Vrain Waves: Teaching Conversations with Minds Shaping Education
Knowledge Party with Natalie Wexler
Episode Summary
Today on Vrain Waves we have an exciting and somewhat earth shaking interview from Natalie Wexler, education journalist and author of The Knowledge Gap. She walks us through the contributing research and education history that led her to write the book, and some strategies for schools to set the foundation for student success. From her website: “Education journalist Natalie Wexler focuses on two ideas that have solid evidence behind them but have been mostly overlooked by schools and reformers: immersing children from less-educated families in knowledge about the world, and linking that knowledge to writing instruction.”
Episode Notes
Episode 048: Knowledge Party with Natalie Wexler
Today on Vrain Waves we have an exciting and somewhat earth shaking interview from Natalie Wexler, education journalist and author of The Knowledge Gap. She walks us through the contributing research and education history that led her to write the book, and some strategies for schools to set the foundation for student success. From her website: “Education journalist Natalie Wexler focuses on two ideas that have solid evidence behind them but have been mostly overlooked by schools and reformers: immersing children from less-educated families in knowledge about the world, and linking that knowledge to writing instruction.”
Connect with Natalie Wexler
Website: nataliewexler.com | Twitter: @natwexler | Books: The Knowledge Gap, The Writing Revolution
Connect with Vrain Waves
Website: vrainwaves.com | Twitter: @VrainWaves | Becky Twitter: @BeckyEPeters | Ben Twitter: @mrkalb
- Intro (00:58)
- Natalie Wexler’s view on the Promise of Public Education (5:25)
- Functioning democracy needs a citizenry that can understand events and how to edit and fact check the information that they’re exposed to
- What is The Knowledge Gap (06:55)
- We’ve treated reading like it’s a set of discrete skills while letting content knowledge take a back seat
- Most important factor for successful reading comprehension: how much background knowledge and vocabulary you already have
- The Baseball Study and reading comprehension (09:42)
- 2 Parts of Reading: Decoding and Comprehension (11:27)
- Whose knowledge? (16:13)
- Common core history and content knowledge (18:32)
- Supplemental materials language on content in common core
- Underestimating student ability and having high expectations (22:10)
- Student choice (24:13)
- History of the role of content in reading instruction (28:35)
- Alternatives to leveled groupings (31:08)
- Listening comprehension exceeds reading comprehension
- Written language is more complex than spoken language
- The importance of exposing struggling readers to grade level texts (34:07)
- The importance of facts and knowledge in the age of Google (36:42)
- The Curse of Knowledge (38:19)
- Doug Lemov: “Those of us on the privileged side of the knowledge gap have no idea how we got here.”
- Importance of pre-assessment
- Misinterpretation of Bloom’s Taxonomy (40:35)
- Taxonomy, not a hierarchy
- Skipping lower levels is not appropriate
- Quote from the book: “That graphic has led many educators to conclude that the ‘lower-order’ tasks should be passed over as quickly as possible, or even eliminated, because they’re inferior to those at the top. In fact, Bloom meant that knowledge and comprehension are prerequisites for higher-order thinking, and that teachers should never ask students to start analyzing or evaluating a topic until first ensuring they have a solid understanding of it.”
- The Writing Revolution (42:33)
- Balance between free writing & content-based writing (47:40)
- Role of the teacher in the modern classroom, PD (48:54)
- Delivering curriculum instead of creating curriculum
- Ongoing PD around content delivery, not skills in isolation
- Provide information and then guide them through thinking about that information with opportunities for desirable difficulty
- Closing & Take Aways (53:00)
- NatalieWexler.com / Forbes.com contributor
- Quote: “It’s not so much that particular bits of information are vital in and of themselves—although some certainly are. It’s more that people need to have enough facts in their heads to have what one commentator has called ‘a knowledge party’—a bunch of accumulated associations that will enable them to absorb, retain, and analyze new information. Education certainly shouldn’t end with facts. But if it doesn’t begin there, many students will never acquire the knowledge and analytical abilities they need to thrive both in school and in life.”
Other Resources as well as some relevant citations from The Knowledge Gap: