Join Susan B. Neuman, professor of early childhood and literacy education at the Steinhardt School at New York University, in our Deconstructing the Rope series. She explains the important link between background knowledge and reading comprehension in the Science of Reading, and shares her five research-based principles to build knowledge networks in literacy instruction. She also highlights the connection between speech and reading, and previews her upcoming studies on the role of cross-media connections in children’s learning.
Show notes:
Quotes:
“What you’re helping children do is create a mosaic, putting all those ideas together in a knowledge network. If you don’t do it explicitly, many children cannot do it on their own.” —Susan B. Neuman
“We’ve got to start early. We’ve got to start immediately, and know that children are eager to learn and use the content to engage them.” —Susan B. Neuman
Join Susan B. Neuman, professor of early childhood and literacy education at the Steinhardt School at New York University, in our Deconstructing the Rope series. She explains the important link between background knowledge and reading comprehension in the Science of Reading, and shares her five research-based principles to build knowledge networks in literacy instruction. She also highlights the connection between speech and reading, and previews her upcoming studies on the role of cross-media connections in children’s learning.
Show notes:
Quotes:
“What you’re helping children do is create a mosaic, putting all those ideas together in a knowledge network. If you don’t do it explicitly, many children cannot do it on their own.” —Susan B. Neuman
“We’ve got to start early. We’ve got to start immediately, and know that children are eager to learn and use the content to engage them.” —Susan B. Neuman
We have been spending our time on comprehension strategies instead of teaching content knowledge.
Susan Lambert:This is Susan Lambert, and welcome to Science of Reading, the podcast from Amplify where the Science of Reading lives. Well, we've officially wrapped up Season 8; thanks to you and all of our listeners for your support as we explore different facets of knowledge and knowledge building over 12 episodes. We are currently producing a special spring series, and I promise I'll be able to tell you more about it very soon. While we're working on that, we're highlighting a couple of timely episodes from our archives. First, we're bringing back one of my favorite episodes from Season 3, our season-long deconstruction of Scarborough's Reading Rope. This particular episode featured Susan Neuman, Professor of Childhood and Literacy Education at NYU, and it was all about background knowledge. And not to get too meta here, but with all the new background knowledge about background knowledge that we've picked up from Season 8, I think now is the perfect time to revisit Susan Neuman's five research-based principles to build knowledge networks. So please enjoy this conversation with Susan Neuman. Hello, Susan. Thank you so much for joining us on today's episode.
Susan Neuman:Well, it's nice to be here.
Susan Lambert:It's such a pleasure to talk to you today. We have a lot to get through when we're talking about background knowledge and reading comprehension. But before we get started, our listeners love to hear the journey that you took to get to the place that you are. So I'd love for you to share us a little with us a little bit of that.
Susan Neuman:I think there many different journeys, but let me focus on one in particular I was thinking about this morning. I was a new fifth grade teacher. And as many of you probably experienced, when you're a first-year teacher, you kind of don't know what you're doing all that much.
Susan Lambert:I can relate to that <laugh> .
Susan Neuman:Exactly. And I had this fifth-grade class and I just loved them. I loved them and tried to do so much emotionally for them, because I found that they were emotionally needy. But at the same time, of course, I was trying to teach reading. I was trying to do all the different subjects. And my principal came up to me at the end of an observation period, and he looked at me and he said, "You know, watching you with your class is just a wonderful experience. You are so emotionally connected with those students. They love you; you love them. It's just a joy to be here. But one of the problems I think I'm seeing is that you're not teaching them anything."
Susan Lambert:Oh , ouch. <Laugh>
Susan Neuman:And he said that in the kindest way. But , I went home and of course I cried. < Laugh> And, I thought about it and I thought, "Oh gosh, you know, he's right that in my effort to connect, I ha d f orgotten that children also need to learn and to learn the skills." And many of these children were flailing. I mean, they were in fifth grade — you could say they maybe were on second-grade-level reading, but they were really struggling. And so while I was focused so much on one thing, I neglected the other. And that made me really want to do two things: To go back and to learn more about reading, but also to go to the early childhood years where I fe lt I c ould prevent problems before they actually ha ppened.
