Comprehension Starts Before the Text: Insights with Dr. Kate Cain

In this episode, Dr. Kate Cain joins Literacy Talks hosts Stacy Hurst and Donell Pons to explore why comprehension isn’t just about decoding—it’s about what students bring to the text. From oral language and background knowledge to the structure of “considerate texts,” Dr. Cain offers practical insights into how educators can teach comprehension intentionally. Tune in for a deep, thought-provoking conversation that connects research to classroom practice and redefines what it means to understand what we read.

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Transcript

Narrator: 0:03

Welcome to literacy talks, the podcast for literacy leaders and champions everywhere, brought to you by Reading Horizons. Literacy talks is the place to discover new ideas, trends, insights and practical strategies for helping all learners reach reading proficiency. Our hosts are Stacy Hurst, a professor at Southern Utah University and Chief Academic Advisor for Reading Horizons. Donell pons, a recognized expert and advocate in literacy, dyslexia and special education, and Lindsay Kemeny, an elementary classroom teacher, author and speaker. Now let's talk literacy.

Stacy Hurst: 0:46

Welcome to this episode of literacy Talks. My name is Stacy Hurst. I have the privilege of hosting this podcast along with Donell pons and Lindsay Kemeny, and those of you who've been listening know that we are focusing this season's podcast on the idea issue celebrating its 75th anniversary of perspectives. So we are excited for this specific episode, and I'm going to let Donell introduce our guest and tell you why we're excited.

Donell Pons: 1:18

Great. So this is such a pleasure to have Kate Cain on. I had not known much about your background, Kate, but I saw you. I had the pleasure of being able to attend the IDA conference in Texas that was just held recently when they introduced this perspectives publication. And then you took a piece, because you have an article in the publication, and boy, I was just, it was really good. Just very, very good. I was so glad to be introduced to your voice, and I thought everybody's got to hear from you, so we wanted to make sure we could get you on. And it's been challenging because you are, you know, in a different place than we are here in the United States, and so the time difference, and we really appreciate you doing that and accommodating us. And Lindsay isn't going to able to join us today for that reason, so you'll find you're absent, but we just really found it important to be able to talk to you today. Thoroughly enjoyed what you discussed and when you presented. You did your piece was on making and conveying meaning, how structured literacy integrates comprehension and composition, and so we've talked about various aspects of structured literacy. This isn't new for our listeners. They've been listening along and also following along in the article. And so you'll want to go to your perspectives publication, because we've we've told folks where that's at, and they've been following along. Page 60 is where it begins, but we really get into it next couple of pages in. But for our listeners, Kate, just I'd like you to maybe give us a little bit of your background, because, like I say, you were new for me, relatively new for me, and I was just so grateful to hear from you what give us a little bit about your background in reading. Okay, well, first I'd just

Unknown: 2:47

like to thank you for inviting me to be part of this and talk about these ideas and share them with your listeners. It's a great experience. I love talking about research to different groups and really trying to bridge that research to practice divide. So I guess my background is maybe not what people expect it to be. So my training is actually in experimental psychology. So I'm not a qualified classroom teacher. I'm not a speech language pathologist or an educational psychologist, I have only ever stood up in a classroom and work with children in terms of my research, but not actually in terms of instruction or teaching. And so basically I did training. My undergraduate degree was in experimental psychology, as I said at Sussex University. And one of the things that I learned there, I became particularly interested in memory, in text, in language processing, and then I got into reading research, specifically for my PhD. So I worked for a couple of years on adult text comprehension with Jane Oak Hill and Alan Garnham. And through that, I became really interested in Jane's other work that had been about children that have got specific reading comprehension difficulties. So up to them, I'd only been sort of like doing work on skilled adult readers, but Jane had done some work previously with a group of children who acquire apparently good word reading skills, but they're not very good at answering questions about texts that they've read or recalling those texts with appropriate detail and sequencing. And so I ended up, sort of like focusing on that group for my PhD studies, trying to understand, why does their comprehension break down? You know, why can they they've obviously got good learning skills, because they can develop good word reading skills. So what's going on with the comprehension? And then I took a postdoc, actually, with Jane as well, that was looking at longer. Original study of a group of readers, and I've never really been able to get away from reading comprehension development and difficulties since then, I was hooked.

