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What order should we teach the letters of the alphabet?

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TRT Podcast #107: What order should we teach the letters of the alphabet?

Should we teach upper or lowercase first? Which letters should come first in the sequence? And what does the research say, anyway? Get the answers in today’s episode!

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Hello, Anna Geiger here from The Measured Mom, and we're going to continue our alphabet series today discussing what's the best order to teach the letters of the alphabet.

This is a question I get asked all of the time. And the answer is, it depends.

Here are some questions people often have. Should we go in alphabetical order? Should we start with uppercase or lowercase? What does the research say?

Well first I want to restate what we talked about last week, and that is that research strongly suggests we should teach both letter names and sounds at the same time.

Now, I should note that last week when I recorded the episode, I recorded it on a Thursday, edited it, sent it to my team member who gets it all uploaded to Buzzsprout, and then the next day, Friday, I watched a video by Dr. Shayne Piasta, which is inside of the Reading Science Academy with Dr. Stephanie Stollar. If you're not part of that, I highly recommend it. It's really affordable. I can't remember how much I pay per year, but I think it's like $149 and you get access to just a ton of great resources plus expert interviews like this one. I was really excited to watch it because I'd read a lot of Dr. Piasta's research in working on last week's episode, but I also thought, oh boy, I hope I don't learn anything that means I would have to go redo that episode. Thankfully, I didn't. Everything she said agreed with the conclusions I had drawn based on the things I'd read.

The big one is that research strongly suggests we teach BOTH letter names and sounds at the same time. I think that's important to remember as we think about the order for teaching the alphabet.

The first big question is, should we teach upper or lowercase letters first? According to Dr. Shayne Piasta, there is correlational evidence that children may use uppercase knowledge to learn lowercase letters, but no studies have been conducted to determine which is best to teach first so everything that follows here is going to be based on our best judgment.

What about teaching uppercase letters first? Many preschool teachers would say that is a good way to go. I have a lot of respect for Jamie White. She's over at the blog Play to Learn Preschool. She's done a lot for early literacy. Her website is amazing. She's currently teaching an at-home preschool, and she supports her students when they write their names in all capitals.

Here are some of her reasons. Children see capital letters everywhere and therefore learn them more quickly. Think about alphabet puzzles and toys, they almost always have the uppercase alphabet, right? Capital letters are easier to recognize, and that's important because kids are still developing visual discrimination skills. Think about the capital D and B. Those are much easier to distinguish than lowercase d and b.

Many occupational therapists would agree that teaching uppercase letters first makes sense. Here's an argument from Laura Sowdon. She's an occupational therapist, and she writes at Five Senses Literature Lessons. Here's what she wrote, "Uppercase letters are generally straighter and simpler to form than lowercase letters, which makes them easier to write. Unlike many lowercase letters, capital letters don't require students to write on lines they've already written." If you're thinking about the capital M, it goes down, then you lift your pencil up and go down, up, down. Whereas with a lowercase m, it's down, trace it back up, bend around, trace it back up and around. That act of writing over what they've already done can be hard for kids who are first learning to write. And finally, "Curves and intersections are the hardest parts of a letter to form, and there are fewer of those in uppercase than lowercase."

Now, on the other hand, if the comment section of my blog is any kind of clue, many kindergarten teachers believe that preschoolers should learn lowercase letters first.

Here are some of the reasons for that. When children learn to read, they will primarily encounter lowercase letters. It's also hard to break the habit of uppercase letters in the middle of a child's name or in other words. In one way, you could say uppercase alphabet letters are actually trickier to write because there's so much picking up and putting down of the pencil, whereas with lowercase, it's more of one continuous stroke or more likely to be a continuous stroke.

My conclusion is that if you're teaching preschool, you should choose upper or lowercase based on what you think is best for your students. If you're teaching kindergarten, I think you should start with lowercase because you want your students reading as soon as possible and lowercase letters are primarily what they're going to be reading and writing.

With that out of the way, upper or lowercase, what's the best order to teach those letters?

Well, I think you need to consider your goal. Are you focused on matching letters with sounds? Are you focused on letter formation? Are you merely interested in letter recognition? Whatever is your primary focus will help you choose an order.

Here's how I do it. I recently finished writing a Letters and Sounds Curriculum for Preschool. As of this recording in January of 2023, it's not quite ready. Hopefully in February we'll be done editing it and have it in our shop. But with this program for preschool, I'm mainly focused, in addition to letters and sounds, on letter formation. I wanted to make sure that the letters were grouped based on strokes and, in general, easy to hard in terms of letter formation. When it comes out, you'll see that the program has an uppercase letter sequence and a lowercase letter sequence, and that's because it mixes review all the way through.

Because upper and lowercase letters are formed differently, I have a different order for teaching them. Here's my sequence. When you're listening on the podcast, this isn't entirely helpful, but there are show notes where you can go ahead and copy this down. But the uppercase sequence is like this: T, L, I, F, H, E, those are all pretty much straight lines. D, P, B, straights and curves. O, C, G, U, those are a lot of curves. S, R, Q, again, more curves. And then we've got a bunch of straight letters with slants included: A, M, N, Z, V, W, K, Y, X.

Then the lowercase sequence also starts with the really basic letters - just a line - and then starts to add curves and then slants. That sequence looks like this: t, l, i, j, u, r, n, m, h, b, p, o, c, d, a, g, q, s, f, e, z, v, w, k, y, x.

Now could someone with the same goals that I have, have chosen a different order? Definitely. This is just one way to do it.

In ordering my sequence, I was also conscious that because I'm focused on teaching letter sounds, I'd want to make sure that letters that may be formed very similarly are not right next to each other in the sequence if they have similar sounds. That would be easy for students to confuse the sounds. By that I mean basically short vowels. Letters like A and O, I wouldn't want those right next to each other, even if I felt they were formed very similarly, because we don't want children to begin to confuse those vowel sounds, which is very easy to do when you're teaching them right next to each other. So we may have to make concessions. Again, it's all about our goals.

If you're teaching kindergarten, I think your order definitely needs to have a different focus. We're certainly wanting kids to form letters correctly, and research definitely supports teaching handwriting through third grade, but in kindergarten, our main goal is getting kids to read.

I think we should do lowercase, and I think we want to make sure that those early letters can be grouped to form words as soon as possible. Many teachers would agree that we want those first five letters to allow us to make some words. We want a short vowel, most programs start with letter A, and then some consonants.

How do you choose which consonants to put at the beginning? Well, one consideration is to put as many consonants with continuous sounds at the beginning as you can. A continuous sound would be the sound of /s/ or the sound of /f/, just because we know that it's easier for kids to sound out words when they can connect a lot of the sounds together. In the word Sam, for example, /s/ /��/ /m/, we've got all those sounds we can hold out versus a word like pat, /p/, /��/, /t/, where only the A is sustainable. As much as possible, we want sustainable letters at the beginning.

We want to make sure we separate those short vowels. We want to separate consonants that are easy to confuse, like B and D, or P and Q.

Now, for me personally, when I chose my sequence for teaching letters and sounds to kindergarten, I wanted to be able to form words that I could use in stories. For me, there's a difference between reading words in a list and choosing words that can actually tell a story. It's much harder to do the latter.

Because of that, I did have to include a low utility letter that has a stop sound towards the beginning, the letter J. The letter J isn't in too many words, and it's a stop sound. You can't sustain it. That might be an argument for not including it early, but I wanted a story about a little bear named Sam who can't open a jar of jam. Because of that, I need a J early on. To me, that was more important than some of the other considerations.

As you can see, it just depends on so many things. The next time someone tries to argue with you about upper or lowercase letters first or what's the best order, you can tell them that research does not tell us, but we can use our best judgment and our goals to help us choose the right order for our students.

You might want to check out the show notes to get those sequences that I listed, as well as the blog post that this podcast episode is based on. It's got everything laid right out there for you. The show notes for this episode can be found at themeasuredmom.com/episode107.

Talk to you next time!

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Mentioned in this episode

Dr. Stephanie Stollar’s Reading Science Academy (highly recommended!)
Last week’s episode:
Blog post: What’s the best order to teach letters?��
Jamie White: Should children write their names with capital letters?��
Laura Sowdon: Why OT’s tell you to learn capital letters first

Sequences mentioned in the episode

Preschool sequences: Uppercase: T, L, I, F, H, E, J, D, P, B, O, C, G, U, S, R, Q, A, M, N, Z, V, W, K, Y, X Lowercase: t, l, i, j, u, r, n, m, h, b, p, o, c, d, a, g, q, s, f, e, z, v, w, k, y, x

Kindergarten sequence�� s, j, a, t, p, m, d, c, h, r, n, i, b, f, g, k, ck, o, e, l, v, w, sh, th, u, ch, wh, x, y, qu z

Get on the waitlist for my course, Teaching Every Reader

Join the waitlist for Teaching Every Reader

The post What order should we teach the letters of the alphabet? appeared first on The Measured Mom.

What’s the best order to teach letters?

I’m often asked, “What’s the best order to teach letters?” The answer is: it depends. Keep reading to find out my recommendations!

Many teachers and parents wonder what’s the best order for teaching letters of the alphabet.

Should we go in alphabetical order? Should we start with uppercase or lowercase? What does the research say?

Well, here’s the first thing to know: , research strongly suggests that we should teach both letter names and sounds at the same time.

This conclusion may very well bother people of the “letter sounds first” camp, who believe that letter sounds are what matter when it comes to reading (true), and that learning letter names will confuse children who are trying to learn to read (debatable).

Knowing that, let’s move on.

Should we teach upper or lowercase letters first?

According to Dr. Shayne Piasta, a major researcher in the field of alphabet learning, there is correlational evidence that children may use uppercase knowledge to learn lowercase letters, but no studies have been conducted to determine which is best to teach first.

In other words … we are left to our best judgment.

Arguments for teaching uppercase letters first

Because we are left to our best judgment, this means we will have disagreements. I have great respect for Jamie White, of Play to Learn Preschool, who supports her students when they write their names in all capitals. Here are some of her reasons:

Children see capital letters everywhere and therefore learn them more quickly (think of alphabet puzzles and toys).Capital letters are easier to recognize because they are still developing visual discrimination skills (for example, D and B are easier to distinguish than d and b).Forming capital letters is easier because there they tend to have simpler lines (think E vs. e).

Many occupational therapists agree that it makes sense to have preschoolers learn the uppercase alphabet first. Here’s a summary of this argument from Laura Sowdon, an occupational therapist and writer at Five Senses Literature Lessons.

Uppercase letters are generally straighter and simpler to form than lowercase letters, making them easier to form than the lowercase versions.Unlike many lowercase letters, capital letters don’t require students to write on lines they’ve already written. (Think M vs. m, or B vs. b.) Curves and intersections are the hardest to write, and there are fewer of these in the uppercase alphabet.Arguments for teaching lowercase letters first

If the comments section of my blog are any kind of clue, many kindergarten teachers believe that preschoolers should learn lowercase letters first. Here are reasons to teach lowercase first:

When children learn to read, they will primarily encounter lowercase letters.It’s hard to break the habit of uppercase letters in the middle of a child’s name or other words.In one way, the uppercase alphabet letters are actually trickier to write because there is so much picking up and putting down of the pencil, instead of using more continuous strokes like we do with lowercase letters.

My conclusion? If you teach preschool, do what you think is best for your learners – but if you are teaching kindergarten, absolutely start with lowercase because you want to get your students reading as soon as possible.

What’s the best order to teach letters?

Once you’ve decided on upper or lowercase, there are other things to consider. What is your goal here?

Are you focused on matching letters with their sounds?Are you focused on letter formation?Are you merely interested in letter recognition?

Whichever is your primary focus will help you choose an order for teaching the alphabet.

I recently finished writing a letters and sounds curriculum for preschool (my team is currently editing it). Since the program is for preschool, I am most focused on letter formation. Therefore, I’ve chosen an order that groups letters based on how they are formed.

How to choose an order based on letter formation

My curriculum (coming soon) includes two different sequences: Uppercase and lowercase. Each sequence aims to order letters by stroke as well as by easy to hard in terms of letter formation. Is it based on science? No, because science doesn’t tell us the best order. It’s based on common sense and good judgment, which is what many of our teaching decisions must be based on because there’s often no research to draw on.

