The Cult of Pedagogy Podcast, Episode 242

Jennifer Gonzalez, Host


GONZALEZ: This is Jennifer Gonzalez welcoming you to Episode 242 of the Cult of Pedagogy Podcast. In this episode, we’ll learn how to do a close reading lesson in any subject.

As I considered how to introduce this episode, I started by looking for statistics that could paint a picture of where modern-day students are with their reading skills. I typed “Kids Can’t Read” into my search bar, looked at the results, and realized I could skip this step. I doubt too many people need me to prove that our students, in general, could use some work on their reading skills. They’re not reading often enough, they’re not reading challenging enough material, and their skills are not great. So let’s skip to a solution. I’ve covered lots of literacy-related topics over the years, and today’s episode will be another solid addition to that collection.

Today we’re going to talk about the idea that all teachers — not just English teachers — need to be incorporating reading instruction in their classes. By the middle of elementary school, it is assumed that most students have basic decoding skills — they know how to turn letters into sounds and sounds into words, but reading is a lot more than saying the words on the page. (In episode 212 we dig into the debate over early reading instruction.) 

Most academic subjects are taught at least in part with some kind of text, whether it be books, articles, or digital resources, and each field has its own unique vocabulary, syntax, and ways of constructing and interpreting meaning. These texts get more complex as students get older, and the people who know those subjects — teachers of history, science, art, technology, health — these are the best people to help students navigate those discipline-specific texts. But many of them don’t really know how to do that. 

Fortunately, today’s guest does. 

Jen Serravallo has spent the better part of the last two decades supporting teachers in helping students become better readers and writers. Much of this support has come through her best-selling books. 

In her newest book, Teaching Reading Across the Day, she gives us nine research-backed lesson structures for explicitly teaching reading across all content areas. These are ways to teach a reading lesson that can be repeated over and over throughout the year with different texts, taking the guesswork out of reading instruction for all teachers. The nine structures are read aloud, phonics and spelling, vocabulary, focus, shared reading, close reading, guided inquiry, reader’s theater, and conversation.

In today’s episode, we’ll look closely at one of those structures, close reading. In Jen’s words, a close reading lesson “empowers more experienced readers to delve deeper into complex texts, uncovering layers of meaning through careful exploration, examination, textual analysis, and study. Readers should get more from a text when engaged in a close reading lesson with explicit instruction and guided practice and feedback than they would if they were reading it alone.” She’ll describe a close reading lesson step by step, so that by the end of this episode, you’ll have a pretty good idea of how to do it yourself. And to help you a little more, we’re going to share a video of Jen actually teaching a close reading lesson. You can find that over on Cult of Pedagogy: Just select “podcasts” and go to episode 242.


Before we get started, I’d like to thank Wix Tomorrow for sponsoring this episode. If you’re a passionate educator this one’s for you. Want to empower your students to bring their ideas to life and lead the world toward a better tomorrow? To do that, they’ll need the tools to develop an online presence. Wix Tomorrow is a free platform for students aged 13-18. They empower youth to make a change in their communities and beyond by teaching them how to create websites using Wix. From lesson plans and free resources to a web creation competition with mentorships and prizes, they’ve got you covered. Be a part of their global movement by going to wix.com/tomorrow and start equipping the creators of tomorrow today.

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Now here’s my interview with Jen Serravallo about close reading.


GONZALEZ: Jen Serravallo, welcome back for the third time. 

SERRAVALLO: Oh my gosh. It’s such an honor to be back. You know, I love this podcast, and every time I’m on it, I’m just so counting my lucky stars that you’ve invited me back. So thank you so much for having me again. 

GONZALEZ: Well, you have a lot of really good stuff. And so it’s, you know, it’s a natural fit, I think. So in case people are, have not heard our other two interviews, just give us a real quick summary of sort of who are you in the education world and what do you do? 

SERRAVALLO: Sure, yeah. So I’m a teacher, first and foremost. I taught in New York City public schools, and after some time in the classroom, I went on to support schools, teachers, administrators, coaches in New York City and throughout the U.S. And I’ve written a lot of books on the teaching of reading and writing. Starting in 2007 all the way to today, there’s more than 15 books and resources. I write a lot about strategy instruction. So people probably know my reading and writing strategies books. I write a lot about small group instruction, responsive teaching, several books on comprehension. And this new book that I’ve written is really about explicit instruction for any group size, full class instruction, small group instruction. And my books have been translated in Chinese, French, Italian, Spanish. So you might even have some listeners overseas who are familiar with my work. A lot of what I do now is to lead a team of literacy specialists who support schools and organizations around the world with the research-based student-centered methods that I write about in my books. And that team is called Literacy Strategies Consulting. So I do that, and I do a little bit of speaking at conferences and I still do workshops and I’m still in classrooms with teachers. 

GONZALEZ: Awesome. So really, I think, when people hear literacy in the 2020s and the 20-teens, they, your name comes up a lot. So you’ve got a new book, published earlier this year, “Teaching Reading Across the Day.” Tell me about the book and who should be reading this book. 