Donell Pons: 5:10

Well, that's great. That's our gain. I think that's an interesting background, like you said, Kate, because when you presented it, definitely it was a different perspective that I was not used to hearing, and really appreciated that different lens that you brought to it. So that is that's interesting to hear from you, that your background is is a bit different. So I hope our readers will or listeners will pick up on that. It's great. And to let's just dive right in, because you get, you get started right away in your article, which I love, just get right to the right to it, and you say that you begin the article by stating good oral language and communication skills provide a strong foundation for the development of reading and writing. Preschoolers who know the meanings of more words speak longer utterances and produce more sophisticated narratives are those who typically acquire stronger literacy skills and more quickly than their peers. So this is an excellent opening statement explain why this is such a good way to begin discussing a rather complex topic of making and conveying meaning.

Unknown: 6:11

Yeah, so reading comprehension and written composition, they're complex. They draw on a very wide range of different knowledge skills and cognitive processes. And I think one of the things I was trying to get across often, readers and instruction instructors of literacy, they know that kind of word recognition skills have got to be taught. Children have got to be able to decode the words, to be able to access meaning from text, and they got to learn how to spell those words for writing. We know that that's critical, but what I wanted to get across was the ability to understand what we read and the ability to actually write sort of clear, unambiguous, sort of persuasive text. It doesn't just come from nowhere, so reading comprehension, composition skills, they've got to be taught and fostered, similar to how we think about word recognition skills. They have to be sort of like taught and fostered, too. But it doesn't mean that children are coming to the classroom without anything, because we have this foundation of their oral language skills, of their communication skills that they've built up in preschool, and those serve to be a really strong foundation for what we need to go on and teach and foster. So I guess to link it with something that your listeners might be familiar with, it's not really dissimilar to how we know that your oral language skills predict how easily children learn to read words? You know, children who can play around with the spoken language, can identify words that rhyme, can identify similar starting letters. They find it much easier to learn to read or to decode the printed word. So what we have comprehension, children who have just got better oral language skills, they know the meanings of more words. They produce longer utterances. They tell narratives. Relate autobiographical events with clear structures, you know, with the beginning, a middle and an end. Children who come with those foundational skills, they typically acquire or develop progress, if you like, in reading comprehension much more easily than children who don't have that oral language background when they start school. So I guess what I was trying to do with that is really get across this idea that comprehension, composition, they do need to be taught. They do need to be fostered. But we're not starting with a blank slate like the majority of children will come to school with oral language skills, and we can build on those and develop those to enable them to become good readers and good writers.

Donell Pons: 8:59

Yeah, gosh, I just love the way you broke that down for us, and the importance of it and the importance of knowing. And I think Kate, sometimes that's where it breaks down for us, is we see children and they're being expressive, and they might be telling a story, and they're rather young, and we think that's just so adorable, but there's a lot going on when they do that, and they're presenting a lot of skill when they do that. And I think maybe sometimes we lose track of that and think, Oh, it's just natural when really, there's a lot that plays into how well they do that, right and sets them

Unknown: 9:27

up. I agree, and I think also it's really difficult sometimes for us as skilled language users to reflect on that. It's very difficult for us to remember back and reflect on our own learning. So sometimes, and I think I may it may be one of the things that I did when you saw me speak at Ida, when we were launching this perspectives issue, I often try to use different types of texts and example to put a skilled adult audience in the shoes of a young Re. Data to give them some of the challenges with vocabulary, with structures, with meaning that a young reader might come across. Yeah. In fact,

Donell Pons: 10:09

Kate, you have a text right away. After that first bit that I read, you present the reader with a text, and you say, just read this. And then you ask a few questions, and you call this. I thought it was really interesting. You had a good name for it, and I'm trying to remember, oh, consider it considerate text. And that was kind of the first time I've heard anybody use So Kate, tell us a little bit about that, because it was a great exercise, by the way, and a great piece of text to get us thinking like you say,

