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Descriptions of effective teaching often depict an idealized form of "perfect" instruction. Yet, pursuing perfection in teaching, which depends on children's behavior, is ultimately futile. To be effective, lessons and educators need to operate with about 75% efficiency. The remaining 25% can be impactful, but expecting it in every lesson, every day, is unrealistic. Perfection in teaching may be unattainable, but progress is not. Whether you are aiming for the 75% effectiveness mark or striving for continuous improvement, this podcast will guide you in that endeavor.
Gene Tavernetti: Welcome to Better Teaching, Only Stuff That Works, a podcast for teachers, instructional coaches, administrators, and anyone else who supports teachers in the classroom.
This show is a proud member of the BE Podcast Network shows that help you go beyond education.
Find all our shows@bepodcastnetwork.com.
I Am Gene Tavernetti the host for this podcast.
And my goal for this episode, like all episodes, is that you laugh at least once and that you leave with an actionable idea for better teaching.
A quick reminder, no cliches, no buzzwords.
Only stuff that works.
My guest today is Dr. Olivia Mullens.
I was excited to have Olivia back, especially after seeing her work quoted in an article or referenced in an article by, uh, Natalie Wexler recently and.
You'll see Olivia frequently on social media talking about the importance of literacy and content knowledge in comprehension, especially as it relates to science, where she is a science teacher in elementary schools.
Dr. Olivia Mullens is a founder and executive director of Science delivered a science education nonprofit focused on elementary science and educational equity in San Diego.
Dr. Mullins also runs a program called Learning Squared, which provides multi-week science and literacy programming for early elementary school classrooms.
Dr. Mullins has developed, implemented and refined numerous elementary science programs and projects, and taught over a thousand science labs.
She is the lead developer of Learning Squared Science and Literacy Program.
Prior to her work at Science delivered, Dr. Olivia was a neuroscientist working at the University of California San Diego.
She received her BA from Boston College in 2004 and her PhD in neuroscience from University of Virginia in 2012.
She's also the author of the Kids Science Experiment book, experimenting with Science, published through the Junior four Dummies series.
I think you are gonna like this one.
Gene Tavernetti: Olivia, welcome back to Better Teaching Only stuff that works.
Olivia Mullins: Thank you so much for having me again.
I love talking with you.
Well,
Gene Tavernetti: oh and me too.
And as I've told several people, you are my kind of my hero on the internet for a lot of reasons.
And I think those are some things that I wanna talk about today.
And I want to, you know, I've read your intro, but I just wanna reemphasize something.
Mm-hmm.
And as I've told you before, you are doing this work in an almost exact, out of order type of thing.
Most of the folks who I work with, who are very interested in science of learning and everything having to do with literacy, they started out teaching and then moved on to academia.
But you got your PhD in neuroscience.
Olivia Mullins: Mm-hmm.
Gene Tavernetti: And now you're working with little kids.
Olivia Mullins: Mm-hmm.
Yep.
Yeah.
And not even cognitive neuroscience.
So, I guess I like to take a leisurely path or crooked path to a goal.
Gene Tavernetti: Well, what's interesting to me a about that is that when you are working with students and you're teaching them science
Olivia Mullins: mm-hmm.
Gene Tavernetti: It is, you're not encumbered by a lot of preconceptions that many teachers have because they've been through pre-service training and they get all this.
So, so when you started working with the kids and mm-hmm.
And you're working, what, K three?
Is that your age range
Olivia Mullins: Now?
That is at the beginning I was K five and now it's shifted to K three.
Yeah.
Gene Tavernetti: Okay.
So you're working to K three and I think we originally kind of ran across each other because you were looking for better ways to provide science instruction.
Olivia Mullins: Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Gene Tavernetti: And what did you find that just wasn't matching your experience and then how did you go about finding out some better ways to do that?
Olivia Mullins: Yeah, so when I started Science Delivered, which is the organization I do, I work with you know, NGSS had just come out.
I. The Next Generation Science Standards and NGSS, they say we're, you know, this is ambitious science teaching.
And I thought it looked great.
I thought it was great timing.
They had a lot of things in there that I did and do still agree with, like the scientific practices.
I still like the scientific method, but the practices are more all encompassing, like analyzing data or communicating data.
So I thought this is great, and I was trying to do what I thought NGSS wanted.
But as I got deeper into it, I started to realize they were asking for some things that didn't make a lot of sense to me.
Most specifically withholding information and allowing students to think something was the right answer or that it might be the right answer when it wasn't.
And so that part of it seemed very anti-intuitive, especially I think working with little kids.
It's so hard sometimes to get them to understand anything.
So the idea of trying to get, the idea of having them understand something and then you're saying, oh no, scientists revise their models.
I know you thought this was correct, but actually it's wrong.
That to me seems really out of bounds.
But, you know, NGSS, they're the experts and so I kind of thought I must be wrong.
Well, you know, you have those feelings.
I must be wrong, but this doesn't make sense, but I must be wrong.
But I, it, I just really had a hard time finding any information to the contrary for some time.
And so at some point I did.
And
Gene Tavernetti: so, so where was your, where did you look for information about how to teach that?
Was it counterintuitive?
Olivia Mullins: Yeah, that's a good question.
I mean, I probably was starting with NGSS and then I was on, you know, itself, like they have a website and I bought, I'm looking at my books.
You know, I bought the books.
They referenced Taking Science to School and the National Research Council, I think and looked in all those references, but they all read like case studies or theory, you know, there's a lot of 'em.
So it's not like I looked at any, every paper, but you're reading through the titles, looking for something that might give you some better guidance.
And then I was on Twitter and it, at that time I was really in like NGSS land, so everyone who cares about elementary science education, at least that I have met or met online, was an NGSS person.
And so I pushed back a little bit.