SERRAVALLO: Well, one of the things I wanted to talk about in this book is how we all really should be reading teachers because kids read all day long. They read in every subject. And therefore, I think every teacher, whether you teach social studies, English language arts, science, I think we all need to be reading teachers. I also think we need to be reading teachers whether we’re teaching the little guys in kindergarten at 5 years old or we’re teaching high school or maybe even college-age students. Whether we’re presenting kids with a science textbook that has unique and challenging text structures and features and kids need ways to grapple with the information in that text. Or we’re a history teacher, we’re giving kids primary source documents and asking them to write a DBQ essay or we’re in a math classroom and kids have a word problem where they have to figure out key information and solve that problem. Or even in English class in high school where kids might be reading a Shakespeare play for the first time and need to know how to deal with the stage directions and read a script, right? All of these are examples of how students will read better, will read more deeply and will get more from their reading if they have teachers who see not just that I want them to know what’s in the text, but I want them to approach the text well and have strategies to have it do that. And even with the little kids, right, if we’re reading a decodable text which we might be reading for the purpose of helping kids practice applying their knowledge of phonics and spelling patterns to running text, we still should be teaching them, like, how do I also think about the meaning as I’m reading? And how do I blend in segment words that are new and unfamiliar to me? So that’s one of the, kind of one of the themes throughout the book is that we’re all reading teachers, that all of us can be teaching reading, we should be teaching reading, and there’s lots of examples throughout the book of me teaching in science, social studies, and ELA classrooms, all group sizes, small group, whole class, kindergarten, sixth grade, right, every grade level. Another big theme in the book is that well, teaching’s really challenging. Planning can bog us down. And I wanted to offer teachers really predictable research-backed lesson structures that you could really use again and again in every grade level and every subject. And if you know how these nine lesson types go, it can free you up to focus on the details within the lessons. It could free you up to focus more on the responsive instruction that should happen within each lesson. And so these nine are like my toolbox. These are all I use no matter what grade I’m teaching and no matter what subject I’m teaching. So do you want me to list them out just so people, I mean I think people will think, like, I know a lot of these. Some of them might be new. But I know these lesson structures, right? 

GONZALEZ: Yes. Do that. Because what we’re going to do in a little bit is we’re going to pick one of those, we’re going to do close reading and actually kind of walk through a lesson. 

SERRAVALLO: Sure. 

GONZALEZ: But yes, what are, what are all nine of the structures? 

SERRAVALLO: So one is read aloud, right, reading out loud to kids. And I have, and when there’s a structure that I think is like oh yeah, I know what that is, what I hope people get from this book is how do I make this more explicit? How do I pack more into the lesson? How do I streamline my planning to make it easier for me to pull off a really high-quality version of this lesson type? There’s a whole chapter on read aloud. There’s one on phonics and spelling — first time I’ve written about phonics instruction, actually. There is a chapter on vocabulary, so not just teaching vocabulary within other structures, but how do I explicitly teach vocabulary and help kids form networks of words, morphological networks, conceptual networks. There’s a chapter on what I call focus lessons, which includes what people might know of as mini lessons or strategy lessons where you’re really focused on one strategy. Shared reading, which I think a lot of primary teachers are going to know a lot about where you have an enlarged text and everyone’s reading chorally or echo reading. You mentioned close reading, which we’ll talk about. Guided inquiry, which could be to help kids anywhere from setting goals for themselves to fishbowling a conversation and inquiring into what makes that conversation go so well and how can we do those same things in our small groups. Readers theater, which has become really popular because of all the research basis for it. And I talk about not just setting kids up to read and reread texts and perform them, but how do I teach into that to lift the level of their fluency? And then conversation lessons which might be whole class sort of grand conversations or literature circles or book clubs or partnerships. So those are the nine. So I think if they know those nine, we can use those nine again and again and again, they can just really save planning and prep time and help you to be really explicit and focused and engaging. 

GONZALEZ: Yeah. Those sound really, really good. So the last time you were on my podcast, we were actually talking a lot about all of the debate around reading instruction and what approach is the best. And, you know, you and the other guest had a very sort of balanced response to that. How does this book fit with all of the conversations that we’re having about the best ways of teaching reading? 

SERRAVALLO: That’s a great question. So I mean I definitely address the foundational skills conversation. That’s a big part of the science of reading debates through the inclusion of the phonics and spelling chapter and then other lesson types that help kids apply those foundational skills like the shared reading and readers theater lesson types that I mentioned. Another big debate that’s happening right now is about the teaching of strategies. Should we be teaching strategies or the teaching of knowledge and vocabulary? And a lot of districts have adopted core programs recently that are described as knowledge-building curricula based on research that shows how critical it is for kids to have relevant background knowledge in order to comprehend texts. The stance I take in this book is that it’s not an either-or proposition. I think I even talked about this on the last podcast episode we did together. Right? It’s really, it’s both-and. Yes, we need to support knowledge and vocabulary, and also, we need to be supporting kids with skills and strategies. So in every one of those nine lesson types, I talk about how to do this. So even in phonics and spelling lessons, how are we building knowledge about sounds and, you know, sounds and written letter spellings? But also, how are we giving or using opportunities in those lesson types to teach vocabulary words, right, that might fit the spelling pattern but words that kids might not know about. And then in other, you know, in other areas, like when we’re reading a text for readers theater. Kids might learn, for example, about stage clues, sorry, stage cues, or we might choose a readers theater script or even write one together as a class that helps them explore a scientific concept. Or we might be teaching strategies for inferring character emotion and for phrasing and for intonation and expression. So it’s not just knowledge and vocabulary or just skills and strategies. It’s both-and, and I think the both-and approach should be in every lesson type for every grade level. So that’s another big kind of theme throughout the book and something I’m supporting teachers with throughout it. 