The uppercase sequence looks like this:

T, L, I, F, H, E, J, D, P, B, O, C, G, U, S, R, Q, A, M, N, Z, V, W, K, Y, X

The lowercase sequence looks like this:

t, l, i, j, u, r, n, m, h, b, p, o, c, d, a, g, q, s, f, e, z, v, w, k, y, x

Could someone with the same goals order the letters differently? Yes. This is just one way to do it.

In ordering my sequence, I was also conscious that my curriculum teaches letter sounds. I left at least a little space between vowels because those sounds are easily confused. This means that I had to make a few concessions when it comes to the order of easy to hard based on letter formation.

How to choose an order based on getting kids to read

I use a different sequence when I teach the alphabet to kindergartners because my goals are different. While I certainly want kindergartners to form letters correctly, we have a more pressing goal: getting them to read.

When creating my set of decodable stories with custom illustrations (free on the website), I chose an order that separated both vowels and consonants which are easily confused, while also including letters that allowed students to read CVC words as soon as possible.

In choosing an order like this, it’s wise to start with letters whose sounds can be sustained (like s, f, or m), teach high utility letters first (for example, waiting to teach letters like z and x) and order the short vowels in what is often considered the best order (a, i, o, e, u).

For me personally, it’s important for students to be able to read stories as soon as possible, so I had to make exceptions with my sequence. I needed the word JAM in the first short, basic decodable book, so I included j (a low utility letter with a stop sound) early on.

You see? It all depends on your goals.

My scope and sequence for teaching lowercase letters and sounds to kindergarteners follows (you’ll notice that digraphs are included throughout):

s, j, a, t, p, m, d, c, h, r, n, i, b, f, g, k, ck, o, e, l, v, w, sh, th, u, ch, wh, x, y, qu z

This order allows me to start with very basic decodable books (you can get them for free here) like this one:

So what do you think? How do YOU choose the order for teaching letters? Feel free to let us know in the comments!

The post What’s the best order to teach letters? appeared first on The Measured Mom.

It’s our 10th anniversary GIVEAWAY!

The Measured Mom launched in January of 2013 … which means that we’re celebrating a big anniversary!

10th anniversary giveaway

I’m giving away a 45-minute one-on-one call to 10 winners.

That’s right … if you win, ask me anything! (Well … anything related to teaching literacy. )

Here are some things we might discuss:

How to help a specific learner (your child or a student in your class)How to choose a new curriculumWhat the science of reading says about a particular topicHow to design your school dayHow to do small group phonics lessons in your settingHow to make changes in your setting when not everyone is on board with the science of readingHow to start your own teaching-related businessAnything else related to teaching reading and literacy

Please use the form below to enter.

IMPORTANTYou must leave a comment on this blog post letting me know what you’d like to discuss to be eligible to win. If you’d rather contact me privately, you must still leave a comment letting me know you’ve sent me an email.

*I will choose ten winners on Thursday, January 19. Watch your email! If you’re chosen, I’ll send you a link to my calendar to choose a time to video chat via Google Meet.

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The post It’s our 10th anniversary GIVEAWAY! appeared first on The Measured Mom.

Should we teach letter names or sounds first?

TRT Podcast #106: Should we teach letter names or sounds first?

When teaching the alphabet, should we teach letter names or sounds first? Everyone seems to have an opinion … what does the research say?

Listen to the episode here
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Hello and welcome to the first Triple R Teaching podcast of 2023!

My family just got back from a week-long trip to Florida, which was a very nice break from the Midwest. I do love living up here, but the dark, dreary days of winter do get long, so it was nice to get some sunshine. I wish I could've bottled it up and taken it home because now it is just so dark and dreary outside, but I am really thankful we were able to get away for a little while. However, I'm really excited to be home because home is my happy place. I love the work I get to do at The Measured Mom and on this podcast.

So we're back to work, and today we're going to talk about a very sticky subject in education, because people have very strong opinions on it, and that is should we teach letter names or letter sounds first?

Now, if you ask this question in a Facebook group, any Facebook group connected to early childhood, watch out! People on both sides of the aisle have very strong opinions. Many of them will tell you their side is backed by the research.

There was a recent Reading League event that I went to, and I got to hear Dr. Steven Dykstra speak in person, which was wonderful. I love watching all the things he shares online. He's got just a great perspective. He joked that if you put these two groups of people in the same room, they're going to break out in fistfights. I think he was only sort of joking. This is a very hot topic. It's definitely one where people feel very, very strongly.

So who's right? Should we teach letter sounds or letter names first? I think it might be helpful to start by looking at the arguments for each side of this debate.

All right, so why might you teach letter names first before teaching letter sounds? Well, learning letter names helps students remember letter sounds for many letters because many of those letter sounds are embedded in the letter name itself. For example, the letter B has the sound /b/ inside of the letter name.

And letter names are the only stable property of a letter. So the shape of the letter changes depending on whether it's upper or lowercase or a different font. The sound sometimes changes because letters can often represent more than one sound, especially when used in combination, but the name never changes.

Now, why might you teach letter sounds first? Well, when you think about it, when it comes to sounding out a word, the letter sounds, not the letter names, are what's important. Also, some children may be confused when learning both and mix up letter names with sounds. It's also possible that children with poor working memory may struggle to remember both letter names and letter sounds. Since letter sounds is the most important thing when it comes to reading, we might think let's just do that.

The fact is, though, despite what claims you may hear, there's not a lot of really strong research to tell us exactly what to do first. However, there is some research that's starting to tell us it seems that children do well learning both letter names and sounds at the same time.

Before we talk about that, we should really talk about why even teach letter names at all. Is there any purpose? Couldn't we just teach letter sounds and save ourselves the trouble? That's a fair question because, strictly speaking, you would not need to know letter names to read. Interestingly though, a preschooler's knowledge of the names of printed letters is a strong predictor of success in learning to read. That's been shown many times in research.

Many people will say that's just correlational because if a preschooler comes from a home where the parents are teaching them things and talking to them about letters and reading to them, of course they're set up to be a good reader later on. Unless there's a learning disability, they are set up to be a good reader. Therefore it makes sense that those kids with those actively literate parents who are teaching them letter names are going to be better at learning to read later on.

However, David Share and his colleagues found way back in 1983 that letter name knowledge has a greater effect on reading success than other variables, including socioeconomic status or even how much parents read to their kids. I'll be sure to link to a bunch of articles in the show notes so you can check them out for yourself.

Now, exactly why knowing letter names is a good predictor of reading success is still up for debate. There is an article by Share, another article that you might want to read that's in the show notes, that helps give some possible ideas, but I don't think we really know for sure.

Another reason to teach letter names is that research clearly shows that learning letter names helps students retain letter sounds when the letter name contains its sound. I mentioned that earlier, but that is definitely backed by research.

Another reason to teach letter names is because they're important labels for letters. Now you might say, well, I could just use the letter's sound as its label. So for the letter S, we could just call it /s/. However, this becomes confusing because many letters, like the letter C, have different sounds. It can also be confusing when the letters are combined with other letters, for example in digraphs, because then they make a brand new sound or just the sound of one of the letters.

Based on the reading that I've done and the research I've studied (I'm going to link to it all in the show notes), my conclusion is that we should teach letters and sounds concurrently beginning in preschool. I feel that there is a strong enough research base that explains why letter names are important, but I also know that focusing on letter names alone for too long is not really going to be helpful for learning to read. They have found that preschoolers can learn both letter names and sounds concurrently at the same time, and so I think that that's the best approach for preschool and kindergarten teachers.

Now, I don't think it has to be a problem if you want to spend a little time teaching letter names first to get those solid and automatic. Some people would say that's the way to go, but if you would do that, I wouldn't want to spend a ton of time on it, like as in not more than a few weeks in kindergarten, for sure. Preschool may be a little bit longer of a time.

You may know about Marilyn Adams' alphabet curriculum. She's an amazing researcher, she's phenomenal, and she has been around for a long time. I'm pretty sure in her curriculum she starts by teaching letter identification before teaching sounds at all.

When you think about it, a lot of kids come to us already knowing lots of letters, letter names, because their well-meaning parents have taught them to them. They talk about them when they see them in books. They've got letters on their refrigerator. That's a good thing!

I feel like I've heard some people lament this, that if only parents wouldn't teach kids letter names before they come to school. I think we should celebrate it because it's showing that there's an interest in literacy and learning, and that's fabulous.

Really, most kids who come from a literate background, come to school with some alphabet knowledge, so I think we should work with what they come to us with. I think that we should use that alphabet knowledge they have to be an assist when teaching sounds.

So I think that the best approach to teaching the alphabet is to teach letter name, sound, and letter formation at the same time.

Now, what should this look like? How do we make this engaging? What does review look like? This is just the first in a series about teaching the alphabet, so stay tuned. We're going to talk about more things very soon.

You can find the show notes for this episode at themeasuredmom.com/episode106. Talk to you next time!

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Articles to read

Foulin, J.N. (2005) Why is letter-name knowledge such a good predictor of learning to read?��Reading and Writing 18:129-155.
Piasta, S.B. & Wagner, R.K. (2010). Developing early literacy skills: A meta-analysis of alphabet learning and instruction.��Reading Research Quarterly 45(1), 8-38.
Piasta, S. B., Purpura, D.J. & Wagner, R.K. Fostering alphabet knowledge development: A comparison of two instructional approaches.��Reading and Writing 23:607-626.
Share, David L. (2004). Knowing letter names and learning letter sounds: A causal connection.��J. Experimental Child Psychology��88 (224), 213-233.
Treiman, R., Sotak, Lia, & Bowman, M. (2001). The roles of letter names and letter sounds in connecting print and speech.��Memory & Cognition 29 (6), 860-873.
Share, D.L., Jorm, A. F., Maclean, R., Matthews, R., & Waterman, B. (1983). Early reading achievement, oral language ability, and a child���s home background.��Australian Psychologist, 18, 75-89.

Helpful video to watch

Promising New Evidence for Improving Alphabet Instruction��with Robert Meyer

Get on the waitlist for my course, Teaching Every Reader

Join the waitlist for Teaching Every Reader

The post appeared first on The Measured Mom.

Should we teach letter names or letter sounds first?

If you ask this question in a Facebook group, watch out. People on both sides of the aisle have strong opinions, and many of them will tell you that their opinions are absolutely backed by research.

At a recent Reading League event, Dr. Steven Dykstra joked that people on both sides of this debate will start pulling punches if you put them in the same room!

(I think he was only sort of joking.)

So ��� who���s right? Should we teach letters or sounds first?

Let���s start by looking at the arguments for each side of the debate.

Why you might teach letter names firstLearning letter names helps students remember letter sounds, because many letters��� sounds are embedded in the letter name itself.
Letter names are the only stable property of a letter. The shape changes depending on upper or lower case and the use of different fonts. The sound changes when letters can represent more than one sound. But the name of the letter never changes. Why you might teach letter sounds firstWhen it comes to sounding out a word, the letter sounds (not names) are what���s important.
Some children may be confused when learning both and mix up letter names with their sounds.
Children with poor working memory may struggle to remember both letter names and sounds.

The fact is, despite claims you may hear to the contrary, there isn���t a lot of clarifying research on this topic. However, there is growing evidence that children do well learning both letter names and sounds at the same time.

Before we draw conclusions, however, we need to tackle an important question.

Why teach letter names at all?

This is a fair question, because, strictly speaking, you would not need to know letter names to read. 

REASON #1

A big reason to teach letter names is that ���preschoolers��� knowledge of the names of printed letters has long been known to be among the strongest predictors of success in learning to read��� (Share, 2004, p. 214).

Some will say this is simply correlational, that children who know the alphabet in preschool have a strong literacy environment prior to coming to school, so it makes sense that they will be more successful as readers.

However ��� Share and his colleagues (1983) found that letter name knowledge has a greater effect on reading success than other variables, such as socioeconomic status or even how much parents read to their children.

Exactly why knowing letter names is a good predictor of reading success is still up for debate. (But if you want some possible reasons, check out the 2004 Share article linked below.)

REASON #2

Another reason to teach letter names is that research clearly shows that learning letter names helps students retain letter sounds when the letter name contains its sound (as in the sound /b/ and the letter B) (Share, 2004).