But it's just no one seemed interested in that pushback.
And I think I started to maybe be this person who was saying things that people maybe didn't like.
In that world at some point, two things happen.
I'm not sure the exact order.
But I read Dan Willinghams, why don't students like School?
And that was just like, think that it was like information I had been looking for.
Yes.
You know, novices are not experts.
They are not the same.
And we can't just treat them like that because a big part of NGSS is that in order to learn science, you must do what scientists do.
That's what they say.
But of course, a 6-year-old is not the same as a professional scientist.
And I think I said on there last time I was on as well, it made me a little cranky too because I'm like, well, if we're gonna have the kids do what scientists do.
They should go be going to one hour lectures because that's what I did as a scientist every week.
Or, you know, so it, it's like they NGSS just took the most kind of high level, exciting, top of the pyramid part of science and said that's what kids should be doing all the time, but ignored all this other part.
And I actually, I'm gonna take that back.
That part is very exciting.
But it is also exciting to honestly repeat people's experiments.
How many things do you actually discover as a scientist?
It's a very small amount compared to what you know, but it's very interesting to learn what other people have done as well.
So that happened and then I found Zach Roche's Twitter account, and that was really my entry point into the science and learning community.
And at that, at the time, he was tweeting a lot of papers about direct instruction and that, that was just so useful.
So I would say almost everything I've learned has been downstream of finding that account and Dan Willinghams book,
Gene Tavernetti: I know you had been on a journey because at some point, you know, we were having a conversation and I think you had read Teach Fast, you know, and so, so you had some clarifying questions.
Olivia Mullins: Mm-hmm.
Gene Tavernetti: And I think we had a couple conversations like that, and then I realized, why aren't I talking to Olivia anymore?
Said she's got it.
I mean, you know, because most of the questions that you had were, well, I thought so.
That's what I thought you were gonna say.
That's what I thought you were gonna say.
And because they are just the things that are, they just do make sense.
Olivia Mullins: Mm-hmm.
Gene Tavernetti: So, so you you migrated how you presented to your kids using more explicit instruction.
Mm-hmm.
And was, but that wasn't the complete answer.
I don't think that you were looking for that.
Olivia Mullins: Yeah.
Well, there's a lot of things going on because I have.
Our direct programming through the nonprofit, and that is a little more constrained because we go in for an hour, we do give the teachers lessons, but there is sort of this fixed way that has to happen.
And I will say I actually never fully followed NGSS at all because the way NGSS works would require, you know, requires you to really teach every day.
And I, in my programming, I wasn't able to do that and I wasn't able to say, you know, I wasn't.
Teachers do often use what we give them, but we don't, they don't have to.
So I always was using direct instruction anyway or, you know, small direct instruction, not, you know.
Gene Tavernetti: Yeah.
Olivia Mullins: Just, I mean, it didn't make sense to me to do this other way, but I probably would've tried it if I had a different setup.
But then I also started to realize kind of parallel to our direct programming work in San Diego that, hey, no one is in this space of looking at.
Explicit instruction and science education in early elementary.
There's almost no, I don't wanna say quite no one, but it's close to that.
There's people who are looking at explicit instruction at that age.
It's mostly reading and math.
When you have people looking at science and explicit instruction, it tends to be starting in upper elementary and then secondary school.
So the science education people in early elementary are pretty much all student led NGSS people.
So I had no, no guidance on those specifics.
I had a lot of guidance on more general things and yeah.
The question I asked you last time, which now seems, you know, once you know something, it seems obvious.
But I was like, everyone's saying you have to use worked examples, and I just couldn't wrap my head around how I'm like, how does that work in science?
Okay.
It doesn't really, it's for procedures or math.
It doesn't make sense for content, right?
So if you're doing a procedure, you can do it or.
But for the content piece, no.
So, you know, I think that's a great example of cognitive load.
There was just so much information, you know, that I had that I couldn't make heads or tails of some of the advice.
And so I started to realize like, hey, no one is really giving specific advice for teaching content in early elementary.
And it's very different because you can't rely on even reading.
Like the kids can't read as much as they can listen, but then you don't have a record, right?
Like if you're a fifth grader, you can read something, you have it there, you can reference it.
If you're a 6-year-old and you're being read to, you can't reference back what was just read to you.
So teaching content at this age is different.
And and then science, you had the additional.
Piece of hands-on activities.
And I will say when I first got to the Twitter space, there was some amount of, like saying hands-on activities wasn't, aren't a good thing.
You know, it was kind of being lumped in with inquiry based and project based learning.
And that's just, you absolutely need hands-on.
And science, I mean, the information that you're getting, a lot of it is in a three dimensional space, right?
So you can't just read about it as much as you can.
You need to experience it as well.
You want that to be directed.
You want it to be careful and intentional, but you can't just read about dissolving and never dissolve something yourself that's not, or you could, but it's not as effective, right?
Yeah.
So there's all these things that just, I felt like there was no guidance for.
There is one book but it's just the one and.
So I've started working on, okay, how do we do this and how do we integrate with literacy?
And yeah, I've landed on this explicit oral language instruction, especially as the story champs.
People do it as like, okay, this is how we have to do it.
And so I've started integrating that a little bit into our direct programming which is slow.
'cause I have, you know, we have everything all set up and now I have to go back and tinker with it.
But it's been transformative, honestly.
So it, it making sure that all kids are saying full sentences, the turn and talks, which are difficult but necessary.
The choral responses I hear, I don't have, I wish I had data, but from my experience I hear a lot more kids talking, like scientists, like, you know, using full sentences, using our vocabulary.
Whereas maybe before it was the higher kids that were able to do that.
Gene Tavernetti: Are you, so kind of your next step is, you said is to include literacy.
Mm-hmm.