GONZALEZ: Yeah, yeah. Would you say, I mean I know that this book is necessarily sort of meant for kind of anybody who teaches anything, but it seems like the people who stand to gain the most from it would be people who teach in non-English language arts subject areas, anything that’s not an English class. Because they are currently, I’m guessing, not using a lot of these strategies. So I guess, this is going to be a complicated question, but I think the reason that a lot of this kind of teaching isn’t happening in, say, like a sixth-grade social studies class or, you know, a 12th grade economics class, or a chemistry class, is because the impression that a lot of teachers have at those older grades and those different subject areas is that the reading teaching happens in K-3. The kids learn how to read. And then from that point on, they’re just using those reading skills to learn the material. And so what historically have you seen as sort of the default approach to texts in those other classes? And what would, you know, why is that not that effective? 

SERRAVALLO: If I could, I’d love to respond to the first part of that question. 

GONZALEZ: Yes. 

SERRAVALLO: Or kind of your statement, right, that the content area teachers might have the most to gain from this book. I hope not. I hope that English language arts teachers also have a lot to gain from this book because one of the things that happens a lot, and I think this relates to the second part of your question, is this sort of siloing where the English language arts teacher teaches skills and strategies and then the content area teacher teaches content. 

GONZALEZ: Yeah. 

SERRAVALLO: But I think that the ELA teacher needs to be thinking about content as well as much as the science and social studies teachers need to be thinking about reading skills and strategies. 

GONZALEZ: Can you give an example of, like, what you mean by content that an English language arts teacher would be thinking about? Apart from the obvious sort of, like, literature stuff and things like that. 

SERRAVALLO: Yeah. It could be the obvious literature stuff, like how do I approach a play and what are stage directions? 

GONZALEZ: Yeah. 

SERRAVALLO: And how do I, you know, how do I, or how about how do I understand in a historical fiction novel, like what’s the information I need to know about this historical time period? It could be that kind of content. So it could be content that’s coming from science or social studies or, you know, in a lot of cases, I think we read books in English language arts that are outside of the historical context that kids are studying in social studies and in history. 

GONZALEZ: Yes. They’re not aligned necessarily. 

SERRAVALLO: Because it’s a great novel or whatever. 

GONZALEZ: Right. 

SERRAVALLO: They don’t have the background and the geography or the time period. So it could be that. But it could also be, it could also be content around people. Like, how do we describe emotion? How do we describe character traits? How do we describe, you know, the kinds of motivations that people have? Like, that’s content that’s important in literature. If you don’t understand people, it’s going to be hard to do that theory of mind work — 

GONZALEZ: Yeah. Got it. 

SERRAVALLO: — that Duke and Cartwright talk about in their active view of reading. Vocabulary, if we’re always thinking about the vocabulary words that show up in a text but also what are the vocabulary words that we’re using to talk about the work we’re doing as readers. Like using the word “summarizing” or “sequencing” rather than just saying “putting it in order.” Those are opportunities to teach higher level vocabulary and can show up in the English language arts class. So I think yeah, so I think everybody should have knowledge and vocabulary goals and skill and strategy goals in every lesson type. 

GONZALEZ: Okay. 

SERRAVALLO: Whether you’re an English language arts teacher or a content area teacher. But let me get back to the second part of your question, which I think is really important which is, you know, what’s the common approach people in science and social studies might take, or even I would say English language arts in upper grades and middle school, high school, college with this sort of assigning of a text and assuming that because kids are fluent readers, accurate readers, they have all their decoding skills under, you know, under their belt that they should be able to figure out what’s in those texts. 

GONZALEZ: Yeah. 

SERRAVALLO: And one of the explanations for when kids, when comprehension breaks down is like oh, well they just don’t have the relevant prior knowledge to be able to understand the text. And that’s absolutely proven by research to be part of what’s going on. But also, I think kids need instruction. They need explicit instruction, they need guided practice, they need feedback. And how do I deal with this text type? How do I deal with this text structure? How do I deal with, you know, a textbook for the first time? How do I, how do I read a script for the first time, right? And there, there are strategies that teachers can teach them and should teach them so that they’re able to better read that one particular text that’s being assigned but also other texts in the future that may follow the kind of, those similar patterns. 

GONZALEZ: Got it. And so the strategies that you’re teaching and these structures that you’re offering are going to show them how to do that? 

SERRAVALLO: Yeah. Let me give you an example. So there is research dating back to the 1970s, the 1980s that helping readers understand text structure helps them to understand and process the relationship between information within and across sentences to then synthesize information, and then to determine main ideas and provide a really good summary, right? So one of the researchers people might know is a researcher named Myer who with various colleagues in actually the 1980s, 1990s, early 2000s researched a variety of different things like what happens when we clue readers into key words and phrases that signal a text structure, like looking for words like if-then or so-that or because to know that oh, this is going to be a problem solution text structure. 

