Many educators understand the value of reading aloud to students, but may not have yet unlocked the full power of these tools as an intentional, consistent, and joyful instructional approach. In this episode, we welcome Molly Ness, author or the recent book, Read Alouds for All Learners: A Comprehensive Plan for Every Subject, Every Day, Grades PreK—8. Molly—a former classroom teacher herself, who also spent 16 years as a teacher educator—gives us an overview of the research on read-alouds, detailing the myriad benefits (linguistic, socioemotional, motivational, and physiological) they provide students. Molly also lays out strategies for effective read-alouds, instructions on how to properly plan and implement them, and specific examples of the pre-work process for texts like Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems.
Show notes:
*Terms and conditions:
Discount valid on SolutionTree.com only. Enter promo code AmplifyPodcast20 at checkout to receive a 20% discount on the paperback version of Read Alouds for All Learners. Offer expires December 15, 2023. Not valid for bookstores, distributors, or resellers. Continental U.S. only. Cannot be combined with other offers. For customers submitting a purchase order, payment must be received by December 15, 2023, to qualify for this offer.
Quotes:
"A read-aloud is an interactive language experience...where a teacher reads something, elicits a conversation from students. Those conversational turns are so essential in [a] read-aloud. It's a shared literacy experience around a text." —Molly Ness
"What I don't think teachers understand, and I say this having been one of those teachers, is the intentionality that needs to happen in planning the read-aloud." —Molly Ness
"When we add things like think-alouds and being explicit in our vocabulary, we are building [students'] metacognition and [their] abiliy to understand text." —Molly Ness
"We all have those gaps in knowledge and life experiences, regardless of where we come from and regardless of our zip code and regardless of our personal or family situation." —Molly Ness
Many educators understand the value of reading aloud to students, but may not have yet unlocked the full power of these tools as an intentional, consistent, and joyful instructional approach. In this episode, we welcome Molly Ness, author or the recent book, Read Alouds for All Learners: A Comprehensive Plan for Every Subject, Every Day, Grades PreK—8. Molly—a former classroom teacher herself, who also spent 16 years as a teacher educator—gives us an overview of the research on read-alouds, detailing the myriad benefits (linguistic, socioemotional, motivational, and physiological) they provide students. Molly also lays out strategies for effective read-alouds, instructions on how to properly plan and implement them, and specific examples of the pre-work process for texts like Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems.
Show notes:
*Terms and conditions:
Discount valid on SolutionTree.com only. Enter promo code AmplifyPodcast20 at checkout to receive a 20% discount on the paperback version of Read Alouds for All Learners. Offer expires December 15, 2023. Not valid for bookstores, distributors, or resellers. Continental U.S. only. Cannot be combined with other offers. For customers submitting a purchase order, payment must be received by December 15, 2023, to qualify for this offer.
Quotes:
"A read-aloud is an interactive language experience...where a teacher reads something, elicits a conversation from students. Those conversational turns are so essential in [a] read-aloud. It's a shared literacy experience around a text." —Molly Ness
"What I don't think teachers understand, and I say this having been one of those teachers, is the intentionality that needs to happen in planning the read-aloud." —Molly Ness
"When we add things like think-alouds and being explicit in our vocabulary, we are building [students'] metacognition and [their] abiliy to understand text." —Molly Ness
"We all have those gaps in knowledge and life experiences, regardless of where we come from and regardless of our zip code and regardless of our personal or family situation." —Molly Ness
What happens when we don't intentionally plan those read-alouds, we lose some of their instructional opportunities and benefits.
Susan Lambert:This is Susan Lambert, and welcome to Science of Reading: The Podcast from Amplify, where the Science of Reading lives. Season 8 is now officially underway, and this time we're focusing on the critical role of knowledge when it comes to literacy development. Over the course of this season, we'll delve into the research on knowledge building and discuss best practices for supporting students. And on this episode, we're exploring an especially fun and important tool for building knowledge: read-alouds. My guest is Dr. Molly Ness, a former classroom teacher, a reading researcher, a teacher educator, and the author of the recent book Read Alouds for All Learners: A Comprehensive Plan for Every Subject, Every Day, Grades PreK—8. On this episode, we dive into all the reasons that read-alouds are so effective for students, and we talk about how to use read-alouds most effectively in the classroom. Listeners will come away from this conversation with some new ideas and strategies for using read-alouds in their community. So please enjoy this conversation with Dr. Molly Ness. I'm so excited, Molly, to have you join us on today's episode.