And so we're looking for, a big thing in, in science, like you said, you need to have students who know something.
Olivia Mullins: Mm-hmm.
Gene Tavernetti: And that's part of the knowledge building curriculum.
It's not only that they have to know something, but they're going to read about it.
Olivia Mullins: Mm-hmm.
Gene Tavernetti: And you're gonna read about it.
And then that became something that you became very interested in about reading comprehension and how to do reading comprehension.
And you were really, it was really important to you that the kids did comprehend, because like you said, you're there once a week or however, you know.
Right.
Many times.
So, so what kind of was your journey and more a deeper understanding of how kids comprehend text.
Olivia Mullins: Yes.
And well, I have two parts of this.
So the first one is getting interested in this because all when I've, years ago, say five years ago, 'cause I've been doing the Combined Science and Literacy
for many years now and, you know, still learning lots, I realized we weren't, if you talked, just talked about science, you weren't getting that far.
So I started to think maybe we should talk about science and literacy combined as a way to get people to care about the subject.
Now, of course, at the same time I was also interested in that just for you know, 'cause it seemed beneficial and I was starting to see research saying if you combine them, it was more powerful at that time.
I didn't have a strong sense of how you would ever do that.
I mean, I was thinking, I guess you have a read aloud, you know, I really knew nothing about teaching literacy.
So I started to get interested in that and then.
You know, I had that little slightly cynical reason, and the real reason, as I learned more about it, I thought, wow, this, it, the re the research on this is so powerful.
Clearly this is the way we should be teaching.
You know, we should be clearly integrating science and literacy.
And with that, I started seeing the knowledge matters kind of stuff, saying that, okay, you need content knowledge for reading comprehension.
And that made a lot of sense to me.
So I just started, I, you know, I was just consuming as much as I could about trying to learn best practices.
I, when we started, I had a literacy co-teacher who taught me a lot, you know, and I've, how to integrate these things with the vocabulary and all this.
And so I started looking into all that research, you know, from the NGSS two, I had realized you can't always just trust.
What people say.
You know, you, if it's something, you know, I'm argumentative online, but I, if you look, I really only argue hard about two things, and that is explicit instruction.
And well, I say too controversial things, let's say.
And content knowledge and comprehension, because I don't like to argue about things.
I haven't looked into myself pretty deeply if they're controversial, but I did.
I do like to look for myself because I realize everyone, everyone is wrong sometimes.
And that's was a very good lesson.
No matter how respected they are or smart they are.
If it's your main thing, you should go to the sources yourself.
Like if you're gonna be an advocate, if you're gonna push this, you should go to the sources yourself.
Now, I can't do that for everything, right?
I don't look at the math papers myself.
I don't teach math.
So you, there, I trust the experts, but so.
Yeah I started looking at the research for comprehension and content knowledge, and I think at this point I've read most of it, that, at least for the experimental research,
Gene Tavernetti: I think again that you are exactly opposite of how folks normally do things.
And that makes sense.
Based on your background based on your background, you know, pretty much I think a PhD in any topic is going to be looking for research, you know?
Yeah.
But I think that there were two things that really stood out to me as I was looking at what you were doing online and the types of research you were doing.
Is number one different than somebody who had been through a lot of pre-service programs and a lot of training.
You didn't mind challenging some folks who were kind of the gurus, kind of, kind of, kind of big names and and I think again, that is part of just having the confidence of being able to look at the research and say whoa.
That's not exactly what this says.
Olivia Mullins: Yeah.
I mean, it's a, I'm glad you admire it.
I yes, it is difficult for me not to argue if I disagree, to be honest.
So, like I said, if I'm not sure, then I'm, I don't argue, you know, I will ask and be curious.
But I do feel like there's some things that I feel sure about.
And if people are saying the wrong things, in my opinion, clearly in my opinion, they're the wrong things and their opinion, they're not.
And I think the more influence someone has, the more concerning it is if you're someone who's very influential and you're saying things that maybe aren't, don't seem right.
Then I feel like that needs to be challenged because it shouldn't just sit there and influence people.
So I get that's just, it's a, you know, it's a good thing and a bad thing, you know, sometimes I think maybe you could just let things lie a little bit.
But yes I have also been surprised because there was a series of papers I kind of had read early on before I knew so much.
Knew, knew, so knew so much about the controversy with comprehension and content.
And then people are saying there's not a lot of experimental evidence.
So I spent a long time before going back to those.
'cause I thought they were all kind of program studies with a lot of things not controlled and confounded.
And it seemed like, well peop, you know, these, all these people are saying there's no experimental research.
So that's kind of my memory of reading these papers too.
But, you know, in the last month I went back and looked at them closely and found, actually there are.
Several studies that do control for basically the literacy instruction.
So the argument
Gene Tavernetti: Just for one second to bring our listeners along, what you were looking at is the, is literature regarding best ways to teach comprehension?
Olivia Mullins: Yes.
Well,
Gene Tavernetti: And it was, and there seemed to have been a dichotomy between teaching comprehension strategies and to to help comprehension versus content knowledge as a roadway to to comprehension.
Olivia Mullins: That's been the debate, although I like to not put those against each other.
I think depending how you define strategies, there is a small place or a large place, again, defending, depending on how it's defined for strategies in, in teaching comprehension.
So yes.
Thank you for bringing that back.
The literature I'm referring to is specifically looking at does content instruction increase students' ability to comprehend text?
And people ha there's a lot of people saying we don't have good experimental data for that.
Because a lot of the studies that looked at kind of these content pieces had a lot of literacy instruction within them.
So it'd be like a program that's eight weeks or 12 weeks or a year, and they do science instruction and experiments, but they also do a ton of reading, a ton.
You know, they have this way of looking at text and so there's just all these changes, you know, a lot of variables changed.
