Knowledge rich curriculum meets bulletproof instruction
As if rolling out a completely revamped word reading and spelling curriculum, and a new approach to teaching writing instruction wasn’t enough, we have just begun implementing our school’s latest initiative. Read2Learn (r2L) is our new platform for teaching reading comprehension within a knowledge-rich curriculum. This is an evolution from our work in recent years to teach reading comprehension explicitly and in a way that gets students focussed on in-depth text.
In this post, we are not only providing a brief overview of r2L and also a chance to preview two units; we are also launching a project to share our curriculum resources with you, and collaborate with other schools to produce high-quality units that develop knowledge and reading/writing expertise in students.
Don’t forget to download the two give-away r2L units for you to use at your school
Check out the resources when you subscribe, and sign up to the project below!
Our r2L units aim high
With many based on Core Knowledge Units, we aim to embed comprehension of complex text within high-quality curriculum content (e.g. History, Geography, Civics, and Science.
Core Knowledge
This is an incredible organisation in the US, which has produced a vast and robust curriculum for the humanities, social sciences, sciences and English language arts. While CK units are free and comprehensive, there can be considerable background work for the teacher to get students engaging with this content in an explicit and direct way. There is also a gap in localised content (e.g. Australian history and geography), as the curriculum has been developed for US schools.
Knowledge rich and instructionally bulletproof
To try and address this gap, Read2Learn has the following features:
Developing student expertise through Explicit Direct Instructional techniques
The modelling and facilitation of text comprehension and analysis
Explicit vocabulary instruction
Building depth and breadth of content/knowledge
Embedding of history, geography, and civics knowledge and skills
Explicitly linking to writing instruction (Write to Learn), see last week’s post.
Want to download two completed r2L units for you to use at your school?
Subscribe at the end of this post.
Example of an Activating Prior Knowledge (APK) Slide, from Year 1 Mesopotamia Unit
Every day across our school, teachers will deliver a ~50 minute r2L lesson with the following components aligned to Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI):
Daily Review
Activating Prior Knowledge
Concept and Skill Development
Skill/Concept Closure
Independent Practice
These components have been added in explicitly for teachers, building upon the advice in the CK teacher guides. This allows for more seamless transition between lesson phases, and a better understanding of whether students are comprehending and meeting the lesson’s learning goal.
The questions for the independent reading task, including prompts for full sentences and boundary punctuation.
Learning and Engagement Icons, adapted from Brad Nguyen’s incredible work.
As students engage with texts and lesson activities, they complete a mix of the following instructional routines*:
Choral reading
Teacher Read-Aloud
Pair Shares
Mini-Whiteboards
Multiple Choice voting and other CFUs
Group Discussion
*We thank Brad Nguyen and James Dobson for their amazing work on the building blocks for this r2L template, including many of the learning and engagement icons.
r2L Lessons have a range of formats, to alternate what students are asked to do. This helps students grapple with new content and apply their learning in various ways (not just by answering comprehension questions). These activities include:
Whole class reading
Independent reading
History and Geography skills development
Games and role plays
Video content
Hands-on exploration of materials
Application activities
Short Writing or Oral Language Tasks
Class discussion
Want to download the complete Mesopotamia and Vikings units to use at your school?
Subscribe at the end of this post.
Example of Concept Development slide with a writing prompt from The Writing Revolution, to be completed on mini-whiteboards.
While the content is rigorous and sophisticated, the texts are written in accessible ways (thanks Core Knowledge!). Also, more complex text is introduced once students’ knowledge-base is developed and have shown their understanding in the explicit teaching phases of the lesson (via checking for understanding).
Want to get involved in this project and develop your own r2L units?
EXPRESS YOUR INTEREST USING THE RED BUTTON at the end of this post.
why knowledge again?
If you’re a teacher, you may be asking “why are we teaching knowledge units?” or “Why the Vikings"?”
These questions warrant a separate post, but we will illustrate some answers using a quick adaptation of Greg Ashman’s example from his post on this topic. This material has been adapted from a real article on the 2015 World Cup. Note: we haven’t told you the sport yet!
PASSAGE
After Warner’s dismissal from a short ball, Steve Smith joined Finch at the crease. He began with uncertainty and rarely looked at his best, but showed tenacity to support his free-scoring partner. With his familiar shuffle across the stumps, Smith whipped, clipped and pulled three-quarters of his runs through the leg side to become only the fifth man, and first Australian, to score a hundred in a World Cup semi. As Smith and Finch traded sixes, Australia looked set to move out of sight, but Smith's hook to deep square leg off Yadav signalled a slowing of the pace.
Potential literal question for this passage
Potential inferential question for this passage
You could read the above passage. But can you answer the above questions? If you know something about cricket this will be easy. But if you’re like Nathaniel, a sporting non-expert, then this is about as difficult as a scientific article on rheumatology.
To answer the first literal questions it is helpful to know that the sport in question is cricket. You will know this if you know the following terms and names, and their meanings:
Warner, Smith, Finch, short ball, free-scoring partner, crease, stumps, puled, runs, leg side, score a hundred, sixes, hook to deep, square leg, Yadav).
