty theory?

The sounds, spellings, parts, and associations of words have just as much to add to the weight of a page as does the overall meaning.

This starts, at the beginning, with disciplined practice with articulating sounds as they are connected to their symbols and scribed into form.

...just the beginning of this journey. Making meaning of a written text is not just about the message of an author. It's about how that message is crafted and delivered, both artfully and by the nature and constraints of concatenations of words in sentences.

Studying the orthography of a language system--how a spoken language is conveyed by an arbitrary set of written symbols--is fascinating and worthy of deep analysis.

Teaching our kids to pay close attention to the sounds in words and how they map into patterns is... 🧵

Learning to decode and encode words in written form is not some lowly, menial task that is to be mostly ignored or denigrated. It is one of the most awe inspiring vehicles of human creation, a skein of oral language that allows us to be transported intimately across time & space

But there is joy and meaning even there. How some letter names in English can bundle multiple sounds, how some letters take especial care to form just right, how sounds can assume multiple patterns like shapeshifting friends.

until they can swiftly and with ease take apart and put back together and rearrange those smallest parts to craft their very own timeless messages to the world.

There is beauty and meaning in phonics and spelling. There is poetry in oral reading practice to build fluency.

So let's honor it as such. Teaching our children to read & write in a language-or even better, in multiple languages-includes careful and critical and diligent and delightful handwriting, spelling, speaking, listening, and collaborative engagement with the smallest parts of words

“I don't think that there were classrooms that…were exciting, and poignant and beautiful, and...getting kids on fire as readers and writers, that were using that that train of thinking.”

Let's get this train back on the tracks.

https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2022/11/17/sold-a-story-e6-the-reckoning

I find it so confusing that "meaning making" is set apart from "decoding" by so many. The form in which a spoken language is encoded is rich with meaning.

10 years ago, I wrote a series on #curriculum on @ChalkbeatNY, and I stressed the importance of #opensource curriculum. I don't think the field was ready to hear it then, but maybe we are now given developments since then. Here is the post republished: https://languageliteracy.blog/2022/12/11/the-open-source-imperative-for-k-12-curriculum/

An underappreciated aspect of effectively using ChatGPT: It takes a well crafted prompt to generate a truly interesting response. Therefore, teach kids the knowledge and skills of crafting great questions for inquiry.

Just remember that when you hear about AI being "trained on data," it's often much of the same data you have been trained upon. If we want our algorithms to be better then us, we may want to restrict their diets.

Controversial opinion alert: Morphology and etymology should be viewed and taught as directly and reciprocally related.

He was turned forward into the next day so much I had trouble seeing him clearly until his fire was gone.

I look at my son now, who explodes like kindling when he doesn’t get his way. I must be distant from my own demands to give him space to catch. (2/3)

It takes a death to bring to life how little I have seen beyond the tip of my own needs.

My father’s discipline was to deny himself any warmth that could not be banked towards the future. (1/3)

I must be better than who I was.

We are never enough for each other until we are far enough away.

It’s too late to control. This is the place where our hearts will begin. (3/3)

The written code is part of meaning. It is an overlay, an enhancement to meaning. It is meaningful. It is worthy of study. It is not a one-size-fits-all to ensure that it is taught well, taught with joy, and taught systematically and explicitly with a shared scope and sequence.

What does it say about our beliefs about the impact of daily instruction in schools when we remain so focused on tutoring, afterschool programs, and summer school as solutions to pandemic effects?

There's a strong tendency to write off the power of #LLMs because they are 'just' parroting or predicting a sequence of words that most often come together. But that's what language is. Even stripped of cognition, language has a generative power that LLMs have tapped into.

A friendly reminder that outcomes data does not represent potential. They more often represent potential ignored or denied.

It is our birthright to learn to read and to speak and write and think in the language that allows us to transport our minds and hearts into worlds far beyond that of our everyday lives.

http://languageliteracy.blog/2021/06/05/our-brains-were-not-born-to-read-right/

And it is therefore incumbent on those of us responsible for teaching our children this language to ensure that all of them will be equipped and empowered to do so.

If researchers can claim big learning effects on self-created measures, even when there is no impact on standardized measures . . . . . . well, shouldn't teachers be able to, too?

Simple messages and concrete models are important for laying the foundations to advance growth and broaden reach.

Ultimately, we need to be able to carry people into a space of nuance and complexity and divergence. Not to such a level that all is relative and nothing is essential. But also some level of quiescence can be a means to move all forward in the long run.

A seed carries the kernel of complexity, which when provided with adequate space, time, love, and attention, flowers and branches multifaceted into the sky.

But growth can be easily stunted when the conditions (leadership, policies, resources) change too rapidly to secure those foundations, or the foundations are never agreed upon or actively sabotaged.