Molly Ness:Well, thanks for having me. I'm thrilled to be here.
Susan Lambert:We would love if you would tell our listeners just a little bit about yourself , and maybe even how you got into the world of literacy.
Molly Ness:Sure. So I started my career as a classroom teacher right out of college. I actually thought I was going to go to law school. I joined Teach for America and spent two years teaching in Oakland, California, and quickly realized that public education and literacy in particular were the social justice issues that mattered to me the most. But I knew I didn't know a lot. And so, after teaching in Oakland, I taught in Los Angeles for a bit and then came back east and was fortunate enough to study reading education at the University of Virginia, where my research mostly focused on comprehension at the secondary level. Finally, I think my family recognized, "OK, she's doing the education thing. She is not going to law school." <Laugh> And eventually realized that what I really found interesting was being one of the people who could convey research to classroom teachers. My lens was always what was relevant to me as a classroom teacher on a Tuesday afternoon. So I sort of saw myself as somebody who could help bridge that gap between research and practice. And for 16 years, I was a teacher educator doing exactly that in New York City. I was a professor at Fordham University, working in teacher education, and left about a year and a half ago. I have always been interested in literacy as an issue of social justice. I've been very interested in book access. I have been very interested in teachers' instructional beliefs and decisions. And right now I serve as the Vice President of Academic Content at Learning Ally. And I have the honor of being on lots of boards: the New York State chapter of the Reading League and the International Literacy Association. I always think about myself as somebody who ... I do a lot of writing about reading, and reading about reading. That is the the way I sort of see my world and professional circles come together.
Susan Lambert:Well, it makes sense then that you were inspired to actually author a book, which is what we wanna talk with you about today. And that book is called — I'm gonna try to get this right— Read Alouds for All Learners: A Comprehensive Plan for Every Subject, Every Day, Grades PreK — 8. That's a mouthful, but exciting.
Molly Ness:It is . Thank you. Yeah, so the book came about because as somebody who has lived in the world of reading research for almost three decades now, I'm so grateful for this moment in our literacy landscape, where there's so much buzz and focus — podcasts and documentary films and social media conversations, and even mainstream media — covering reading instruction. But I have been a little concerned that we focus so much on foundational skills that we are overlooking — we're not paying enough attention to — things like vocabulary and comprehension. And what we know as unconstrained skills on the top part of the Reading Rope. So I was thinking back to what was one of my favorite things as a classroom teacher to do, which was read-alouds, and found that there wasn't a whole lot connecting read-alouds to the Science of Reading, and really helping teachers plan effective read-alouds across content areas.
Susan Lambert:A great motivation. And not just in the younger grades . So we often talk about read-alouds with preschool kids, or Grade 1 or kindergarten, first and second grade. But you chose to go all the way up through eighth grade. Why did you choose to do that?
Molly Ness:I did. I very firmly believe that. And some of this is backed by a powerful body of research that shows how all students benefit from read-alouds. And that read-alouds really are the way to build language comprehension. And just as they're so effective. When we think about the typical early childhood experience of a read-aloud — a teacher in a rocking chair, kids around his or her feet — those benefits continue in upper elementary school, as well as middle school. I will say that the book doesn't specifically focus on high school. That is no way a message that read-alouds should not happen in high school. It's just my particular learning and teaching experience was K—8. So I will look forward to somebody else writing the book about the power of read-alouds in high school as well.
Susan Lambert:<laugh> There you go. Well, before we get too much further down the road, I'd love if you could just do a definition of read-aloud. And it seems like, "Well, why does Molly need to do a definition of read-aloud?" But I think there's probably some misconceptions about a read-aloud.