And then at the end, they find often, not always, they find that this did improve reading comprehension.
So there's two issues that people were saying, A, those, all, those mul, you know, so many variables were changed.
So you cannot attribute those changes to content instruction.
B, they said there's no studies that do that.
And look at standardized reading scores.
It's like researcher created or domain specific texts.
So say the students learned about birds, then the researcher might give them an article about birds and they can read that better than the group that didn't learn about birds.
They said for it to matter.
Some people say for it to matter, you need to show that content instruction has significant effects on general reading comprehension tests.
And they were saying those studies didn't exist.
But in fact, some of those studies do exist.
Now, it's not a ton, but there is this, these authors, romance and Vitali, I think it's pronounced maybe.
And they have a five-year study with a series of papers where they gave science content instruction for two hours a day.
And.
The control groups had an hour and a half of the basal instruction and a half hour of science instruction.
And what they tried to do is match the goals for the literacy instruction with, you know, the literacy and science.
They tried to match those goals to the basal readers, right?
Like what does the district say we should learn?
Okay.
So they did this many, for many years.
They expanded their base and they saw significant results in a standardized reading test.
They also had a first and second grade program that was more like, versus business as usual.
But that study is there.
I mean, those studies are there and they're pretty strong.
And there's another group that has something similar as well.
Gene Tavernetti: These are the studies as you, that talked about the importance of content knowledge on comprehension.
Okay.
Olivia Mullins: Yes.
So, so they, so I'm just, I was, these are all well cited studies.
They're in all the literature, but somehow they didn't.
May cross that bridge to the online discourse.
And I was also saying, oh yeah, the experimental data is not as strong.
The, you know, the correlational data is strong.
That content affects reading comprehension.
So I don't know, I mean, maybe there are more issues with those studies than I'm not seeing, but I think the data in general is so strong for the fact that content instruction integrated with literacy is really the way to go.
And I don't think there's any excuse to wait anymore.
To just be full-heartedly say we need students to be knowledge building for both the content learning and for comprehension.
Gene Tavernetti: You know, I think that folks are gonna be interested in some of the analysis that you did, and we'll put we'll put a link to your paper in the notes.
But you seem to have attracted a lot of attention over the last few weeks about a critique you had done about meta-analysis on this topic.
Olivia Mullins: Yes.
And so, yeah, I mean, this is published on sub Substack and I wanna also give the disclaimer, I am not a statistics person.
I don't have training in that.
Also many biologists do, but many don't.
No.
You know, nothing I did was as complicated statistically as this.
So with that disclaimer I ha I, you know, the hansford et all meta-analysis came out that looked at many different measures and of what affects reading comprehension.
So they looked at content, they looked at cognition, cognitive strategies, all sorts of different things.
I mean, I'm focused on the content piece and the paper itself was fair in its conclusions.
They basically said, we just see these weak effects, or depending on how you slice it, we don't see any effects of content instruction on comprehension.
But, you know, this can't be, you know, they had something very like, but this does not mean you shouldn't knowledge build.
It was very even right.
But of course, right away on social media, people are going, should we rethink content?
You know, should we think rethink this?
And I'm just hor, you know, no we shouldn't.
For so many reasons that it's even, I feel like hard to list them all here.
But there's data that wasn't, you know, there's correlational data, first of all that everyone likes to poo, but it's quite strong and clear.
And it's uncontroversial.
Then, as I said, there's these studies that were actually not included in the Hands for Adult paper for reasons I'm not clear about.
I have asked.
So I'm not sure why they weren't in that meta-analysis.
They seemed to fit the criteria and I think there were just papers in there that I would not have picked as well, that were looking more like, they were looking at actually teaching strategies versus content instruction itself.
So I don't even know if you rearrange things how the results would turn out.
But I would say that the set of papers in there was, would not be the papers that I would pick to give us an idea of how content instruction affects comprehension.
Gene Tavernetti: And again, going back to I think your experience, you know, your academic experience, when I read when I read that piece, I mean,
a lot of things you, like I say, you, as you just described, you're looking at methods looking at what should be there and what shouldn't be there.
And again, looking at it in a, with a much more critical eye.
And I appreciate people like you, then I don't have to do the work.
And
but okay.
So let's get like to, to a bottom line here, because I'm like you I'm kind of, I don't wanna say I'm upset, but it just seems like we get traction in something.
Olivia Mullins: Mm-hmm.
Gene Tavernetti: And then now we have to have a controversy.
And now we have to stop doing this.
And so what have you found, what have you found in your work?
Not in the research that you've read mm-hmm.
But what have you found in your work when you're working with young kids?
Which is more important?
Or is there one more important content knowledge or strategies.
What's your feeling?
Well,
Olivia Mullins: so I am an enrichment teacher, so I, you know, I don't get to the point where we're testing them.
So I would say my knowledge base on their, in terms of, you know, what's effective comes from research.
I also will point out, well, there's always 10 caveats, right?
But the whole system of knowledge building is supposed to be slow, right?
Like, it's not necessarily true that if you learn more content and kindergarten, you will necessarily see that content affecting reading comprehension in first grade.
Theoretically it might take two or three years because.
The idea is, you know, if you learn about eels, how often are you gonna encounter eels in text?
I mean, that's a random one, but you know that the, you are trying to build up a critical mass of things so that you have more chance of encountering the things you know about in text, right?
So, so from the theory, I actually thought you probably need three years because there's so many things you can know.
And that's what, that is probably the quote unquote best argument that the critics make is, you know, there's so much knowledge, how can you teach it all?
But I always point out, well, actually there's a lot of knowledge you teach in content instruction as well.
So, how said that though, there are some papers that CFX in like 12 weeks on the, these Guthrie papers.
They have a 12 week program.