GONZALEZ: Yeah. 

SERRAVALLO: And they found that when teachers provide readers with that knowledge of signal words, it improves their memory, it improves their recall of a text. So not only do they understand that particular text better, but they also learn the information, which is what so many science and social studies teachers want kids to do. They want them to learn the information for that set discipline, right? 

GONZALEZ: Yeah. 

SERRAVALLO: So they’re learning that information and then we know from research around prior knowledge that when you have more information, it sets you up better to read the next text on that same topic. So they’re learning the information and they’re learning a how-to or strategy that’s going to help them anytime they approach a text. Look for signal words. Figure out the text structure. Use that text structure to help you understand what’s most important. So you might even say to kids specifically, explicitly if you have a sequence of steps they can follow, like, look for words. Let’s say I was teaching compare-contrast. Although, either, similar, different, collect the information that’s being compared in the text, organize it mentally or on a T-Chart on paper, and then use those notes to help them summarize the key information. And then when they practice it, they’re not going to automatically all get it perfect the first time. You’re going to need to be there for them with prompts and feedback. You’re going to say things like can you find a keyword? List back the information you learned. Make sure you include what’s the same. Make sure you include what’s different. Right? So these, these explicit strategies, these step-by-step how-tos, this is what I write about in my “Reading Strategies Book 2.0.” There’s 300 of them, these how-tos to be able to figure out what exactly do I do when I want to figure out a main idea or understand a character’s emotions or retell a story or whatever. But those aren’t lessons yet, right? The strategy by itself is not a lesson. 

GONZALEZ: Yeah. 

SERRAVALLO: I think this is the misunderstanding. And one of the places where maybe we’ve gotten a little offtrack with English language arts instruction, a strategy by itself is not a lesson. You need a lesson structure. You need attention to the knowledge and vocabulary together with the skills and strategies. You need procedures, you need ways to prompt and guide kids. And that’s really what this new book about, is about. It’s about these lesson structures, how to pace them, how to structure them, how to provide feedback. And it can include those strategies, but the strategies aren’t everything. 

GONZALEZ: So speaking of, because we’re going to get into the close reading piece in just a minute and actually teach teachers how to do one of these nine structures. The book has some, it’s got planning templates and video. And so tell us just a little bit about all the tools that are packed into this book to help teachers really implement this stuff. 

SERRAVALLO: Yeah. I mean when I first conceptualized this book, I wanted it to basically be 50-50 video and text. Like, I wanted to build the book around the video. And that’s because when I was a teacher learning how to improve my practice or even today when I’m watching master teachers teaching, it’s the watching as much as or even more than the reading about it that really helps me. 

GONZALEZ: Yeah, yeah. 

SERRAVALLO: So I wanted to not just tell but I wanted to show. So there’s over four hours of classroom video included in the book, and the way you encounter it is you read a little bit about a lesson type, and then there’s a link so you can watch the video, and then a lesson plan, my lesson plan from that lesson unpacked with annotations describing how did I make changes on the spot, what decisions did I make and why. Why did I just choose to abandon this whole thing here? Why did I switch gears over here? Like, the real stuff that happens when you have the best intentions planning, but then the kids in front of you actually show you they need something a little bit different. 

GONZALEZ: Yes. And there is a section about being responsive as a teacher and being able to think on your feet, and it’s not just going to go the way it’s written out. 

SERRAVALLO: It never does. 

GONZALEZ: So helpful. Yeah. 

SERRAVALLO: Never really does. So the lesson plans are all there, and then the planning templates that you mentioned are blank versions of them so you can kind of create your own lesson plans as well. And there’s also lesson vignettes that start off each chapter, again, that are annotated with callouts of, like, here’s what to notice, here’s what I’m doing, here’s why the teacher made this choice. Again, to sort of just like let you under, let you inside my brain a little bit to see not just what did I think through when I was making the plan, and why did I make the plan I did, but what are those decisions I’m making on the spot, and how do I shift gears. So, you know, those videos, they’re kindergarten through eighth grade science, social studies, English language arts. I filmed all of them across two days. 

GONZALEZ: Oof. 

SERRAVALLO: In one take. I didn’t redo anything. They’re very, very barely edited. I left in fumbles and stumbles and kids not responding to what I thought they were going to do because I think that’s just as valuable as seeing the quote-unquote perfect example. You have to see what happens when it doesn’t go according to plan and how do you shift gears? And that’s another big thing that I wanted to show in this book as well. 

GONZALEZ: So what we decided is that we’re going to pick one of these nine structures, and it’s going to be close reading, and actually try to teach people listening how they could do a lesson like this. And in the book, you give a couple of examples and the one that I’m going to ask you to walk us through right now is a fifth-grade science close reading lesson. So first off, I guess, tell us what exactly is close reading? And then, then let’s walk through this lesson. 

