Teaching Content Vs. Teaching Skill with Natalie Wexler

Natalie Wexler: These comprehension skills and strategies are what's really going to enable kids to understand complex text down the road. If you get good at finding the main idea, you'll be able to apply that skill to any text that's put in front of you.

Amanda Bratten: Education Uncharted is a show from Propello a K- 12 teaching and learning platform that helps districts and teachers give every student a first- class learning experience. I'm your host, Amanda Bratten, exploring the stories of courageous educators that have broken out of the status quo to chart new paths and boldly innovate in the ever- changing landscape of education. In today's show, we'll explore how cognitive science plays a role in our pedagogical approach. Today's guest is Natalie Wexler, an education writer and author of The Knowledge Gap, the Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System and How to fix It. Natalie's articles and essays on education and other topics have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, and other publications. She has spoken on education before a wide variety of groups and appeared on a number of TV and radio shows, including Morning Joe and NPR's On Point, and 1A. I'm really looking forward to speaking with Natalie today as her work has helped to inform my own why as I move through my career as an educator and curriculum professional. Welcome, Natalie. It is so great to have you here today. I am really looking forward to our chat. You are definitely somebody who's inspired me, and I know lots and lots of other people out there to continue to move forward and make change in education. So, thank you again for showing up today. I wonder if maybe we can start by just letting you give us a little bit of a background to the journey that you've taken over your career, starting with your steps to become a reporter all the way to the educational research and authorship that you're doing now.

Natalie Wexler: Well, I don't think you want all the steps. I mean, would be here for quite a while. I've had a circuitous journey, but I did spend one year as a reporter, but that was quite a while ago, and I've done a number of things. I've worked as a professional historian before that I got a law degree. I practiced law for all of eight months. A number of things, but journalism is something that I've kept returning to over and over. So about... I don't know, maybe 12, 13 years ago now, I decided to go back to writing and I'd been doing it on and off, but I was particularly interested in education because it just seemed incredibly important. And I began to realize I live in Washington DC where at the time there was a lot of education reform activity. And as I got more interested in what was going on and started going around to schools and I realized that there wasn't enough coverage of all of the stuff that was going on, I was particularly interested in what we sometimes call the achievement gap, the gap in test scores essentially between kids at the upper and lower ends of the socioeconomic spectrum. And I wanted to figure out why we'd made so little progress in narrowing that, especially at higher grade levels. So, I started writing about education specifically then mostly for a local news website, and I learned a lot through doing that.

Amanda Bratten: Excellent. And I wonder, did part of that discovery process, was that in your development of the writing revolution, was that kind of what really started to get you thinking? Or was it even before that?

Natalie Wexler: Well, simultaneously with writing about education, I decided to try tutoring some students, and I thought it seemed like the problem was really at the high school level. And I thought, well, this would be one way to maybe be useful because I know writing is hard to teach and I could tutor some students in writing since I'm a writer, I know how to do that. And I also thought it would give me some insight into what was going on in high schools and what the problem was there. And it did to some extent, but while I was trying to tutor these kids in writing... and what I discovered was that they were not getting any writing assignments. And when I tried giving them some writing assignments and I didn't want to do creative writing with them, I wanted to do the kind of writing they would be expected to do in college. And I realized couple of things when I brought in articles or things, I'd written for them to write in response to, I realized that no one had taught them the basics of writing, what is a sentence? And I also realized that there were gaps in their knowledge of the world that were preventing them from understanding the articles I was showing them, which seemed to me pretty straightforward. These were 10th graders, I thought they'd be able to understand them, didn't know what the Supreme Court was, for example, even though we were at the time only 17 blocks from the Supreme Court. And I was very puzzled by this. So, while I was doing this, an article came out in the fall of 2012 in The Atlantic magazine called The Writing Revolution. And I read that article and it was about a method that was used at a low performing high school in New York City that had really helped to turn the high school around, and it taught both writing schools and it built knowledge at the same time. And I thought, " Wow, this is what these kids need." Because there was nothing wrong with their brains. They just hadn't been given access to the knowledge they needed. And then through a complicated series of events, I met Judy Hochman, the woman who created this method that was used at that high school and got to know her and admire her, and eventually was on the board of this organization she started, and then eventually co- authored a book with her called The Writing Revolution, and the organization is also called the Writing Revolution. So that's how that happened. So that was happening before I got the idea to write this book, the Knowledge Gap, but it was Judy Hochman who set me on the path to writing, The Knowledge Gap because at the time that I met her, I was on the board of a charter school that was an elementary school, and I thought, " Gee, wouldn't it be great if that school could use this method of writing instruction?" And I asked Judy if she could look into that, but she came back to me and said, " Well, the problem is that this method really only works if it's embedded in the content of the curriculum and your school isn't really teaching any content." And I was like, " What?" I thought I had no idea what she was talking about. So, she explained to me a little bit, and that got me started on the road that ultimately led to writing The Knowledge Gap.