Susan Lambert:I love that message of prevention. It's really important. And I think the work that you're doing right now, which you're very passionate about, is very connected to that prevention. And we actually invited you on to talk a little bit about background knowledge. This is a series about the elements of Scarborough's Rope. And we've been focusing a lot on the word-recognition side. We're shifting to the language-comprehension side. and just talking a little bit about the role of background knowledge a nd reading comprehension. So I'd love for you to just explain to us a little bit about comprehension and background knowledge and how they fit together.
Susan Neuman:Great. Well, you know, again, this is an area of passion for me. Because we see that many of our children ... if I go back to my fifth graders again, you could see that some of them could actually read. But they were word callers. This is a very sort of difficult stage, if you've ever seen it, where children can actually read the words, but they don't understand them. And I t ried to understand what was going on. I mean, they s eemed to know those words, but they did not know the meaning of those words. And so I began to really examine co mprehension in mu ch greater depth. And I focused on the notion that a great deal of my training and of what people were saying is that children really need to activate their background knowledge. That when you read, the first process that a teacher would do is to give them a sense of purpose and say, "Activate your background knowledge!" But then I realized a very valuable lesson. What if they didn't have it? What if they didn't have the background knowledge in order to activate? You could say to them, "Activate your background knowledge," to kingdom come, but if they don't have it, they can't activate it. And so it became a real challenge for me to try and understand, well, what do you do when there isn't any? And that's why content knowledge became so critically important to me.
Susan Lambert:That's interesting. Because I do remember ... ooh, this was a long time ago. I'm surprised I still remember. But I do remember in my undergraduate program learning about activating prior prior knowledge ... or, I am not sure they call it background knowledge at that point. So what do you do, first of all, that impacts reading comprehension? Like, we all know that. What about comprehension? What is the connection there between background knowledge and comprehension?
Susan Neuman:Well, in my view, let me first say that I do not see comprehension as a generic skill. Some people think so, but I don't. So for example, if I would read a sixth-grade text in science, which is not my forte <laugh> I would probably have a little bit of a problem in trying to understand some of the concepts and some of the terms. I would probably not be able to connect and to activate any background knowledge. And so what I began to realize is that side of Scarborough's Rope — language comprehension — to a great extent, it's two critical things: It's vocabulary and it's it's knowledge. It's content knowledge. And if you don't have content knowledge, you're likely not to be able to comprehend text. Now, this has an enormous implication because what it means is that we have been spending our time on comprehension strategies instead of teaching content knowledge.
Susan Lambert:And so you're recommending or saying, then, what we should be doing is that instead of teaching strategies, we should be building background knowledge.
Susan Neuman:That's right. That's absolutely right. So some of the strategies you often hear about is, let's say you read a newspaper at night, you're relatively tired, and , you use a comprehension strategy. One of them very clearly is: reread. So I reread. But I still don't understand it too well. So I'm then supposed to ask myself questions. Well, I don't really have enough information to ask those questions. Al l r i ght. So then, I'm supposed to summarize. And m aybe summarizing is a a nother strategy we typically use. But then my summarization is just taking various sentences and plopping them together without really synthesizing that information. So my point is that some of the strategies that we have talked about in the past are dependent on having enough content knowledge in order to be able to use them. So that, I think, is an enormous insight, because what it says to us is that from the very beginning, we have to start building content knowledge for our children if they don't have it.
Susan Lambert:That makes a lot of sense to me. I remember ... one of my sons is actually in physics. He's a physics engineer. And he would get excited to talk to me a little bit about what he was learning. And I had to listen and shake my head and, like, just enjoy the conversation because I had no concept what he was talking about at all.
Susan Neuman:Right. Right. You're shaking your head and saying , "uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh," but not necessarily understanding what he's saying. That's right.