Molly Ness:Sure. I see a read-aloud as an interactive language experience. When we think about that language interaction, I think about the ping-pong kind of thing, where a teacher reads something, elicits a conversation from students, that those conversational turns, which are so essential in read-aloud. So it's a shared literacy experience, around a text. That text can take so many forms. It can be the classic picture book. It can be a political speech in a social studies classroom. It can be a headline about an athletic event in physical education. Whatever that shared text is, and that interaction between teacher and students. And I'm specifically looking at read-alouds with more than one student. So I'm thinking about the classroom context, small-group or whole-group. But we know, of course, that there are so many benefits to the the one-on-one read-aloud that we typically see more in home environments.
Susan Lambert:Yeah. So, when we're thinking about using the research to base this as a whole-group instructional approach for students, what does research tell us about the benefits of read-alouds?
Molly Ness:Well, I will say that the, the body of research around read-alouds is a longstanding body of research, and really focuses on so many benefits. Linguistic benefits, socio-emotional benefits, motivational benefits. We know that read-alouds help students identify as a reader, and build their self-efficacy of who they are as a reader. We have a pretty profound body of research showing that read-alouds improve students' comprehension, their vocabulary. They build that knowledge, that background knowledge, and what I refer to as funds of knowledge. They foster higher-order thinking. I will say one of the real joys of writing this book is I got to dive into a relatively new body of research that looks at the physiological benefits of read-alouds. And I got to really geek out about the physiological benefits.
Susan Lambert:Oh , can you tell us more about that? That's very interesting.
Molly Ness:Sure. So there's a really interesting study that happened to take place at University of Virginia, where I had studied, where a nurse-practitioner actually was working in the neonatal intensive care unit. And these are the medically fragile babies who are, you know, in incubators with lots of wires. Their parents are often sort of not sure how to interact with them, because it's not the traditional experience of having your baby and putting it in your arms right away and taking it home. What we know: Men and women who have children in the neonatal unit often have higher levels of postpartum depression. And so this study created essentially a reading garden. Where they took babies and gave them three different types of treatments, all dependent on their medical stability. So we had really fragile babies, all the way up to more robust babies, who were about to be discharged. And the babies received read-alouds from their parents or caregiver that was specific to their condition. So a medically fragile baby might have whisper-reading for a shorter duration of time, whereas the babies who were more robust and ready to be on their way had longer readings at a louder voice level. And what they found is that these babies, their heart rates slowed. Their oxygen saturation rates increased. And these rates of stability and this calm state of physiological being continued for up to 30 minutes after the read-aloud. So, we actually started to see some medical benefits. And interestingly, the parents and caregivers who were more likely to experience postpartum depression had lower rates of postpartum depression when reading to their children. And 100 percent of participants said that they saw the benefits of reading aloud, and that they would continue it with their children at home. That was followed up with another study, where children who were hospitalized reported lower levels of pain. And we actually were able to see higher levels of oxytocin, which is that neurochemical transmitter that is often associated with pleasure, and lower levels of cortisol, which is one of the body signifiers of stress . So children reported their pain levels decreased in the hospital, and we actually saw it with some pretty compelling physiological data.
Susan Lambert:Wow, that is amazing. And that doesn't even take into consideration, for these children, the benefits of that language development that's happening, also, simultaneously. So a win-win there. That's amazing.
Molly Ness:Yeah, absolutely. I'm sure if we were to look at those babies and those children, those school-aged children, and look at the parts of their brain that light up with language experiences, we would see those as well. So, pretty powerful stuff going on, holistically, when kids are read to.
Susan Lambert:So, I know this really motivated you to wanna write this book. And, you know, I think teachers think, "Of course we're going to use read-alouds!" Do you think that they understand the power of read-alouds, in terms of the classroom?
