Episode 5: Text Selection for Purpose-Driven Reading

Jonathan: Welcome to the Literacy Geek's Show. We are your host, Jonathan LeMaster.

Lee: And Lee Ramsey.

Jonathan: The goal of the Literacy Geek Show is to inspire educators and spark great conversations that help students meet and exceed reading and writing standards.

Lee: Join us as we geek out about our journey to revolutionize literacy instruction. Today we are geeking out about text selection, written or spoken, and how the text we choose to teach can make all the difference. When explicitly teaching deep reading comprehension standards and skills.

Why is text selection so important that we have dedicated a whole show around it?

Jonathan: If we're going to dig into text-dependent writing, and we're going to talk about teaching deep reading comprehension skills, kind of have to go back and look at, well, what, what, what text do we even begin with?

How do we teach specific skills and can we do that with any text? And I think. I think the answer is no, we can't just use any text and so if we can't just use any text to teach specific skills, then what do we use? And that kind of got this conversation going and you and I decided, okay, well, I think we're going to have to have a show on text selection, which is kind of a passion of ours.

Right? I mean, I think it's important if. If you're teaching reading, you probably should be good at choosing the texts that, um, lend themselves well to teaching reading skills, right? So one of the, I think the first goal of any text that we choose is to engage students in critical thinking. I know that seems common sense, but not all texts are going to be equal in that way.

They're not all going to be able to teach kids how to critically think. So today we categorized, I guess, some of the components of text selection. So one is going to be genre, that fancy word for text type. When we talk about genre, we're talking about plays, short fiction, novels, that's very English heavy, I know.

Editorials, arguments, scientific articles, informational texts, films, and TV shows. I never taught TV shows, but I should have.

Lee: I remember there was a class in San Diego State, and that's all they did, they would analyze TV shows or movies and that's fun.

Jonathan: That sounds amazing. Yeah. So when we talk about genre, we're talking about the medium or method that the writer is using to communicate information. Is this going to be a movie or whatever? And then we talk about content. That's another piece that we have to consider. And I think sometimes we, stop there. We go with genre. And then content, we pick the genre that's right for our subject or content, and then we, we pick the content and that's it, and we stop. The problem with just picking content and genre is that the writing might not lend itself well to specific skills that you want to teach.

For example, if you're trying to teach how authors build relationships among ideas. And the author doesn't do any of that in the text. That's a problem. If you want to teach, maybe you want to bring in an article about baseball. I love baseball. The Padres are coming up, Lee. We're starting the Padres season in a couple of days.

Super excited about that, but if I brought in an article that just kind of went through the ideas of the Padres and what the season looks like fact after fact after fact, without any real intention of how those facts are put together or any kind of complication or complexity, then I'm going to struggle. to be able to teach my students to see something in the text that I want them to see.

Lee: And when you're trying to when you're picking the content It seemed to me that the important factor was, uh, high engagement. So you're trying to pick us something that they might have interest in. Is that, is that kind of how you pick the content or, and then I guess based on the subject you're teaching in your classroom,

Jonathan: Yeah, I mean, it needs to be highly engaging, and in the education space, we talk about relevance. The text needs to be relevant, but that doesn't always necessarily mean that it needs to be directly related to their lives, although that does help. It needs to be relevant maybe for their future. It can be relevant to something that's going on in the world that they need to know about. relevant doesn't always have to be about that particular kid and that particular kid's experience in life, but just something that's connected to them somehow. And then it's got to be high interest. Uh, there's a lot of cool stuff for kids right now. I think we talked about it in one of our previous shows, but with e-bikes, and how cool that is, but I also like how dangerous they are. And, um, the controversy around e-bikes, which kind of brings us to, the other two, criteria elements: point of view and the rhetorical technique. So genre and content, we're thinking about when we pick texts, we've got to think about the genre. We've got to think about the content, but then we have to think about, does this particular writer has a point of view. And the reason why you want to look at the point of view is that it's really important to start thinking about, is this person positioning him or herself in a way that we could analyze that, break the argument down, um, if the information can be analyzed in a certain way, contextualized, um, and then also the rhetorical techniques.