It starts with simplicity, but it carries from the beginning a hungry tension that edges towards the as-of-yet undefined. It emerges. It adapts. It is beyond any one person's limited capacity.

Our messages, however simple, must allow for these future multitudes.

That generous, generative space of complexity, the level we want to get people on a team or in an organization to, is at the same level as water. Dynamic, flowing, accepting of all -- and relentless in its drive to flourishing.

But these barriers are not barriers because reading is some alien thing being superimposed upon their delicate and fragile brain — they are barriers because of a lack of sufficient and coherent instructional opportunity.

https://languageliteracy.blog/2021/06/05/our-brains-were-not-born-to-read-right/

We need to acknowledge the barriers that prevent children from gaining the powers of written language, and tackle them headfirst.

Can we stop with the games of creating a rubric and then using it to pretend it says anything substantive about a curriculum? What we need are more empirical studies of the impact of curriculum on the academic outcomes and the reported experiences of real students.

You know that you can still invite students to compare words in English to words in their home languages even if they aren't cognates, right?

Then I can feel more confident in bringing my preexisting knowledge and skills to bear. And when I am supported in producing the language of instruction through scaffolds and in participation through clear and consistent routines, I can engage in instruction very quickly.

Think about it for a second: if I come into a new country not yet speaking much of the majority language, I still possess language--the language I use at home.

I can certainly produce that language! And when bridges are built between home language & the language of instruction

I strongly disagree with this premise: "As teachers the expectation should not be that learners are producing language."

This idea of a "silent period" is unfortunately based on outdated theory and should not be used to lower expectations for language.

https://wp.me/papLcz-dO

I shudder to think of teachers waiting a year to expect their students to speak!

Please don't do this! Expect more and support more. Provide plentiful opportunities for kids to hear, see, read, speak, and write words, phrases, sentences, and passages.

The apocalyptic scenes from NYC brought back memories of fleeing our apartment in South Lake Tahoe from the Angora fire in 2007. It felt like that was a beginning to a neverending, everexpanding fire season in California, which now is encompassing everywhere. https://t.co/f83obODFm9

This is the world we are bequeathing to our children. For what? So we can have the convenience of driving gigantic SUVs by ourselves and having products shipped to us within a day? So we can have giant data centers so we can upload endless video streams of our forgetting?

This @emollick post made me think about how using an LLM as a tool for student reflection could be powerful, such as after completing a unit performance task.

More thoughts in 🧵⬇️

https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/assigning-ai-seven-ways-of-using?publication_id=1180644&isFreemail=true

Wouldn't be surprised if someone out there has already designed some tool to do this, given the surge of innovation in this space right now. Or maybe it's already embedded in an existing LLM and I'm just not aware?

What would make it most useful for such a pedagogical purpose is if the teacher had a dashboard where they could get the LLM started with the same, well honed prompt, then assign the generative discussion activity to each student individually.

I've only been dabbling but I am convinced there are many powerful use cases for AI in the classroom--with the proper constraints in place, once we get past all the anxiety around cheating.

While LLMs may be great for boilerplate forms of writing, their most powerful use is dialogic--and this is where we should look to harness them with students in instructional use.

Let me reframe this: bipartisan efforts to try to ensure the most disadvantaged children receive high quality instruction keep running into deeply entrenched ideologues who refuse to teach kids literacy coherently and systematically because it doesn't give them fuzzy vibes. https://x.com/alfiekohn/status/1670763796053278720

Equity for multilingual learners is about scaffolding up content, rather than watering it down. https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/what-does-equity-really-mean-for-multilingual-learners

What do your students at beginning levels of English language learning need that is separate from core instruction? For how long? Seems to be a fundamental area of tension in our field that boils down to values and theories of language development.

Best feedback I got from today's PD on scaffolding a core curriculum for MLs: "I have been to many [vendor we shall not name] trainings and I know you kept telling us "you weren't the expert" -- but you taught me more in today's session than all of those trainings combined!"

If we think of language as completely innate, then perhaps we don’t think it requires much of any teaching that is explicit, systematic, or diagnostic. https://languageliteracy.blog/2023/08/12/language-like-reading-may-not-be-innate/

We think of LLMs inaccurately because we forget that written language is different than spoken language, and they are trained thus far solely on the written form

But if we think of language as communicative, social, and interactive, and that it develops in tandem and reciprocally through rich disciplinary content and texts, then we will seek to engage students learning the language in grade-level tasks alongside their proficient peers.

How we think about language matters.

If we think of it as mere oral language proficiency, and if we think that language is a prerequisite for grade-level texts and content, then we might think putting kids on a program on a laptop or an app on a device will teach them language.