Molly Ness:I think teachers understand that read-alouds are a should-do. I think teachers understand that their kids enjoy read-alouds. What I don't think teachers understand is the — and I say this having been one of those teachers — I think that teachers don't understand the intentionality that needs to happen in planning the read-aloud. And this was actually confirmed by a 2017 study, which was a survey of early childhood teachers. McCaffrey and Hisrich. What they did was they looked at teachers' instructional decisions and moves as they planned read-alouds. And 50 to 70 percent of their sample reported that they didn't actually plan their read-aloud, other than selecting the text. And I think back to eons ago, when I was in the classroom. I thought planning a read-aloud was, you know, knowing which book I was going to choose, and knowing how many pages; if I wasn't gonna read the whole thing, how many pages I was going to cover. I didn't think it was one of those times that I had to think about objectives and outcomes and extensions and modifications, and all of those things. And what happens when we don't intentionally plan those read-alouds: We lose some of their instructional opportunities and benefits .
Susan Lambert:Yeah. I ask that question intentionally, because me too, right? Thinking back when I was a classroom teacher and how I used read-alouds; I always read aloud. I mostly taught third grade. Always read aloud, of course, after kids come in from lunch and recess. Introducing them to the most exciting new fiction text that I want them — and, and I think the planning for me was, yes, selecting the text. But I also, at least, read the chapter ahead before I read it aloud to them. But I don't know that I did anything after I read ahead. So <laugh>, my planning too was not really that much <laugh> .
Molly Ness:Well, I will say you planned more than I did. I remember my first year of teaching, reading aloud the Andrew Clements book, Frindle, which was a new book at the time. That speaks to how long ago it was. And I hadn't read the book. And if you've read Frindle, you know the book ends with this really powerful emotional scene. And I wasn't expecting it. I hadn't previewed the text. And all of a sudden, here I am, sitting in front of these sixth graders, crying and sort of teary-eye misting. And the kids are looking at me, of course, like she's crazy. Because, you know, here's the teacher in the front of <laugh> — they're all sweaty and everything from recess and lunch, and here I am: <mock-sobbing> "It's just so sweet, what the characters do!" <Laugh>
Susan Lambert:Oh, fun moments. Well, let's talk a little bit about this planning. I would imagine that when we're thinking about the early elementary grades, the middle elementary grades, middle school, planning takes on a different look and feel. But, what do you mean when you say you need to intentionally plan your read-alouds?
Molly Ness:Sure. I mean that we need to search, prior to reading, for instructional opportunities, as well as instructional potential obstacles. So, I introduce a three-step planning process for the read-aloud. And it sort of occurs in that before, during, and after format, which many of us are familiar with before reading the text. Not only, of course, do I want to choose a book that's relevant and engaging and all those wonderful things. I will actually also add that there's a lovely article from 2022 by Kristin Conradi Smith and colleagues that that shows that, actually, read-alouds — the majority of those titles are 25 years old. Sort of those beloved texts that we —
Susan Lambert:Wow!
Molly Ness:Yeah. And that fiction continues to dominate. And also, sort of a confirmation that teachers, we don't often plan where we're going to stop during a read-aloud, and what we're gonna say. So this process that I've created helps to do that. The first step is evaluate. So, before we go in front of kids, we have our book. We evaluate funds of knowledge that are necessary for kids to understand. Meaning, what does the text assume we are bringing to the page? What background information do we need to know? What social nuances happen in the book, that potentially — if we don't front-load them or pre-teach them — could obstruct comprehension? So I identify those potential obstacles, as well as those opportunities: "This is a great place to make an inference." Or, "This is a great place to connect to a text that we had previously read." So we're really critically evaluating what is gonna happen in the read-aloud. Then, the second step, I'm in front of my kids — either, you know, that traditional rocking chair, or I'm walking up and down the aisles of my seventh-grade social-studies classroom. And I'm explaining vocabulary — vocabulary that is really worthy of explicit instruction — as well as those words that you just gotta know to get through this particular part. And then I'm also explaining through think-alouds, that first-person "I" language, that narrative ... me, cracking my teacher head open, and showing what I'm doing to make meaning here, so that kids are more likely to do that themselves. We know there's so much power in think-alouds. But typically, what happens during a read-aloud is we ask kids questions. And that's useful. It's a great way to engage in conversation. But it doesn't actually build comprehension, necessarily. Whereas a think-aloud is me, showing you. Me, literally demonstrating through that narrative language how to make sense of a text. And then the third step is the after-reading component. And I consider it "engage and extend." So, I engage kids in opportunities from the book. Maybe these are socio-emotional learning opportunities. I also extend the text into other literacy-rich areas. So, what other ways can I foster reading, writing, speaking, and listening, beyond the purview of this particular text? It's the three or four "E"s, as I say it: Evaluate, Explain, Engage, and Extend. And these are relevant if you are reading the classic picture book to a first-grade classroom, or you're reading a novel in verse to your sixth-grade science class.