Amanda Bratten: Excellent. Yeah. I think that we're walking into classrooms every day where that knowledge building is just not a part of the game, but is such a passionate part of what younger children are about, right? I wonder if we could talk a little bit more about that. As you began to do that research and you're sitting in on classrooms, what did you see as you compared a classroom that really was very focused on the skill building as opposed to a classroom where there was an integration of that skills and knowledge kind of combining? Can you just tell me a little bit about that?

Natalie Wexler: Yeah. And I will say, wasn't that I'd never been in elementary classrooms before, but I just hadn't... I'd been there for five or 10 or maybe 15 minutes at maximum, and that's really not enough time to understand what's going on. But also, once I learned about how reading comprehension works and the importance of building knowledge and the fact that most elementary schools were not trying to build knowledge, but they were focused on these reading comprehension skills and strategies, then I really was able to see what was going on in the classroom in a much clearer way. But one of the things that I did for the book as part of my research was to follow a couple of early elementary classrooms through a school year to compare what is a comprehension skills focused curriculum look like versus what does a knowledge building curriculum look like? And the differences were really dramatic. I mean, that was kind of an afterthought. I only came up with that idea of following those classrooms after my publisher said to me, well, sort of an offhand comment. She said, " Well, of course you'll need a narrative arc. And I was like, " Oh, oh, yes, of course." But I had no idea what I was going to do for narrative arc, but I thought, " Well, maybe if I follow these classrooms through a school year, that'll sort of be a storyline." And it was and it also, I think, was an incredibly illuminating part of the book. So, the skills focused classroom, the teacher was putting a skill of the week, usually in the foreground this week we're working on sequence of events or this, we are working on main idea and details. And she was using a textbook, a basal reader as they're sometimes called that had texts chosen, not really for their topic, but for how well they would lend themselves to demonstrating the skill of comparing and contrasting or whatever. She was a good hardworking teacher, but the kids were just not that interested in what she was trying to teach them. They were six- year- olds. And so, they didn't have that much to say about the difference between a caption and a subtitle and the abstract. They wanted to know what's going on in that picture that has the caption. But the teacher with the best of intentions felt that it was more important for her to focus on the difference between the caption and the subtitle because that's what her training and her instructional materials and the tests were all telling her she should focus on. So, those kids were just not very engaged in what they were supposedly learning, and they weren't really learning that much of value. The other classroom that was using this curriculum that was very rich in what we would consider very sophisticated content for early elementary students, they were way more engaged. They were having incredibly thoughtful discussions about things like the War of 1812 or the Trail of Tears or Greek myths. They were highly engaged. And these kids, they were second graders, not first- graders, but they weren't that different demographically from the kids in the other classroom. In both classrooms kids were from low- income families, they were all children of color. The difference really was the curriculum. And these second graders who were getting the content rich curriculum, I should add, they had gotten it since kindergarten. So, they already had learned, for example, when they came to the War of 1812, they'd already learned about the American colonies. They'd learned about the revolution. They had the background knowledge, they needed to understand it. And they were having these great discussions, they were highly engaged, and they were learning vocabulary words like, oh, desperately, plummeted, foresight because they were encountering them repeatedly in an engaging context. And those are words that will serve them very well in years to come. And it wasn't that the teacher was never asking them to make a prediction or to connect prior knowledge to new knowledge. I mean, the curriculum was helping her bring in those kinds of skills and strategies as appropriate to the content she was trying to teach, rather than trying to teach the skill and bringing in some text in service of teaching the skill, and that's what works. And by the way, when she tried to activate their prior knowledge or ask them about their background knowledge, well, they actually had some relevant prior knowledge to activate because the curriculum had made sure that they had learned the stuff that would enable them to understand what she was trying to teach.

Amanda Bratten: Sure. So, they were actively making connections to the knowledge that they had built, not only in the classroom, but also just through their daily life, bringing in those funds of knowledge to help kind of make sense of what it was that they were learning?