So then if I have a point of view, I want you to see my point of view and I'm going to start using some strategies and then those strategies of course could be analyzed They could be broken down and as kids look at how writers construct meaning then they become better readers, but also better writers Think about that, right?

If you're constantly looking at how writers construct meaning, you're probably going to be able to transfer that over to your writing and say, Oh, I remember when this writer did that. But if you're

not looking at that, and you're constantly looking at content, content, content. You never really learn how to build ideas.

Does that make sense?

Lee: I think that reading deeply like you keep saying deep a lot of times I wouldn't look that deep.I was just trying to understand the essence of what the author was trying to convey, but not how they were conveying it, right? Understanding that they were, they were saying their point of view in a certain way.

And some were very sophisticated and being able to emulate that I can see can help improve your writing, right? Really Yeah. Watching someone very good with how they do it. Right. And that's how you get started.

Jonathan: Yeah.

You look at those models. The models are really important. We have our modeled text. But again, if we call them exemplar sometimes, or we talk about them as, um, modeled text, but again, if it's an exemplar or a modeled text that doesn't do the types of writing moves you're teaching your kids to write. Uh, I'm not sure. It's difficult how you move on from that. It's challenging. So the other thing that I look at personally in my classroom when I select texts is I want to find texts that have diverse perspectives. These are kind of like some additional layers. I also really love it when writers come at topics philosophically. We can debate philosophy, we can debate belief systems and, why certain things are, are not true. And then, obviously, controversial issues. Should we ban e-bikes or should we not? Should we, uh, get rid of tackle football? I mean, that's such a great conversation to bring in for students.

And how is it relevant? Well, people love to watch football. People like to play football. Some people think football is very dangerous. Some people think that it's not appropriate for young people because they can have serious injuries as they grow older. So you bring in a controversial issue like Okay, no more contact football until you get into college or pros and people are like, wait a second.

I have an, I have an opinion about that, right? And then that starts the engagement. And I think what's, interesting is this prerequisite skill of selecting texts is what can we do? What are some things that we can do to fill those gaps?

Lee: Yeah. I mean, I, I think this has been a question of ours, uh, for since we started LiteracyTA 14 years ago. And we started by going out and training teachers on how to, how to practice these deep reading comprehension skills. And I remember sometimes you would be like, Oh yeah, just bring in a few articles and then I'll use those.

And, and then you'd get there and we'd read the article and you're like, Oh, these, these don't, they don't provide. The author is not doing something that can help practice a certain skill.

And that was, that was very interesting. And, I think you quickly realized that the way you would pick and select a text was, it was much different than how other teachers were looking at it.

Four criteria that you've explained have kind of come out of these 14 years of trying to help teachers. I remember one of our initiatives early on a few years in is we wanted to create a text library on LiteracyTA and we started trying to find articles.

That we could link to that, and then provide like some tips you can use it to practice the skill or the standard, and that, was tough and it's, it's kind of been a long process for us and we've, a lot of it even had to do with the newspaper, rights. I remember, um, they were very specific About how they can use your article so you could provide a link to a student that could go on it.

But as soon as you printed that off, you crossed the line and now you needed to pay for that. And there's a lot of companies that popped up that would get licensing and then allow that licensing to kind of pass through to the school. So you could use it for educational purposes. But it's just been interesting.

I think in over the last few years, we've seen. many more options, which I know we're going to chat about a little later, but it's, I think it's a good context to understand our journey and the number of hours and time we've spent looking for these texts. And I know, I know it's been you who's been out there.

Digging around and trying to find them even to the point where we started hiring writers, to convey and that became complicated to, I mean, what do you think has been the biggest challenge in finding these, these type of texts to practice skills?

Jonathan: It's disheartening sometimes when you spend 40 minutes, an hour or two hours trying to find that like perfect text. And what I mean by perfect is it's got the right, it's the right genre. It's the right content. Um, it's high interest. It, um, it's well written. The writer uses nice rhetorical strategies. There's a point of view. The writer is doing exactly what I want to teach students to see, right? If I'm teaching like an allusion, you can't just pick up a text and say, all right, let's go find the illusion that the writer has to have. illusions to teach allusion. The writer has to use certain text structures.