REASON #3

Yet another reason to teach letter names is because they are important labels for letters. Using a letter���s sound as its label – /s/ instead of S, for example, will quickly become confusing because many letters represent multiple sounds, especially when used in combination with other letters (as in sh, for example).

So … what’s the answer? Letter names or sounds first?

Based on the reading I���ve read and the research I���ve studied, my conclusion is that we should teach letters and sounds concurrently, beginning in preschool.

However, just to be clear: I don���t believe that teaching letter names (without also teaching sounds) has to be a problem when we are teaching very young learners. After all, many children come to preschool knowing at least a few letter names because of the efforts of well-meaning parents.  We shouldn���t fight or lament this. When students come to us in the classroom, we can use the letter-name knowledge to our advantage as we use that knowledge to help them learn letter sounds (particularly those that are connected to the letter name).

Let me state my position again: Once children are in preschool, I believe that the best approach to teaching the alphabet is to teach letter name, sound, and letter formation at the same time. 

What should this instruction look like?

Stay tuned! This is just the first in our series about teaching the alphabet.

Articles to read Foulin, J.N. (2005) Why is letter-name knowledge such a good predictor of learning to read? Reading and Writing 18:129-155.Piasta, S.B. & Wagner, R.K. (2010). Developing early literacy skills: A meta-analysis of alphabet learning and instruction. Reading Research Quarterly 45(1), 8-38.Piasta, S. B., Purpura, D.J. & Wagner, R.K. Fostering alphabet knowledge development: A comparison of two instructional approaches. Reading and Writing 23:607-626.Share, David L. (2004). Knowing letter names and learning letter sounds: A causal connection. J. Experimental Child Psychology 88 (224), 213-233. Treiman, R., Sotak, Lia, & Bowman, M. (2001). The roles of letter names and letter sounds in connecting print and speech. Memory & Cognition 29 (6), 860-873.Share, D.L., Jorm, A. F., Maclean, R., Matthews, R., & Waterman, B. (1983). Early reading achievement, oral language ability, and a child’s home background. Australian Psychologist, 18, 75-89.Helpful video to watch

Promising New Evidence for Improving Alphabet Instruction with Robert Meyer

The post appeared first on The Measured Mom.

What to do when you suspect dyslexia: A conversation with Heather O’Donnell

TRT Podcast #105: What to do when you suspect dyslexia: A conversation with Heather O’Donnell

What are the signs of dyslexia? What should you do if you suspect it? And how can classroom teachers make sure they teach reading so��all children learn? Heather O’Donnell, certified Dyslexia Practitioner, has answers to these questions and more!

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What are the signs of dyslexia? What should you do if you suspect dyslexia? And what can classroom teachers do to support all students as they learn to read? We've got the answers today with Heather O'Donnell, certified Dyslexia Practitioner and owner of New Paltz Multisensory Tutoring Clinic.

Anna Geiger: Hello, everybody. Today we have the honor of listening to a conversation with Heather O'Donnell. She is the owner of a tutoring practice founded in 2018, and she and her team are currently supporting sixty eight families, both online and in-person, with multisensory reading, math, and writing instruction. She is here today to talk to us about dyslexia, what the signs of dyslexia are, what parents and teachers can do, and how they support learners at their facility. Welcome, Heather!

Heather O'Donnell: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Anna Geiger: Before we went live here, you and I talked about your background in learning how to teach reading. Like so many of us, you learned the balanced literacy way in college, but pretty early on you said that you had some experiences with teaching with Foundations, and that changed your perspective. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Heather O'Donnell: Sure. So I started my career as a general education teacher. I've always been passionate about early childhood, and I was actually teaching preschool in a private preschool in the New York City area. I found that I was drawn to a student in my class who had a SEIT (Special Education Itinerant Teacher), a special education teacher coming into my classroom to work with her to facilitate the environment for her.

So I made a slight career shift. I went back to school to get a second master's in Early Childhood Special Education. While I completed that coursework, I worked at the Aaron School, which is a private special ed school in New York City. At the Aaron School, we worked with small classes of eight to twelve students. There was a teacher and an assistant teacher in every single classroom.

My first year I was the assistant teacher in a kindergarten classroom, and we taught kids to read using Foundations. Coming from a balanced literacy graduate program, to me, this was just amazing. I had no idea you could teach children to read sound by sound, letter by letter, and I really loved it. I loved taking the material. I loved bringing out the multisensory materials, adding things to make it interesting and having the children come alive with the learning. For me, looking back as a teacher, this was one of those formative experiences that I just stumbled into, but it really shaped who I was as a teacher.

When I left that school, I bought my own Foundations kit and continued to work with students privately. Then I put all that away when I took five or six years off having my own children. And then when I came back to teaching again in formal classrooms, I pulled out the letter tiles. That is the approach that I feel makes the most sense for kids when they're learning to read, especially at the early elementary level.

In the time that I was looking to get back into teaching full-time, there were lots and lots of teachers. At this point, it's well-known that we were sort of headed more into a teacher shortage, but it was 2015 or so when I was looking for positions, and they were really hard to come by. So I was able to work in several districts as a leave replacement or doing short-term teaching, and I was working as a special ed teacher.

I had several positions as a self-contained classroom teacher, which is amazing work. The kids are fantastic, but being a self-contained classroom teacher is a lot. Everything needs to be visual. All the systems and the routines need to be visual. You're talking about individual visual schedules. You're talking about completely tailored experiences.

That was my last position. I was working in a local district as a K-2 autism classroom teacher, and there was a long commute involved, and I had my own kids. I just reached that point of needing to step back and move things around in my life.

In the fall of 2018, I decided to take the Wilson certification, which I'd gained from that district in order to better support students learning to read, and I opened my own tutoring practice. Originally, it was just me. Now I have a team of certified Orton-Gillingham providers. We have Wilson certified, and we have Orton-Gillingham certified through the academy. They are tutors who help me support so many more families than I could on my own.

Anna Geiger: So I know that many of the students, not all, but many of the students that your team teaches have dyslexia, which we know has to do a lot with phonological processing. There are other parts of the definition. I can direct people to a blog series I wrote all about dyslexia, which really gives a lot more information, but could you talk to us about the signs of dyslexia that a teacher or parent might see that would alert them that we've got to do some more digging to find out what's going on here?

Heather O'Donnell: Sure. There's a belief that you can't diagnose dyslexia until about the age of seven, but there is actually research that indicates there are signs even before a child enters school. A child who is late to talking, for example, or has difficulty remembering letters, numbers, preschool curriculum, colors, numbers, nursery rhymes.

Nursery rhymes are considered a little traditional at this point, but the rhyming, the sing-song aspect, is an important step towards establishing an understanding of rhyming words and verbal fluency. Often kids with dyslexia have difficulty identifying rhymes and have difficulty recalling and retaining those nursery rhymes when they're practiced in the classroom.

So those are some signs that you can see before a child even steps into a kindergarten classroom.

Once they become school age, I think the biggest indicator that I hear time after time from our clients and teachers is that you have a really bright, capable child who is intelligent and so smart, but their reading progress is just so much behind that profile, and the teachers are a little confused and not sure what's going on. And the parents are a little confused and not sure what's going on.

A child with dyslexia at school age will have trouble with spelling. Spelling is really difficult, because again, spelling is harder to a certain extent than reading. When we're reading, we're looking at words on a page and we're interpreting them. But when we're spelling or writing, we have to understand the sounds. We have to hold onto the sounds. We have to remember how to form the letters on the paper, and go ahead and complete that physical motion, which for a kindergartner or a first grader, that's a lot. Writing is a huge demand, and that's why kids with dyslexia really struggle with it.

School-aged kids with dyslexia take a long time to do reading and writing tasks. Homework takes forever, and there's usually tears, unfortunately, and they avoid reading. I hear it from client after client. I've had teachers come to me and they're like, "I'm a teacher and I love reading, and my child just isn't there, won't do it, is not interested. Something's wrong and we don't know what's going on."

When teachers and parents notice all these little things and they're coming together with a child who is significantly behind where they should be in terms of their reading expectation, that's when as awareness increases, hopefully, it's time to take the next step and look into, what else could be going on here and how can we get this child more support?

Anna Geiger: Do you think it's necessary, if these problems are all showing themselves, that a parent should seek out a dyslexia diagnosis or should that not be on the top of their list?

Heather O'Donnell: I usually recommend to families to start with a school evaluation. That's always my first step. I recommend to them if they have any questions about their child's learning, that should be step one. It's free, and it will provide a basic look at your child's strengths and weaknesses.

Now, unfortunately, requesting an evaluation from school districts can be a little bit of you get what you ask for. For instance if you don't necessarily request a phonological awareness assessment like the CTOPP or if you don't request the right assessment, it might not be included necessarily. So there's a little bit of a learning curve there for families, but that is typically the first step that I ask families to take when they come and they're wondering what's going on with their child.

Now, school evaluations can take a couple of months to get done because you put in the request, and then the testing has to be done. So typically, what we would do is if a parent comes to us looking to start tutoring, we will make sure to do our own evaluations so that we have a clear starting point that can then be referred back to. Then we will start to work with a student and start to remediate and support their reading difficulty.

But I typically encourage parents to start at the school level, because sometimes that can be enough. A meeting is held. A school might decide that the child is deserving of an IEP. And at that point, services can be provided. And then if the parent chooses to go on to a private evaluation and a formal diagnosis through a doctor, they can. But ultimately, it's about supporting the child in the school environment.

Anna Geiger: So what are the assessments that you give when you first meet a student?

Heather O'Donnell: So we offer several. We offer an evaluation package, which families who are often interested in an IEP and getting their child classified to receive more support at school, will seek. We give the WIST, which is the Word Inventory Spelling Test. I always get that wrong. Word Identification Spelling Test. It is one of the hallmarks of the Wilson Reading Program. It's the beginning evaluation that records all the data. It is standardized. It provides percentiles and standard scores and all of that. So we offer that as a stand-alone package for parents who perhaps are not necessarily sure they're interested in tutoring, but are looking to offer more support to their child in school and seeking a classification.

When a family just comes to us, and they're ready to start tutoring, we give their child what's called the WADE, which is a similar test to the WIST. It's just not standardized. It's the Wilson entry level test. It goes through all their skills. It will show the weaknesses that will be remediated through tutoring. And then my Orton-Gillingham providers will give the Gallistel-Ellis or an equivalent test that they prefer, that they're more comfortable with.

Again, it's really important to us to make sure that we get that starting point, both in terms of tracking the child's progress and making sure we're remediating the areas of weakness, but also so that if a family does try to get more support from a school, we can provide that information for them as well.

Anna Geiger: So I know that as a teacher, I look back, and I certainly know now that there were definitely a couple kids that probably had dyslexia. At the time, I really knew nothing about it at all. People listening to this podcast are probably quite a bit more educated than I was at that time, twenty-some years ago. But they still might not know, what can I do to help this child within my classroom?

I think we both agree that a lot of this starts with the Tier 1 instruction. So maybe we can talk about what core reading instruction should look like for everyone, which we know will actually greatly decrease the number of kids that may need to be classified as dyslexic because they're getting their needs met already in the regular instruction.

Can you talk to what that should look like and maybe what it should not look like?

Heather O'Donnell: Oh, this is a great question, but definitely a loaded one, because I think what I would describe in a perfect world of what it should look like, I also recognize that not every teacher has the ability to necessarily implement that. Schools have curricula, schools have expectations, and I absolutely feel for the teachers who are in positions and in classrooms where they want to move one way, but there are real constraints that make it a complicated situation. So I feel like I have to say that off the top.

I think in a perfect world, where price is no object, and I could design the curriculum for every classroom, I think every teacher should have some basic Orton-Gillingham training and be able to directly and explicitly teach the sequence and the structure of our language to their students.

I, myself, have children who took to reading like ducks to water, but I still see the deficits in their understanding of the structure of the language. Prefixes, substances, morphology, it's a code and it can be taught. I personally think every child would benefit from even maybe not an in-depth ongoing study of it, but just the basics. This is how the language works. It's not wild and crazy. It comes from Anglo-Saxon. It comes from French. It comes from all these places.