Unknown: 10:36

oh goodness. Well, certainly the idea of a considerate text, I'm sure it does not come from Me, but basically, you can think about a writer as being considerate and thinking about their audience and what knowledge they have and how much help and support they give them with explicit information and with signaling so that they can extract meaning from it. So I'm allowed I had a series of questions after this text, and I'm allowed to call it an inconsiderate text, because I wrote it deliberately to try and sort of like trip readers up. I mean, in fact, I actually adapted it from a text that had been used in the study of poor comprehenders Many years ago by Nicola Yule and Trish Jocelyn, who I both know. But basically, in this text, what I was trying to get across was you can read the words on the page, and you still may have to engage in some active effort to extract the meaning of a text. I've actually got the text here. Shall I read it out? And then I could talk read through what I was thinking, or your listeners rather, sorry, I'm so obsessed with reading, I'm going to constantly refer to readers, but I can talk you through what I was thinking about, the ideas I wanted to get across with this text. So it's very brief. I think it's only about, it's only, it's only three sentences long. So the text reads like this, Lily had been busy with her bucket and spade for hours. A huge wave crashed onto the shore just after she had completed the tower. On seeing that her day's work had been ruined, Lily started to cry. So the first question I asked was for a reader to think about, is this a considerate text or not? To try and get them into the process of thinking, how well did I understand it? But then some follow up questions to really get them to probe them so they could think, Well, did I really get that or not? So where was Lily the setting of the story? That's not stated explicitly, what was she doing? Well, the activity, it's a bit vague and fuzzy, really, in what we're talking about and what happened to make Lily cry. Typically, in a narrative, things happen for a reason. There's a motivation for a character's actions. And so in this text, it doesn't, as I said, it doesn't state the setting, but there are clues here, because we've got a wave and we've got a shore. So you might infer that Li was at the seaside, means she could be by a big lake. I guess if it's got sufficient weather system, we've got words that could trip a reader up if they were not using the context to extract meaning. So for example, the word wave, it doesn't mean a gesture here, it means sort of like a wave at the seaside. But that sentence starts off it's a huge wave, so before you hear crashed onto the shore, you don't actually know whether that is somebody gesturing or not. And then there are details where the reader really needs to infer what is going on by drawing on their background knowledge and their general knowledge. So we have, I mean, this obviously reflects my childhood fact that I've written about this many happier time on a cold beach with my bucket and spade making sand castles. But you know, so there are these clues that if you have that background knowledge, as I do, that sort of a bucket in spade, it doesn't say that she'd completed a sand castle, but it calls it a tower. You can use that information to understand that that was what Lily was doing. Again, this text doesn't state explicitly that the sand castle was ruined, or, like, kind of, or doesn't say that it was, you know, like kind of crashed by the wave. The wave crashed onto the shore. Lily's day's work had been ruined by that the reader can infer, oh, the reason that Lily started to cry was not just this fuzzy idea that her day's work had been ruined, but that her glorious sandcast or some magnificent tower had been destroyed by the wave. And if you don't engage in that additional processing of trying to rather than just understanding the words in isolation, but linking them into. Coherent clauses, coherent sentences, linking up those ideas across the text. And by drawing on your background knowledge to actually make sense of these more implicit details, you're only going to have a fuzzy, inadequate representation of the text, meaning there's actually an awful lot going on even to understand a very, very simple text. You know,

Donell Pons: 15:27

that's interesting, because Stacy, you and I have had a conversation before, too about the kind of text we put in front of students, and our expectation for what we think the student ought to be able to accomplish with that. And Kate, you are honing right in on this for us, because you often see a great deal of text put in front of young readers, and people think just because the language has been simplified, that Oh, that's good. But as you've mentioned in those four key parts that you would teach in structured literacy, if you're really paying attention to this, you're looking at vocabulary and background knowledge, sentence structure and grammar knowledge and use of text structure and critical thinking skills. That's a whole lot more than just making the words making the words a little more simple,