I have to pinch myself when using @AnthropicAI Claude2-- which is currently free to use. Uploading research papers and asking it questions about the paper -- including across multiple papers -- is an absolute game changer. https://claude.ai/ https://t.co/LvjGLF6POb

There is a fertile topsoil we are born with in our brains, imprinted by the interplay of sights and sounds and movement of those who interact with us. http://languageliteracy.blog/2023/09/02/the-inner-scaffold-for-language-and-literacy/

I'm starting all over with a new blog.

& I'm starting off reposting where it began for all my musings on ed, 13 years ago as a new teacher in a 5th grade 12:1:1 classroom in the Bronx, with an analogy between growing healthy food and teaching children

https://languageandliteracy.blog/

Next, we grow this idea to the concept of a school as an ecosystem

https://write.as/manderson/public-schools-as-ecosystems-part-i

Then, we keep expanding that metaphor, considering the impact of school culture on learning and well-being.

https://languageandliteracy.blog/public-schools-as-ecosystems-part-ii

If literacy improvement becomes more about a bunch of disconnected programs, and less about the collaborative planning teams must do to provide clarity, consistency, and coherence across the school, then we're getting lost.

This article on the continued pervasiveness of the discredited discrepancy model for dyslexia identification is important and rightfully getting amplified.

But I wanted to pause for a minute on a paragraph towards the end (screenshot below).

A brief🧵

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-flawed-dyslexia-screen-leaves-thousands-of-kids-without-help/ https://t.co/XuSKwzvdo3

More extensive and voluminous data, in other words, does not necessarily equate to better targeted instructional support or intervention. The idea of neuropsychs for all may be alluring but misguided both in terms of time and cost and in terms of scalability of impact

As a former SPED teacher and IEP coordinator, I loved receiving extensive neuropsychs on kids. I love data. Yet at the same time, making the connection to a specific instructional program or support that my school or class could provide each day was not a clear nor direct task.

There's a tension between a cost-benefit of the depth and extend of diagnostic assessment and its utility for gaining targeted instruction that is glossed over here. There's an assumption that having an extensive 'neuropsych' for more children will better ensure targeted support.

These reflect the measures used by screeners like DIBELS and Acadience. While there is still some work needing to be done to translate that data into targeted instruction, it is much more immediate and actionable -- and that is what is needed to prevent later reading challenges..

Look back at that last sentence I highlighted in that paragraph -- I think the scalable--and already happening here and nationally--solution lies there. There are efficiently administered and more cost effective assessments available for identifying specific literacy needs.

...rather than merely labeling them.

These are the shifts we can make more immediately to get more kids what they need. When we can move more directly from screening (identification of needs) to progress monitoring (targeting specific needs), then we will see impact.

Teaching decoding and encoding of sounds to letters is always in service to comprehension. Why the heck do u think we do it?! People are so weird about foundational skills, I swear.

We must practice with precision if we are to extend our abilities beyond that of everyday functioning and communication. Our context and environment does not necessarily lend itself to such practice unless we have guidance. https://languageandliteracy.blog/thinking-inside-and-outside-of-language

Maybe we need to shift from the simple explicit vs implicit learning dichotomy to "are sufficient structured opportunities for learning being provided"?

What I'm suggesting here is that precision on those distinctions may be less useful than whether students can have enough opportunities to be exposed to and practice with the target learning. Explicitly teaching a vocab word is not very helpful in isolation...

...while implicit learning of vocabulary and concepts across multiple texts can be incredibly powerful. It's more about whether the learning is designed and planned for in a manner that will provide those repeated opportunities over time in connection to a topic or discipline...

...and less about any given explicit or implicitness in one component or one lesson.

Yes! And another related point. . . all too often, we put things up for other adults, rather than for our students. Rule of thumb: If what is up on your wall will not be referred to by your students in any upcoming lessons, then take it down. https://schoolecosystem.wordpress.com/2018/03/16/what-is-on-your-classroom-walls-why/ https://x.com/rodjnaquin/status/1753087642223116774

Don't think this gets the proper attention. We STILL need a strong base of literacy and knowledge in order to wield these cool new AI tools. Just like we did with Google search and all the other stuff before them. https://x.com/mandercorn/status/1751299301181985093

Like reading, using language drives increasing specialization of our brain—and this specialization, in turn, drives greater cognitive ability and communicative reach. https://languageandliteracy.blog/language-like-reading-may-not-be-innate

...if I do my close reading and annotating, and then share my compiled quotes with an LLM, I've found it quite useful for summarizing and synthesis of the key points and patterns I've drawn out. It can also then be more helpful for a basic outline of what I might want to write

I don't use AI tools very frequently in my own life or work yet, but beginning to discover specific uses that can make my blogging more efficient. I've found that I can't rely on LLMs to read and synthesize research if I upload PDFs directly. Too general and vague...But

In other words, I still need to do up front reading and analysis. But it helps me to more efficiently consolidate what I pull out on the back end.