Natalie Wexler: Well, they were doing both, but I would say primarily what I saw was that they were relying on the knowledge that had been built through the curriculum. And sometimes the teacher would prompt it, but sometimes they would volunteer it. So, there was a reference to a white flag of surrender, I think during the War of 1812. And one little girl said, " Oh, I remember that from first grade. They did that in the American Revolution too, that thing about the white flag." By the way, so about half of them came from Ethiopian families, and the teacher told me about one day when they were talking about Alexander the Great, and she asked this rather sophisticated question, was Alexander the Great's ambitious nature a good thing or a bad thing, basically, was it an inspiration to his followers or was it a flaw? And the kids said, " Well, he was invading other people's land, so it was a bad thing. And the teacher pointed out, " Well, if you were one of his followers, you might think that was a good thing." But then the kids who were from Ethiopian backgrounds, they said, and she didn't know where exactly what they were referring to, but they said, " Well, people invaded our Ethiopia, and that was a bad thing." So, they were making some connections to what they knew from the outside. So, it's a combination.

Amanda Bratten: So, for those listeners who may just be getting onto this understanding of what you have brought to the conversation with The Knowledge Gap, can you tell us why all of this matters? When we're talking about learning to read and teaching reading, why does it matter that we're building this knowledge?

Natalie Wexler: Yeah. Good question. It's complicated, especially I think if you're an educator who has been deeply steeped in this idea that these comprehension skills and strategies are what's really going to enable kids to understand complex text down the road. If you get good at finding the main idea, you'll be able to apply that skill to any text that's put in front of you. But cognitive scientists have found that that's really not the way reading comprehension works. What is more important than general skill is not relevant prior knowledge. Now, that could be knowledge of the topic you're trying to read about. And there's this famous study called the baseball study that showed that basically poor readers who as determined by a standardized test who were baseball experts did really well when they were as comprehenders when they were reading about baseball, whereas the good readers who didn't know about baseball did much worse when they were reading about baseball-

Amanda Bratten: That would be me.

Natalie Wexler: ... So, yeah, metoo. But it's not just knowledge of the topic that's helpful. It is also general academic vocabulary and something that's often- overlooked familiarity with the complex syntax, the sentence structure of written language. Written language is always more complex than spoken language in terms of both vocabulary and syntax. But the only way to get familiar to acquire that general academic vocabulary and that familiarity with complex syntax is through knowledge of specific topics, a lot of specific topics, because that vocabulary does not stick in the abstract unique context to give it meaning. And the same with syntax, it's just not going to... it's just having kids diagram sentences for most kids does not transfer over into their own writing or into their familiarity with things like subordinating conjunctions when they encounter them in their reading. The root to that valuable general knowledge is through knowledge of specific topics. But what's going on in the mind has to do with our working memory, which is the part of our consciousness where we are taking in new information and trying to make sense of it, or we're learning in other words. And the important thing to know about working memory is it is very limited in its capacity it can only juggle maybe four or five things for about 20 seconds before it starts to get overwhelmed. And we start to lose the capacity to understand what we're trying to take in. And the best way around the limits on working memory is to have a lot of stuff stored in long- term memory, which is potentially infinite. And if you can just withdraw relevant information from long- term memory, you don't have to juggle it in working memory along with the new information you're trying to take in. If you're reading about baseball and you already know what a double play is or some of that lingo, you don't have to think about it. You don't have to go off and look it up, all of which imposes a burden on working memory. You have more capacity to just take stuff in and attend to the meaning and absorb it and retain it. And the way this plays out in a typical elementary classroom during the ELA block, the way a curriculum enables it to play out a good curriculum that builds knowledge logically, that focuses on content and that relies on read alouds and discussion primarily for building knowledge. Read alouds are crucial because before they are fluent readers, they can take in more sophisticated information concepts through listening than through their own reading. Again, that has to do with working memory, because if somebody else is doing that work of decoding for you or figuring out where the emphasis goes in a sentence, you have more capacity to just attend to the meaning and take it in. So teachers should be reading a complex text more complex than kids could probably read on their own, and then asking questions that focus on the content so that kids get a chance to talk about what they've just heard, use that new vocabulary because that really helps transfer new information to long- term memory, explaining it to somebody else in your own words. And then now they have some information stored in their long- term memory that will enable them to read about that topic at a higher level, and also to write about that topic at a higher level because they don't have to juggle new information along with the demanding tasks of reading and writing. But that only works if they are reading and writing about the same topic they've been listening to and speaking about. And unfortunately, in our current system, they might be listening to a text about sea mammals. The conversation would focus on author's purpose or whatever, some skill rather than the content. Then they might be reading about it yet a different topic and writing about yet a different topic, and that is making reading and writing harder than they need to be.

