Building Content Knowledge to Boost Comprehension

Join Sonia Cabell, associate professor at the School of Teacher Education at Florida State University, as she shares findings from her research trials on content-rich literacy curricula and discusses whether activating students’ background knowledge alongside explicit phonics instruction is more effective than the traditional approaches. She also describes what constitutes “compelling evidence” in the Science of Reading and explains why students need to interact with both written and spoken language while learning to read.

Show notes: 

Florida Center for Reading Research

Core Knowledge Language Arts

Writing Into Literacy TEDx Talk by Sonia Cabell

National Reading Panel Report 2000

EdWeek Science of Reading article by Sonia Cabell

Special Issue: The Science of Reading: Supports, Critiques, and Questions

Live with the Author interview

The Power of Conversations: Building Primary Grade Students’ Vocabulary and Comprehension in a Changing Educational Landscape by Sonia Cabell

Twitter: @SoniaCabell

Quotes:

“The knowledge that you have about a particular subject matters for your reading comprehension.”
        —Sonia Cabell

“When I think about content-rich English Language Arts, I think about how we can integrate science and social studies into the language arts in ways that make sense.”
     —Sonia Cabell