In this episode of Science of Reading: The Podcast, returning guest, Nathaniel Swain, Ph.D., joins Susan Lambert to close out the season by answering thoughtful and thought-provoking comprehension questions submitted by listeners. Nathaniel and Susan answer questions about comprehension strategies, the relationship between comprehension and memorization, and how to shift the mindset amongst your teaching colleagues to help them understand comprehension.

Show notes:

• Submit your literacy questions!
• Bonus: Watch Dr. Hoover's complete responses to a listener guest.
• Learn more about Nathaniel Swain on his website
• Connect with Nathaniel Swain on LinkedIn.
• Access free, high-quality resources—including our recent Essentials episode on Science of Reading: The Podcast—at our companion professional learning page
• Download our free Comprension 101 bundle for comprehension resources, including ebooks, and on-demand professional learning
• Listen to Season 2 of Amplify's Beyond My Years podcast
• Join our community Facebook group
• Connect with Susan Lambert

Quotes:

"What we're trying to do is create meaningful text experiences. ... The strategies are background, the powerhouse behind the work we're doing, but the star of the show is the language and the text." —Nathaniel Swain, Ph.D.

"If you ever feel like your comprehension work only allows students to produce or perform something on a particular day in which you've just read that text, then you may be missing the opportunity to weave meaningful text together." —Nathaniel Swain, Ph.D.

"When we're teaching reading comprehension, really let the text be the center of what we're doing." —Susan Lambert

Timestamps*:
00:00 Introduction: Answering listeners' questions on comprehension
03:00 The difference between oral and written language as it relates to comprehension
06:00 Supporting students who read fluently but struggle with comprehension
16:00 The role of comprehension strategies
21:00 Oral language development and comprehension
28:00 The connection between memory and comprehension
36:00 How to help colleagues adjust their mindset on comprehension
42:00 Overall takeaways from this batch of mailbag questions
*Timestamps are approximate, rounded to nearest minute

Host Susan Lambert hits the home stretch of her comprehension-focused season of Science of Reading: The Podcast with a reflective episode based on her presentation at this year's Plain Talk About Literacy and Learning conference. Instead of being joined by a guest, Susan breaks down some of her biggest takeaways from this season—explaining how reading comprehension is far more intricate than the ability to decode words on a page, and detailing how the expert guests this season helped illustrate all of comprehension's amazing complexities. Whether you hear her Plain Talk conversation live or not, this episode captures those same insights in a format you can revisit anytime.

Show notes:

• Submit your literacy questions!
• Access free, high-quality resources—including our recent Science of Reading: The Podcast Essentials: “Comprehension” episode—at our companion professional learning page.
• Download our Comprehension 101 bundle: Access free comprehension resources, including ebooks and on-demand professional learning.
• Listen to Season 2 of Amplify’s Beyond My Years podcast.
• Join our community Facebook group.
• Connect with Susan Lambert.

Quotes:

"Comprehension is an active process. It usually requires active engagement and effect from the reader." —Susan Lambert

"Comprehension is an integration of knowledge and experience that requires the reader to connect new information from the text with their own knowledge and experiences." —Susan Lambert

"Comprehension is dynamic and ongoing. It requires the reader to update and revise their understanding as new information is encountered." —Susan Lambert

"What constitutes good comprehension is relative, and it depends on who is reading the text and why they're reading it." —Susan Lambert

"The components of comprehension don't develop in isolation. They bootstrap and support each other throughout a reader's development." —Susan Lambert

Timestamps*:
00:00 Introduction: Building blocks for deep comprehension
04:00 Common themes from guests' definitions of comprehension
07:00 The simple view of reading
10:00 Oral language, syntax and fluency
13:00 Syntax is the critical missing piece needed to improve reading comprehension outcomes
16:00 Fluency is a critical but often overlooked prerequisite to reading comprehension
21:00 The components of comprehension don't develop in isolation
22:00 Closing thoughts o our comprehension focused season
*Timestamps are approximate, rounded to nearest minute

In this episode of Science of Reading: The Podcast, Susan Lambert is joined by Kristen McMaster, Ph.D., Guy Bond Chair in Reading and professor of special education in the Department of Educational Psychology at University of Minnesota. Together, they explore how reading comprehension isn't just about what's on the page—it's also about what's not there—and share practical insights on how to support students in developing inference skills. Susan and Kristen also discuss the dual processes of activation and integration when making inferences; the distinction between teaching students to process text actively versus teaching students to apply comprehension strategies; and different types of inferences, including causal, bridging, and elaborative.

Show notes:

• Submit your questions to our listener mailbag
• Access free, high-quality resources—including our recent Science of Reading: The Podcast Essentials "Comprehension" episode—at our companion professional learning page
• Download our Comprehension 101 bundle: Access free comprehension resources, including e-books, and on-demand professional learning
• Connect with Kristen McMaster
• Learn more about Kristen McMaster
• Listen to Season 2 of Amplify's Beyond My Years podcast
• Join our community Facebook group
• Connect with Susan Lambert

Quotes:

"Inferencing is really central to comprehension. We wouldn't comprehend if we didn't make inferences." —Kristen McMaster

"I would encourage teachers not to underestimate the importance of supporting even the inferences that might seem obvious to us." —Kristen McMaster

"Good comprehenders are often making very automatic inferences that they don't even realize." —Kristen McMaster

"It helps to explicitly teach what an inference is in language that students will understand." —Kristen McMaster

Timestamps*:
00:00 Introduction: Filling in the gaps with inferences, with Kristen McMaster, Ph.D.
05:00 Comprehension is how we make sense of the world around us
09:00 The types of inferences: Causal, bridging, elaborative, and theory of mind
17:00 How teachers can help students develop inference skills
22:00 Creating an effective questioning strategy
27:00 How teachers can preview a text and think about the inferences that might need to be made
31:00 Supporting students who process texts in different ways
37:00 The timing of comprehension questions
40:00 The connection between oral language comprehension and text comprehension
45:00 Final thought: Teacher's shouldn't underestimate the importance of inferences that might seem obvious.
*Timestamps are approximate, rounded to nearest minute