Susan Lambert:Yeah. That's true. And you know, it's interesting because let's say that you don't have content knowledge about a passage or a student doesn't have content knowledge about a passage ... or they're, they're not comprehending; they're not able to find the main idea; they're not able to summarize. And if we give them an easier-to-read text that they still don't know anything about, they still probably wouldn't be successful on that.
Susan Neuman:That's right. It's still containing concepts that they haven't been given access to. So we can level it down, we can make shorter sentences, but that does not address the critical issue that they haven't had the experience or they haven't had the knowledge to really gain more knowledge.
Susan Lambert:Hmm . Yeah. And this idea that — I think I'm inferring what you said — this idea that you have to have at least some background knowledge to engage in the content or the text of what you're reading, and then hopefully through that you'll build more content knowledge that you can take then to another text you would read a bout the same topic?
Susan Neuman:That's exactly right. So, what happens is that you don't need a lot of knowledge. You need entry into the subject matter. Enough that you can start the process and accumulate more knowledge. Knowledge creates more knowledge. And the interesting thing to me , Su san, is that children want to be expert. They want to be expert in a domain. And it kind of doesn't matter what domain that is. It's the feeling that goes along with knowing things about anything. So a child, for example, who comes to school knowing a lot about baseball, he feels good about himself. There's an af fect t o having content knowledge. And other children will recognize that and say, "Oh, he's the go-to guy for baseball information." So it has a duplicative effect, of providing a good feeling about yourself and about knowing things. Children want to be knowledgeable.
Susan Lambert:That makes a lot of sense. When I was a teacher, I know it was fun for me to deliver topics and, and domains and content to students because they really did wanna be scientists and historians and know lots of things .
Susan Neuman:They do <laugh>
Susan Lambert:And, and at some point, vocabulary also is a connection to this. Now, I know we're not specifically talking about the strand vocabulary, but we know Scarborough's Rope isn't in isolation, right? The strands all sort of interweave with each other. What's the relationship here between background knowledge or content knowledge and vocabulary?
Susan Neuman:There's a strong relationship, a very integral relationship. But I think it speaks to something that ... maybe it's a little bit of a tangent, Susan, but I'll say it.
Susan Lambert:You g o ahead, <l augh>. You go ahead.
Susan Neuman:OK. One of the things that we do very often in teaching vocabulary, we teach words that are not necessarily related to one another and not intentionally focused on building that content knowledge. So, for example, I we nt t o a particular core reading program. It 's a c ore reading program ... that's not relevant. And the words of the we ek t hat children were supposed to learn were "people," the word "people," and the word "around." Now you tell me what "around," the word "around," has to do with "people." Right?
Susan Lambert:Yep. Not related.
Susan Neuman:<laugh> Not related. And that might be a tier-one word. They're both quite easy to read. But then you go to more difficult words. And, and the same phenomena often occurs, that children are taught to learn sophisticated words, or tier-two words, without any connection to those words. So a different strategy is to teach tier-three words, or what we call content-related w ords, where those words are related to one another. So for example, if I know a manatee and a whale are both marine mammals, I begin to build knowledge and a knowledge network. It's not only the vocabulary words. I know how the vocabulary words are connected and how they may relate to a larger concept, which is ma rine m ammals. And that's what I think we should be doing. Not only in teaching content, but teaching our vocabulary to think about the words and categories of words that we can teach children so that they learn more content knowledge.
Susan Lambert:That makes sense. And so that would require then us to be in topics for longer than a single lesson, or even a single week, maybe.
Susan Neuman:Exactly. So in the very beginning of our work, we focus on topics, not themes, but topics.
Susan Lambert:What do you mean? What's the difference between the two?
Susan Neuman:Well, a topic is first thing. A topic is something that is informational. So for example, we believe that children, when they get to third grade, are going to need more about science and social studies. They're certainly going to be smarter about science and math than I certainly am <laugh>. And so we, we teach those kinds of words in what we call topics. And the topics might be , the mysteries of space or insects or wild animals. And the difference between what we call a topic and theme is that themes very often are broadly related. For example, a grocery store might be a theme, right? And we have words like a cashier and meat and milk. They're all related to a larger theme of grocery stores. But notice there's no relationship between the words themselves.