SERRAVALLO: Sure. So I love that you picked this one because, this lesson type, because I think this is a great example of what you were asking about before, which is that we could assume that once kids are reading fluently and accurately, they’re good to go. We just need to give them good texts and talk about them when we’re done. But close reading is an example of how with a teacher, a reader can get so much more from a text because of explicit instruction and guided practice and feedback. So within each close reading lesson, what happens is that students are going to have an opportunity to process information, to learn new vocabulary, to ask and answer text-dependent questions, make connections and inferences and interpretations, maybe we’ll learn how to annotate effectively or discuss something with a peer. You’re not going to use close reading all the time. It’s kind of a slow-going structure. Like, you have to really pause a lot and re-read a lot. But what you’re teaching kids to do is how to take a text that’s quite demanding and get more from it because of the pace and the care you’re taking with the approaches and the way that you’re actively engaged with and grappling with the text. 

GONZALEZ: Okay. 

SERRAVALLO: So it can be whole class, it can be small group. You can have kids reading from a shared copy like something enlarged on a Promethean board. You can give kids their own copies of the text and you can have them reading independently. You can have them reading chorally. You can have them, you can have them listening to you read out loud sections. There’s a lot of different opportunities or options that teachers can decide on based on what they think will engage the kids the most and based on how much support they need. But what happens all the time is that the teacher is going slow, directing when they’re going to pause, and giving them questions to think about to help them grapple with what’s in the text. 

GONZALEZ: Okay, yes. And then in the video, in this science example, it looked like it was maybe about 15 kids, something like that, 15 to 20 kids. It was a, kind of a whole class, unless it was in a small group, but it wasn’t a gigantic class. And you sort of had them kind of gathered like on a carpet and in some chairs and stuff. So it was just this sort of loosely gathered medium-ish sized class. And the handout, it was a science article. It was about solutions and mixtures. I know this because I just watched it. I know you have a lot of video in there. And so it was really just sort of carefully and slowly going through this. And it was just a, you know, a ditto. What do they call that now? Photocopy. Ditto! 

SERRAVALLO: Ditto. 

GONZALEZ: I just dated myself bad. It was a, it was a photocopied article on solutions and mixtures. It was maybe two pages. 

SERRAVALLO: Yeah. This class, so I, yeah. I basically, I visited this school. I think it was, like, October. I asked the teacher what they were studying, what unit they were in, where they were, and then I found texts that matched it. So this class, believe me, I didn’t, this is not the most engaging topic in the world. I did not pick this topic. This is where they were. They were only about a week into their unit on mixtures and solutions. They’d done, I think, a pre-test or a little talking about some of the vocabulary they were going to use. They did one hands-on exploration with mixtures and solutions. And that was really it. So they didn’t have a ton of background knowledge. And so I picked a text that had a lot of visual information as well as text. And I decided on some goals that would help them to be able to read that text well and read other texts like it well. And also learn key information that’s going to set them up well in the unit. They don’t have a textbook in this fifth-grade class, and that’s why I have a handout, a photocopied article. 

GONZALEZ: Right. 

SERRAVALLO: Because they didn’t have any other texts that they were using together. 

GONZALEZ: Yeah. 

SERRAVALLO: But I did want to make sure that it was grade-level complexity and that it matched the content that they were studying. 

GONZALEZ: Yeah. 

SERRAVALLO: Well, I remember I looked at the other example too. There was a lesson on the Great Migration, and that looked like it was a text that had, it was multimodal text I think you called it, where there was text and video. 

SERRAVALLO: Yeah. 

GONZALEZ: And walked through how you kind of would go back and forth with the kids. So I bring that up only because there’s a lot of ways of doing it. And it’s interesting to hear that you pull, you brought that text in, and there had not been a whole lot of, like, handpicking of students or anything like that. Because you had them very well engaged. So knowing that it wasn’t inherently interesting to them is, you know, it’s good to know. 

SERRAVALLO: I mean not the most, yeah, not the most exciting topic maybe. And that was the whole class. It was just a smallish class size in that particular school, but that was the whole class, so everybody was there. It was the full range of, you know, learning, learners in the classroom. They were all there in front of me. Yeah. And not a ton of background knowledge. And, you know, I think this might actually be common too is that we talked about how sometimes texts are just assigned in content areas without instruction. I think in some classes, there aren’t even texts assigned at all. Like, that whole science curriculum was really more based on hands-on activities, which I think is very appropriate in science. But they don’t have a textbook. 

GONZALEZ: I’m starting to hear that more and more. 

SERRAVALLO: Yeah. 

GONZALEZ: Yeah. And also, I want to mention too, you make note of this in the book that the word “text” can be very broadly defined too. We can be talking about something written, but a lot of content now is getting delivered at least partly through video. 

SERRAVALLO: Yes. 

GONZALEZ: Audio and, you know, other sort of web-based formats, I guess too, where it’s still words but it doesn’t exactly come to us in the same way that like, you know, the textbooks when we were kids would look. 

SERRAVALLO: That’s a, I’m so glad you brought that up. There’s a lot of video that I see used in science classes, and I’m blanking on the name now. But in elementary science classes, it’s two little robots and they kind of explain concepts. And a lot of times teachers will assign them. I think they became really popular over the pandemic when there was a lot of, you know, book learning or kids were doing a lot of asynchronous learning and video. And I’ve seen them in classrooms today where teachers play the video straight through, and then engage the kids in an activity. This structure, close reading, could be a great structure to use during video. 

GONZALEZ: Yeah. 

SERRAVALLO: To pause and help the kids chunk the information, turn and talk, rewind, rewatch. 