Unknown: 16:05

right? Definitely, most definitely, I think that's we often think about words. We think that if individual words are familiar, or if individual words are decodable, then everything will be okay. And often also we have, there's a bit of a challenge. I think when we use readability formula to identify whether or a word a text is easy to read or suitable for a particular age group, because that typically focuses on, I mean, those different formulae, they typically focus on Word Frequency and decodability and also sentence length. And sometimes a short two short sentences isn't always that helpful, because sometimes we actually have these signaling words that signal the way that two events or ideas are related, such as before and after. Because, you know, thinking those words can be very important, and if you don't actually have them in a text, but you've stripped it all out to have supposedly short, easy to read sentences a child doesn't have that signal from the writer about how to link different ideas. So I think I like to think of them as sort of like processing instructions. And I think we really have to think, when we're looking at what we might call a simplified text, we have to go beyond the words and the length of the sentences, actually think about the ideas. Think about that depth of processing and what it takes to truly understand what is going on in that text.

Stacy Hurst: 17:41

And sometimes those readability formulas they Well, they can't take into consideration the background knowledge of a student, so what they're bringing to the text as well. I think that puts it upon us as teachers and practitioners to be extra aware when we're asking a student to decode a text, then are they prepared to comprehend it based on what we know about their background knowledge?

Unknown: 18:08

Yeah, I fully agree, because a child who's got that background knowledge, they're not just going to find it easier to understand the text. They will find it easier to decode unfamiliar words because they can use the context to help them. But it also, I think, points to that idea that there are these different skills involved, and vocabulary and background knowledge are very, very important, but there are other skills within your sort of like, kind of your battery, your toolkit as a reader that you can use to sort of like support and help you to extract meaning from that text.

Narrator: 18:48

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Donell Pons: 19:26

So interesting. And Kate on page 63 you say something interesting. I think it aligns with this little conversation we're having. You say it is well established that books provide more rich, diverse and advanced linguistic content than child directed speech and everyday conversation. Thus, good oral vocabulary knowledge is not sufficient to support good reading comprehension. That right there could be a revelation for a lot of folks, because they assume, if this child is very orally, you know, prattling along, chit chatting and good at conversation, that that's going to automatically help them in. Text, but not necessarily, right?

Unknown: 20:02

Yeah. So, as I said at the start, having these good oral language skills, it's an essential foundation on which we can build but language, just like the conversation we're having, this is on the fly. I'm just like, kind of retrieving words. Quite a narrow I'll be using quite a narrow vocabulary in this conversation compared to if I was like writing about this, because we're retrieving this in real time, it might surprise people to know some of the differences that you have between written text and conversation. So even young children's picture books have got a greater variety of vocabulary. They've got more rare vocabulary, less familiar words than adult conversation. When we're talking like kind of in conversation as a group of adults, unless it's sort of something very, very specific, we use this very reduced vocabulary so children, as they're reading, they will come across words that may be very unfamiliar to them. I mean, it's a challenge, but it's the real opportunity that you actually have with written text, because a writer has time to think about what they're writing. They want to avoid repetition. They might be selecting very precise words for a particular nuance or shade of meaning. We get this very, very rich vocabulary that's used in in printed books, even printed books very young children and typically also those really critical word words are the content words, the words that are carrying meaning. So I did an analysis of the language that had been used in a children's reading scheme, or rather correct I did not do the analysis. Some other people did the analysis. I read about it and wrote about it. I will give credit where it is due. This was done years ago by Morag Stewart and colleagues, but it still really holds true, and they found that a lot of those key essential words that you have in supposedly like fairly simple, supported, decodable reading schemes, occur very infrequently, and they're very rare words. So how often do we talk about or read about dragons and princesses? For example, we do it a lot when we're children. Same with words, like giant but these words, they're not actually that familiar in like, sort of standard vocabulary and conversation, but you get the same I mean, it's not just with vocabulary, where you can think about the language of books and written text being different. So in terms of thinking about sentence structures, the sentence structures we use in conversation and in you know, child directed speech in particular, are typically very simple. We don't use very many relative clauses, but relative clauses occur much more frequently in written text. If you think about a conversation that you're having with the child, or even if they were telling you back a story or telling you sort of an autobiographical memory, you're there to scaffold it. You're engaged in turn taking. It's short bursts of language, production of conversation. You know, it's very different to if a child was reading a text where you're integrating across different paragraphs, or if the child is like kind of, you know, writing a text for an assignment where they're expected to connect up ideas across a paragraph. You know, we're they're doing it independently when they're reading and writing. It's not like sort of a scaffolded, sort of like two way conversation. But yeah, so you have that some very, very critical differences between the language that we're exposed to in conversation and the language that we're exposed to in terms of print, but as I said, we also that also gives us an amazing opportunity. So building good reading habits, for example, is just so unbelievably important, because people adults, not just children, but adults as well, who engage in more reading in their free time. They're better at word reading, they're better at spelling, they know more vocabulary, they have better general knowledge. They're better at reasoning. I mean, it's just amazing the power of print and what you know it can give to an individual, but obviously, if you don't have the right text processing skills, you're not going to be able to take advantage in that way and learn from