Susan Lambert:Yeah.
Susan Neuman:In the words we teach in topics, we try to create categories or concepts as we teach them. So we'll say to the children , " A bee is a type of insect." So that children begin to learn that an insect has, you know, three, b od y parts, six legs, and that a s p i der may not be an insect because it has eight legs. So what we're trying to do in teaching topics is we're teaching categories of vocabulary words, which will add to knowledge networks. Another example might be, we'll teach healthy foods or fruit, and we teach banana is a type of fruit. Strawberry is a type of fruit. So that children get a sense of some of the common properties of that category.
Susan Lambert:Ah , that makes a lot of sense. So I know, and I'm referring to an article that you authored in Perspectives on Language and Literacy, published by the IDA ... you talk about five research-based principles to then build these knowledge networks. Can you talk about some of those principles?
Susan Neuman:Sure. Actually, I'd be delighted to <laugh> because , I think they're really important. I think one of the things we try to do, you mentioned this before, but one of the things we often do in teaching is we go too fast. And what I mean by that is we'll teach a particular topic and then move on to something else. In our work, we try to spend two weeks on a particular topic. Sometimes we'll even do three weeks if children are really engaged. And that's really important, because it takes time to develop the depth of knowledge that we want children to have, as well as the vocabulary words that are associated with that. Comprehension and content is a slow-developing process, so we have to give children enough time to get deeper in those ideas. So our first principle that we focus on is the big idea. And what we say is there are certain big ideas that we want to try and convey to children. So for example, wild animals, i nsects, how are they all alike? Or, pets? So I'll say to the children, "Wild insects, pets ... and I'll say to them, how are they all alike? Well, a pet is a living thing and needs food to survive. A wild animal is a living thing, and it needs food to survive. Same thing with insects. A live animal needs food to survive." So those big ideas are cross-cutting themes that cut across many different topics. And we think that's really important, because children will develop a sense of orde r and structure in the knowledge that they're developing. So that's our first big, big idea, in t erms of helping children develop content knowledge.
Susan Lambert:And so you do that explicitly then, as opposed to, going back to the beginning of our conversation, assuming they have it? Or trying to activate prior knowledge? We just instruct them and start from there.
Susan Neuman:That's exactly right. So for example, instead of saying, "What is this story about?" Well, if they knew it, they wouldn't have to come to school. What we really want to do is, we want to give them our second principle. Which is word, knowledge. And explicitness. So, in other words, when we start a story, instead of doing a picture walk, let's go through the pictures. A picture walk can be problematic because if the children get the wrong idea, they're likely to keep that idea in their heads. Do you know what I mean?
Susan Lambert:Great p oint. Ye ah.
Susan Neuman:So what we do is we say, "This story is about. ..." And then let's pretend that this story is about a cave. And so, we'll, what we'll do is we'll start, and we'll say to the children, "We're go nna r ead a wonderful story. This book is, it 's a story of caves. A cave is a hole in a mountain." And just a simple phrase — notice, just a simple phrase. I didn't talk forever. But what that does is that it sets the purpose for the children. And it provides an easy, child-friendly definition of the word. And they'll remember that. They'll remember those kinds of things. So the explicit instruction ... we have so much data, Susan, on the importance of explicitness. And I just would love teachers to remember that principle that that enables all children to achieve. So, for example, when we see that four out of five children are raising their hands, and the fifth child does not raise their hand, they're likely not to because they don't know. And what we want to do is we want to begin every lesson with all children sharing that knowledge, so they all know . So that's our second principle.
Susan Lambert:That's great. And I love that reminder about explicit instruction, because I think we've talked about it in other episodes, but when we're thinking about building background knowledge, I think sometimes teachers believe that exposure and implicit instruction is enough for what kids need. And we know that that's not true of how students learn.