Susan Lambert:Hmm . You know, as you were talking about that, I g ot this vision of a teacher walking up and down in a seventh-grade classroom. Let's say it's a history or a social studies class. And I think sometimes we look at read-alouds and read the text aloud if the students seem to be struggling. So we use a read-aloud as sort of a support mechanism, as opposed to using it as an instructional approach. And when you're saying, "We need to plan ahead," we need to look for opportunities to utilize read-alouds. And so, can you talk a little bit about that difference? An instructional approach, versus a scaffold?
Molly Ness:Yeah. Well, we know that readers, when they listen to a read-aloud, get access to all of that rich content. That vocabulary, those language-comprehension bits. Which may be well beyond what they're able to independently decode. And so, when we add things like think-alouds and being explicit in our vocabulary, we are building their metacognition and the ability to understand text. It's really that thinking through, "How can I beef up their comprehension here? How can I add to their world knowledge and vocabulary, using this text as an entry point into it?"I also think one of the things I hope teachers will do is recognize that read-alouds don't have to be that "15 minutes , start to finish, sit in front of your kids in a rocking chair" kind of thing, that we can read aloud from a paragraph of a headline newspaper article. We're all coming off of a summer of unusual weather patterns. So, great way to read aloud in a science classroom. That when we read aloud from little short bits of text, that accumulates over the course of a day. And so, it's exposing kids to a wide variety of texts that's done in a teacher-facilitated, scaffolded, supported way, throughout the day. Many opportunities. Not just in a sort of start-to-finish, but lots of these little bursts, as we see it.
Susan Lambert:I'm wondering if you have an example of someone that used — or maybe you used — a read-aloud as an instructional approach and saw a really big impact with it.
Molly Ness:Yeah. The book that I always think about that has so many opportunities, and I think we overlook a little bit, is Mo Willems — everybody Loves Mo Willems — his book, Knuffle Bunny. When I look at the book, Knuffle Bunny, if it's been a while or you're not familiar with it, it's a very simple story. It's about Trixie, who is probably a preschooler or toddler. And she goes to the laundromat with her father. And she carries her beloved stuffed animal with her and loses it at the laundromat. And the whole story is this family's quest to find this beloved stuffed animal. So, there's a lot in it to unpack. There's a lot of comprehension assumptions that the readers brings to the page, that if we don't explicitly do something with meaning, is lost. So, for example, background knowledge: You have to know what a laundromat is. Not every kid does. Maybe they have a washer and dryer in their home. It is a space that is often unique to either rural areas or urban areas. But you have to know that, as a setting, you have to know it as a place that you go to access washers and dryers. There's also some funds of knowledge, as I consider. Funds of knowledge are sort of more of the social capital, those nuances, those patterns, and ways of interaction, that add meaning to a text. So, in this particular story, Trixie's dad is the one who goes to the laundromat. Trixie's mom stays home. The book starts with them saying goodbye to Trixie and her dad, and the dad goes out and does this. Well, that's a social nuance that's specific to that family. And, if you grew up in a family where the mother was always responsible for domestic chores, that's something you might not understand. But, by explaining, you know, "let's put up a Google slide of a laundromat, and let's talk about how in this book, here's how this family divides chores," we improve kids' ability to make meaning of the text. So, instructionally, we're using it as a way to introduce new points of view, new perspective, new settings. All of these things. Which, if we just sort of opened up the book and read, we're assuming a lot about what the reader's bringing to the page. And when we assume, we overlook those comprehension opportunities and obstacles. And I was guilty of this myself. I went into a classroom in an upper-middle-class area, and read Knuffle Bunny, and assumed that all of the kids were gonna know what a laundromat is. Well, this was an upper-middle-class area, where some of these houses not only had a laundry room, but they often had somebody outside of the family who was responsible for doing the laundry. A housekeeper, or what have you .