GONZALEZ: Yes. 

SERRAVALLO: I’ve used this structure for, like, nature videos even, like a David Attenborough video and doing it the first time, the first quote-unquote read-through is just watching it without any audio. 

GONZALEZ: Yes. 

SERRAVALLO: Then the second time watching it with the audio, so you sort of layer in the information and give them really purposeful meaning or reasons to reread quote-unquote or rewatch and think about new information as they get it. And then yeah, pausing the video often for prompting, checking for understanding, clueing them in to what might be coming next. You know, reviewing key vocabulary. There’s a lot of opportunities to do that with video texts as well. 

GONZALEZ: Yeah. So let’s, and I’m going to repeat something that you just said a little while ago. Because this takes some time, and it’s a slow process, this is not something that you’re recommending teachers do with every text every day, because there’s just, there’s no way to actually get through the content. The hope is that you’re actually teaching kids transferable skills that they can apply to future texts. 

SERRAVALLO: Exactly. You’re teaching them this kind of habit of mind of when I approach a text, I’ve got to understand what it is, and then you’re teaching them strategies for how to do that, strategies like rereading, annotating, asking questions, answering questions, so that when they come to a text when they don’t have a teacher next to them, they can apply those same procedures, right, those same active processes to encountering, experience when it’s complex text, you have to go slower. 

GONZALEZ: Yeah. 

SERRAVALLO: You have to read more carefully. You have to reread more often. 

GONZALEZ: Yeah. So let’s walk through this. So you’ve got this handout that all these kids have been given. What happens first? 

SERRAVALLO: It might be helpful first to think about, kind of, what the general flow is. 

GONZALEZ: Yes. 

SERRAVALLO: Like, how do those 10 to 15 minutes go? 

GONZALEZ: Yes. 

SERRAVALLO: So generally, the first minute I’m doing what I call establishing a focus. So I’m going to tell them, like, why did I pick this text? Or what’s the overall purpose for what we’re going, you know, why are we even reading this text? What are we trying to get out of it? Maybe activating some relevant background knowledge if there is any, and possibly previewing a strategy or strategies that we’re going to have to use.

GONZALEZ: Okay. 

SERRAVALLO: And that’s really quick, like a minute, right? 

GONZALEZ: Okay. 

SERRAVALLO: Then the majority of the lesson is the reading and rereading, which is guided by the teacher. So in this section of the text, the teacher is going to prompt students to, prompt students to turn and talk, prompt students to stop and jot and annotate their copy. Prompt students to reread. This is also where you’re going to make decisions as the teacher. Am I going to, are we going to read this all out loud in one voice chorally? Or am I going to read a section to them and ask them to follow along on their paper? Or am I going to ask them to read the chunk to themselves? And that decision is going to be based on how well you think the kids can read it accurately. So if you think it’s within their reach, you might say, okay, read this next section to yourself and then you offer them the prompt. If you feel like they need more support, you might say, I’m going to read this next section to you. I want you to follow along in your copy. Kind of in the middle? 

GONZALEZ: Yeah. 

SERRAVALLO: Let’s all read this together in one voice, and as we read it, let’s be thinking about X, Y, and Z. Right? So the teacher’s going to be deciding is it chorally, is it independently read, are they listening to it and following along? 

GONZALEZ: Let me ask you really quickly about the choral reading thing. Is that, having not done much of that, because I was a middle school teacher, it sounds like it could be very clunky. And what, what are the benefits of that over the other thing? Like why would you choose choral reading? 

SERRAVALLO: I think it can get really clunky if the kids are all reading off their own individual copies, because it might be hard for them to all track exactly being in the same place. 

GONZALEZ: Okay. 

SERRAVALLO: What might be better is if you’re going to do choral reading, have an enlarged copy so that you can point to where everybody should be reading all at once. 

GONZALEZ: Okay. 

SERRAVALLO: The benefits are that kids are getting feedback, auditory feedback from all the kids around them and from the teacher as they’re reading. And they’re having to actually read the words so you can often get better engagement than if you’re just telling them, “read it to yourself.” We all know some kids are going to be like, okay, whatever, and they’re looking at their paper but they’re not actually reading. 

GONZALEZ: Yeah. 

SERRAVALLO: As the teacher, you can watch or you can listen, are they actually reading it with me? 

GONZALEZ: Yeah. 

SERRAVALLO: And you can also get feedback for you like, oh wow, if they are really stumbling a lot, and if it is really clunky, that tells me this text is quite complex for them, and it might mean you need to support them with some even foundational skills, decoding skills, fluency skills the next time you’re reading a text that’s of this complexity. You know, there’s another structure I write about in the book “Shared Reading” that leans on choral and echo reading a lot. Echo is, like, the teacher reads a section, and then the kids read it back, they just repeat it right after. It’s another way to support their fluent reading. So this kind of borrows some of that, that idea from “Shared Reading” which is quite research-based and used a lot in the primary grades. But I do think choral reading could be helpful here in, in upper elementary, middle school grades. There’s a body of research known as “fluency-oriented reading instruction” or FORI. And there’s, like, short FORI, long FORI, all different kinds of versions of it that looked at upper elementary, middle school students doing choral reading of complex texts. This was during the last 20-year wave of when there was a big textbook adoption, and the texts were really much too challenging for kids to read on their own. And they found great gains in students’ ability to read these more complex texts through the support of choral reading. So that’s some research I’m, I can share it with you, and you can link to it in the show notes. 