Donell Pons: 24:47

it. Yes, so interesting, Kate, you were saying a couple of things. I think we make assumptions oftentimes about what we mean by background knowledge as well, because you made a really interesting point about oftentimes, the background knowledge might be able to help a student. Be able to interpret a text that maybe they're lacking a little bit vocabulary, maybe that meaning is fuzzy, maybe even an image of something might be a little difficult for that student. However, background knowledge may be helpful. And so do we sometimes make an assumption that if a student has a lot of oral language, they've got a lot of background knowledge, and maybe that's not necessarily the case. And then how do you help a student gain back that background knowledge? Yeah, that's a really

Unknown: 25:25

interesting point. Oh so. Background knowledge, as you say, it can help to compensate for poorer reading skills. And there are lots of studies where they get individuals who are either experts in baseball, or novices and those sorts of things, getting them to read text. And then the ones who know that, because they know the pattern of a game, you know, like the structure how things happen, they're able to, sort of, like, understand that text much more readily than someone who actually, on a standardized test would be seen to be a skilled reader that doesn't have that knowledge. They can't fit it into the framework. They can't draw up that schema of how that particular event unfolds. So it's you know, this is this complex interaction, but then it also speaks to your point of sort of, how should we, how do we teach this background knowledge? And you know, one of the ways that people are exploring this and pushing this a lot is really trying to have, I guess, what can be referred to as content focused instruction. So rather than teaching things in isolation, the way that you can build up banks of knowledge, banks of vocabulary, so it really does become sort of like integrated, and you're sort of like, you have to establish, sort of like rich, connected semantic representations, and that has To be connected more broadly to what you know about things, your conceptual knowledge about the world. I mean, I do kind of, you know, I always say I'm not really sure where vocabulary knowledge ends and background knowledge begins, because, you know, I really do see them on a continuum. But I think it really speaks to the fact that, like, kind of we can't just give kids, like a list of vocabulary items and say, This is your list of words for this week. Go away and read it and learn it. You know that is not necessarily going to help them, but actually, kind of like building on that knowledge by having texts and activities that are all based on like, particular topic areas can help you to use that knowledge in different ways, because we know that to consolidate knowledge, it's not just coming in. You're not just like sort of a passive recipient. You have to use that knowledge to consolidate it. Retrieval is very important as well, right?

Donell Pons: 27:57

And connection too, right? Kate, so you're reading other texts, you can make connections. Yeah, that's really interesting. I'm just thinking about, you know, this makes text selection so much more important. And how often is text maybe the last thing we think about, because we're doing all of the teaching, and the text is sort of an afterthought, and it really should be our primary goal is that text shouldn't it?

Unknown: 28:24

I agree with you, in terms of what the text can offer. If you're working with a group of students, you're never going to be able to select a text that is going to be equal to all of them. But one of the nice things is because they'll all have different knowledge and experience. Then through that discussion, you can help them to make the connections that you were talking about, to connect it with their own experiences and with different texts. But you know, there are so many, I think if you understand what is going on in constructing meaning from text. You can use almost any text to actually create a really interesting discussion and facilitate learning. But there is something to be said for you know, we do want to encourage children to be happy, successful, motivated readers and writers. So we do really have to think about, sort of like our selection of texts, as you say, to really try and instill that enjoyment and to sort of like, bring up the next generation of motivated readers. It's something I think people are concerned about a lot in terms of how much time is spent outside of school in reading and writing activities. You know, it seems much more less than sort of couple of decades ago.