Susan Lambert:Right.
Molly Ness:And at the end of the book, a kid raised his hand and asked, you know, "What's that place where they go?" And I thought he was just unfamiliar with the term "laundromat." He was unfamiliar with the entire concept. And, I thought about it, 'cause, shame on me. My assumption was that these were kids, who had came from privilege, they had upper-middle-class backgrounds, professional families, and I sort of assumed that because of that, they would have more world knowledge. And broader funds of knowledge. When that's not actually the case, that we all have those gaps in knowledge and life experiences, regardless of where we come from, and regardless of our zip code, and regardless of our personal or family situation.
Susan Lambert:It's such a good point. I mean, it's a good challenge for teachers, to look at picture books and try to, you know, figure out what that knowledge the picture book assumes. Because there's often more than what we think about. Right? We assume, "Oh, these are picture books; they're written for young readers," but often they're useful with older readers, too. Just because of those layers of meaning and comprehension that are in them .
Molly Ness:Yeah. And when I was writing the book, I was able to go into an elementary school that really had adopted read-alouds as a universal non-negotiable. Meaning every kid was gonna see them, be it their homeroom teacher or their music teacher. And I was amazed to even see the gym teacher. They were about to study .... I remember back to my elementary school, we had to do, like, six weeks of volleyball and six weeks of square dancing, and all these sort of units. And, the way that the gym teacher read was, literally went online — these kids were starting volleyball — and so they went online and they looked at whatever the National Association for Volleyball is, and they literally like did a read-aloud of the rules and the guidelines and how to play the sport. And then, throughout however many weeks of volleyball instruction, the teacher brought in newspaper articles and biographies of volleyball players and just all of these really clever ways to show that, nope, literacy is what connects us all across this school. And the same thing was happening down the hallway, with the music teacher, who was reading biographies of musicians. And the same thing happened in the art class, where the teacher was reading aloud a beautiful picture book about the person who created Crayola crayons. And, I specifically am highlighting these electives, or sort of specialty areas, because those are the ones that read-alouds happen least frequently.
Susan Lambert:What makes a school decide that they're going to adopt read-alouds, school-wide, as an approach?
Molly Ness:Well, some of it was just joy. They saw how joyful kids were in the read-aloud. And, most teachers say the same thing, as well: They enjoy reading aloud. They think it's one of their favorite times of the day. So some of it was just the sheer joy. And a lot of it was the recognition that while kids had strong foundational skills — they could decode and they were working so much on sort of word identification — but how are they getting to vocabulary? And how are they building background knowledge? Those unconstrained skills, nothing was in place, necessarily. And they were working with a program, a foundational skills program, which didn't leave as much room for teacher choice and flexibility. And the read-aloud was a great way to honor teachers' individual priorities, decisions, interests, all of those things. And so, that was what brought them to the read-aloud. Which again, this was relatively short. We're not talking about 40 minutes. We're not talking about instruction which takes the place of explicit reading instruction. But getting to vocabulary, background knowledge, all those things that we know kids need, through a variety of texts across a variety of topics, and a variety of text formats.
Susan Lambert:That is so great. I love the way that you said that. Because we know that the Science of Reading community, yes, we understand explicit and systematic instruction and word recognition, so kids get really, really, really automatic in terms of the word-level skills, but we can't neglect the language-development side. We can't neglect getting kids information. And read-alouds are a great way to do it, through background knowledge, for vocabulary, even sentence structures and the flow of language. So you don't have to do either-or. Right? This is both-and, isn't it?