There's even one where they had the exact same instruction except one group got more hands on activities and that group on a standardized test had.
Higher reading comprehension, which I was wondering, but I think what's actually going on, or there's two things, right?
Like one, the actual content you learn will help you make inferences or, you know, but I also think when you are doing a content approach
to text that you are, the students are more engaged and they're more interested in the text and they're able to engage more deeply with it.
And that Guthrie paper that looked at hands-on activities, 'cause I thought what I said look, I'm a huge hands-on person, but that to me is even, I
wouldn't even make those claims, but I read it more and I read their argument and they said, you know, they did statistics, which I can't comment on.
They said all the effect of those hands-on activities were through motivation were counted for by motivation.
And that started, I started thinking, well that could make some sense because it's not just the motivation during the test, right?
It's not just that you're motivated when you take that final assessment.
You're more motivated for the whole 12 weeks.
So for instance they had the kids look taking apart owl pellets and then they would read a text about owls.
And so now when the kids are reading the text about owls I would say my, the theory is, you know, they're really into that text and they are really getting that practice and engaging with that text.
And I mean, honestly I think it's ga almost like gaining reading skills, you know, it's gaining skills, but through another mechanism they're practicing and getting better at reading from that motivation.
That would be my, someone can tell me if I'm wrong, but that's kind of my thought because you, to me, you see some results earlier than I would think from just the content knowledge alone.
So I think you're getting like a twofold effect when you teach literacy through content.
And as an aside, the absolutely you should teach high quality fiction and all that too, which shouldn't all just be.
Science and social studies nonfiction.
But that's what I know about, so that's what I talk about.
So that, but you said, what do I see for myself?
So, yeah, I think the research is hard to see for yourself because it is, it does tend to be this longer term thing.
But what I see is with the content and the explicit language instruction, 'cause I'm with little kids, remember, so reading is a whole different thing there with a 6-year-old or, you know, I do see it.
I mean I really feel like it has elevated our programming so much doing the intentional literacy, 'cause there's always some literacy, right?
But doing it intentionally using best practices, I really feel it.
And I, my schools are the highest poverty schools.
A lot of challenges and I really see kids learning and being so excited and doing so well.
So, you know, it's interesting too because I'm getting, taking almost like a view that's maybe controversial to me.
With the youngest kids, like I said, they can't reference a text.
So I'm actually starting to go towards when you're teaching a hard concept that you should teach it with slides, have a ton of interaction.
A lot of choral responses turn and talks all this and that the text, the read aloud text should be something that's a little more conceptually easy.
So for example, if I'm teaching kids what pitches for sounds, that would be through slides because trying to teach them all that information in a read aloud text, it's not quite, in my opinion, the right format.
And then maybe afterwards we have a story about how adults can't hear.
High pitch sounds and kids can, and there's like a little thing and that is easier to follow.
And that can be the read aloud texts that they work with.
And you have to have it be read out loud because they cannot decode at the level that they can think at that age.
Gene Tavernetti: It's interesting you're talking about kind of the order of how you present things, that there's some sort of explanation and then there is some reading to go with it.
Olivia Mullins: Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Gene Tavernetti: And when we look at language arts, when, you know, especially like secondary, not especially secondary but in language arts we do some reading.
About the background.
Mm-hmm.
Maybe it's a, maybe it's a historical reading, you know, depending on what the setting is.
Mm-hmm.
And so, so it is just the opposite.
Mm-hmm.
Order.
Olivia Mullins: Mm-hmm.
Gene Tavernetti: But I think as you described, it's part of it makes sense based on the skill level of the students.
Olivia Mullins: Yes.
Gene Tavernetti: You know, but the content knowledge has to be there before you ask them to do something, to make judgements, to make predictions.
Mm-hmm.
You know, all of absolutely.
All of those things.
So the other thing that's interesting to me is that I don't know what happened in the other states, but in California, the big move with common core language arts standards was to.
Take away part of the literature piece with respect to reading.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
And put it into content areas.
Olivia Mullins: Mm-hmm.
Gene Tavernetti: So they were reading more informational text.
Yeah.
Which again, you know, we're kind of begging the question of, you know, they need to know the content first to be able to understand.
So, so where are you now?
Let's just talk about, so
Olivia Mullins: wait, actually Jean, can I comment on that?
Gene Tavernetti: Oh sure.
Olivia Mullins: I think that does bring up a really interesting point because I think literature can mean a lot of things and so I think content instruction will help generally for all reading, for reasons enumerated before.
But I, I do think it's also, you know, it might not help you as much to read like Harry Potter you know, your science class as it will help you to read science texts.
And so I use Harry Potter 'cause I actually flipped through it to see if I flipped through my kids' books to see.
If anything I teach is in there and that, or that you would teach in social studies.
And that was one that I didn't see a lot of references to science or social studies versus like some spy kid series.
My kids have had a million references to plants and geography and everything.
But you know, I think it's, I think it's okay.
And I don't like that the narrative was like the reading, general reading contra comprehension has to be better in order for content instruction to be important to comprehension.
Because I think, no, if you teach science and you teach social studies and those kids in third, fourth, fifth grade and middle school can better read their science texts and better read their social studies tests, that is enough.
That is a good academic outcome.
This demand, which now I think actually there, there are studies, but this demand that it has to show up on a general reading comprehension test, I always found to be a little sideways.
You know, it is enough if it's domain specific because.
We are in school.
School is academic.
You actually do want students to be able to read nonfiction text.
So that's my caveat.
I do think it helps everything, but I think it does it, it's gonna help the domain specific texts probably first.
And that's okay.
'cause that is part of school, right?
I,
Gene Tavernetti: oh, well, did we solve anything yet?
Olivia here
Olivia Mullins: solved.
