What it looks like when content isn't cohesive
Part I: A slightly unfair critique of content-cohesion in a Benchmark unit
When it comes to knowledge-building, cohesion is a key concept. The knowledge-hesitant tend to dismiss knowledge-building as learning “a list of facts,” but this criticism is precisely backwards. Knowledge-building is defined by content that is taught in a cohesive manner. The Knowledge Matters Campaign writes that “grade by grade, the specific content should be cumulative, ensuring that children are developing both deep and broad knowledge.”
Arguably, it’s the basals that throw “lists of facts” at students and demand that students perform deep analyses on content they haven’t seen before and will never see again.
Just about everyone supports the idea of students reading “rich texts,” but many fail to see the following: part of what defines the “richness” of a text is the context in which the text is taught. This is especially true for informational or expository text which can be hard for students to access or care about if they have nothing to anchor it to.
There is sometimes confusion about why certain basals aren’t considered “knowledge-building” given that many (although certainly not all) passages in these curricula have interesting content. This confusion makes sense if you look at (some) articles and passages in isolation. But let’s consider an analogy of a woven blanket. The quality of the yarn is a critical part of the quality of the finished product. But the quality and beauty of the blanket also depends on how the yarn is woven together and how the colors are placed.
Judging how “knowledge-rich” a curriculum is based only on individual texts is like judging the quality of a blanket based only on the yarn. There certainly are passages in basals that are decent if you need a one-off text. But the “knowledge-rich” part of a curriculum comes from the careful and intentional layering of new knowledge upon previously learned information. The same way that random, strewn pieces of yarn are not equivalent to a blanket, randomly taught pieces of content are not equivalent to a knowledge-rich education.
What does cohesion look like? Or rather, what does it not look like?
Basal curricula often organize units around a theme. The themes are often broad - like “Time and Money” or “Government.” From a distance, they may give an impression of cohesion, but in reality the units are mostly made up of a scattered series of articles in which the content itself is clearly an afterthought.
My children’s school uses Benchmark, so I have accumulated most of the reading packets from first to third grade. Below are passages from a first grade Benchmark unit titled “Observing the sky.” This reader is mainly for decoding. There are “extended texts” that I can’t access, so it may seem unfair to criticize this reader for content cohesion. However, the second and third grade Benchmark readers, which include these “extended readings” have the same issues I’m about to describe. I choose the first grade unit to highlight because it’s a great example of “faux-cohesion.”
So know that I’m taking some liberties for the sake of convenience and the actual Benchmark 1st grade is at least marginally better, content-wise, than what is shown here. Furthermore, decodables should be first and foremost for decoding, not knowledge-building.
So what’s wrong with the content of this unit? One could be forgiven for looking at these texts and thinking they are a nice cohesive series. All the articles center around something that you can observe in the sky. But while there is a theme to these readings there is no cohesion.
Reasons “Observing the Sky” lacks cohesion
Note that each of these articles has two pages, but only one page is shown.
Despite being centered around a science topic, very few of these articles have any substantial content. Therefore, there is little content knowledge to build from as students progress in the texts.
The articles that do have content knowledge introduce too many concepts while also not adequately explaining the concepts.
Rarely is information introduced in one text referenced in another text. Reading one text does not make the other texts more accessible in any serious way.
Introduced vocabulary is rarely repeated between articles.
There’s no introduction, overview, or big picture. Even though the theme is “observe” - the word “observe” is not found once in the text (yet other difficult words like “nucleus” and “scientist” are).
The theme “Observing the sky” ends up excluding any articles about planet Earth, since we can’t observe Earth in the sky. This is a major oversight in what is basically a space-themed unit.
Multiple problems are present in each text
Here I’ll detail problems that occur in each passage.
Article 1: “A Star Party”
The introductory text is a narrative. While I love narrative text to support content, it is not a good way to introduce content. This text also tells us next to nothing about stars besides that they are “big and bright” (page 2, not shown). It’s a missed opportunity to not say that stars are “far, far away from Earth” given the ‘ar’ focus.
However, “A Star Party” does contain a rare example of inter-article cohesion. On page two of “A Star Party” (not shown) appears this sentence: “One star was big and bright! Mom told them it was a planet, not a star. It was Mars.” The second article is about Mars. Another positive is this article repeats “star” five times.
Article 2: “On Mars”
This article is really about a rover on Mars, rather than Mars itself. (Remember, our theme is “observing”). In fact, the article doesn’t even tell us that Mars is a planet! Granted, we learned that information in “A Star Party,” but it would be useful to have it repeated. In my view, there is too much new vocabulary in this article, however, the subject matter is probably interesting enough that the kids can understand it with support.
The word “Mars” is used only twice and “rover” is used three times. Of course we don’t see these words again.
Article 3: “It’s a Comet”
Students have not really learned what a star or a planet is, nor are they likely to have a strong mental model of our solar system, but nonetheless they are now introduced to comets. Granted, comets are interesting.
“It’s a Comet” is full of new and unnecessary vocabulary. In two passages totaling 83 words (the second page is not shown), this passage introduces at least four new words or terms that require substantial conceptual understanding. These are: 1. comet, 2. orbit, 3. solar system, 4. core/nucleus(!). “Orbit” is at least briefly explained, but “solar system” is completely undefined. And while first graders certainly could learn about the “main core” or “nucleus” of a comet, you can guess whether these concepts are ever seen again.
Additionally, thirteen out of 83 words in “It’s a Comet” are likely to be unknown or weakly understood by many first graders. These are: comet, chunk, orbits, travel, solar system, toward, main, core, nucleus, gas, several, form, and tail (as it relates to a comet).
I’ve witnessed first graders deep interest in space, so by sheer will they may get something out of this passage content-wise, however Benchmark cannot take credit for that.