Susan Neuman:That's right. I think we all appreciate an even playing field, and that's what explicitness does. It levels the playing field. So everyone can participate as a community of learners, and that's really important.
Susan Lambert:That's great.
Susan Neuman:So our third principle ... can I go on?
Susan Lambert:You can go on <laugh> .
Susan Neuman:All right. Our third principle is that children really need multiple genres in order to learn. We never start with a n information book when we are talking about our topics, because t he information books have greater vocabulary, greater density of concepts. And so it's often a little bit difficult to begin that way. So what we often do is we begin with a predictable book, a predictable book in our topic. It may be the topic of insects or marine mammals. But a predictable book is wonderful, because it provides co-participation for our children. You know, if I say, "B rown bear, brown bear, what do you see?" You know that the children are go ing to say, "I see a green frog looking at me." So, in other words, there's a co-participation that is ju st a n a t ural wi th predictable books. Plus it provides the vocabulary again and again. But of course, predictable books have limitations. They have wonderful language, wonderful lilting sounds of our language, and they create a mnemonic, s o many of you can remember. "Conjunction junction, what's your function?" Right?
Susan Lambert:Oh, no, I'm gonna hear that in my head all day long now.
Susan Neuman:I know, I know. I hate to do that to you <laugh> . But the fact of the matter is that predictable books have that mnemonic quality. And so they're very important for children, especially those who may struggle a little bit with language. But then we go on to narrative nonfiction and storybooks, because storybooks have an emotional content. You know, you could read about pigs as an information book, but if you read Charlotte's Web, oh my gosh, you know? I mean , the emotion that you might feel when you read a storybook! So we then move on to storybooks and, and get children to know and recall and understand story structure. But then finally, we always go to an information book over our two-, three-week period, because the information book will provide that wonderful content knowledge, plus the children will have heard the words again and again from the predictable book and the narrative nonfiction, so they can really deeply understand those information books. So we always do it in that sequence, to provide the multiple genres, so that children can really begin to build a deeper sense and a greater comfort with content knowledge.
Susan Lambert:That's great. I'm gonna say back to you what I think I heard you say.
Susan Neuman:Sure.
Susan Lambert:Because I think this is a nuanced point that people could maybe miss. So if we are doing a topic of ... let's say we're doing a topic of farm animals or farms. That you don't have to jump just to informational text. With that, you should actually scaffold students starting with a great picture book to be able to engage them into the storyline a nd narrative, which comes much easier to them than the structure of an informational text to include all genres when we're talking about that topic.
Susan Neuman:Exactly. You said it better than I did. But <laugh> , e xactly. So what you're doing is you're actually using the text as a scaffold. And that's really important to remember, because sometimes teacher questioning can a ctually d isrupt children's content knowledge. So we're always very careful in using the text and remembering when to talk with our children, because again, sometimes the interruptions can affect comprehension.
Susan Lambert:I love what you just said, using the text as the scaffold.
Susan Neuman:That's right.
Susan Lambert:Because we do that as adults. If I don't understand something, I will go back to another source to try to figure it out and go to that text to help me scaffold. That's lovely. Thank you for sharing that.
Susan Neuman:That's right. Thank you. Well, I'll go on to my next.
Susan Lambert:Please do.
Susan Neuman:OK. My next big principle is distributed review. And I think, again, we f orget this a little bit when we teach. Distributive review is not just review; it's review over time. So very often in the description that we just talked about, whether it's farm animals or marine mammals, I will have children repeat and learn those words a nd content again and again through these different texts. But if I never revisited, Susan, they'll forget. Children, they'll forget it.And so what we have to do is we have to go back and, and do it again a little bit later. And what we found is, distributed review is what we call spaced review. That means not repeating it immediately, but repeating it at various intervals over time. So, we will do repeated reading, but then we'll take a little break, go to another topic, show the topic, cross connections with our big ideas, and then maybe go back and, and talk about our book again. So, we have to be careful to not forget and to remember that children are likely to go ont o th e next topic without seeing those cross connections. And that's where we're building those knowledge networks. We're reminding children what they've learned and how it creates greater depth over time.
