Reading Science
Maryanne Wolf
In a recent essay I provided a more detailed overview of the multiple processes involved in what I have called deep reading for many years. Twenty years ago I used the term Deep Reading to describe what lies under the hood of what most educators call reading comprehension. I was discontented then and now with the way this single term fails to convey the richness of the many processes that contribute to comprehension, all of which require thought-filled instruction. I did not realize at the time that a decade before I wrote about deep reading, the wonderful author of Gutenberg Elegies, Sven Birkerts, had used the same term as well, albeit differently. In science as in life, as Pascal wrote, there is nothing new on this earth, but there is rearrangement.
Indeed what I mean by deep reading is a “rearrangement” of the many cognitive, linguistic, motoric, and affective processes that all contribute to our understanding of what we read and, in the process, expand the reading brain’s extraordinary reach into our very selves. Thus, the stakes involved in achieving that form of fluent reading that leads to deep reading could not be higher for the development of our young. We will parse these thoughts in this essay, but first a quick recap for those of you who have not read the previous essay by me.
Deep Reading Overview:
In the development of the reading brain, young readers learn to connect
their multiple, word-level, foundational processes with text-level processes that allow them to decode AND understand what they read. Gradually readers learn to allocate ever more time (in milliseconds) and attention to the more sophisticated and time-consuming cognitive, linguistic, and affective processes that comprise “deep reading”. Briefly, these processes include among others: 1) the analogical reasoning ability to couple the reader’s background knowledge with new information from the text; 2) inferential/ deductive reasoning about the purpose of the text; 3) empathy and perspective-taking that enables “passing over” (Dunne, 2006) into the thoughts, feelings, perspectives of others; 4) critical analysis in which the readers can evaluate the truth of text; and ultimately 5) insights from contemplation/reflection, described by Proust as the heart of reading (Wolf, 2018).
In Proust’s memorable description, at the heart of reading “the reader goes beyond the author’s wisdom to discover their own wisdom”. This beautiful achievement requires not only multiple foundational and text-level skills, but also an epiphany by the reader: that their thoughts are valuable and that such thoughts emerge when they learn to read deeply and think for themselves about what they read. Such an epiphany is one of the major goals in RAVE-O that is nurtured by a three-headed dinosaur, named T-Lex (trithinkasaurus lex). But I am skipping too far ahead. Let me tell you something that IS new or at least new to RAVE-O.
The original RAVE-O was created to help teachers of children who struggle to learn to read to have a more systematic approach to teaching that incorporates as many of the components of the reading brain as possible, in as engaging a way as possible for students and teachers (!). This is why the decade plus of research we did on this through NICHD was called a multi-componential approach. We were connecting the components underlying phonology, orthography, semantics, syntax, and morphology (POSSUM, see next essay) to increase decoding, fluency, AND comprehension. Then and today, everything was about connections: connecting the POSSUM components to each other to increase accuracy, fluency, and understanding; and connecting the increasingly automatic POSSUM components to connected text. Although the original RAVE-O had a wonderfully fun set of characters for foundational skills and a set of Minute Stories to embed the core words and their multiple meanings in stories, there was insufficient differentiation of the many processes in deep reading. Only later did my research for both Tales of Literacy for the 21st Century and Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World give me a whole different understanding of the rich life contained in the multiple processes in deep reading.
The new RAVE-O brought all the research in those books on deep reading processes to life for children (and their teachers). AND from the very start. We rewrote many of the original stories so that they progress in their emphases from background knowledge (new science, nonfiction stories) and inference (Sam Spade mysteries) to increasing emphases on empathy and perspective-taking by the characters in the Minute Stories. Modules One and Two provide a gradual progression of these emphases. For example, in the Meg and Lil stories, empathy and perspective taking are highlighted through understanding the experiences of others who are “different”. With the help of Amy Elison and her team and Mirit Barzilai, we wrote stories about two best friends who embody two forms of diversity: Meg is gifted in her motoric processes and has “wings in her legs”, but she can not read or spell. Lil, who lives in a wheelchair, is gifted in her reading, writing, and spelling. (Just for you to know, Lil is our own secret weapon in RAVE-O as she teaches Meg all the same strategies we try to teach the children in RAVE-O!) By the end, Lil teaches Meg that when you learn to read, you grow “wings in your mind” and together, they can go to the moon.
Embodied in characters like Meg and Lil are not only the perspective-taking/empathy processes, but also the metacognitive processes that help our young see themselves in these characters and form thoughts of perseverance and what I have called cognitive and emotional patience with the difficult task of learning to read. As every teacher knows and most parents too, when children fail to learn to read like all their peers, there is an emotional upheaval, a dissonance between what they thought of themselves before they failed and the sense of rejection they feel after they failed. A very important, invisible aspect of RAVE-O is both to use stories that show the children they are not alone in this hurdle, and whenever possible, to teach small groups of similarly struggling children to encourage a sense of belonging and helping each other, just like Lil helped Meg when Meg felt at her lowest.
Gradually, by Module Three and Fours more sophisticated processes like critical thinking and thinking for themselves emerge. While all the stories, books (anthologies) are decodables written by un in early modules, we provide access to many books with similar letter patterns and themes in non-decodable books through the Bookalicious platform found through nidolearning.com.
Throughout the modules, our most lovable dinosaur, T-Lex (Tri-think-asaurus Lex) uses his three heads to teach multiple, well-known comprehension (thinking) strategies like prediction (Right head looking, well, ahead!); plot-character-, and setting-related strategies after the text is read (Left head looking, well, back!). At the end of every discussion students are encouraged by T-Lex;s third head to “think for themselves”. In this way, for almost every later story, students are learning what Proust wished to tell everyone: that reading can lead us beyond whatever the authors thought to what we think, and what we think is something good, in and of itself. If RAVE-O’s emphases on the reflective capacities at the heart of deep reading can instill more confidence in themselves in our struggling readers, then we will have done something permanently hopeful. None of us who teach RAVE-O will probably ever see our children become their best selves, but if we can help them reclaim their lost selves as we teach them to read, the world will be a better place.
There are many more things I would like to tell you about how the new RAVE-O incorporates far more that surface level understanding of text, but I will hope you discover that for yourselves that your children are having more insights and creative thoughts that when they began the program, something no existing measure can ever assess. The entire RAVE-O program is directed not only to addressing the intellectual and emotional difficulties in our struggling children, but also to unleashing and propelling the cognitive, linguistic, and affective strengths that all our readers possess, but that they never realized.
POST SCRIPT:
After saying all these ways that we hope RAVE-O can help children succeed, no program can succeed, particularly multicomponent programs, without the knowledge, fidelity, and flexibility of teachers; the guidance of leadership: and the expertise needed about implementation that is required for all parts of the system to work together for the children.
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