GONZALEZ: Okay. 

SERRAVALLO: So anyway. Where were we? We were in the middle of the lesson, the main part of the lesson. 

GONZALEZ: Yes. 

SERRAVALLO: They’re reading, they’re rereading. They’re being prompted. They’re being directed to reread. They might be turning and talking. You might be having a quick conversation as a class. And at the very end of the lesson, is a quick summary of the key takeaways. I call it “clarify the takeaways” where the teacher is going to articulate, you know, here’s some strategies we practiced today that you can do anytime you’re reading. 

GONZALEZ: Okay. 

SERRAVALLO: Or here’s some key information or vocabulary that you’re going to need to remember for the next text that we read or for the next science exploration that we’re going to do together. 

GONZALEZ: Okay. 

SERRAVALLO: That’s sort of the general flow of how the lesson’s going to go. 

GONZALEZ: Okay. All right. So we’ve got “establish a focus” for a minute. About 8-plus, I think in the book you said 8 to 13 minutes of reading. So we’re not looking for this big 45-minute lesson. And then you clarified the takeaways at the end. And that middle piece has lots and lots of different kind of starts and stops and conversations and prompts. So are we going to do the science one now? 

SERRAVALLO: Why not? Let’s talk about the science one. 

GONZALEZ: Okay, yeah. 

SERRAVALLO: So it’s fifth graders. Like I said, they’re like one week into this unit. They don’t have a lot of background knowledge. I selected this text. And because there are so many photographs in this text, and a lot of headings to direct their reading, I wanted to set them up to, to think about that, to think about, like, how do I connect text features like photographs with the main text? This synthesis work is always really challenging for informational text reading. And I also wanted to help them to know that when you have headings, those headings can be helpful in a lot of different ways. Like, if you have a heading that’s a question, you should be able to answer the question by the end of the section. 

GONZALEZ: Right. 

SERRAVALLO: If not, you need to go back and reread. Right? 

GONZALEZ: Right. 

SERRAVALLO: Or if I read a heading, I’ve got to start thinking, okay, what’s this next section going to be about? And I’m reading to collect information that connects to that kind of main topic or subtopic. So those were my literacy goals. And then I previewed the text and found some knowledge and vocabulary goals that I thought were going to be really helpful and important. Again, they’ve had a pre-assessment on vocabulary. A lot of kids didn’t know the difference between a heterogeneous and a homogeneous mixture or what a colloid or a suspension was. So those are the specific terms that are explored in this text. And I was like, okay, we’re going to make sure by the end they know what those words mean, they’re using those words confidently. So those were sort of the knowledge and vocabulary goals that I had for them. 

GONZALEZ: Okay. 

SERRAVALLO: So I distributed a copy of the text to everybody. Everyone’s got their own copy. And I start off with the, we start at the top, we start at the top of the page. So I said, okay, the first thing we’re seeing here are three photographs. Let’s take some time, really looking closely at these photographs, read the caption, and then I’m going to have you turn and talk to your partner about what this photograph is teaching you. And so I’m, again, pausing them there before we move on because I know from my own experience and from research, some kids just skip right over that stuff. 

GONZALEZ: Yep. 

SERRAVALLO: They just, they hop right into the text, and that visual information, it really supports you as a reader and it’s really important because it adds information to what you’re learning. So in the video, you see me giving them a moment to look at their paper, to study the photograph, to read the caption, and then you’re going to see them turning and talking to a partner. And when they turn and talk, I’m crouched over, listening in and prompting a partnership to say more, to use more specific vocabulary as they’re talking about it. They ask questions of each other, of the text. I ask them questions. And then I’m also of course getting feedback from them. I’m learning, like, what are they understanding about this content, and what do I still need to highlight for them? And then I call them back together. We have a quick discussion as a class. And then I, and then I direct them to the next section. And I had planned this out ahead of time, right? I had planned ahead of time to say, okay, so what’s the next thing they need to deal with here? They need to deal with a heading and a short section. So I’m going to use this opportunity to tell them that that heading, when it’s a question, should direct their reading, and they should be able to answer those, those questions by the end of that section. So I have them read the heading, tell your partner what do you think you’re going to learn about in this next section. Okay, now everybody read the next section to yourself. I’d chosen this because the text was a level that I thought that they could handle reading independently. I’m having them read it to themselves in each chunk rather than reading it out loud. But I’m giving them a lot of support with, like, here’s what I want you to think about in the next section, or here’s the strategy you should be using in this next section. And the support of their partner to check in, okay, tell your partner what you just learned. And if they aren’t on the same page, they can go back and reread or they can correct each other’s misunderstanding. But there’s a lot of support but with the actual reading, you’re going to see them doing a lot of it independently. I said you’re going to see it, because we’re going to link to it in the show notes. 