And so I think whether it's a curriculum, like S.P.I.R.E.'s one that I've grown to love. I have several tutors who are using S.P.I.R.E. right now, and that's a pretty great Tier 1 curriculum. It's direct. It's explicit. Would it necessarily meet the needs of a child who's severely dyslexic? Maybe not, but it provides the direct instruction in spelling, the direct instruction in decoding. It provides decodable stories all embedded in it. I personally would love to see more use of that in my area in general, in the classroom.

Decodable stories, that's such a huge piece when kids are struggling with reading. Teach a skill. Give them practice in it. Give them a decodable story to practice more. And then move on to the next skill. The ability for more teachers to be able to approach reading instruction that way and in the Tier 1, I think would be amazing. It would make a big difference for those kids who are struggling a little bit when there are too many untaught concepts coming at them at once, because that's the challenge with some of the programs. Even the basic books have these skills to them that if they're not taught and kids can't decode them, then that leads to guessing at the words as opposed to actually reading them.

Anna Geiger: Any practices you can list that teachers should try to avoid if they have the freedom to do that?

Heather O'Donnell: Of course. I mean, I think when students are struggling, it's really important to scaffold the classroom so as not to put them on the spot for reading out loud or reading in groups. I think reducing the amount of independent reading time or partner reading time for kids who are really struggling is huge, particularly in the structure of reading workshop models.

I know I had a client who came to me a few years ago and described that she would sit and hold her book, but she had no idea how to read it. And then she would get so nervous she would start pulling at her eyelashes because she just didn't know what to do.

I think the classroom teacher's job is so complicated and so challenging, but I think the quiet ones are the ones that it's so important to check in with and really pull out some words on a sheet of paper without any picture to find out, can they actually read them? Because again, if there's a strong reading skill base, reading in a book or reading on a blank piece of paper with no pictures, it shouldn't make a difference. But often when that picture support disappears, the struggling readers really start to flounder.

In terms of writing assignments, when kids are really struggling with the language you can try using word banks, using sentence stems to get them started, providing the vocabulary words and the content words. Then you're not asking students to hold onto that information, and spell it, and put it into the context of the curriculum, whether it's, I don't know, forests or science and things like that. Those kinds of supports.

I think the more teachers are able and willing to brainstorm. If we have to be here, but there's still these deficit skills from the past couple years, what can we put into place to support the learners through word boxes, sentence stems, models, and things like that? I think that's really helpful.

Anna Geiger: So rewinding a little bit, you talked about reducing the amount of time that a child with perhaps dyslexia or another reading problem has to read independently or read with a partner. I know some people will hear that and say, "Well, that's what they need. They need practice," which is certainly what I've always said. And at some point, that is very important. But can you explain why that's not what's best for a child with a word reading problem?

Heather O'Donnell: I mean, again, I'm going to caveat my answer with the fact that if you're one classroom teacher and you have twenty five kids, or you have thirty kids, there is only so much you can do. I absolutely think kids who are having difficulty learning to read need practice, but I think they need practice with an adult wherever possible, whether it's a teacher's aide, or whether it's parent volunteers coming in to listen.

In my experience, and again, through the lens of an early childhood teacher, which was what I was in the classroom, asking another first grader to moderate or monitor a student's struggling skills has two challenges. Number one, it's really a lot to ask of a first grader, and number two, if a child is really struggling and they're feeling badly about themselves, because again, the challenge with dyslexia is these are such smart, capable kids, and they know, they are looking around at the kids in their class and they're seeing that there's understandings happening that they're not getting.

I had a first grade client last year tell me, "They don't know how to teach me so that my brain knows how to learn." He was in first grade, and he has a diagnosis of dyslexia and he knew.

So I think that is a challenge. And I think it's a real challenge for teachers who are stretched too thin and managing all these different student needs. But the more that the kids who are struggling are paired with adults to monitor and support their learning, the better it is for those kids within the challenges of a early childhood classroom.

Anna Geiger: Well, thank you for sharing what parents and teachers can look for when it comes to dyslexia and next steps, as well as the approaches that you take at your center. Are there any resources, like journals, or books, or anything that you found really helpful that you'd recommend to teachers and parents?

Heather O'Donnell: I know we've recommended Dr. Sally Shaywitz's book, "Overcoming Dyslexia." Actually, I think the biggest resource these days would be the podcast, Sold a Story, which has been amazing, by Emily Hanford. She has written several investigative pieces of journalism. The New York Times has been coming out with great articles, and there was one in Time Magazine last summer.

Anna Geiger: Well, thank you so much for joining me, and I'll be sure to link in the show notes to your center, as well as the book that you mentioned and anything else that you share with me after we turn off the recorder.

Heather O'Donnell: Thank you so much for having me! This was a ton of fun. I love the opportunity to talk all things dyslexia.

Anna Geiger: You can find the show notes for this episode, including a link to Heather's tutoring clinic at themeasuredmom.com/episode105. Talk to you next time!

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Dyslexia blog series
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Overcoming Dyslexia , by Sally Shaywitz








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The post What to do when you suspect dyslexia: A conversation with Heather O’Donnell appeared first on The Measured Mom.

From Balanced Literacy to Decodable Books Author: A conversation with Elise Lovejoy

TRT Podcast #104: From Balanced Literacy to Decodable Books Author: A conversation with Elise Lovejoy

Like so many of us, Elise Lovejoy began her career as a balanced literacy educator. After throwing herself into research, she created her own decodable books and reading curriculum. Listen to learn more about Express Readers!

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Today is an interview with Elise Lovejoy, the creator of the Express Readers Decodable Books and Reading Curriculum. We'll get into it right after the intro!

Anna Geiger: Hello everyone! I am very excited today to welcome Elise Lovejoy. She is a former K-2 classroom teacher and is now the creator of the Express Reader Decodable Books and Reading Curriculum. Welcome, Elise!

Elise Lovejoy: Hi! Thank you for having me. I'm so excited.

Anna Geiger: I'm so glad you're here.

What happened was a couple years ago, I think, I had published a blog post with The Ultimate Guide to Decodable Books. Elise emailed me and said, "Hey, I've got some books. Would you be willing to take a look?" So she sent them to me, and I thought they were amazing. I fell in love with them right away. I was able to use some with my little guy before he took off and got out of decodables. I promote them wherever I can because I love them.

Today we get to hear a little bit about Elise's background, how she was, like so many of us, in balanced literacy and what led her into a more structured approach.

Can you give us your background as a teacher and what happened?

Elise Lovejoy: I always knew I wanted to be a teacher, always. I was lining up the neighborhood kids and all my stuffed animals.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, I was the same, in kindergarten.

Elise Lovejoy: It's a calling. I think it really is a calling. So I went to college for it; I went to Boston College. Of course, now it's twenty-some years ago, but I remember specifically learning the names of programs, and then how to teach guided reading. So that was where I started.

My first district I walked into was Fountas & Pinnell. Of course being a twenty-one-year-old, you look to the experts, to your administration, to tell you what you're supposed to do and how to do it right to best help your kids. So I thought it was the law. I thought this is how we did it, and I threw myself into it.

The idea behind it was incredible. I made all these reading spaces. I had beanbags in my class. Kids were just supposed to love books. I think I was shocked when they didn't or when there were so many behaviors in the class around reading time. I thought, "Well, I love reading, and I struggled with it." That's a whole different story, but I eventually loved reading. I was confused. I was really confused.

I was teaching in Boston, and I went to a charter public school, and one of the teachers there was the son of a well known... I don't want to say too much, but he was the son of a well-known foundational skills program. He was big into sounds, phonemes, how the vowels and the consonants play into words, and he was dyslexic.

I started listening to him teaching and thought, "This just makes so much sense to me. I know something's wrong, and he's showing me a different way to do it." And the kids were all learning how to read! Not only were they learning how to read, they had a mastery of it that I hadn't thought was needed to read the way that I could read. So that was incredible.

Then I threw myself into research. When I got into the next school, I immediately grabbed onto phonics. I really wanted to make sure that all my kids had the basics.

What I found was that the materials were dry. It wasn't fun. It wasn't fun the way math was fun. Math was fun! You had toys. You had colorful manipulatives. There were all these games that we played. Reading was "Repeat after me, or this is the sound and then say it."

I thought, "There's got to be a better way to do this."

Of course, I'm sure that there were people already making that and coming up with it, but when you're in a classroom, sometimes the best way to do it is to make it yourself. So I started making it myself. I had phonics books, but they didn't make a lot of sense.

Anna Geiger: I know. I know.

Elise Lovejoy: I thought, "If I have to read one more time about Mel, or the cat and the rat that sat on the mat!" It's so predictable as far as being an adult looking at it.

So I started writing these little books that were based on exactly what the kids were learning in class and only the skills they had been taught.

I loved the wordplay, making sentences out of words that were limited. I would write a list of words and say this is what I should use in this story."

Anna Geiger: I do that, too. It's hard. I think it's hard.

Elise Lovejoy: It is! As I say, it's hard, but I found it really fun, really exciting.

Anna Geiger: That's awesome.

Elise Lovejoy: So I just started making these books. I made these black and white copies, and the kids just ate them up. They loved them. They were reading, and they were excited, and they wanted to know, "When's the next one? What's Dog going to do? What's Cat going to do?" And Bug is in every picture. "Where is he? What's he saying this time?" So I got more and more creative with it.

There's this incredible woman, Marsha Geary. She was an LA principal for a long time. She was out to lunch with my mom, and my mom had a set of my black and white books. She said, "Elise is doing this funny thing in her class. You have to see it because I know you're a teacher."

She said she couldn't finish the rest of lunch because she was just looking through the books. She called me up and she said, "You have to do something with this."

I said, "No, these are for my kids. These are for my students."

She said, "No, you can't keep this to yourself. It's just such a great way to get kids reading!"

Nine years later, here we are.

Anna Geiger: Here we are. This started with your decodable books, but I know you have a reading program, too. How did that come about?

Elise Lovejoy: When I was making the books, I again realized that there needed to be more fun in literacy. I wanted games, and I wanted hands-on materials.

I also struggled with phonics workbooks that had very distracting pages. There was a ton of text on it that the kids couldn't read. It was the directions for the teacher to read. I thought, "There's got to be a better way to make this." I found myself at the photocopier cutting out portions of pages and enlarging them so that the kids were only focusing on what they needed to practice, not on all of this extra text.

So I started making my own workbooks that went along with it. I realized that if I did it in the same structure as the books, then I could use these two together. It was really very much a teacher piecing things together based on the knowledge. I really threw myself into curriculum.

That's when I left the classroom because I was supporting the teachers. I was doing a lot of research and a lot of reading and really trying to dot my i's and cross my t's and make sure I was doing it right. Children deserve our best, and it really meant something to me to do it right.

Actually, this is a story nobody knows. Not that I haven't told it, but I just don't tell it often. I went to EdReports with the first version of our program, and I failed. It's out there now, my failure is somewhere out in the public.

When I was talking to the people at EdReports, I said, "I'm just beside myself!" I think they thought immediately that I was beside myself because I was going to lose money or something along those lines, but I said, "I failed these classes!"

Now I hadn't because the people that were using it were incredible educators. They were fitting and putting in the pieces that I was missing, and they were making sure that their kids were getting everything they needed.

But in my head, I had this very important job, and I hadn't done it to the best of my ability.

So I told them I'm going to replace it out of pocket. My husband, thank goodness he believes in this the way I do, because out of pocket from our family's money, I rewrote it, and I gave it to every school that had bought it.

We went yellow on EdReports, if you know what that means. It's kind of like "partially meets." The pieces that we didn't have at the time were a systematic phonemic awareness program and a sight word curriculum, some way to introduce those.

Anna Geiger: That's interesting.

Elise Lovejoy: Yeah. It wasn't a piece that I had focused on a lot. So we're going back to EdReports actually this spring. We're in the queue to be reviewed again, and I think we're going green. So I'm really excited.

Anna Geiger: Well, that's cool. Now, you've been in this for a long time. So many people I talk to, it was really 2020 or 2019 that they came around. Maybe you can talk to us about what you were reading and studying back then, this is over ten years ago.

Elise Lovejoy: I read a lot of research. I clung on to the Journal of Literacy with researchers and looking at how big the base was, the stuff that's kind of boring, but I started to find it really interesting.

I have to say, I think that the reason that it took us as long as it did to get here where this is so public and urgent - obviously, it's always been urgent that children need to learn how to read - but the research is really hard to read. It's not made for a teacher.