AI, at least in current iterations, best supplements, not supplants, human knowledge and insight.

When language is more formalized, more abstract, and more removed from the immediate context of interaction with our physical world, it requires more explicit teaching and guidance. https://languageandliteracy.blog/the-inner-scaffold-for-language-and-literacy

Something I haven't seen flushed out empirically yet in examinations of scaling: Can we deliberately scale up good things, leveraging power scaling laws while simultaneously.and inversely scaling down bad things? Would love to read more on this.

If the revolutionary advent of the technology of writing advanced our individual and collective capacity for processing and sharing information, in what ways will language models similarly and exponentially scale that capacity?

I am far less interested in the potential of AI for tutoring and far more interested in its potential for supporting planning of instruction or easing administrative tasks for teachers and leaders

Should all students be expected to read the same texts? Or should all students be empowered to read different texts? Why?

Write a claim statement, such as by completing the following stem:

In my opinion, all students should read ______ because_____________________________.

This is of course deliberately framed as oppositional to draw out debate, but it's really about how we strategically design for both, to build an intellectual community engaged in disciplinary study, while reading a wide variety and larger volume of texts https://t.co/ipnFncPZnr

The challenge of the English cipher: 26 letters map ~44 phonemes in a quasi-regular manner, with spellings and morphemes amalgamated from Anglo Saxon, Latin, and Greek origins. The nature of this cipher means not all can be taught directly. https://languageandliteracy.blog/what-does-it-take-to-internalize-the-cipher

When I coordinated IEP development at a school, I structured the process to ensure students understood their data and had a say in their own goal-setting and aligned supports. And they were invited to share those goals and their reflection on their progress at the IEP meeting

"When kids have a better understanding of the condition that affects their learning, they tend to have a better self-concept, and they are more likely to feel empowered and motivated to self-advocate."

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/neurodivergent-kids-flourish-when-theyre-taught-how-their-brains-work/

We always had an eye on self-advocacy and agency when developing IEP goals, looking ahead to when students would leave our school and how their services and goals would best put them on a path for greater independence.

It all starts with supporting students with building their confidence to ask questions in class when they don't understand something and to ask for help when they need it--and to understand that self-advocacy as part of the learning process, rather than "not being able."

Outdated terms on language development such as "pre-production" or "silent period" can reinforce the misconception that English Learners have no language. ELs bring to our schools the language they use at home. Effective instruction recognizes and builds upon their HLs.

The most exciting potential of LLMs may lie not in their ability to respond to and generate human language, but in their ability to help us to process and manage vast quantities of information --and thus further extend our cognitive capabilities. https://languageandliteracy.blog/scaling-our-capacity-for-processing-information

The effectiveness of #AI and #LLMs hinges on the quality of our input.

Just as with previous tools like Google Search, the more precise and informed our prompts, the more powerful and accurate their responses.

Another way of framing this idea:

LLMs can help us further widen or refine our own ideas and language. They are far less useful in just handing them to us.

They mirror and leverage what we provide to them.

I am less interested in the "intelligence" of #AI #LLMs, & more interested in their potential to teach us about our own development of #language and #literacy, and to extend our own cognitive, linguistic, and literary abilities. https://languageandliteracy.blog/the-interplay-of-language-cognition-and-llms-where-fuzziness-meets-precision

The meaning of a concept may not be determined by its individual vector components, but rather by its relationships and interactions with other concept vectors in a vector space. Hence: the advancing power of LLMs. https://x.com/MatthiasMichel_/status/1821575602937139299

So why do we call learning to read unnatural?

Yes, it developed farther down the evolutionary line.

But what we probably are getting at is that it takes more effort to learn.

That doesn't make it unnatural. It just makes it not immediately and easily available to all.

Here's the thing that's kind of funny about calling learning to read "unnatural":

We humans invented the technology of writing. We could put a trademark on it.

We also pretty much have spearheaded the advancements in language, though we share traits of it with other species.

Yet that very notion of "accessibility" is culturally determined.

We can teach all our kids to read, if we truly believe it is essential to all.

So stop pretending learning to read is some alien imposition.

Learning to read should be more properly viewed as our birthright.

Stated another way: if learning to read is unnatural, then the human species is unnatural.

New post! LLMs have demonstrated that implicit learning of statistical associations are fundamental not only to language and to reading, but to our knowledge and experience of the world. https://languageandliteracy.blog/llms-statistical-learning-and-explicit-teaching

There is great potential for #AI to extend our #cognitive capabilities Yet there is a strong case of an equal and commensurate danger that use of #LLMs can reduce our cognitive capabilities. https://write.as/manderson/reviewing-claims-ive-made-on-llms