I think everything,
Gene Tavernetti: well, I think one of the, one of the big things that that we've talked about is that it's not either or.
You know, there how you present material, the order in which you present it, the coherence.
The coherence.
Mm-hmm.
So that it's not just these disparate things that you're doing, but you're actually helping the students make the connections.
Yeah.
This is why I get upset about these arguments.
L like I said, there is there's the science, but then there's the artistry.
Olivia Mullins: Mm-hmm.
Gene Tavernetti: Of putting these things together, keeping the kids excited.
Mm-hmm.
And it's, and in, in many ways, you know, I could just imagine you in your classroom asking a question.
Asking a question that, oh, let's take a look and see what somebody else says.
Now let's see if we see the same thing.
You know, type of thing that you're leading them, you're leading them along.
But I just don't think that.
You know, I was a philosophy major and one of, one of the funny, you know, what people always would argue when they were just arguing to argue is like how many, you know, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
You know, that a lot of this stuff is there's, it's different, but it's not important.
Olivia Mullins: Right, right.
And I,
Yes, and that's okay.
One thing when I did come into all this late, right?
I came into this argument about content knowledge and reading comprehension.
And at first I was totally perplexed because I'll be honest, when I saw the details of what everyone was saying, I thought, there's really not much disagreement here.
There's it.
A lot of it did feel like a fight that where there was a, yeah, I, if the messaging, I think the fight was.
In large part over the messaging or in response to the messaging.
But when you started asking people what they really thought about how things should be taught, there was some space, but it wasn't nearly as much as you would expect given all the ruckus.
Right.
And that was really confusing to me because I'm learning people who I felt were kind of putting down knowledge building.
They weren't wanting a strategy of the weak approach either.
And you know, if you, Timothy Shanahan just had a blog where he, you know, the text is king and you have to really grapple with the text and make meaning of it.
I mean, to me that's adjacent to knowledge building.
That's what you, the text is king if it's even more king or queen if it's not scattered.
Right.
If you have cohesive content or we can say high quality literature.
It's much easier to grapple with that text in a meaningful way.
So it doesn't seem like anyone was really promoting a strategy, the weak approach.
I think also there was confusion about the term strategy, which is why I, you know, don't, so, you know, you would see people say, strategies are really important and then they'd link to papers about fluency.
Well, I don't know anyone who doesn't think fluency is important, right?
So I think one, some people were using strategy to mean this very discreet, like, let's make, let's learn how to make an inference and make it, and then spend, you know, every day on that.
When I think there's starting to be agreement that kind of instruction is important, but should be limited.
And it seems, yeah I don't think there's as much space as people think.
And then I maybe this might be speculation, but I think there might be concerns about.
You know, if it's implemented a certain way, does that take time away from the content instruction that was already happening, which I think is a valid concern.
I think there are very valid concerns about implementation.
I mean, I don't I go on teacher groups and I see most, I think it's more favorable, but certainly mixed opinions about some of these knowledge building programs.
I haven't looked at all of them.
I would pick an, I would probably pick CKLA, you know, that would be what I, from what I know.
But I still, there's aspects of the science teaching I would like to change, you know, so I think if teachers don't understand what they're doing why they're doing certain things and suddenly this is very different curriculum, it can go sideways.
So these are all really valid concerns.
I just think we should name the actual concern and not use it as, not use it as kind of a way to put down knowledge building.
The same way there's concerns around phonics implementation, but everyone agrees that students need phonics, the dosage, the programs.
There's always gonna be issues there.
So yeah.
I think people agree on more than they think.
Gene Tavernetti: Well, yes I do too.
And it's just, again the whole phonics thing now, you know, we just moved, we just, you know, this agreement you know, that we need to do more phonics and then all of a sudden, but wait a second, you're doing too much phonics.
Right.
Holy, come on.
CI
Olivia Mullins: don't, cg. This is a place where I'm silent.
See, I don't argue about everything.
I don't know about phonics.
I mean, I, you know, I don't know the best way to do anything in phonics, so I just watch the debate and stay quiet.
Gene Tavernetti: Well, well, again, and that's why I think what you have to say is so important because it represents kind of a clean slate except for your experiences in the classroom.
Olivia Mullins: Mm-hmm.
Gene Tavernetti: Your experiences in the classroom are going to validate.
You know, what you find in the research or not.
Mm-hmm.
But you're walking in there with an open mind.
Mm-hmm.
Not already have been trying to have somebody convince you of this is the way to do it.
Mm-hmm.
So it's a I, again, I just appreciate your thinking.
And I put a when I read your stuff, you know, I just put a lot more credence towards it because it is pure looking for knowledge.
I mean looking, and I didn't wanna use the word knowledge, just looking for the best way to do things based on the experiences that I'm having with my kids in front of me now.
Olivia Mullins: Well, I think, I mean, those are high compliments and you know, I think I've been argumentative my whole life, so I've had to learn.
I had to learn to maybe not art argue.
Now look, I had lots of friends.
I don't wanna be sounding like I'm some crazy person, but you know, I think I really did have to learn how to be wrong and how to be very careful when you argue because, so that has something I have learned.
Now, I'm 43.
I only argue about things that you really know about because it's really embarrassing to have to back down after, you know, getting a in, you know, really staking a claim and then you're wrong and you didn't know about things.
So I do try to be really careful and, you know, there's that saying in writing, which is kind of vulgar, but it's kill your babies, right?
Like, if you're waiting something, you can't hold onto things just because they feel precious.
You have to look at the whole picture and you have to make sure that's the best.
So I really try to go by that and I try to imagine if I was arguing the other way.
What evidence I would pull.
And I really like with the explicit teaching, I really try to disprove myself and with content knowledge, you know, if you were on the other side, what would you be pulling, what would you be saying?
And try to disprove yourself.
And that is a, an approach I take.