Article 4: “The Moon’s the North Wind’s Cookie”
Look - poems absolutely can be integrated into units with a science topic. But is it too much that they at least be informational neutral? The image of the moon under the poem implies that the moon literally changes its size during different phases. The poem itself implies the wind eats the moon. As a science teacher, I hate this.
Article 5: Shapes in the Clouds
Here we learn nothing about clouds except that they have shapes. For some reason, a story about Sam and his mom looking at clouds is sandwiched into a story about someone named “Kurt” who “didn’t come.” This is perhaps to give this story a problem for students to identify or a vague situation that students can make an inference about. The story references football, but there’s a soccer ball in the accompanying picture.
Clouds are better placed in a weather unit, but of course what should be a space unit is instead “Observing the Sky.” This theme leaves us with an article about clouds, but no article about planet Earth.
Article 6: The Sun
”The Sun” is the final passage in the reader. On page one, we finally seem to be given some relevant content that isn’t overly challenging. We even have some repeated vocabulary from other articles (e.g. orbit, planet). But then on page two (not shown) we veer way off course. I’ll write the page two text here:
“Living creatures on Earth depend on energy from the sun. We need the heat and light. Plants use sunlight to make food. Then they grow and give off oxygen. People and animals breathe oxygen and eat the plants.”
Whew! This nine sentence article starts by introducing the sun and ends with describing energy cycles! I get that they are trying to show why the sun is important and that energy is an important aspect of the sun. But these are complex topics for a six year old and most will be lost.
This pattern is very typical of Benchmark science and social studies units. The units tend to have a bunch of content-free passages, then an inappropriately dense passage, and then maybe one that is adequate. Another example of this will be given in Part II.
Some big-picture issues
A few more notes on why this unit has “faux-cohesiveness” and therefore is not knowledge-building.
Poorly chosen theme. “Observing the Sky” is not a good theme. It is not meaningful to a six-year-old that we can make observations of stars with a telescope and observations of Mars with a rover when the student doesn’t even know what Mars is. The six year old will think the rover is cool and forget the meaningless stories about looking at stars and clouds. If your theme constrains your topics and adds nothing to the unit, then what is the point of having it?
Inappropriate introduction of concepts. The two articles that had any attempt at meaningful content - “It’s a Comet” and “The Sun” - introduced multiple difficult concepts within two short paragraphs. This is unfortunately something seen throughout the science and social studies units of Benchmark.
Inability to keep focus within an article. An article about the sun turned into an article about energy cycles. A story about looking at clouds introduced a random person named Kurt and a football game.
Lack of repeated concepts and vocabulary. A relatively simple rearrangement could fix this issue. Instead of putting a bunch of articles in a random order, you could do the following:
Article 1: An article on stars.
Article 2: “The Sun” - leave out the energy cycles and focus on the sun being a star and the center of our solar system.
Article 3: Introduce the Earth. Share that the Earth is a planet and orbits the sun.
Article 4: An article that explains there are other planets (like Mars!) and that they also orbit the sun.
Article 5: “On Mars” - the rover story.
Article 6: A narrative text or poem.
The arrangement would create a more cohesive unit that is not overly conceptually challenging. I also think this reconfiguration would be helpful for decoding and fluency. For one, you have more repetition of vocabulary. Additionally, this version removes inappropriate content density and vocabulary load. Students focused on decoding shouldn’t have to spend time understanding what a “nucleus” is.
What does cohesive content look like?
It’s not trivial to create materials that are truly knowledge-building, but I’ll share some recent examples. The images below show an early attempt at creating “progressive” informational read-alouds for first graders (progressive in the sense of building on themselves). These are not in their final form and are only one piece of our “Waves of Sound” curriculum.
These passages may look long, but the length comes from examples that support the main concept. Students are also shown more images than appear above. To teach these texts, I print a hard copy of the article to read from, and then display supporting images on the smart board.
These texts are interspersed with activities, videos, and other lessons that focus on sound. In each text, I tried to incorporate previous concepts and vocabulary as much as possible. I ended up writing about ten articles that culminate in the idea that sounds are vibrations. These texts have been piloted with one class.
These texts differ from the Benchmark articles in that these readings are progressive. In other words, each text builds upon information learned previously in the unit. This means that the texts should not be taught as stand-alones.
The articles are focused. All sentences in the article are intentional and support the main idea. Although the articles are long, the length comes from examples that explain the concepts. For example, the majority of the fourth text, “Sounds come from movements” is detailing examples of movements that create sounds (e.g. clapping, vocal cord movements, wind blowing leaves). Key vocabulary is repeated throughout and between articles. Other general vocabulary words are sometimes included, such as “gradually” in the third text, but additional challenging vocabulary is limited.
These texts are not perfect. The second text, “Describing sounds: volume & pitch,” was too difficult, even though it was not students’ first encounter with these concepts. The third text “Can children hear sounds that adults cannot?” was just about right when done within the full curriculum. Prior to engaging with this article, students had an activity and a quiz about pitch. They also tested their “hearing age,” and watched a video about the mosquito ringtone. Without these knowledge-building pieces, the text would have been too hard.
Narrative text is interspersed throughout the unit in the form of picture books (e.g.) and custom Story Champs-style stories (see an example here and more explanation here).
In a knowledge-building curriculum, concepts and vocabulary should be repeated across units and grade levels, with new information introduced at increasing levels of complexity and sophistication.
To conclude, cohesion is a critical part of knowledge-building. Curriculum developers would do well to get rid of “themes” and consider instead creating rich, cohesive text that starts in kindergarten.
For more non-examples of cohesion, find Part II here.
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I love how you've broken this down, Olivia.
For a decade now my description of what we need has been a COHERENT, content-rich curriculum. Emphasis added. Your example is powerful and helpful.