If I want to teach,, rhetorical patterns, it has, they have to have them. And I remember when you talk about the writers that we employed, I would give them a list and I'd say, you're writing needs to include all these things. And it never was content. It never needed to be about this idea or that idea.

It was always, you need to make this move, and make this move, and then do this, and do this, and do this, so that our, our readers, our young readers could go through the text and see these different strategies, these techniques being used, and to analyze them, and to, to see them. And not all, not all writers are going to craft their, ideas the same and it's hard to find that writer that used this is the one or this is the article. And then sometimes you find it and then you get two-thirds of the way through it and you find out there's like an inappropriate reference or there are some cuss words and you're like, no, cause you, you think you found it and it's like, this is going to resonate so well and it's going to plug in beautifully.

And then they do something like that. That's hard.

Lee: You spent all this time. You're invested and nope, got to throw that one out.

Jonathan: Got to throw that one out. Picking texts for our own company takes a while and it's when you have multiple lenses on that, you're looking through to see if a text. is worthy of study. You hope that you can find this bank of texts that someone's picked for you, uh, that you can say, okay, I know I can teach skills with this text because these, these texts have been picked. And I also remember Sometimes if you don't read your text, um, before teaching it, you can get into some trouble. I have done that once when I relied on a friend who said, yeah, this is a great text to teach. I was in the copy room and I didn't like making 65 copies for my two classes and my first class.

I rolled it out and we started reading it and I was reading it with them. I had not put eyes on this text, and I had all these great ideas to teach all these great skills. And I quickly realized that this text was not going to work in any way, and I had to, I had to embarrass myself and ask my students to turn them back in. And it was a good lesson for me that you just can't do certain things with just some random text that you have to know. And then sometimes texts are the wrong you think they're about something. I remember working with some teachers once about volcanoes. They were reading about volcanoes and elementary school teachers. And they, uh, said this, this is the text we want to teach about volcanoes and we want the main idea and then we want them to do details. Okay. So you want them to read for the main idea and details. Yes. Well, I read through the article right then and there in our meeting, and I realized that it was about a camera that this company had developed. That could get close to the magma without melting. And so it was able to capture pictures that no one's ever been able to capture before. So I said, how are we supposed to achieve the outcome of main ideas and details when this has nothing to do with volcanoes? So it was kind of an interesting it's hard. It's so difficult and in time and all of it.

So it's a challenge for sure.

Lee: We were brainstorming some of the main reasons why it's hard to find these. And one of them is it's just really time-consuming. And we've felt that for 14 years of searching for thousands of texts. We know the time commitment and it is tough.

You said we get to the bottom of reading it and it doesn't work anymore. You start over, it's tough. Then access, which we were talking about newspapers and licensing and what you're allowed to use and not allowed to use. It's just a really difficult process and making sure the standards fit, right?

Jonathan: Wo why should we care so much about these text selection? I mean, it helps with our text-dependent writing. Tasks so we could close reading and then we can teach certain skills. They can apply them. But like looking on past middle school past high school, um, Why is it so imperative? What do you think about our students? to have opportunities to dive into this kind of texts. Like what kind of thinking are they going to be required to do as they go into college? If I'm a teacher, I'm listening to this. Why, do I want to spend time looking for these very, very specific texts? What's, what's the point of it?

Lee: I think the hardest part is being able to practice. The deep reading comprehension skills and, and the state, the standards, the CCR standards that are required. And I think that's where the challenge starts. Um, so if we have to practice this, then I need to find a text to be able to, practice it with.

Right. And, and that, I think that's been our challenge that there's a lot of different standards that, um, the text, the textbooks that you have don't lend itself to practice these skills. Right. I mean, to me, that seems like the number one challenge. What do you think?

Jonathan: No, it's a good point. We were told, okay, you're, you have this new textbook. It's a textbook adoption. You have to use it with fidelity and then it doesn't always have what you need to teach the college career readiness standards. And that's hard, even though they said it was and all these things, but it's about like kind of content. and not always about skills. And then I think about what kids are expected to do when they go to college. For me, analysis is what you do. My students are going to need to know how to ask certain questions of text as they go into college. And if I can't give them that text where those questions mean something, it's hard.