And if you can't, then I usually feel pretty confident going and advocating for that approach.
But, you know, for inquiry, there are many caveats.
You know, there are many kind of mini inquiries or this or that I con, I personally consider part of explicit teaching.
But I think you, it is much better to be open-minded and not just try to stake your whole claim on an argument you've already made in the past.
So
Gene Tavernetti: We agree.
Olivia, do you have any questions for me?
Olivia Mullins: Yes, Gina?
I did, I do.
Let me pull it up 'cause I emailed it to myself.
Oh, okay.
It's specific.
So not totally related to what we're talking about, but I was thinking of something, so I know you do pd. This might be a challenging question, and I know that you always want to have a relationship with the school.
You know, that's how you make the most change.
Right?
But what if you are only given an hour or two for a professional development session?
Is there a way that you can make some small change within that one or two hour session?
And what would you, what would that be?
Gene Tavernetti: Well, I would probably start out saying, no, I couldn't, but now I'm gonna explain to you how I could
Olivia Mullins: Yeah.
You gotta answer.
You gotta tell me how you could, yeah.
Gene Tavernetti: Well, the first thing is think about you know, there is so much bad stuff and memes online about bad pd mm-hmm.
And that the teachers provide.
And if you take a look at the things that they're upset about, for the most part, I absolutely agree.
Olivia Mullins: Mm-hmm.
Gene Tavernetti: You know?
Mm-hmm.
They're don't apply to us.
You know, they're just talking down to us.
All of those things which are absolutely valid, you know, which are absolutely valid.
And so, if I only had a couple hours, one of the most important things that I would do first would be to go into classrooms.
Olivia Mullins: Mm-hmm.
Gene Tavernetti: To go into classrooms and see what's happening now.
Olivia Mullins: Okay.
Gene Tavernetti: And to see where, to see who might be doing one of the, one of the strategies to techniques, whatever we wanna call it, that I might be talking about during a training.
Okay.
Because we can turn to those people and they can, you know, we can say, this is already happening in your site.
Olivia Mullins: All right.
So you would get permission to observe prior to the pd Yeah.
And then build that into your session.
Gene Tavernetti: Yeah, and it's, and you don't have to do a lot.
I mean, you could do and I know teachers don't like to hear this, but it's absolutely true that if somebody knows what to look for during walkthroughs mm-hmm.
You can in 10 minutes mm-hmm.
You can gather a lot of data.
Olivia Mullins: Mm-hmm.
Gene Tavernetti: And and you know, based on what you walk in on, you can pretty much determine what happened before.
Okay.
And what's gonna happen when you leave?
Okay.
So that, so there's a lot, there's a lot of a lot of data there.
And the other thing that like if I was doing secondary
Olivia Mullins: mm-hmm.
Gene Tavernetti: I always wanna do it by department and you know, I know what, okay, we're gonna have everybody in here.
And the reason is
Olivia Mullins: yes.
Gene Tavernetti: It's not that it's not generalizable.
Olivia Mullins: Mm-hmm.
Gene Tavernetti: But you're making the teacher generalize it instead of having them, you know, present within their content area.
Olivia Mullins: Right.
Gene Tavernetti: So they don't have to generalize it.
I mean, this is an example of what we're doing.
Olivia Mullins: Mm-hmm.
Gene Tavernetti: So those are a couple things.
And I would wanna be sure that if I was only gonna be there a couple hours, I would wanna be sure that I could also, while I'm at the school, work with the folks who are gonna do the follow up.
Okay.
If they're not follow, if they're not hiring me to do the follow up
Olivia Mullins: mm-hmm.
Gene Tavernetti: Training, coaching, et cetera.
Olivia Mullins: Mm-hmm.
Gene Tavernetti: We wanna be sure that we can have a, we can have a plan to support those teachers in whatever we talked about after I leave.
But I think the, there's really it's funny when you talk to teachers about PD.
We're working at, in one district and the we are starting with the administrators, but the administration very wisely.
Also invited all the union officers.
Olivia Mullins: Oh
Gene Tavernetti: the you know, teacher's union.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
They and so we did a couple sessions and I asked the president president of the union, I said, what is, and he was just saying, this was great, you know, this is mm-hmm.
This was really good.
And I said, what do you think is gonna be the pushback from your folks?
Mm-hmm.
He said, they're gonna say, we're already doing it.
We're already doing, yeah.
You know, we're already doing it.
So the reason that I give that example is.
There are things that are predictable and you face them and you talk about them mm-hmm.
In trying to, instead of trying to hide and BS your way through it.
Right.
Olivia Mullins: Right.
Gene Tavernetti: And then the other thing about a two hour training, probably wanna do an hour.
Olivia Mullins: Mm-hmm.
Gene Tavernetti: Because most teachers, even if it's worthwhile they wouldn't, they wanna get back to their classroom.
Olivia Mullins: Yeah.
Gene Tavernetti: Yeah.
And again, we need to respect Right.
We need to respect them.
And part of that respect is being as efficient as possible.
Olivia Mullins: Mm-hmm.
Gene Tavernetti: Mm-hmm.
And talking to their needs.
Mm-hmm.
Olivia Mullins: That's int I like with secondary, that makes so much sense because yeah.
A literature teacher and a math teacher, it, you're gonna, I mean, they're gonna do be doing very different things, right?
Gene Tavernetti: Yes.
Olivia Mullins: Even if there are a few generalizable things.
And then I also that I, the idea of we're already doing this, I know there's been conversation and I really like the idea of, you are, you're doing this and let's do it more.
You know, what are you or what are you already doing that you can do more?
Gene Tavernetti: Well, and I think the okay, I'm gonna drop names here so I can Okay.
So I can, you know, Laura Sta
Olivia Mullins: Oh yeah, Laura.