Molly Ness:This is both-and. And I always think about the read-aloud not only as a must-do, but also a should-do. And get-to -do. And what I mean by the get-to-do is, it's a privilege. It's an honor. It's a joy, to choose a text — be it a full picture book, or just a short excerpt of something — and share it with kids, and make meaning with it. And have that be a universal thing, that you all share, across whatever your content is. So it's a privilege. And it's something that we need to honor. And we know that the majority of teachers are reading aloud. The Scholastic reports are fabulous for showing the percentage of read-alouds that happen. We know that about three-quarters of teachers say that they read aloud frequently, but only a third of teachers report reading aloud daily. So my hope is that not only do we increase the frequency, but we increase who is getting to do the read-aloud. Which is everyone! Be it the homeroom teacher or the ELA teacher, all the way to the science teacher, preK through eight.
Susan Lambert:Yeah. Any examples that you can share about middle-school non-ELA teachers using read-alouds and finding a big "aha" with this approach?
Molly Ness:Well, most of the teachers that I worked with recognized that the kind of classic textbook that they had for their seventh grade or eighth grade social studies ... you know, I was a sixth grade teacher, and our social studies was all ancient civilizations. Mesopotamia and Rome and Greece. And we had these lovely books ... which were really difficult to read. And so what teachers found, is that a picture book explanation of ancient Greece, or the ancient Greek Olympics, was a really great entry point to build that background knowledge that they could use as a pre-teaching or a front-loading kind of thing. And then, improved kids' comprehension of what the actual textbook was. So lots of people were using it as a, "I know this is a difficult text that we have to get through," and textbooks can be problematic for many different reasons. But most people were really just amazed by, "Wow, I can actually teach my kids chemical reactions in an eighth-grade chemistry class through picture books!" Because, right now, the variety and quality of picture books is just astounding. I mean, you can find — literally — you can find picture books about fractals, which are patterns that occur in nature, and use that as a entry point into geometry for upper-middle-school students.
Susan Lambert:Anything that you would say to teachers to avoid doing while they're doing a read-aloud? Any cautions you have?
Molly Ness:Well, I think one of the big cautions is that you have to start and finish the book. Certainly, a book like Knuffle Bunny, you gotta start it, you gotta finish it.
Susan Lambert:Yep.
Molly Ness:But, what I mean is that we can read aloud from passages. We don't have to commit to the whole book. We can also show that we can abandon books. Because if the book that you're reading is not grabbing your attention, or captivating your kids, it's OK to model — and I actually think it's powerful to model — "this isn't the right book for us right at this moment; let's move on to something else." That happened to me as a sixth-grade teacher. I was reading the book Hatchet to my kids. And this was, again, eons ago, before my kids were all living in a very urban area. This was before Survivor was on, and all of these sort of TV shows. And so they had no frame of reference to Hatchet. And I had selected it because I had a cousin at the time who was a sixth grader, and he had loved it, but it wasn't the right book for my kids at the right time. And so, I stopped and surveyed kids: "How many of you wanna finish this? How many of you wanna abandon and move on to something else?" The majority abandoned it. The ones who wanted to keep reading, it was their book that they read during independent-reading time. So I think we need to push against the idea what we often have in our head — which, again, I keep coming back to —this kindergarten teacher in a rocking chair, that that's the only way to read aloud. There are so many ways to read aloud. Short texts, speeches. There's just so much that we can read and in so many different varieties. So, I think we need to sort of break down our conception of what a read-aloud is, and recognize that the benefits happen across content areas, across text genres, and across age levels.
Susan Lambert:Talk to us a little bit about the structure of the book. And, by the way, we'll link listeners in the show notes.
