Knowledge Matters Campaign

🎧 Season 3 of the #KnowledgeMatters Podcast drops June 24! This season, we’re diving deep into Literacy + the Science of Learning! Our hosts are three powerhouse voices: 🧠 @dylanwiliam 📘 @Doug_Lemov ✍️ @natwexler 📅 New episodes drop here: knowledgematterscampaign.org/podcast/

Here's a study on exactly that point: The proportion of academic words used by teachers during the school day is a significant predictor of student vocabulary growth and reading achievement. Research indicates that higher teacher usage of sophisticated, academic language directly correlates to higher student vocabulary scores at the end of the year, particularly for language-minority students. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37541302/

John Sweller developed cognitive load theory. He is my guest in the next episode of Chalk & Talk! Coming tomorrow, March 20. Don’t miss it!

Kernel sentence expansion, leads directly into knowledge rich paragraph writing.

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It’s obvious to me that effective curiosity explodes once one’s knowledge has been built. I see it every day in my students: the more they know, the more they want to know. It’s the Dunning-Kruger effect—as their expertise develops, they become more and more aware of what they don’t know yet, and then ask very insightful, substantive questions to explore those gaps based on what they’re now ready to understand. This doesn’t happen when you lead with discovery and inquiry. Yes, kids will ask questions, they will be curious, but it often lacks a substantive foundation of knowledge from which that curiosity can develop. They don’t know enough yet to know what they don’t know about a concept or an issue, so their questions and inquiries are often superficial. If you want to help your students become more curious and inquiring, teach them to know a lot about that topic or concept first. From there, they will become inquiring minds, built on a strong body of knowledge that helps them understand what they still need to learn.

This is perfect @mcglynn3! “If working memory is limited, instruction must be selective. And in literacy, the text deserves the top seed.” 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 Okay, now back to basketball!

🏀March Madness is in the air!📚 What’s @mcglynn3 overall number one in her literacy instruction bracket? The text. It’s always the text. Read more from the @Standards_Work Chief Academic Officer on her Substack or the @KnowledgeMatrs Blog! knowledgematterscampaign.org/post/bracketol…

@KnowledgeMatrs @ckschools @HistoryMatrs Great to hear about the positive impact of a coherent curriculum, Kelsey! KnowledgeMatters EducationMatters TeachingSuccess

@KnowledgeMatrs @LHUSD1 It's always a delight to peek into classrooms with good instruction happening!

That’s exactly what integrated literacy classrooms have always done. Writing, reading, and knowledge weren’t separate, they worked together. We didn’t miss this. We were doing it.

Looking forward to presenting at researchED New York on May 2. It promises to be a great event, as usual for researchED. Hope to see many others there! More info & registration here: researched.org.uk/event/new-york…

High text; low tech. In reading, that's the first step.

“What do you think we might see. What’s a word we could use?” “Lewis and Clark” “Because” We saw some excellent writing instruction using learned history content on our recent school tour in @LHUSD1! Peep those #becausebutso posters on the white board! 😉@TheWritingRevol

It’s so wonderful to read to students as they build knowledge under guidance and amazing talents of @andree_brochu @ELeducation @KnowledgeMatrs

It’s always a great day when @KevinJ_McNamara comes in to read to our class. Thank you for answering all of their questions.

“What do you think we might see. What’s a word we could use?” “Lewis and Clark” “Because” We saw some excellent writing instruction using learned history content on our recent school tour in @LHUSD1! Peep those #becausebutso posters on the white board! 😉@TheWritingRevol

I *wonder* if the decline in reading scores has anything to do with the increase in digital reading assessments. I wonder if there's a correlation between the two (My guess is yes, but I really don't know)

I don't know why the work of Romance & Vitale has been absent from the online discourse about content and comprehension. They did a 5 year study with pretty consistent results and effects that lasted into middle school.

Really thoughtful review of our new book on the science of reading.... hope you'll check it (and the book) out.

Coherent instruction is essential for all students, yet those who need it the most, tend to see a disjointed day much more often. @natwexler’s latest edition of Minding the Gap dives into this important conversation. Read more here: open.substack.com/pub/nataliewex…