Susan Lambert:And, this says to me, then, and maybe this isn't true, but it feels to me, then, a classroom teacher needs to be really thoughtful — and I wouldn't even say a classroom teacher, but a an entire grade level — to be really thoughtful about the topics that they're introducing and the connection and the coherence of those topics across the grade level. Is that right?
Susan Neuman:That's absolutely right. Coherence is a perfect word here, because what you're helping children to do is to create a mosaic, putting all those ideas together in a knowledge network. And if you don't do it explicitly, many children cannot do it on their own. They haven't had the experiences to do it before. And so what you're doing is creating an intentional connection, and that's what they need, especially those who are struggling.
Susan Lambert:That makes sense. Well, why don't we go on to your last one? 'Cause I have a feeling this is a great extension of what we just said.
Susan Neuman:Well, thank you. So , my last one is intentional opportunities for language engagement. And this ... oh, I'm so passionate about, Susan! < Laugh> Because one of the things that we know is that sometimes teachers do too much talking and children do too much listening. And what we know about knowledge is that knowledge is engaging. Oh, children just love it. And once they start on it, they, they really want to de velop more and more. So we have a term we call conversational terms. And what this means is that it's almost like a conversational duet between a t e acher and students. And we do it as a whole group rather than picking on individual children very often. So, in other words, I'll ha ve a whole group of children who has listened to this wonderful story of marine ma mmals, and then I'll engage in very quick c on versational turns, so that I speak, and then the children speak. I speak, and the children speak. And in doing that, what we're doing is providing opportunities for them to talk, and talk a lot. We're providing opportunities for those children, English language learners, to feel like they're part of a team. You know what I mean? They're not singled out. They're not special. They are part of the classroom community and they're engaging in these conversations. But the important thing also is the strict amount of interaction has a dramatic effect on expressive language. So we have seen in our own data and data from others that that leads to content knowledge and comprehension, because they have to be on. They have to be engaged. And that's really critically important.
Susan Lambert:And that's another connection that we actually saw on the word recognition side: this connection between language, what students say and what they're able to read.
Susan Neuman:That's right. That's right. If they can talk about it, they can begin to deeply understand it. You might even remember when you were studying for an exam years ago that often you had to say it out loud or express it in some way, whether it's writing or, or talking about it in order to know, "Ah, I do know what I'm talking about!" And then you also know, "Hey, sometimes I need to go back and relearn because I don't know it well enough."
Susan Lambert:Yeah. I actually noticed that as an adult. I mean, I recently got a dog and take him out for a walk all the time. And what I found myself doing now is telling my dog about the things that I just read in the morning <laugh> . And it actually helps me remember it better and work through it a little bit,
Susan Neuman:<laugh> . That's right. Right. Exactly. You're working through.
Susan Lambert:Yeah. Well, I'd like to read a couple of sentences from, from the end of this , this article that you wrote. And for our listeners, we will link them to this in the show notes. But here's the sentences. It says, "Despite the numerous consensus reports on the extant research on comprehension, we have ignored the factor that most powerfully predicts it: Knowledge. Instead, we have fallen prey to quick fixes, a wish fulfillment that some sort of monitoring, activation, or strategy might repair what has been lacking in background knowledge."
Susan Neuman:That's right. I still believe that <laugh> , even though I wrote it about a year ago. I still believe that strongly. Yes.
Susan Lambert:And the next sentence actually says it hasn't worked.
Susan Neuman:That's right. Yeah.
Susan Lambert:Tell me more.