Molly Ness:So, the first couple of chapters are sort of an introduction. Why are we talking about read-alouds in 2023, at this prime time where the Science of Reading is front and center? The introduction and the first chapter dive into the research, the benefits, for reading aloud, in terms of academics and socio-emotional benefits, and some of those physiological, all of those different benefits. And then I talk through this process of, "Here's how you can plan a read-aloud. Here's what the first step looks like. Here's the second and third steps." And then, I'd go through it with three different books: A book at the K—2 level, a book at the 3—5 level, and a book at the 6—8 level. There's also a chapter that specifically looks at ways to read aloud in some of those specialty area classes: How to read aloud in math; how to read aloud in music and arts and PE. Because I really want to broaden the vision of who reads aloud and what is read aloud. And then there's tons of resources in the appendix. A ny t ime you write a book t hat includes titles, by the time it comes out, there are already more titles out there.
Susan Lambert:Yeah.
Molly Ness:So there are just different resources about ways to choose text. Because there's so many preexisting books that are about choosing the title to read aloud. And I go into that. But I let some of my previous colleagues do more of that. So, this is really just, "Here's the way you plan it; let's walk through it in terms of demonstrations." And as somebody who spent almost two decades training future teachers, early career teachers, my frame of reference is always — not only when I was a sixth grade teacher, but what my students would've needed in that moment. The clarity, the examples, the sort of handholding, scaffolding. So that you're ready to try it out immediately. So it's written with that frame of reference as well.
Susan Lambert:That's awesome. Congratulations on the book, again. And, you know, this is the start of the school year, so it's a great time to try out new instructional approaches to support what happens in the classroom. Any tips or suggestions you have for teachers to walk into this read-aloud process, besides buying your book? Of course? <Laugh>
Molly Ness:Well, just to embrace the joy of the read-alouds. I think there's so much on teachers' plates right now, and it can often feel overwhelming when we say, "Here's one more thing to try." The good news about the read-aloud is for the most part, teachers enjoy it and kids love it. And so, this is one of those returning to the joy, but doing it in a way that's really intentional, really purposeful, and really inclusive of text and the areas in which we read aloud . So, my hope is that it will be an encouragement. Not only how to do it in a more strategic way, but, like, "Oh yeah, I used to really carve time for read-alouds, because I love them and my kids were so excited too by them, but here's how I can make it even more beneficial and more intentional."
Susan Lambert:Wow. Thank you so much for joining us, Molly. It was just really interesting. I appreciate the work that you've done around read-alouds in that upper part of Scarborough's Rope, and we look forward to following up with you soon to see how the book is impacting teachers across the country. So, thanks again for joining us.
Molly Ness:Well, thank you to you and all of your colleagues at Amplify, who do so much to help teachers better reach students.
Susan Lambert:Thank you. Thanks so much for listening to my conversation with Dr. Molly Ness, former classroom teacher, reading researcher, teacher educator, and author of the recent book Read Alouds for All Learners: A Comprehensive Plan for Every Subject Every Day, Grades preK—8. Check out the show notes for a link to her book. Also, for Science of Reading: The Podcast listeners, we have a special promo code for a discount on Molly's book. Check out the show notes for more information on that. Science of Reading: The Podcast is brought to you by Amplify. For more information on how Amplify leverages the Science of Reading, go to amplify.com/CKLA. As this eighth season gets underway, we want to hear from you. Let us know your questions in our Facebook discussion group, Science of Reading: The Community. Also, as we focus on knowledge building, we would love to hear from students about their favorite classroom topics. If you know a young person who might want to hear their voice on this podcast, go to amplify.com/student-testimonials. That's amplify.com/student-testimonials. Next time, we've got a fun conversation with Dr. Gina Cervetti about effectively building students' vocabulary. We'll also talk about expanding our understanding of student knowledge beyond just subject-area knowledge.
Gina Cervetti:What I'm learning is that knowledge is so complex that it actually offers a number of different benefits. And different kinds of knowledge actually benefit literacy development in different ways.
Susan Lambert:Make sure to catch that, and the rest of Season 8, by subscribing to Science of Reading: The Podcast, on any and all podcast platforms. While you're there, please consider rating us and leaving a review. That will help more people find the show. Thank you again for listening.