Donell Pons: 29:54

Boy, isn't that true. So Kate, you looking at that from your perspective on your background? What are. What's one of your main concerns you have about students reading text?

Unknown: 30:07

I think they don't do enough of it. Text. So for me, it's, it's, it's, you see, I'm a real book worm. So I could read from a very young age. And I always say you're never lonely with a book, because you can always, like, kind of escape into that other world. And I also see that books just open up so much knowledge and opportunities. So I can be a male medieval traveler, you know? I can get into, like, the shoes and the perspective of that character through a book. So I can experience all different types of cultures, of ages, times in history, emotions, you know, like different positions and attitudes and perspectives, because we don't always read books where we agree with the perspective of the author. So I think you can learn a lot from books. There are studies demonstrating how more with sort of like narrative reading, in particular, it's actually important for emotional well being, and so it can sort of like impact on your ability to empathize with other people on, sort of like insight into yourself. Obviously, you know, it can help you to relax, which is a good thing to do. So there are lots and lots of benefits from reading. I mean, the same is true with writing, and it's one of the things. I don't know what the situation is like in the US, but in the UK, we have a there's a charity, the National Literacy trust, that does an annual survey of literacy, and in the last one, they found that fewer than three in 10 children engage in writing in their free time. It's something that they might do in school, but they don't engage in writing anymore. They found out of those who did engage in writing, often they did it to like, kind of relax, and I think to sort of like, help them think through problems and their well being. Maybe they were keeping diaries. But it's, you know, it's really so it's not, you know, it's, it's sort of like reading and writing. Those general literacy activities are not something that necessarily features so heavily in children's free time. Yeah, in today's society, more than ever, you've got to be literate to have sort of like educational success, but to have employment success, you know, you have to be able to fill in all of those forms. To do your tax returns. You have to be able to understand really complicated information to sort of like, make choices about healthcare, to like, you know, participate in democracy. You know, life is complex now, and actually, kind of literacy is important, I think, more than ever so, and it's easier if it's an enjoyable lifelong habit. So it's really sort of like trying to support children to see that there's a purpose to it, that it isn't just something that you do in school. It's not just something that is taught in school. It actually serves a much wider purpose, maybe partly helping to connect it to these broader aspects in life, as well as just the enjoyment aspect, is a way for children to really sort of see that function and engage in literacy activities outside of school.

Stacy Hurst: 33:44

Yeah, I love that you're you're mentioning that because I think oftentimes, as teachers and I, I formerly I taught first grade, now I'm teaching pre service teachers, but I I'm just making a note for myself to mention more often, the importance we have as adults to instill that love of reading in our students. I think so often we're overly conscious of can they actually read? That's the important thing. Can they decode? But there's no reason that we can't, at the same time, develop this love of reading and learning from reading that may help facilitate that. We might need to just start putting that on the map more often, right? Like do? Our students love to read, and most of my students, to be honest, will mention that they don't like to read, and they're going to be teachers, so I think it's important that we can instill that in our students coming up.

Unknown: 34:43

But if you think about a standard young child, standard classroom, or think about the family home, how often does a young child who is learning to read actually see an adult read? Yeah, they may. Engage in, like, shared reading activities and discussion. But children actually don't see us reading very often. We don't necessarily like show it and model it as an activity that we engage in in our

Donell Pons: 35:16

free time. Yeah, you are so right. And I know some teachers who

Unknown: 35:21

will, like, kind of who do this in class, and they will sort of like, the children are like, kind of there to do their, sort of like, read their book, you know, do their silent reading on their own. And the teacher will sit at the front of the class, rather than grading a lot of assignments. Will sit there and read a book to actually demonstrate and try and sort of have some of that shared experience and be a good role model. You know,