You will also be able to answer this question easily if you know that a World Cup Semi Final is the game before the Final (so, is therefore, penultimate). Even if you don’t know all of these things, you might still be able to work out the correct answer based on your syntax knowledge. However, question two is significantly more difficult. In order to answer this correctly you must genuinely comprehend the text, and to do this, you must know lots about cricket. No reading comprehension strategy will be powerful enough to make up for your paucity of cricket terminology knowledge.
hook = specific cricket shot
deep square leg = fielding position
traded sixes = hit lots of balls for six
move out of sight = score so many runs that the other team would not be able to score as many as the Australians
off Yadav = off a ball bowled by Yadav
signalled a slowing of the pace = the rate at which the scoring from the Australian team slowed down because Smith was caught. Can imply that the next batsmen did not score as quickly
To answer question two you need to know the following:
whipped, clipped and pulled = hit
three quarters (and work out from there that ¼ was remaining)
Steve Smith is a right handed batsman
leg side = the side of a cricket field on the batsman’s legs when they line up to face a bowler
off side = opposite of leg side
THEN, you can use your understanding of syntax to help answer the question.
This may not worry you too much if you’re not a cricket tragic. However, this proves something we know about reading comprehension. The more knowledge you bring with you to a written passage, the more easily you will understand it and respond to it. The logical step from this is, if you want your students to have strong reading comprehension, they will benefit greatly from being taught lots of powerful knowledge about the world.
Nathaniel will go into this further in a later post, but the main message is: if you do not have a wide range of knowledge, you can never be a proficient reader! See this article by the great Natalie Wexler for a quick dive into this fascinating area.
Also - It should be noted that by teaching content from Core Knowledge along with complementary Australian history and geography content, our school plans to teach more and further than we are required in the state-mandated curriculum. We aim to give students not just a familiarisation with themes and topics from the humanities or sciences, but an in-depth understanding that sets them on course to become knowledgeable, well-read and critically thinking individuals.
Why all this UNIT WRITING?
Want to get involved in this project and develop your own r2L units?
Express your interest using THE RED BUTTON at the end of this post.
One downside of r2L is that it takes considerable time to make these units. Once prepared, however, teaching them is a joy. As all the components are mapped out, the teacher’s focus can stay on their students, ensuring learners are grappling with the content and bringing their own understandings to the texts.
It is of course possible to deliver this content direct from the teacher guides provided by Core Knowledge, and we encourage schools to do this as well. But we have found combining EDI with Core Knowledge, along with some curricular-instructional finesse, makes for some knock-out pieces of work.
These knowledge-rich, instructionally sound units are fun for students to engage with, and provide real-time information about students’ understanding, allowing teachers to go faster, slower, or re-teach as necessary.
Caveats!
We do want to stress that the units we are sharing have been adapted from Core Knowledge and are not an original work. Please note as well that these units are still works in progress. If you find issues or errors and wish to pass them on, we are open and waiting for your feedback! We hope you will consider joining our project to create more of these units, as our students and teachers are embracing their ease-of-use and high level of rigour and learning challenge.
Other sources of high quality materials
Core Knowledge
This is an incredible organisation in the US, which have produced a vast and robust curriculum for the humanities, social sciences, sciences and English language arts. Get into it now!
Ochre Education
Check out this growing treasure trove of amazing lessons and resources, in collaboration with the Australian Educational Research Organisation (AERO).
Reading Reconsidered Curriculum
From the creators of Teach Like a Champion, this is a series of high-quality literature units schools can purchase.
Phormes
Check out the PhOrMeS: A Comprehensive Word Reading and Spelling Curriculum.
Think Forward Educators
Also see the presentations from Brad Nguyen on Knowledge Rich Curriculum and Emina McLean on English Curriculum on the TFE website.
Thanks for visiting, and see you next week!
KUDOS to Shane Pearson for co-Authoring this post.
Want to get involved in this project and develop your own r2L units?
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Dr Nathaniel Swain
I am a Teacher, Instructional Coach, Researcher and Writer. I am passionate about language, literacy and learning, and effective and engaging teaching for all students.
I teach a class of first year foundation students, in a space affectionately known as Dr Swain’s Cognitorium. I also work as Science of Learning Specialist in my school.
Shane PEARSON
I am a Speech-Language Pathologist specialising in literacy difficulties and am passionate about effective whole-school literacy instruction practices. While working in schools and private practice in an intervention capacity, I became aware of the many instructional casualties caused by non-evidence-based literacy teaching. This drove me to develop a freely-available spelling and decoding curriculum. I began work at my current school in Melbourne’s south-east in late 2018 solely to improve spelling results. However, implementing evidence-based spelling instruction has been just the beginning of this school’s journey of aligning teaching to the Science of Reading and Learning.
Upcoming presentations
Shane and I are excited to be presenting our school’s work on Write to Learn and Read to Learn at the 2022 Language, Literacy and Learning Conference (now online in April). Check out the website to get your tickets.
Credits