And so, as the text becomes more complex, then we also need to teach kids how to break into those complex texts, because that's what's going to happen in college.

They're going to be given these articles, and they're going to have to be able to do it, and I think that's what the College Career Readiness is all about.

Lee: Yeah. And I think increasing the amount of practice, from my math background, I'd loved to do problem after problem after problem. And that's really what would cement it in, in sports, um, you practice that same skill over and over again. It's the same, you're dribbling, you're going to dribble for 30 minutes, or you're going to shoot free throws for 20 minutes a day. And you're going to do that same thing over and over again.

That's how you get better at that skill. Even though it may be boring, right? It's so important to keep doing it.

Jonathan: Yeah. When I ran track, they put me in high hurdles and it was, everyone thinks I ran high hurdles cause I'm tall. And I think it was just because I was willing to jump over an object while sprinting. Um, and a lot of people don't want to do that. And. I was so excited about being a hurdler. And I thought, Oh, this is going to be so cool. I'm going to be a hurdler and I'm excited about practice. I'm thinking I'm going to jump in. And to your point, we had to stick our lead leg out. We're sitting on the ground, sticking our lead leg out. And then, our trail leg was, is kind of like cocked behind us in the same shape that you would take while flying over the hurdle. And. We would have to twist our upper body and do toe touches to our lead leg. And we would do that probably half the practice it seemed like.

I'm like, when are we going to get to run? When are we going to be able to run these hurdles? And it's like, you've got to get this basic stuff down before. You can do some of the harder work, and that's just what you're talking about. Those reps, that repetition, um, that we see so often in mathematics, too.

Lee: Yeah. How do we increase the reps? And I, I think that's been our thought here, Literacy Geeks. how do we keep making it easier to increase the reps and increase the practice so that, that started our journey down, how do we find high-interest texts?

Jonathan: What a great question, How do we find high-interest texts? And I know it seems like we've kind of, we've painted this daunting picture. This is hard work, guys. And it is. It truly is. But here's a few things that, that, uh, everyone can keep in mind. First of all, we'll go back to, whether is the text relevant?

Can we, is the, is a student going to engage in this text? And relevancy, again, doesn't have to be about that particular kid, but maybe about their life or things going on in their lives. It could be about some new legislation that's going to impact their lives. What is it that we can find that is interesting to them?

You can slog through it because the kid's interested. The kid wants to figure it out and get in there. We want to look at if the text engages kids in critical thinking. So, is it pushing them to think a different way? Is it challenging them in some way? Is it, making them make a decision? Like, you have to take a stance on this one issue. What is that stance going to be? I think those are powerful. Also, does it lend itself well to teaching certain skills if the skill isn't in the text, it doesn't lend itself well to teaching that skill. So if you're trying to teach a description and this writer is not using description, not going to be good.

If you're trying to teach how writers use subclaims and this writer doesn't use subclaims. Not going to be very good. So you've got to find those texts that lend themselves well to teaching of specific skills. And then a strong vocabulary. I was talking to my wife. I don't know if you guys remember, but my wife is an elementary school teacher and I said, honey, what? What other things I'm missing when we talk about text selection, and she says, what about vocabulary? And I was like, right, of course, vocabulary, that the idea, though, is not hard, challenging words, but it's powerful, strong words that are used appropriately. And I think in a couple of shows previously, Lee, you said. One thing that I like to say about writing is writers use strong verbs, so if

I'm claiming my students that writers use strong verbs, I want to find a text that shows a writer using strong verbs, not simple, basic. Generic verbs that don't prove my point and then also show kids that, what this author is saying is interesting because of these strong verbs. What are some things that we've done and how have we been successful and what can we do to support teachers?

Lee: The number one thing is, check out our Geek Gazette post on Thursday. We'll be releasing and, uh, there are some resources that we've found that are great. Uh, some more information, kind of summarizes some of the points that we're talking about. So that's one way, really try and make sure once a week we get out a Geek Gazette to help all the literacy geeks out there.