Anna Geiger: I know, it's not. It's not, and not for tired teachers either.

Elise Lovejoy: No. Teachers have enough on their plate. You're exhausted at the end of the day, and it is mentally exhausting reading some of the research. The people who are creating it are brilliant, but it is not translated for our classrooms.

I think that enough people have started trying to do that. When somebody asks me, "Oh, what do you want to say about your program or your books?" and to be honest, I want to support all the people that are doing what I'm doing, too. I want more of us. I think that we have to create things that teachers can use easily because their job is already so difficult.

Anna Geiger: I can just talk to those who are listening who have not seen Express Readers. They are pretty large, square books, and hand-illustrated, which they have a very special charm, and there is this little bug on every page to find, which is fun.

But when you open the page, the text is on the left in big Comic Sans font and lots of spacing. Then the full color picture is on the right. So it is a very user-friendly, reader-friendly I should say, book.

They're also very sturdy, so these are quality books. They have fun pictures and sturdy pages.

Can you tell us a little bit about your reading program?

Elise Lovejoy: We are a TK, because I'm in California where transitional kindergarten is big. So we're TK through second grade. TK is really just the first in a two-year kindergarten. It's like they've split it and allowed younger children to be a part of it. It's a mix of pre-K and K basically. But it's TK through second grade, so it's all the foundational skills in reading, because I know my role.

People say, "Oh, are you going to go into third through fifth?"

I say, "Nope, not right now!"

My world is this piece where we're really teaching kids how to read and making sure that they can access everything in third grade and above.

We have a great phonemic awareness program now. We call it the Daily Do's. The kids are jumping, they're dancing, they're cutting, and they're using all kinds of imagination in order to do it. Ours has a visual piece to it. I know that the research that has come out has said we really should be tying phonics to it early on.

To be honest, I did that before I had read anything about that because in a rational sense, especially out here in California, when we've got so many English as a second language learners, the more times we can connect that and show it, I think that the better chance kids have of making that connection. And why not show it? You just don't require them to know it yet. So we have a visual piece that goes with ours.

We also use a lot of pictures because, again, English is a second language for many. Why not be hearing words and seeing a picture of it so you can acquire more vocabulary? So that's been really fun. I actually went out to New York a little while ago and got to see the teachers doing the Daily Do's-

Anna Geiger: Oh, how exciting!

Elise Lovejoy: ... and it was really exciting! I heard from a professor at NYU. She said, "Oh, this is the Daily Do's." She said, "Yeah, my student teachers talk about it all the time."

Anna Geiger: Oh, that's so great. That's so great.

Elise Lovejoy: We cover all the foundational skills in reading, so basically how to teach reading and how to comprehend what you're reading because I think that that immediately ties in. It shouldn't just be this disconnect between phonics and the process.

But it did center around our books; it started with that. It started with kids being able to access the meaning behind, "Why are we reading? Why are we doing this work? Let's have something funny at the end of it."

Anna Geiger: What's next for Express Readers?

Elise Lovejoy: Oh, well, first, it'll be the EdReports.

We are a family-based, kind of home-grown company. As I've told my family and those close to me, I really want to do this right. I want to go slow. I'm not looking to make this monster of a company. I want to make sure that teachers are always involved and always on staff and having more voices be heard. We need to make sure that we're reading all of the research before we develop things, and so I don't want to rush things out.

Hopefully, the next thing for us is to write more decodables, to be a supportive and quality company and resource for teachers to go to.

Anna Geiger: Well, I hope that more people will check you out after listening to this episode!

Elise Lovejoy: Thank you!

Anna Geiger: I will definitely link to that in the show notes. Anything else you want to share before we end?

Elise Lovejoy: I would really like for teachers to know how important decodable books are, mine or anyone else's. It's so important for a child to see their success and to use what they're learning in real time. It's so important, and I'm so appreciative that you gave me the chance to talk about it.

Anna Geiger: Well, thank you so much. Thank you so much for listening. To get links to check out Elise's books, including free samples and free printable books, go ahead and head to the show notes, themeasuredmom.com/episode104. Talk to you next time!

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The post From Balanced Literacy to Decodable Books Author: A conversation with Elise Lovejoy appeared first on The Measured Mom.

Structured literacy in kindergarten: An interview with Kate Winn

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TRT Podcast #103: Structured literacy in kindergarten: An interview with Kate Winn

Kate Winn is a brilliant teacher who shares how she moved from a balanced to structured approach … and how structured literacy has reignited her passion for teaching!

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Hello and welcome to Episode 103 of the podcast! Today I have a very special interview with Kate Winn. I reached out to Kate to ask her if she would speak on my podcast when I saw a wonderful webinar she had given about structured literacy in kindergarten. So in this episode we talk about Kate's movement from balanced to structured literacy and what teaching reading with a structured approach looks like in her kindergarten classroom.

Anna Geiger: Hello everyone! Welcome to the podcast. Today I'm very excited to welcome Kate Winn. I watched a YouTube webinar that she had given about teaching with structured literacy and it was amazing. It was how she teaches it in kindergarten, and I knew we needed to talk to her about how she made the move from a balanced to a structured literacy approach and also to hear how she applies all this information in her day to day teaching. I was so excited that she agreed to come on the podcast. Welcome, Kate!

Kate Winn: Thanks so much, Anna. I was thrilled when you asked me and I'm so happy to be here talking to you today.

Anna Geiger: Before we turned on the recording, you said that you transitioned from second and third grade down to kindergarten. Can you talk to us a little bit about that and how you realized there needed to be some change in how you were teaching?

Kate Winn: Sure. So I've been teaching for 22 years, a huge range of different grades and subjects and I had, as you said, spent a couple years, or a few years, in the sort of grade 2, 3, 4 range, and then I moved down seven years ago to kindergarten.

That was when I first started to realize maybe something was wrong with balanced literacy because in kindergarten you really are responsible for that, for introducing that foundational piece, right? And so I had some tools that were okay and some tools that weren't and I was realizing, "Okay, the kids are really not reading, they're guessing." It just kind of struck me that, "This can't be the right way to do it." So that's when I started my deep dive into the science of reading.

I can remember one story where I was sending home all of those things like eagle eye and those little tips that you're supposed to be using with your kids with balanced literacy and look at the picture and all that stuff. And then I remember following up with one parent and gently reminding them they hadn't sent back the leveled book that their child had been practicing at home. The mom emailed me back and she said, "Oh yeah, I'm waiting until she can do it with the pictures covered and then we'll really know she can read it."

I remember thinking, "Well, that's kind of mean. She's not going to be able to do it with the pictures covered. How's she going to know which animal you're on if she's not looking, right?" And then that got me really thinking, "Okay, that can't be right. There's something else going on here."

So in my deep dive, I mean I was getting hardcore into books and podcasts and webinars and everything I possibly could. I should mention at the same time too, because I know sometimes when I share my story people think, "Well, how did you have the time?" because classroom teachers don't. Classroom teachers do not have the time to delve into every single subject you teach and to actually be looking for the science and looking at the actual primary sources, research and all of that stuff. So one thing I will mention is that I was diagnosed with breast cancer in November of 2020 and ended up with some months at home.

For me months at home are just not good unless I have something to do. So that actually kind of helped me with a bit of a focus and gave me some time for that too. So if anybody's listening and thinking like, "How did she find this time?" That is one of the reasons, is I just kind of did have that time at home.

Then of course with COVID too, just prior to that, with so many things being shut down and when you're doing online learning and all of that stuff, just being home also provided me with a bit of extra time too. So many circumstances came into play to allow me to get into all of this information.

I'm so glad that I did because as you mentioned, I totally changed my practice and what I was doing in kindergarten, and I shifted to a structured literacy approach. It made such a difference last year at the end of the year.

I teach in Ontario, and our kindergarten program is probably what most states would think of as a pre-K and kindergarten mix. So I've got the kids who are four or turning four, plus the kids who are five or turning five mixed together.

At the end of last year, the year twos who were leaving me for grade one were all reading, and then I also did my Acadiance screener, the end of the year screener, and they were where they needed to be benchmark-wise. So that was kind of my evidence that they were where they needed to be and that this was really working. And I think when you see it working, it's just so motivational.

Anna Geiger: Mm-hmm. Well that was a lot. You talk faster than I do!

Let's go back to what you were doing before you started making the switch. It's very interesting that you mentioned 2019 and 2020 because for so many people I talk to, it's the same time frame that they learned the difference and started making changes. Were you using a particular curriculum or how did you approach teaching reading before you started looking into that research?

Kate Winn: So I think if you look at the... Well, Scarborough's Rope for example, I think for the language comprehension side, I was doing a good job with that. I would say kindergarten teachers in general are doing a good job with that, probably a better job than on that word recognition side.

So I know that in our board we had Jolly Phonics. Jolly Phonics is seen to be an effective program so there's nothing wrong with using that one.

We were still doing sort of that letter of the week idea though, whereas we know now that kids can move a lot faster. Then I think the biggest issue was that the reading material I was giving the kids to use was completely undermining any phonics instruction that they were getting.

I think sometimes there are teachers who are kind of new to all of this and they're saying, "We do phonics. Everybody's always done phonics. This is so silly," but it's HOW you're doing the phonics. We know the whole explicit, the systematic, and those kind of key words.

But I was using leveled readers that basically required the three cueing. They required kids to guess kind of that whole sight word. It's not what scientists would call a sight word, but what a lot of educators call a sight word, that kind of high frequency word where you learn it as a whole and then just drill it kind of thing and then you'll be able to read some of these books as well. I was doing a lot of that stuff.

Well I have learned now that is not the best way to teach kids to read. So that was kind of what was going on in my classroom with that.

Phonological awareness I might have dabbled in a bit of it in the more broader stroke stuff like the syllables and onset and rime, that sort of thing. I definitely wasn't doing that phonemic level awareness kind of work in the class either until I learned all about that. So yeah, those were definitely two improvements that I made.

Anna Geiger: I'd like to go back to talking about the leveled books that you were using. You mentioned "guess" and I know people really get defensive about that word. I know that I used to get defensive about that because I didn't think I was teaching them to guess, I was teaching them to be strategic. That's what I thought. Can you explain why you use that word and why people need to accept that that's really what's happening when we're using those leveled books?

Kate Winn: So now since I've shifted to decodables, the idea is if they need the picture at all, they're not reading the words. So I mean pictures are still so useful for context and comprehension and getting more out of the story and maybe even checking what you've read, but if you can't decode the words that are there... And again, I'm talking about kindergarten, so I'm talking about kids who are sounding words out for the first time, they shouldn't need the picture. They shouldn't have to use that whole eagle eyes kind of cue that is guessing. If it's like we are at the zoo in this book and it says, "We saw a monkey." My kids don't know how to sound out monkey, so they have to look at the picture and then go, "Monkey."

And I was seeing things too where even when kids should know how to sound out the word, like for example with... I don't know if we want to name any not-good assessment tools, but the assessment tool that we would use. In a book, they could sound out the word "truck," but they would just look at the picture and go "dump truck." It starts with T, why are you saying dump truck? Because they're not even bothering to look at the word.

Or there was another example where it was the same thing where they should be able to sound it out and they just totally didn't. They just looked right to the picture. It was "bus," and they said "school bus." Now school bus is a great big long word that starts with S. This says B-U-S. Why are you saying school bus?

So again, the idea of totally guessing. I know some people might think, "Oh well, if they're learning to sound out and they're doing this, no big deal." But the science tells us that it is a big deal especially when we get into functional MRIs and all of the brain research and things like that. Kids who are using those strategies of poor readers, different things are going on in their brain, not the things that we want to see going on in the brain of a skilled reader.

And so it is really important.

I know in my webinar I said some habits are kind of neutral. I mean they might not be worth your time, but it's not going to hurt kids if you're using them, whatever. But a thing like this, having kids guess when they're reading, that is harmful and that is something that we don't want to be encouraging anymore. So that's definitely a big shift I made to go from those leveled readers where it was basically either looking at the picture or just following the pattern because if it's like, "My dad is..." that sort of thing on every page, they're following the pattern too. So if they need to do that stuff, they're not actually reading. And our job is to teach them to read.