Gene Tavernetti: Okay.
Yeah.
Olivia Mullins: Yeah.
Gene Tavernetti: So, she allowed me to work with her and do a little bit of coaching.
Olivia Mullins: Mm-hmm.
Gene Tavernetti: And she's a, you know, she uses the CKA knowledge building mm-hmm.
Program.
Mm-hmm.
Olivia Mullins: Mm-hmm.
Gene Tavernetti: And so we were looking at how she was doing it, and it was she was doing it very systematically, you know, using all the things, all the strategies and stuff.
And the one thing that I shared with her is that at the end of the lesson, the kids were gonna write a one paragraph summary.
Olivia Mullins: Okay.
Gene Tavernetti: Okay.
And she uses the writing revolution.
Mm-hmm.
Stuff.
Olivia Mullins: Mm-hmm.
Gene Tavernetti: And so it was one, this is the only thing that I suggested to her.
Mm-hmm.
And she started using it and she said it's been very successful, is that if you're gonna want the students to choose three things to write about
Olivia Mullins: mm-hmm.
Gene Tavernetti: As a, in a summary
Olivia Mullins: mm-hmm.
Gene Tavernetti: They should be the, some of the most important things in that article.
Olivia Mullins: Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Gene Tavernetti: And before you read it, say, you know what kids we're gonna read about the Nile River today.
Olivia Mullins: Mm-hmm.
Gene Tavernetti: And there are three things that I want you looking out for.
Olivia Mullins: Mm-hmm.
Gene Tavernetti: When we read this.
Mm-hmm.
And then she creates a tree map, you know?
Mm-hmm.
And so when they get to that piece mm-hmm.
Part the discussion is, kids, did we get, did they talk about the geography here?
Yeah.
So what do we wanna put in our notes?
And so it's very focused on those three things that are going to lead to their paragraphs that have three things in it.
She did it, and she, you know, she changed the lesson like that, and she, and I asked her, you know, well, how did it go?
She goes, well, I changed everything, you know, I just had to change everything.
But I told her, you know what, you know, maybe in your head mm-hmm.
You changed everything.
Olivia Mullins: Right.
Gene Tavernetti: But somebody watching.
Right.
Olivia Mullins: Right.
Gene Tavernetti: No.
And so the point of me telling that story is that what was going on in her head
Olivia Mullins: mm-hmm.
Gene Tavernetti: Was important that instead of saying, I do this already.
Olivia Mullins: Mm-hmm.
Gene Tavernetti: It wa it was a shift, but it didn't look any, any different.
Olivia Mullins: Right.
Gene Tavernetti: So somebody coming in and watching a teacher say oh yeah, they're doing that, they're doing that, but they could be missing the most important element to make it su to make it successful.
Olivia Mullins: I, you know, I think I need to go back and now that I know more than when I first read your book, I need to go back, you know, once you know more, you can pull out the nuggets.
Gene Tavernetti: Right.
Right.
' Olivia Mullins: cause I, I love that.
I always, I have a big problem with most informational texts for this age.
And anyway, it also reminds me of the story champs I'm using and modifying a little bit their informational text part where you kind of create something so it's structured like that to, to start off.
But anyway but yeah, I like, I love that for when you have these informational texts that are just like, most of them are unwieldy and have way too much information and which is why I don't, I have cut down on using them.
But yeah, that's a great approach.
But I think, you know, honestly, I think you could, maybe most teachers might do a little preview.
I don't know.
So I feel like you could frame it, you're doing this preview let's expand that.
Gene Tavernetti: What I kind of try to get a metaphor for the teachers is
Olivia Mullins: mm-hmm.
Gene Tavernetti: When you think of, wikipedia, you look up something in Wikipedia mm-hmm.
And it gives you this little paragraph introduction.
Olivia Mullins: Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Gene Tavernetti: And then what's below all the details related to everything they brought up in that introduction.
Mm-hmm.
So, so what I share with teachers is that's the story.
Tell them the story of this lesson.
Lesson.
Olivia Mullins: Mm-hmm.
Lesson
Gene Tavernetti: broadly, no details.
No, no details.
The details are what you're gonna look for when you read.
But without understanding the story, then they don't know what to look for.
Olivia Mullins: Right.
And these, I mean, she's first grade, right?
Gene Tavernetti: She's was second grade when I worked for her.
I think she's doing third.
She's doing third grade now.
Olivia Mullins: Oh, third.
Oh, okay.
Oh yeah.
Third.
Okay.
Yeah.
And it third is a, yeah.
Third, you start to be able to reference the text too, which is different than the little kids where you can't, right.
You don't have the record of it.
But
Gene Tavernetti: yeah.
Olivia Mullins: That's good.
Yeah.
Gene Tavernetti: Yeah.
Olivia Mullins: All right.
Gene Tavernetti: Anything else Olivia?
Olivia Mullins: I think that's, I mean, I think that's all.
Of course I could, we could talk, I'm sure for three more hours, but
Gene Tavernetti: we have already determined, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna tell on you here, 'cause pe people who know me know that I'm gonna be the last person to leave the party just because I wanna talk no longer.
And then Olivia's there too.
So, so Olivia, we're just good to say goodbye.
Olivia Mullins: All right.
Yeah, because if you gimme that opening, you know,
Gene Tavernetti: Olivia, thank you so much.
Thank you so much.
Olivia Mullins: Thank you so much for having me, Jean.
Gene Tavernetti: We'll talk soon.
Olivia Mullins: All right.
Gene Tavernetti: If you're enjoying these podcasts, tell a friend.
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Tesscg.
com, that's T E S S C G dot com, where you will also find information about ordering my books, Teach Fast, Focus Adaptable Structure Teaching, and Maximizing the Impact of Coaching Cycles.