We've created something we call reading quests, which are reading lessons, and we delivered them through Quindew, which is dedicated to middle school, and we recently launched Literacy Chops (literacychops.com) dedicated to high school and Comprehension Engine (comprehensionengine.com) dedicated for grades 3-5.

They're Learning engines that we've designed to make sure we engage kids at the age that they're at, and there's different things that you have to do to engage those kids.

So that's why we have our 3 different platforms. On those platforms, we offer a free reading program, which allows you to log in, sign up, and put your kids on our reading program. And you can deliver three of these high-quality texts with questions, three times a week. It's the easiest way to get more practice into your classroom and you can sign up tomorrow and have your kids reading more.

Jonathan: Yeah, we don't have multiple choice. So when students are reading with us. They are engaged in that close reading and then they're finding that text evidence that then transfers to text-dependent writing. And so as the kids answer questions, they're going through that process of the kinds of questions they need to be asking as readers, finding that text evidence, identifying the text evidence that they can later on in a writing assignment Use. So it's a transferable skill where multiple choice answering these questions isn't a transferable skill in other reading environments. It's a transferable skill to other tests, but it's not a transferable skill to other reading environments and other content areas. So I'm proud of us for that, too. And then we have the teacher-driven lessons, which use high-interest text, but then a full teacher lesson where the teacher facilitates that close reading, the deep reading comprehension strategies, all of the vocabulary, the pre-reading, the during reading, and then the after reading activities. to support teachers now in the facilitation of close reading lessons. And we think that that's extremely important for our teachers to have that. So they have access to high-interest engaging texts that are designed to teach specific skills and they can do the same, the kids can read with those on their own.

And then you have the teacher-driven ones, which is amazing.

Lee: We're super excited. Uh, most people don't see them. They're part of our current reading and writing curriculum product. So if you're interested in that, let us know. Send us an email. We're happy to show it to you. We're also happy In the next few months, we're excited. We're going to release, the ability to look through the library and you'll be able to use it once a month. you can select one of those texts and then you can be able to teach it. So we want to get that out there. We want everyone, to be able to use it, and help add these great lessons into your classroom. Um, so, yeah, we're, we're super excited. So there'll be more to come on that once, once we get it out there and released, uh, we'll let everyone know.

Jonathan: So excited about that update.

Lee: So good. So good.

Jonathan: What else I'm excited about? It's let's get techie time. All right. I had to get my arms in there because last time you got your arms in there. And I was like, I need more arms in

Lee: Oh yeah, I know you need some shoulder.

Jonathan: You've got the best shimmy. I'm not sure if I can get there.

Lee: You can do it.

Jonathan: For our techie segment we want to talk about text-dependent tasks and then the importance of text selection, what sorts of things can we do in the tech space? What are we doing? And then I'm gonna be able to share a couple of my favorite websites with our listeners so they can get started right away to find some great, great resources.

Lee: Yeah. We were brainstorming some ideas, and the one idea that came to mind that we didn't even think about was the removal of multiple choice. I believe that this is enabled through technology. So moving beyond an ABCD question can be challenging.

There's more work to assess whether that student was correct or not. And it's difficult because they could have multiple answers. I think the fill-in-the-blank has been some of the most challenging, but through technology, we've learned how to grade them. Removing that multiple-choice, the brain no longer can try and guess. That's the first thing I want to try and just pick which one. My brain wants to do the simplest thing and even when we're testing, my brain doesn't want to go through and do the hard work it's tough, you have to read, you have to try and answer difficult questions once you remove multiple choice and so I think that's probably the number one thing that we do to leverage technology. To upgrade our quests and make sure that it's not about multiple choice.

Jonathan: Mm-Hmm.

Lee: yeah, I don't know. Yeah. What are your thoughts on that?

Jonathan: I think one of the things just connected to what you're saying is we want to try to get kids critically thinking as often as possible and, when the students have to consider the whole text. And look at how the writer constructs meaning instead of just picking from when you think about multiple choice, someone has already done the heavy lifting and then listed some distractors.