Anna Geiger: And what you mentioned too, you said something about habits, and I think that is even a bigger thing than the guessing. When we teach them that your eyes have to go off the words to figure out what they are, it can be very hard to break for some kids, I know. Especially I think in the primary grades you maybe don't notice it as much because the books you're giving them are designed for that. But the teachers that come after us will notice that more because now the picture cues aren't there, the context may not be useful for a word they've never read before, and now they don't have what they need. So those are good things to keep in mind when you're teaching kindergarten and first grade.

Kate Winn: Even a special education teacher that I work with who gets kids down the line and is working with them, she'll tell me how they'll be looking at a text with absolutely no pictures and they're just looking around anywhere but down at the paper as if somehow the answer's going to magically come to them. So you're right, I mean those habits are very, very hard to break. Especially the kids who perhaps are going to be more prone to difficulties with reading that are going to latch onto those early on, and then that's going to be even harder for them when we're trying to intervene or remediate down the line.

Anna Geiger: So when I watched your webinar, it was very clear to me that you've done your research, I recognized so many things you were talking about. Can you tell us where you went, what did you start studying, and what was most useful to you as you made this big shift?

Kate Winn: So I'm definitely a book person, but the funny thing is people always ask what I would recommend for a person starting out, and I see people recommending Louisa Moat's Speech to Print or Mark Seidenberg. The funny thing is those were two of the first books that I read. However, those are not the best books for beginners.

I'm definitely a book person, and Know Better, Do Better by David and Meredith Liben is excellent. The Art and Science of Teaching Primary Reading by Christopher Such, I did a book study in my school board last year using that one, which was just excellent. So I mean for me I enjoyed books, being able to read stuff.

I also got into, of course, a lot of podcasts, including yours, and that sort of thing.

Again, I'm in Ontario, so the International Dyslexia Association in Ontario has just outstanding resources, and not only on their website that I could find. I actually came to them because I was assigned an article on this for a magazine here in Canada and I wanted to interview an expert. And so I ended up talking to the president of the IDA Ontario, and then that's how I got involved in a whole bunch of things with them and they put on my webinar and that sort of thing.

And through different workshops and inservices, and then finding mentors and people who are doing the same thing, maybe in other boards, and learning from them. I found that that really helpful as well.

I don't have higher education courses in this and I know in terms of teacher prep courses and even some courses that we do now for inservice teachers, a lot of them haven't covered the science of reading. Even if you may have taken a reading specialist course or something like that in past years, that doesn't necessarily mean that it had anything to do with structured literacy. So it's really about knowing the best sources to find all of that information.

So for the most part I'd say it was really self-directed, but there's a whole variety of different media to get you there.

Anna Geiger: Now, you took a break from teaching because of your cancer, is that correct? Were you spending all that time studying and then when you went back, everything was different for you? Or how did that go?

Kate Winn: Yes, so I had started learning about this before my medical leave. At the beginning of that school year, the beginning of 2020, I thought, "Okay, here we go, I'm going to do this," and then I ended up going on leave. And then you have a different teacher filling in for you and I couldn't really tell that teacher, "Don't be doing sight words anymore" and that sort of thing so I had to sort just let that go for those months that I was at home.

Then when I came back we were online, and by that point my school had bought Heggerty and there were a few things kind of heading in the right direction. So I was using some of that.

But it was really the start of last school year. It was really the fall of 2021 when I could just throw myself in it hardcore for the entire year and do it the way I wanted to do it. And of course having the kids physically in school I found very helpful as well.

Now an interesting point is that our kids wore masks until March, and I know there's a lot of concern about kids and their literacy abilities and things like that, but I do know that that ours were able to be quite successful even though they did have masks until then. But it's so nice now because I know last year I didn't bother with mirrors for phonics or anything because they can't see their mouths as they've got a mask covering them, right? Whereas this year it is so nice that I know they are seeing my mouth and I am seeing their mouths. So I would say that's definitely a difference that I have seen since before.

Anna Geiger: So I know I'm going to definitely send people to your webinar where they're going to learn a ton about how this looks day to day, but can you give us an overview of how it looks in your classroom? I know right now as we're doing this, it's October. So I know it's the beginning of the year, but how are things looking now and then maybe how will things look a little bit farther in the year towards the end of the year?

Kate Winn: Well, that's a really good question, the way you posed it about the now versus the end of the year, because in something like kindergarten, I came from June having them exactly where I wanted them. And then you come back in September, and I had several three year olds, and a whole bunch of other things going on, besides trying to get kids reading. So you have to remind yourself that you've got the whole year to do this.

Now I'm at the point now where we are doing our phonics every day. I'm actually using the new UFLI Foundations program, which is amazing. I absolutely love it.

They take a letter sound lesson and split it up over two days. So I do a little bit the one day and then a little bit the next day and then move on. So I'm covering two letters and sounds a week. Then there's time built in there for review as well.

So we'll sit at the carpet and we'll do that little lesson. The kids have their cookie sheets with magnet letters and that sort of thing to be doing to some of that work, and some of it's smart board slideshow lessons and that as well. So that's kind of how the lesson component looks.

Then I'm finding decodable books are just so excellent for practice. So my year two students who were in my program last year and are already reading, I know where they are skill-wise and so they read to me from decodables, and I'm just ready right about now to start the take home program.

So instead of leveled readers... Because I know that's what a lot of teachers wonder too, "Okay, I'm supposed to stop sending home leveled readers, but what can I send home for my kids to read?" because parents want reading material and reading is definitely something, if you are going to have any sort of homework, reading is the one thing that you would want to focus on. So having those decodable texts is helpful for that too. Then when my year ones get to that point, they'll be doing that as well.

Then of course a lot of people when they talk about the science of reading and they just think it's all about the phonics, I mean we don't want to miss mentioning the whole other side of it, right? So of course lots of rich read alouds.

Something I started last year was chapter book read alouds at snack time, which I found was really great. I could read the first book in a series and then take a little picture and put it in the Seesaw app and share it with parents. And then I would find out that they had bought number two or number three and they were doing it as bedtime reading at home.

Anna Geiger: Oh, amazing.

Kate Winn: That's really neat because we want kids to be exposed to that vocabulary, the content, all of that stuff as well. So certainly I wouldn't want the conversation to go by and make it sound like it's ONLY about the phonics. However, I do think that for a lot of people, it's more the foundational skills area that needs work.

Anna Geiger: So I have the UFLI manual because I just wanted to see it, and it looks amazing. And I know I'm pretty sure in there they do letter names and sounds, correct?

Kate Winn: Correct.

Anna Geiger: So I was just recently at a Reading League conference in Wisconsin. Steven Dykstra, you've probably heard of him, he talks a lot about the science of reading and what really is the science of reading and what people would like to think is proved by research. And he talked about how there's a huge debate between the letters and sounds together or just sounds to begin. And then if you get people like that in the same room together, they could break out in fist fights, which I hear that all the time!

So I would just love to hear from your experience. Some people who are very much for just sounds to begin, talk about how kids will get those things confused and that knowing letter names they say confuses them when they're trying to sound out words, can you speak to your experience with that and any thoughts you have about it?

Kate Winn: For sure. And I mean, like you said, it's my experiences and my thoughts because I have done no research on this myself, right? So I'm just going to share what I have seen. So I know some of the things that I've read talk about how letter names can actually be helpful for kids because if the sound is in the letter name, then that's actually going to help trigger them to remember.

I know what I have done in the last year when I saw so much success in my class. I taught the sound and the letter name and we would work with both. Even when I was doing flashcard practices or whatever, it would be letter sound, letter name, letter sound, letter name. So they were doing both. And when I get parents to practice, maybe I've got a child who's still struggling with a few, I get them to do the same thing; letter sound, letter name.

Eventually they do need to know both. So certainly my experience has been that it hasn't been a problem to work with both of those. One thing I do, I know there's a lot of debate too... Even talking about UFLI, I was in one of their webinars about the program and somebody said, "Well, is this a speech to print program or is this a print to speech program?"

And Dr. Holly Lane basically said, "I don't really think that needs to be a question. We want to go both ways when we're teaching kids like the decoding and encoding and backwards." And she said, "Most people I know aren't having this sort of debate, so I wouldn't really worry about it." So it kind of reminds me of something like that because they do need to know both and do both.

But one thing I have done in my slideshow for this year, I've taken theirs and I've tweaked them a teeny bit to talk about the sound first before the letter name just because that's the way I did it last year when I had really no resources and I was borrowing from another teacher and putting it all together that and I knew how successful that had been.

So within the same slide show, within the same lesson, we're just talking about the sound and breaking down the articulation and all of that stuff, what words would start with it and we've got pictures. And then, "The way we spell it is with the letter P. And this is what letter P looks like" and kind of going from there. So they're definitely getting both. For me, the way I'm kind of doing things right now is sound and then letter, but it's within the same lesson.

Anna Geiger: Now you have a very unique situation compared to what we have in the states. I know my sister lived in Canada for nine years and she actually homeschooled, but she told me about that, about how very young children are in the early program. And you said you had three year olds. So when you're teaching reading or phonics and everything to this whole group, how does that work? Do you differentiate your instruction initially? Are all of them learning a few letters and sounds at a time and then starting to decode words? Are they getting more of phonemic awareness foundation first? How do you attack that?

Kate Winn: So I am actually doing whole group, this is what I did last year, though last year I had more year twos, so more older kids in the group. This year I have more year ones, more younger kids. But we do that part whole group. The little ones are actually doing well with it. The problem is more at the other end now. It's the ones who are way too advanced to be spending too much time on /m/ right? For right now they're part of the whole group.

One thing that I found too with the ones who are doing really, really well, I started taking some of the UFLI, they have like a sentence, almost an assessment dictation sentence to go with each lesson once you get to a certain point. What I've been doing with a couple of kids is pulling them aside in small groups and using the dictation sentences from all of the lessons just to see where they are because there are some points where they can read it but they're not quite writing it yet or there's things like that because you want to make sure they've really consolidated that skill. So I'm making sure that they've sort of got all of that.

But for me this year, I think the whole group is fine to be that whole UFLI and that phonics piece and then I'm going to be more concerned about the small group that needs enrichment, that needs extension to kind of move on because they're already there. We want everybody to learn to read and we want everybody to continue to grow, even the ones that are doing well. So that's a balancing act right now.

Anna Geiger: Sometimes I think in the science of reading discussion, the more advanced kids are dropped out of the conversation because we're really focused, as we should be, on kids who are struggling and kids who may have dyslexia. But yeah, we want to make sure that everybody is being challenged.

Can you speak to what the rest of the kids are doing when you're working with small groups?

Kate Winn: Well, I'm really lucky again in Ontario because the way the program works, there is a certified teacher and an early childhood educator who are partners in the class. Certainly either one could take a lead on literacy or any other subject. In my class, because this is my passion, this is sort of the thing that I do but I'm lucky that sometimes it's when my partner is doing something else with whole group that I can take kids, even when I'm just doing assessments. I would never take big groups from her lessons or anything like that, but it's just if I want to pull a kid for an assessment or that sort of thing, I can do that.

Then also we have a big focus on play-based learning in kindergarten as well. So there are times in the day where the children are playing and I don't think there's anything wrong with the kids being pulled for small groups there too. You can play, you get pulled out to do a little activity with the teacher, then you go back and play.

I think I have heard the question like, "Oh, does that devalue play? Or make kids think that it's not as important?" But I think kids just learn there's lots of different things you do at school and sometimes Mrs. Winn needs you at the back table and so you go. That's been another way I've been able to make things work as well. Much harder I know if you're in grade one and you're in grade two, and you're all by yourself in terms of trying to figure out what the kids are doing when you're taking small groups. I know it takes a lot of creativity there.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, well that's great you've got that built in support that makes a huge difference.

Can you maybe talk to us a little bit about your comprehension piece? You said you were starting to do chapter books. Do you have a list of questions written out? Do you have some vocabulary that you're going to work on? Do you revisit those? How does this look in your school day?

Kate Winn: So sometimes it's more formal. For example, I have taken some children's books and come up with explicit vocabulary lessons that kind of follow those text talk lessons that were written many years ago. So sometimes we're taking a few vocabulary words and we're being really intense with those and then maybe the next day we're going to read the book again and be really intense on another word. So sometimes it's like that.

Or other times it's something like, it's Canadian Thanksgiving and I wanted to read this lovely book about Canadian Thanksgiving so you just sort of flip through it quickly and think about what parts are you going to stop and question the kids with? So that sort of thing.