Amanda Bratten: Uh- huh. So, what would you say to teachers who are working in districts that have not yet jumped onto this idea of understanding that knowledge building is a key component to literacy, right? What would you suggest that teachers do if they're ready to take that leap within their own classroom without maybe having the curriculum that's embedded? What are some things that they can start doing now while maybe they're waiting for something to be adopted or they're pushing their administrators to start thinking about these things? What can they be doing now?

Natalie Wexler: Yeah. I hear from a lot of those teachers. There are things they can do. I mean, I would say one thing is to see if you could get permission to do a pilot of one of the half dozen or so curricula that are out there because it's going to be a lot easier if you've got a curriculum that has done a lot of the work for you, and that builds knowledge in a logical sequence across grade levels because no teacher can control what happens at other grade levels, but there are things that individual teachers can do. One is to rather than focusing on a skill of the week and jumping from topic to topic, choose a topic to spend two or three weeks on at least, reading a series of texts about that topic. Let's say it's sea mammals or it could be a lot of different things, but it shouldn't be too broad because the idea is that kids need to hear the same vocabulary, the same concepts repeatedly in somewhat different contexts for those things to really stick in long- term memory. And then the questions that you ask should be focused on the content rather than the skill you can bring in. And as I mentioned that teacher in that second- grade class was doing, you could bring in like a question about making a prediction, but it only went appropriate to the content and also putting the content in the foreground. So, for example, when that teacher, they were... She had done a read aloud. She was doing a read aloud about the myth of Daedalus and Icarus when they were doing unit on Greek myths. And she asked the question, " What is Daedalus' plan?" All that is asking kids to make a prediction, but it's putting the content in the foreground, and that seems to work better. Third classroom libraries, rather than having them organized just by reading level, which those reading levels are just approximations, they're not really scientific because they don't take account of the topic and their reader's background knowledge. So, instead of just having them organized by reading level, have a basket on a particular topic, especially if it's a topic that you've just been reading aloud about and discussing. Remember the baseball study, kids might be able to read at a higher level once they have background knowledge of the topic. If you've been talking reading about and talking about sea mammals, have a basket of books about sea mammals at different levels of difficulty.

Amanda Bratten: Uh- huh. Yeah. I mean, that's a way for reusing those leveled texts in a way that you know, don't have to get rid of them to feel that you're doing the right thing as long as they're sorted in a way that makes sense to building that knowledge.

Natalie Wexler: Absolutely. And then two more things. The fourth thing is to spend lots of time on meaty social studies and science topics. Fiction, poetry definitely has its place in the elementary classroom, but it has been found that those social studies and science topics have the most potential to build the kinds of vocabulary that is going to fuel reading comprehension. And it doesn't have to be just informational text could be stories like biographies, biography of a scientist or story from history or historical fiction. And lastly, have kids write in a manageable way about what they are learning about. Remember, it's going to make it easier for them to write as well as read if they already have some background knowledge. And it has been found that when kids write about what they are learning in any subject at any grade level, it boosts their learning. It boosts their comprehension and their retention of information.

Amanda Bratten: And is that writing, is it meant to just kind of ingrain that understanding in their minds? Or is it okay to say, I'm going to also incorporate some of these language skills into that writing? When is that okay? Or is it always, okay? Obviously, we use writing in a lot of different ways in a classroom. What seems to be the best way to allow students to incorporate or embed that knowledge?