Then the answer, and sometimes multiple choice can be just affirming. I think this is the right answer, I see it here, it must be the right answer. Versus digging into a text and considering all of it. And how the writer engages the reader or listener if it's a spoken text. I think is, is, is the root of critical thinking. And we want to make sure our kids are critically thinking as often as possible, which is also why kind of in the techie world, we allow for a second chance in our online platforms. And I think what you've developed Lee is so cool because kids. can miss a question, but instead of it being done and they move on or they get served up another one, which is traditionally what happens with online programs, we give them a second chance. And then we provide more support because now they've been told something and you always say, now we have a problem, right? The student now is a problem. And when we have problems in our brains, we want to fix them. It's an automatic reaction. The students have an extra chance to get it right and they, their brains stay on and they're trying to figure that out. And that's all because of technology.

That's all because we can now say, All right, student, you didn't get this right this time. We're going to give you a second chance. The brain stays on, they continue to learn and move forward. And on the front end, we mark the question as incorrect. So we know that the student needs more practice on that particular question. I think it's just amazing, um, what, what we've been able to do. And, I think the story for those of us who are new to us. I have 21 years of classroom instruction, and Lee is, the chief tech geek.

And Lee says, I want to make a platform that teaches like you taught in the classroom. And I, what'd I tell you, Lee, that's impossible.

Lee: Yeah. Can't be done. So we went and had a beer and then the next day you're like, tell me more.

Jonathan: Yeah. And you're like, I think we could do that. Yeah. And I'm like, it's gotta be this. It's gotta, yeah, I think. Yeah. And then he, he like, he would say, I'm going to pull things out of your brain. So keep talking. Um, kind of like how the show sometimes runs is I talk and talk, and then things come out and he sees things and I see things, but it's this, this idea that can we make, Online practice, similar to classroom practice, where the teacher is facilitating the reading to enhance instruction for the teacher and for the students, giving them more reps. So I promise as part of the techie segment, I was going to give you guys some sources. I'm going to share a few that I love number 1. Lee was talking about earlier on how sources are protected rightfully so, and it's very difficult to find sources that are available for free or that give a little bit more latitude with their licensing. I know like with the New York Times, they have great writers and great articles, but they get so sneaky as to find your IP address. And then after you are on there for a certain amount of time, they lock you out. And then put up a paywall or if you read one article, they say that's all you get for a month or whatever. And, and it doesn't feel good. You just want to see great writing and you want to give your kids access to great writing and they, and they don't let you. Right. So it's kind of hard. The conversation.com is a wonderful platform for writers. It's a bunch of college and university professors who write for the conversation and they have pledged much like we have to give free lessons.

They have pledged to give free articles that's their charter and their writing is excellent. Uh, we use lots of the conversation on, uh, our platforms. AmericanRhetoric. com is a great site. It's not the most beautiful site you've ever seen, but it is a cool site.

It is a gentleman who has compiled all the greatest speeches in U. S. history. In their entirety. So you, you get the full speech and the audio version and that's on americanrhetoric. com. So my humanities teachers out there, English teachers, history teachers. It's a great resource. Ohio State University did something a couple of years ago they created the penguins and polar bears. It's for elementary school students, but it is a wonderful resource to get great writing, and scientific writing that you can just go and grab.

And those articles are there for you. I believe there are about 24 articles. So that's a great place to go to teach science through reading. teach science through reading. Those are some of my favorites that have worked well for me as an educator. And we'll make sure that we link those to our Geek Gazette so that you guys have access to them. And, and, uh, I know it's not easy to write things down, especially if you're listening on the go, but, um, later this week in the Geek Gazette, we'll go ahead and post some things about our criteria, uh, when selecting texts, and then also link links off to some of the resources that we just talked about. So next week, we are going to explore practical ways teachers can increase Text-dependent writing practice. We talked about reps. Well, we're going to talk about how you can get more reps when writing about sources to help students better prepare for these challenging writing tasks because guys, they're not going away.

They're just going to become more and more and we want to make sure we prepare our students for those. So this is The Literacy Geek Show. Visit our website, and our YouTube channel for more inspiration.

Lee: Thanks for geeking out with us today and we'll see you soon.