GONZALEZ: Yes, yes. And so, we do a lot of these, and I’m going to, again, underline kind of something you just said. A lot of the stopping points are all planned out ahead of time. You’ve decided where you’re going to be pausing and how you’re going to be prompting them. And so even though their responses are not something you can plan for, you’re not just going to be haphazardly deciding as you go when to stop. So I think that requires that the teacher read the text pretty deeply ahead of time and really be able to think about where are we going to get, you know, where’s a good place to try to figure out, you know, are they getting this? 

SERRAVALLO: Exactly. So I’ve read it ahead of time. I’ve thought about my literacy goals, the connecting text and text features. I’ve thought about, and the headings. I’ve thought about my knowledge and vocabulary goals, and I’ve thought, where am I going to pause to make sure I’m giving them practice with these different goals? 

GONZALEZ: Okay. 

SERRAVALLO: You know, like, after some time, you’re going to see me prompting them, okay, now that we’ve read the section, and we have the photograph, how do these two fit together? And then turn and talk to your partner. Again, that goes back to my literacy goal. Or, okay, this section talked about homogenous and heterogenous mixtures. Compare and contrast the two. Turn and talk to your partner. That goes with my knowledge and vocabulary goal, right? So I’ve planned all of my stopping places according to what my overall goals are, what I want them to know and be able to do by the end of the article. But like you said, I don’t know how they’re going to respond. So when they, when I listen in and they start using really vague language like, “it shows first and later.” I went, “Oh, it shows a sequence of what happens after the two substances came together.” I’m intentionally using more precise, sophisticated vocabulary that I want them to use. Or when I see that they’re mixing up heterogenous and homogenous, I pause them and say, “Everybody, let’s go back and reread this section to make sure we’re really clear on what the differences are, and I’m going to give you a chance to turn and talk again.” so it’s the responsiveness to how they’re, it’s like they respond to my prompts but then I’m responding to how they respond to my prompts. 

GONZALEZ: Yes. 

SERRAVALLO: And I’m making adjustments. I’m slowing down. I’m backing up. I’m having them reread and so forth. 

GONZALEZ: And I want to point out something about what you just said, because I noticed that, and I think, when I think back to myself in front of a classroom, sometimes if I heard a misconception from a student like that, mixing up those two words, I might be tempted to just quickly correct the misconception. But what you did is sent them back into the text. 

SERRAVALLO: I mean it could be either, right? I could be either and —

GONZALEZ: But I think that’s a good, I think that’s a good difference though, because they don’t always have you there — 

SERRAVALLO: That’s right. 

GONZALEZ: — to fix things. 

SERRAVALLO: That’s right. That’s right. And I think there’s a balance of, one thing I’m always thinking of is, like, how do I keep the pace of the lesson moving forward? What do I just tell them? 

GONZALEZ: Interesting. 

SERRAVALLO: And what do I force them to do so that, again, they have those tools the next time they come to, they come to a similar text. I think in this case, if it’s, like, one of my goals was for them to understand these two things, this section’s about those two things, the heading directed them to those two things, and they’re still not clear, I need to tell them. 

GONZALEZ: Yeah. 

SERRAVALLO: You know, hey guys, this is the time when you got to back up and reread. Let’s all do that right now. 

GONZALEZ: Yeah. 

SERRAVALLO: And I’ll guide you through it and hold you accountable to understanding the key information. 

GONZALEZ: This strategy that we just went over, it was for a science classroom, but it could be used in any class, right? 

SERRAVALLO: You know, the example that we just talked about was for science and for fifth grade, but you could also of course use this with a history text. You could also use it with a poem, right? The same structure, the same flow of the lesson, the same pacing, the same planning considerations apply whether you’re teaching younger kids or older kids or no matter the subject area. And so in the chapter, you’re going to see examples across subject areas and across grade levels to kind of drive that point home. And you’re going to see whole class, and you’re going to see small groups, again, to drive the point home that it’s the structure that’s kind of universally applied, no matter the group size and no matter the grade level and no matter the subject area. 

GONZALEZ: So the book is called “Teaching Reading Across the Day,” which I will link to in all of our show notes and everything. Before we say goodbye, and we’ll probably have another interview again sometime in the next year or so. 

SERRAVALLO: I hope so, I hope so. 

GONZALEZ: Where, where should I send people to find you online? 

SERRAVALLO: Sure. So I, my website is my name, jenniferserravallo.com, and I have a website also for the literacy specialist consulting group that I lead, which is literacystrategiesconsulting.com. I’m on social media. On Facebook, you can go to The Reading and Writing Strategies Facebook community. There’s over 105,000 of us there talking about literacy every day. 

GONZALEZ: Oh, yeah. 

SERRAVALLO: So you’re welcome to join that group. On X, I’m @jserravallo, and on Instagram @jenniferserravallo. So any and all of those places, and I do really try to respond to every email, every direct message, any question I get from teachers, I’m really here to help, so please reach out and let me be a resource to help you and support you. 

GONZALEZ: Awesome. Thanks so much, Jen. 

SERRAVALLO: Thank you, Jenn, so much.


For a full transcript of this episode, and a link to Jen’s book, and a video of the science lesson we talked about in this episode, visit cultofpedagogy.com, click Podcast, and choose episode 242. To get a bimonthly email from me about my newest blog posts, podcast episodes, courses and products, sign up for my mailing list at cultofpedagogy.com/subscribe. Thanks so much for listening, and have a great day.