Natalie Wexler: Well, writing instruction accomplishes several objectives at the same time. If it's done in a way that that really enables students to get the benefits of it, writing is a skill in itself that's hugely important. It's also potentially the most powerful lever we have for deepening and cementing knowledge and vocabulary. And it also is a tremendously powerful way of familiarizing students with that complex syntax of written language. Read alouds can help with that, but if you teach a kid to use a subordinating conjunction in their own writing, they're in a much better position to understand it when they encounter it in their reading. But the problem is that writing is the most difficult thing we ask kids to do in school. So, if we want to accomplish all of these objectives simultaneously, we can, but we need to modulate that heavy cognitive load that writing imposes that heavy burden on working memory. Because if you're an inexperienced writer, you may be juggling everything from letter formation. And if you're young or you come from a different alphabetic system to spelling to what words to use, to organizing your thoughts, to the understanding the content you're writing about it's very easy for kids to get overwhelmed when we ask them to write. And this is part of the writing revolution method. It's really important to start at the sentence level with writing instruction if that's what kids need. Because if writing is hard, writing at length just makes it harder. And if kids get overwhelmed, they're not going to get the benefits of writing, and they're probably not going to learn to write well either. It and the writing activities should also be embedded as much as possible in the content of the curriculum rather than having kids write it just about personal experience. Personal opinion are topics in a separate writing curriculum that they may not actually know very much about. It's not using writing to build the knowledge that we really want kids to acquire. And then another thing that I should mention is teaching grammar and conventions. It has been found that it doesn't work to teach those things for most kids in the abstract doesn't carry over to their own writing, but it's also been found that most kids don't just pick them up if they keep reading and writing enough. They actually do need to be taught explicitly, but in the context of students' own writing. And it's going to be much easier to do that again, if you start at the sentence level, because if you're getting five pages of error filled pros, it's hard to know where to begin with correcting grammatical mistakes. It's much easier if you've got a sentence or two or three.

Amanda Bratten: As a teacher, could I say we're learning about sea mammals for the next two weeks. One thing that we're going to do after we read this story as a class is I'm going to ask you to write down one sentence that stood out to you, or one fact that stood out to you. I mean, is that the way that I would apply that in a early elementary classroom? What do you think it would look like?

Natalie Wexler: Well, again, this is based on the writing revolution method. I did not create this method. Judy Hochman, my co- author did. But more powerful than saying, write down one interesting fact about sea mammals, which is again, kind of cognitively overwhelming because it's pretty broad and kids have to think about, it's better to give them some guardrails for their thinking, and also in the process, teach them specific techniques of syntax like using conjunctions. And so, one of the classic now, I think writing revolution sentence level activities is called because, but and so, and what that consists of is giving kids a sentence stem. It could be more than one, but the idea is to have them finish sentence stems with each of those three different conjunctions. So, let's say you've learned about sharks and now you're learning about sea mammals. You could give them a sentence stem like sharks are like whales because... and they could say, " Well, they both live in the ocean." Sharks are like whales, but whales are mammals or whales need air to breathe. Sharks are like sea whales. But what each of those conjunctions you're doing, it's having them retrieve something from long- term memory and put it in their own words, which is also putting something in your own words is a great way to transfer information to long- term memory. It's also a great way to reinforce existing knowledge in a way that makes that knowledge easier to retrieve when you need it, if you practice retrieval in that way. So that's why writing can be so powerful even at higher grade levels when there may be large gaps in kids' background knowledge, but if writing activities like that that are manageable and targeted can first of all help identify gaps in background knowledge that are preventing kids from understanding or accessing material at grade level, and also can powerfully reinforce new knowledge so that it sticks and even in the absence of prior relevant knowledge.

Amanda Bratten: That's really helpful, and I think it brings to the forefront how easy it is to really as a teacher just tweak things in the direction of recognizing that I can be teaching content while I'm teaching reading and writing at the same time.

Natalie Wexler: In fact, it's crucial to be teaching content while you're teaching reading and writing at the same time. We have artificially separated those things, but it doesn't work. Those skills have very little meaning in the abstract. They really need to be tied to content. And by the same token, all teachers should be consider themselves reading and writing teachers as well as content teachers. Even in math, you can use the writing revolution activities in any subject math, Spanish, PE certainly science and social studies. It doesn't take away from say, math instruction to do an activity like because, but, and so. When math teachers try it, they realize it actually is turbocharging their instruction because it's getting kids to really think deeply about the content.

Amanda Bratten: That's so interesting. And I wonder what... I know that there are a lot of teachers out there that are starting to make that transition content area teachers, even in middle school and high school, where they're recognizing the value of integrating literacy, the reading and the writing into their core content. What do you say to a teacher who feels a little bit hesitant? They say, " Oh, I'm not a writing teacher, that's not what I teach." or" I don't know how to teach reading. I'm just sticking with the content." What can you say to a teacher that is feeling hesitant to move into that space?