And then I find even with my chapter book read alouds, I like to stop, and there are certain things where you can almost quiz the kids. Like the word "glance" kept coming up. "She glanced at him and he glanced at her and they were glancing around" or whatever. And so when it would come to glance, I'd just say, "Okay, everybody, glance at the door." And then you can look and see are they glancing at the door, did they get what they were supposed to do? Right? So just almost those little kind of mini assessment sorts of things. But I mean, I certainly don't have in kindergarten any big long comprehension assessments that they do or anything like that.

I know with decodable text, some decodables are trying to be as good as they can for giving some kind of meatiness that allows for a question at the end. But sometimes it's like, "What did the dog sit on?" The log. There's not a whole lot, but maybe you can connect it. "Do you have a pet at home? Where do they like to sit?" or whatever.

But in terms of the books that they're reading independently, they don't really lend themselves to that and I don't feel like they're supposed to. I don't think writers of decodable books need to make them so that they're so deep and rich that they're going to provoke huge discussions. I don't think that's the role of those. I think it's more of the teacher read alouds that kind of do that piece in kindergarten and it's such an investment for down the line, with all that vocabulary and content knowledge.

I know it's important too. Our kindergarten program in Ontario's kind of set up differently, but in most grades you would have science expectations and social studies expectations. You don't want to skimp on those. It's not like, "Oh, I need more literacy time so I've got to cut that stuff out." Because you can build that in as well and use texts from your science and from your social studies and make sure kids are getting all that content background because that's going to help them the most with comprehension down the line.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, for sure.

What about other things that we might think about as being more balanced literacy? Do you do shared reading and things like that where you do more concepts of print type things?

Kate Winn: I do. One of the favorite things that we do on a weekly basis, it's kind of a shared writing where I have a star of the week every week. And so at the carpet the kids ask the star questions like, "What's your favorite this and what's your favorite that?" and whatever. And so then I kind of do a shared writing of that paragraph and then that becomes of shared reading that we have those together. So we do some of that. And then we do some big books and that sort of thing.

I'd say really, I can still use, for example with UFLI, they have little decodable pieces that go with their lessons and that sort of thing. So you can still talk about capitalizations and punctuation and different things like that. Those sorts of concepts of print and the left to right and all of that stuff still comes up even just using your decodables. I think I probably overcompensate too much in not wanting to put text in front of them and have them think they're supposed to read it when they haven't been taught how to read it. So I think that's something that I'm probably almost too cautious of, is showing texts and having them for any reason think they should be guessing at a word.

Anna Geiger: Can you talk to people who are more balanced literacy and they're hearing all this about the science of reading and they don't feel good about it because then it sounds very boring. It's going to take away all the things they love about teaching. Their kids aren't going to like it. They're not going to like it. What can you speak to in terms of enjoyment of this whole process for you and your kids?

Kate Winn: Well, for me, I mean I've said before, and it sounds really cheesy, but I have rediscovered my joy in teaching because of structured literacy. I feel so purposeful. I mean even with something like the screening tools, when you're kind of color coding where the kids are at in different skills and you see them going from that kind of yellow maybe at-risk and into the green zone, a lot of that stuff, it's so motivational as a teacher. I think once you see that yourself, you want to keep doing it more.

So I would say just try. Just get your feet wet a little bit and when you see this happening, I can almost promise you you're going to want to keep it up. And in terms of the kids' enjoyment of it, I mean, like I said, there's that other side of the rope. They want to hear rich texts, they want all of that stuff, yes, for sure.

But in terms of kids actually reading themselves, they know they're not reading when they're, I know I keep saying the word guessing, but when they're using any of those different strategies and just following a pattern. I feel like I was kind of a fraud, but I'd be like, "Oh, you read that book!"

Because I'm sure the kids would be looking at me, like "Is that? I did? Okay, if that's what reading is." And maybe they did think they were reading, but I was convincing them that reading was something that it wasn't.

But the joy I see now, and it does sound boring when they're starting out, like when it's just like "/��/-/t/, it. /��/-/s/, is. A, a cat," right? That's what you're hearing, but that is exactly what their brain needs. And then when they go, "It is a cat. It is a cat. Mrs. Winn, it is a cat." Yes! And then I try to play that up too.

Even when we're doing our little lessons, every time we add a new letter, a new sound, we can make a few more words, right? And so every time we'll do those on the board and I'll be saying, "You can read more words now! You can read this word that has /p/ in it and this word that has /p/ in it." And you just try to build that up in them and you just see their joy. They're so proud of themselves. And then when you pull them to read a text to you and they're doing it independently, it's really something.

Now anecdotal experience is one thing. So that's all just me telling you. But we have to be careful because in balanced literacy, people might have their own, "Well, I saw a joy in kids" and whatever. So it can't just be about that.

But there is research, there are studies done, to show that being able to read accurately or skillfully leads to joy. It's not just something where there's a correlation like, "Yeah, yeah, of course. Good readers like to read." It actually is a causation that they have found in studies that the better a child gets at reading, the more they like to read, and the more joy that comes.

The fact that you can be the person with that power and that ultimate responsibility of getting them started on that, it really is an incredible thing. So I would say do not worry about the joy part.

Anna Geiger: Thank you. Thank you for sharing that.

I want to switch real quick. Now we're kind of winding up, but I want to talk to you about Twitter because you said that Twitter is where you do most of your talking about literacy. That is the one social media platform that I have not really gotten into mainly because there's only so much time. But now my kids are all in school, so that may be something I can get to. Can you talk to us about, for teachers that may not be interested in using Twitter, how that's useful for learning about teaching reading?

Kate Winn: Yeah. So I have been on Twitter forever, but there were years where I barely touched it until I kind of got into all of this. So I love following the researchers that I trust or institutions that I trust. I find sometimes if you're just in Facebook groups and that sort of thing, one little pet peeve that I've been finding is I think it's amazing that people who are still learning pose a question in those groups. Like, good for you, and I hope people are gentle and supportive and whatever, but sometimes I'm seeing a whole bunch of answers that aren't accurate. And so some of those things I feel like, "Okay. People should only weigh in if you know that you actually have accurate information to help this person because you're just going to mess them up."

Whereas I find on Twitter, people are very science-based, and evidence-based. They kind of want receipts for something if you're promoting. And I know sometimes I'll share a resource and someone will say, "Does that align with the science of reading?" They'll want to know. So I found that really helpful.

And the funny thing is, I know a lot of people talk about negativity on any social media platform for sure, but people talk about Twitter, but I have actually found it to be so incredibly supportive. I mean, like I've said, the mentors that I've found and other friends, and I'm not even just talking Ontario, I'm talking across the country and in other countries. I mean, I got to know somebody who's a professor in Ireland, and when I went there this summer, she and I met in Dublin and had lunch together to talk about things.

Anna Geiger: Wow.

Kate Winn: So it was just... Yeah, I just find it's a really, really good place for learning. And I find too when new research comes out or there's something interesting, even if it's just in general media, like maybe a newspaper covers a big story about literacy or whatever, Twitter is where I see it first. So to keep up to date with that sort of thing, I find it's a great platform for that. So I'm @thismomloves if anyone wants to find me there.

Anna Geiger: @thismomloves, okay, you're convincing me. I think I need to get started over there. I love the idea of being able to follow researchers and get access to that. Because it can be hard to know where to get all that new stuff as it comes out. To know that people are sharing it over there is awesome.

Well, I know that people are going to hear this and just want to learn a lot more from you, so I'll definitely share that webinar that you shared and your Twitter handle. Anything else, any other places I can send them to learn more from you about teaching?

Kate Winn: So my website is thismomloves.ca, and as you and I were talking about before, it's always been sort of a general lifestyle site so there are lots of different things. I mean, I share my favorite books and things that aren't even education related. There are other things that I share in there as well. But I do have pages for print articles that I've done and links to those. I've written for parenting magazines about education and that sort of thing. And I also have a link on there to a page with all of my TV segments. I do a lot of TV segments about education as well. So you can find those there if you want to learn more too. There's a lot of it, some of it's broader than education, but those two pages definitely have a lot of educational info on them.

Anna Geiger: Wonderful. I'll be sure to link to those in the show notes as well. Well, thank you so much for taking time to talk to us, Kate. People are going to be so appreciative hearing about structured literacy and how that looks in the kindergarten classroom.

Kate Winn: Thank you, Anna, for having me. It's been such a pleasure.

Anna Geiger: Thank you so much for listening. One of these days I will get my mic set right when I do an interview. Thankfully, Kate came in loud and clear. And if you would like to hear more about all she has to share, you can find all the links we mentioned in the show notes, themeasuredmom.com/episode103. Talk to you next time!

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Kate Winn’s recommended resources

The Art and Science of Teaching Primary Reading , by Christopher Such
Know Better, Do Better, by David and Meredith Liben
UFLI Foundations – phonics program that Kate uses in her kindergarten classroom

Learn more from Kate

Listen to Kate’s webinar with IDA’s Ontario Branch
Find Kate on Twitter
Find Kate’s education articles here
Find Kate’s TV appearances here








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The post Structured literacy in kindergarten: An interview with Kate Winn appeared first on The Measured Mom.

How to make the most of repeated reading

��
TRT Podcast #102: How to make the most of repeated reading

The research is clear: repeated reading builds fluency! In today’s quick episode we’ll explore best practices for repeated reading … so you can make the most of it.

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Hello, Anna here with Episode 102 of the Triple R Teaching Podcast. Today we're going to conclude our fluency series by talking about repeated reading.

I'm always surprised when I'm in a big Facebook group about the science of reading and someone implies that repeated reading really doesn't improve fluency. That's simply not true because research has shown us many times that repeated reading DOES improve reading fluency. But there are some things we need to think about when we think about repeated reading.

So repeated reading, of course, is reading the same text multiple times until a certain or better level of fluency is reached. We've known since the 1970s that repeated reading improves fluency. In 1979, Jay Samuels, who's one of the big names when it comes to fluency research, asked students with learning difficulties to read a short passage orally several times. With each reading, the students had greater accuracy, speed, and comprehension. But here's the best part, as they were given other passages of equal or greater difficulty, their first readings of those passages were better than their first reading of the initial passage. In other words, the gains from repeatedly reading one text transferred to other texts.

Here are some benefits of repeated reading that Tim Rasinski shares in his book, "The Fluent Reader." Repeated reading improves comprehension, and this improvement in comprehension extends to unpracticed passages as well. Repeated reading leads to greater word recognition accuracy. Repeated reading usually leads to better reading performance. And when students are given real reasons for repeated reading, like to read a play or a poem in front of a group, they're often more than willing to practice.

Here are some tips for doing repeated reading with the whole class: You could choose a text of an appropriate length, 50 to 200 words, depending on student ability.

Make sure you choose the appropriate level of text. Now, to be honest, experts disagree on this. Tim Shanahan suggests texts at students' frustration levels, otherwise, there won't be much improvement with successive readings. Others think the text should be closer to students' independent levels. If you choose a frustration level text, you must be there to give appropriate support.

Finally, if students are not doing repeated reading for a performance, then up to four reads is enough for a single text. Research has not shown fluency gains after that number of readings.

I also want to let you know that it's really important that there's feedback given to students on their reading. So whether that's feedback from another student, or a parent, or from you, the teacher, that's really useful. Having someone just sit and read something over and over may not be useful, particularly if they're a struggling reader, because they may be repeating their mistakes. So make sure there's feedback to help them make corrections as needed.

When it comes to types of repeated reading, one thing students could do at centers is to read along with an audio recording of a text until they can read it independently. Note that I said read along, not just listen. Simply listening is not going to improve reading fluency.

There's also a partner reading where students can read a partner play multiple times.

Something else you could do is a Fluency Development Lesson. I have a blog post all about that which I'll link to in the show notes. I recommend doing that with a poem because that's a fun thing to read and you can do a new poem every day.

And finally, you could do Reader's Theater where students take turns reading parts of a script and perform it at the end of the week. If you missed Episode 101 from last week, you can find out how Dr. Chase Young recommends implementing Reader's Theater day to day in your classroom.