Donell Pons: 35:45

kid, I love that you mentioned that because I taught creative writing for for a bit in high school, for high school students, and we would write together. So I was writing as well. I would be engaged. I had my assignment as well. We'd all get the topic. We would share, and I would share, I'd share part of mine, and that really is that community sense and that leadership of Yes, I enjoy doing this as much as you should be enjoying doing this. I think is so important. So I'm glad you mentioned

Unknown: 36:12

that. That's a lovely example. Yeah, I love that idea. Like a community of readers, a community of writers,

Donell Pons: 36:19

yeah? And I was just thinking, Kate, of you talking about, do they see us doing this thing that we say we value so much the reading and writing, but reading in particular and thinking, my best memories from childhood were memories of my mother, who would and when she had a free minute, she was very busy, she would race into her room. She had a book always on the go, and she'd get down on her bed and just start reading. She'd lie down a little bit, put her feet up, and I remember crawling in, because I was young, and resting my head in the crook of her arm while she read. And as she turned the pages, I could do that for hours just watching her. I couldn't read, but just the act of how engaged she was. And these are, as you say, they're really important moments, aren't they? Well, Kate, you've just been fantastic. I know we're well, you need to get to bed. For one thing,

Unknown: 37:05

I have to read my book. I always read before I go to bed. I can't get away from it. We don't

Donell Pons: 37:12

want to cheat your reading time before bed. This has been a delightful conversation, though, Kate, we really appreciate it, and really got us thinking about some very important things that we've been hearing folks talking more about, more appreciative. And then when I saw you present like I said, I just thought, oh, readers have to be introduced to you our listeners, because it's so good. And I

Stacy Hurst: 37:29

am dying to know what are you reading right now? Yeah,

Unknown: 37:35

what am I reading right now? I'm actually, I'm reading a very, um, traumatic, um, sort of like thriller, um, by Louise Doughty, but I will say, if you're into reading the book I finished before that, if you're really into reading and words and you like a bit of a mystery, then Susie dent guilty by definition, it's for like, book lovers and word of files, whatever the true word for that is is absolutely it's about a group of interview, I won't say much, but a group of individuals who work in an esteemed and established dictionary in Oxford. And there is like kind of an old mysterious case that comes about with lots of kind of written clues and puzzles that they have to work out. But, and I learned, you learn a new word every chapter you learn like kind of a new word that has got some, often some quite ancient origins. So I think for people who like books and words, Susie dent is guilty by definition, is one to read. Well,

Donell Pons: 38:51

that sounds good. Yeah,

Stacy Hurst: 38:53

it just added it to my list. Sounds great. And thank you so much for joining us. Dr Kane, we've learned a lot from you, from your article and from this conversation, and I know I have been inspired to really help my students who are becoming teachers, focus on what we need to do to model that comprehension, ability to comprehend the differences between written and spoken text, and why it's important for us to emphasize those with our students. So thank you so much. Well, thank you for this

Unknown: 39:30

opportunity. I mean, I'm hoping that having this conversation and people being able to listen to it, it might help to put a little bit more detail and information, because we had a very challenging word limit when we were tasked with writing those articles from perspectives, they could have been 10 times the length, and it wasn't possible to get all of that information in there. But I'm hoping it like kind of, you know, sparks off discussion and interest in people. Yeah. Yeah,

Stacy Hurst: 40:00

certainly would, and that is impressive. That's a good reminder that you did have limitations, because that was a very expert article that you wrote, and fit a lot of really good information in with considering those limitations even that's great. Good job. Thank you, and we'll encourage our listeners to read and reread that article as well. I know every time I've read it, I've read it a few times now I do get a new nuanced understanding of something that is going to be really important to my career going forward in helping prepare our teachers. So thank you so much, and thank you to our listeners who've been joining us this season, and especially for this episode, and we hope to see you on the next episode of literacy talks.

Narrator: 40:54

Thanks for joining us today. Literacy talks comes to you from Reading Horizons, where literacy momentum begins. Visit Reading horizons.com/literacy talks to access episodes and resources to support your journey in the science of reading. You.