Susan Neuman:Oh , I was just gonna say that one of the things that we've done wrong, Susan ... and I love this scholar, Jean Shaw, many years ago, t alked about "children go from learning to read to reading to learn." And I love her work otherwise, but that is a wrong assumption. And it assumes that children are working on decoding, and then magically, around t hird or fourth grade, well, then they're going to be engaged an d w ant to learn to use reading to learn. But that doesn't happen. What happens is the skill they're developing early on, the way in which th ey're r eading, the reason for reading, is occurring in those very, very early years. So if we don't engage them in content from the very beginning, by the time they get to fourth grade, they don't know why they're reading. And they call it boring. And of course, you an d I know that reading is anything but boring. So I think my point here is we've got to start early. We've got to start immediately, and know that c hildren are eager to learn, and to use the content to engage them.
Susan Lambert:Yeah. And Scarborough's Rope is organized that way. We can get kids that rich, lovely , knowledge through read-aloud texts in kindergarten, first, second grade.
Susan Neuman:Absolutely. They love it. And you know what? They love being read to when they're sixth graders, eighth graders. They still love it.
Susan Lambert:That's true. That's really true. Well, what are some of the new things you're thinking about, or projects that you're working on right now?
Susan Neuman:Well, one of the things that we're very interested — and you're g onna not believe this to some extent, < laugh> after we've talked about this! But we've been focusing a lot on screen media and the opportunity for children to learn through educational screen media.
Susan Lambert:Interesting.
Susan Neuman:And , what we find is that children learn vocabulary and content through screen media, and then that often connects with books. So we have actually just conducted an experiment that had children read and watch a w o n derful story on science. And what we found is they learned more vocabulary words and they learn more content when they had cross-media conn ections.
Susan Lambert:Hmm.
Susan Neuman:So I think this is a nat u ral for many of us, especially when I think of families at home now. They feel a little guilty that their chil d ren are watching screen media. But if it's educational, if it's good, it often promotes children's interest in book reading. And I think that's something for us to consider: the cross-media connections and crossing boundaries more and more.
Susan Lambert:Yeah. It's so accessible to kids. It seems like you could take advantage of, not an either or maybe, but maybe a both.
Susan Neuman:That's exactly right.
Susan Lambert:Well, this has been just super-interesting, Susan. We appreciate your time. And before we close out, I would just love for you to leave our listeners with some takeaways or things to think more about.
Susan Neuman:Sure. I'm always happy to do that. <Laugh> I guess one of the things I'd like to suggest, to teachers, especially, is that we we're really doing harm for our children if we don't teach rich content early on to them that they are so interested in learning. And so many times I will go into the classroom and I will see reading instruction without a connection to rich content and a focus on what they're reading. And so I urge teachers to think about issues of ways in which we can address content earlier on. And to think about reading as something that is more than just learning the skill, but really engaging their minds.
Susan Lambert:That's great. And it feels a little bit like the advice you're giving teachers is full-circle back to maybe the advice that you got from that first principal.
Susan Neuman:That's right .
Susan Lambert:To actually teach them something.
Susan Neuman:Right. <laugh> . I always feel a little guilty, Susan , when I tell that story, but I think it's a cautionary tale. You gotta love them , but you gotta teach them at the same time.
Susan Lambert:No, I love it because being vulnerable like that and taking that feedback in , that's a hard thing to do. Especially when you're a brand-new teacher in the classroom. So, thank you so much, number one, for being a guest on this episode, but for number two, and even more importantly, I guess, for the work that you're doing for students. We appreciate it so much.
Susan Neuman:Well, thank you. It's been delightful.
Susan Lambert:And thank you for listening to that conversation from our archives, with Susan Neuman, Professor of Childhood and Literacy Education at NYU. This episode originally released in March 2021, as part of our third season: Deconstructing the Rope. You can find other episodes from Season 3 and the rest of our archives on our website, or by scrolling back in our podcast feed. Check out the show notes for links to some of the resources that Susan and I discussed. 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. The best way to stay up to date with the show is to subscribe to the podcast and to join our Facebook discussion group Science of Reading: The Community. Next time around, I'm going to tell you more about the special spring series we've got in the works. Be sure to tune in then, and thank you again for listening.