Natalie Wexler: Well, I can understand that teachers have not gotten good training in how to teach writing. It's hard to do. It's also hard to teach, but I do think I would suggest taking a look at the writing revolution, or there are excerpts that are out there online for free. So, if you want to dip a toe in without committing to buying the book, but it is a guide that can lead teachers through how to use this method. Ideally, if it's used at upper grade levels where there are different teachers for different subjects, it should be used consistently across the curriculum. But you can still... I mean, that's if you really want to turn kids into proficient independent writers, but even if it's just an individual teacher in an individual classroom, you can do a lot to reinforce and deepen knowledge by using the say those sentence level activities or the outlining. Another crucial aspect of the method is teaching kids how to create a linear outline, and both these things are particularly adapted to social studies instruction, I would say. And that I would really encourage social studies teachers to try some of these writing activities as part of their instruction.

Amanda Bratten: So I don't have to know all the grammar rules. I don't have to have a style guide in my head to be able to do some of this work with my students.

Natalie Wexler: No. In fact, the Writing revolution method brings in grammatical concepts, but only insofar as they are helpful in helping kids learn to write. They don't talk about preposition phrases or certain concepts that like in a positive, which is a phrase describing a noun. That is introduced because it can be a very powerful way of enriching a sentence, it's also a construction that appears frequently in written language but not in spoken language. And it's also... it provides a shorthand for a teacher who wants to advise a kid on how to make their writing better or their sentence structure more interesting. Instead of just saying, make it better, make it more interesting, you could say, " How about using in a positive in your topic sentence?" And the kid will know, the student will know what that means and how to do it.

Amanda Bratten: Fantastic. Natalie, this has been really enlightening. I am so grateful for your time today. Thank you for sharing some of these strategies a little bit more about what you have uncovered and the work that you're doing. I think that we can all learn a little bit from the work that you've done. Hopefully, we can learn a lot. And just taking that chance to tweak our learning and tweak our teaching in just those small ways can open up doors to greater growth. And I appreciate some of the tips and strategies that you've shared today. Is there anything else that you want to share with us?

Natalie Wexler: No, and I don't think so. I appreciate the opportunity. Thanks for inviting me, Amanda. It's been a great conversation. I would just say, I know this may all sound daunting. Teachers have so much on their plate and having spent a year in following these classrooms. I have enormous even more respect for teachers. But once you get past the steep learning curve, it's actually going to make teaching easier to build knowledge, it's going to enable your students to get more engaged, it's going to enable them to have more thoughtful discussions. Teaching, writing, I mean, I've heard from so many teachers, " Oh, my kids hate to write." It's so hard... if this kind of approach that makes it more manageable can turn reluctant writers into eager ones. So ultimately, these things will make your job easier.

Amanda Bratten: Wow. What an amazing opportunity to chat with Natalie Wexler, the author of The Knowledge Gap. I want to give you a few takeaways. So, as you move on with your day, start thinking about your next steps in your classroom, in your school, or even in your world, if you're working out there as a non- educator or as a parent, these are all things that we can think about as we work with students, learners, and other people. So, first of all, I think one of the key things that we need to understand is that we need to educate ourselves on how our brains work. It is so, so important that we have some understandings of how our teaching works or doesn't work with the way that our brains operate, so that we can ensure that the information that we're trying to get across really sinks in. Obviously, next step, we understand that knowledge building is that piece of the puzzle that we've been leaving out in favor of reading block, right? In the classroom, so often we're focusing on skills and drills, and we kind of lost the meat of what connects to the real learning. That prior knowledge, building that prior knowledge, connecting to things that we know from our daily life is so, so valuable in ingraining that information. Not only does it help support our working memory to allow our brain to free up and work on the more difficult, heavy lifting of whatever it is that's more strenuous for our brain, it also improves engagement. And just really helps to give our students that opportunity to dig into the reality of the world around us and get excited and engaged with what we're doing. Finally, how can we begin to bridge that knowledge gap in our classrooms today? A couple of things that Natalie suggested, we can build topic units, so really focusing on the content and then bringing skills in an authentic way. We can reorganize our classroom libraries by topic, not by reading level. So, we really are providing students opportunities to build their understanding even in free reading opportunities. And then finally, ensuring that students are writing about what they're learning in every classroom so that they can put their new understandings into their own words. I'm Amanda Bratten. For more conversations with bold educators exploring uncharted territory, click the link in the show notes or visit propello. com/ learn to learn more.