I have many resources in my shop that support fluency, and you can find them by going to themeasuredmom.com/shop and then just select "Fluency" in the sidebar and all of those resources will come up. You should also check out the show notes for links to articles that I referenced when creating this episode. You can find the show notes at themeasuredmom.com/episode102. Talk to you next time!

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Fluency resources from my shop

Fluency Center MEGA Bundle
Partner Plays
Reader’s Theater Scripts

References

Rasinski, T. (2010).��The fluent reader. Scholastic. Shanahan, T. (2017, August 4).��Everything you wanted to know about repeated reading.��Reading Rockets. https://www.readingrockets.org/blogs/... ��

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The post How to make the most of repeated reading appeared first on The Measured Mom.

How to implement Readers Theater

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TRT Podcast #101: How to implement Reader’s Theater: with Dr. Chase Young

In today’s discussion about fluency, Dr. Chase Young shows us exactly how to implement Reader’s Theater in the classroom. You’ll love this entertaining episode!

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In today's episode we have the joy of hearing from Dr. Chase Young, a professor at Sam Houston State University. His primary research includes reading fluency, supporting struggling readers, and integrating technology in elementary literacy instruction. Today we focus primarily on how to implement Reader's Theater in the classroom, and I think you're really going to enjoy this entertaining interview.

Anna Geiger: Hello everybody! Today we have a special guest, Dr. Chase Young, from Sam Houston State University, who has not only been a professor but also was a classroom teacher and a reading specialist. He is going to share with us today some things he's learned about building fluency. Welcome, Dr. Young!

Dr. Chase Young: Thank you so much for having me, it's always awesome to be able to talk to teachers, especially through these podcasts.

Anna Geiger: Can you tell us a little bit about what got you into education, your experience as a teacher, and what brought you to where you are today?

Dr. Chase Young: Yeah, it's actually kind of funny. When I was fifteen I wanted to find a job where you didn't have to bus tables, and that led me to the only other job and that was daycare. So I spent six years just playing dodgeball with kids, and I realized that that was probably something I wanted to do, even though I started as a computer scientist major, but that didn't go well. I lasted about a semester, and finally switched to my true calling, to be a teacher, and things went great from there.

I started teaching in second grade, and I student taught in first grade, but I taught second grade most of the time, although I did teach third grade.

What got me into it is that it's the greatest job in the world. I can't imagine what other people do with their lives, to be honest with you.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Chase Young: So the reason I continued my education is because when I started teaching second grade I realized I really didn't know how to teach kids how to read, even though I had gone to school.

Anna Geiger: Familiar story.

Dr. Chase Young: Yeah, and that was a very, very important thing! So I continued on and got a master's in reading, because honestly I didn't know what I was doing. I think a lot of us can look back at that first class we taught and go, gosh, I'm so sorry, people, I am so sorry. They all have lawsuits on their hands, and I hope the statute of limitations is up.

So I got better, and after I got better I got to learn the foundations and how to do that, and then I started to do some free wheeling and put my own spin on things, and it's what I've been doing ever since.

Anna Geiger: Were you first a classroom teacher and then a reading specialist, or how did that go?

Dr. Chase Young: Yeah, yeah, so I was a classroom teacher, and then one of the schools asked me to be the reading specialist, so I stepped into that role for two years, and I loved it. My passion is working with kids who find it difficult to learn. You have those kids that walk in and it's like, okay, well you don't need me at all, but that's all I worked with and it was fantastic because I was able to test out new strategies and mash certain strategies together to see if I could get more synergistic effects.

But unfortunately there's no recess as a reading specialist, and I missed the classroom culture of having the classroom. We called ourselves the Younganites, and we were a special people. We had our own customs and rituals and things, and I didn't have that as the reading specialist, so I actually went back and taught in the classroom for a few more years.

Anna Geiger: Okay, and then what led you into higher education?

Dr. Chase Young: Well I started my PhD program at the University of North Texas because I just wanted to be the most amazing second grade teacher that anyone had ever seen, and apparently that's really not why people get their PhDs. I remember the first article I was assigned, I didn't even understand one of the words in the title, epistemology. So I thought, I'm going to keep doing this, I'm just going to be the greatest second grade teacher, but about halfway through the program I'm like, wow, this is actually cool because now I get to develop and research and move the field forward and share with teachers and impact their students that way.

I started it and I was like, if I don't like it the first year then I'm going back to the classroom, but then I found out this thing where you can eat lunch for an hour and a half, and you can go places, and I was like, this is a pretty sweet gig.

But I do spend, not as much anymore, I've been pretty busy, but I spend a lot of time in classrooms. Most of the research I do is actually in schools, so I still interact with kids on a regular basis, I assess them, I train the teachers in any of the methods we're using, I go into their classrooms and observe, and I try to stay active in the schools.

Anna Geiger: Awesome. Well, I know that you were co-author of the book Artfully Teaching the Science of Reading with Dr. Rasinski, and he recommended that I talk to you because he said you've got quite a lot to share about fluency. So could you talk to us about your experience researching fluency and what you've learned and how teachers can apply that?

Dr. Chase Young: Yeah, sure, absolutely. I think that one of the most important things that I think about in reading fluency is the theory that supports it, and one of the major theories is the theory of automaticity. That theory essentially says that the more automatic in decoding a reader becomes, the more cognitive energy is freed for them to think about the meaning of the text, and other high order processes. So that fancy term, theory of automaticity, really just manifests itself as practice, reading practice, making sure that we get our students to recognize words more quickly and automatically so that they can focus on what they're actually reading.

Then the other research that stemmed from that was the method of repeated readings, and I know Tim talked about it on the other episode, but that's essentially where you read something over and over. He had also mentioned, why in the world would anyone want to read something over and over? And that's where we start thinking about authenticity and a creative way to have students read something repeatedly to become more automatic in their word recognition.

There's a lot of ways that you can do that, and how I met Tim, actually, I hunted him down at a professional development in 2008. I was a fan boy, I couldn't wait! We were at intermission and I just pretty much tackled him and cornered him and I was like, "Hey, I've been using your stuff, man."

He was like, "Really, what in particular?"

I was like, "We've been doing Reader's Theater this year and it's awesome, the kids love it!"

And he was like, "Yeah, tell me more, do you have data?"

I was like, "Yes, yes I do."

So we actually ended up writing up an article for reading teachers, the first article I ever wrote, and people familiar with academia will find this hilarious, but I got the email back from The Reading Teacher that said, "Hey, we can't accept it at this time but we invite you to revise and resubmit."

And I was like, "Ah, they didn't want it," but Tim's like, "No, that's great, they never accept it right off, don't worry about it."

Anna Geiger: Okay.

Dr. Chase Young: So what made it publishable was the framework we used for Reader's Theater, and if you don't mind I wouldn't mind explaining that a little bit. I know Tim touched on it, but didn't really go in depth on how we implemented it, if that's all right.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, I'd love to hear about that.

Dr. Chase Young: Okay, great, great. So we use a weekly format, a Monday through Friday type thing, and we use it consistently throughout the year. I'll say that up front because the research we've done has always been a longer duration. Don't expect great results if you do Reader's Theater on a Valentine's Day or one at Christmas.

So the weekly format we use is like this. We have all these scripts, and I have a ton on my website, over two hundred, and then a link to the question I always get, "Does it come in Spanish?" Yes, there's about 150 of them that are also in Spanish linked on the site.

Anna Geiger: Awesome, great.

Dr. Chase Young: So we select four or five scripts based on the number of students that you have in the class, different scripts so they're not all practicing the same one, and they're usually based on popular children's books, or some are nonfiction, some are fiction, some are poetry, some are written by my students as parodies of other texts.

So what they get to do is they get to sit down, and I read each script, and they think about which one they like the most, and that's how the groups are formed.

I'll say, "Okay, well who wants to be in the Paper Bag Princess?"

And it's like, "I want to be in Paper Bag Princess," so then their groups are formed that way, based on interest.

Those texts are typically selected, well, I don't select them based on difficulty or text complexity, I select them based on interest, what I think my students will like, because we will have a week long of practice, so challenging texts are absolutely welcome in this framework.

So after they choose their text they go back and they read it over and then take it home and they decide, what part might I want to be? So really they come back on Tuesday and the focus is first to choose a part. There is crying, there is always crying the first couple of weeks, because they didn't get what they wanted, and that's sad. But I always recommend rock, paper, scissors, not only because it's effective, but it's also fun.

Once they have their parts the main focus on Tuesday, the second day, is phonics and decoding, making sure that they're able to recognize the words, working through any of the difficult vowel patterns, which is usually what trips them up. Multi-syllabic words, words they haven't seen before, we work through those and make sure that they can break them down, put them back together, and pronounce them correctly. So that whole goal is about decoding, word recognition, and accuracy.

So then they get to rehearse. They rehearse, they go through it.

Because you have multiple scripts I always recommend that you use a timer instead of saying, "Okay, everybody read it three times." Well, kids are going to get done before the others, and then they come up to you, as always, and go, "What do I do now?" I'm like, oh my gosh. So I usually use the DMV strategy and just tell them to learn how to wait, or you can use a timer and just say, "Hey, for the next five minutes you guys are going to be rehearsing, when the timer's up put your Reader's Theater scripts away and go."

Anna Geiger: Okay.

Dr. Chase Young: So then they take it home and they practice recognizing the words, and then they bring it back, and on Wednesday we start focusing on reading expression. So we start talking about the meaning of the text and the author's purpose, and how to match the expression appropriately to the meaning of the text. And there's some coaching involved in that, like, "Hey, maybe try to read it like this, it makes sense because the character's scared, or whatever."

Then they take it home, they practice with a watermelon or a dog or a parent, or whatever, and they bring it back. Caveat, they don't always bring it back so have extra copies, or just be frustrated, up to you, "Why didn't you bring it back?!" Or you just have folders, "Hey this script's over here, go grab it," because typically the kids that don't bring it back are the ones that truly need more practice.

Anna Geiger: Yes.

Dr. Chase Young: Then on Thursday they do a practice performance, and the teacher roves and listens for any difficulties that students may have. So they practice for that five minutes, and then on Fridays they get to perform.

They can perform for each other, since they're all in different scripts, or they can perform for different classes, or they can perform for parents who are welcome to come in. You can slyly catch that parent you wanted to conference with that's been avoiding you. You can announce going to other classes, but sometimes we just bust in, and if you're really lacking an audience, the front office people can never leave, so there you go. They are always a captive audience.

So essentially we go through that weekly format and they get new scripts every single week, so they get exposed to a lot of different texts, a lot of different words, and they seem to really enjoy it.

Two things that I really love about it as well is because it doesn't take very long. I always did it in the morning, they'd walk in, get their folders, get their scripts out, and go sit down and practice. I'm still imbibing coffee trying to figure out what's going on in the day, and it gives me a little bit of extra time. Plus, they get in that routine and that's what it is, they come in, they practice, it's five minutes.

And the other thing I love about it is that because they have so much support, and because you provided so much support, they are reading challenging texts, especially those that are typically defined as struggling readers. They, for the first time, get to stand next to their peers, read out loud to the class, and sound like a great reader, and it's motivating, and it's confidence building, and it's awesome!

Anna Geiger: That sounds incredible, and I would love to see it in action sometime.

I'm going to ask some questions that I know other teachers will ask about what you just said, so first of all, what grades would you recommend this for? I know you did it with second grade, how young should you start, and I'm sure any grade level would work past that.

Dr. Chase Young: Yeah. So if we look at Charles's work, the fluency stage is right around the first and second grade, which is the prime time for this. However, I have gone and done trainings at schools where they're like, "We really want to go younger," and I've done it. First grade works really great too, we just use shorter poems and things like that, where we just make the text a little bit smaller, maybe using silly poetry like, "Mary had a little pet, its fur was black as night. It followed her school one day, which gave the kids a fright. It made the teachers shout and scream, it gave them such a scare. For Mary didn't have a lamb, she had a grizzly bear." So you just pick, narrator one reads the first line, narrator two reads the second line, so they can actually handle those kinds of text.

Anna Geiger: That's smart, that's smart.

Dr. Chase Young: So this one school asked me to do it in pre-K, and man, I was exhausted, but it worked. I wrote a script specifically for pre-K that's pretty much just the alphabet, it's like, "A, B, C, cat," and then somebody goes, "Meow."

Anna Geiger: Oh that's so cool, I love it!

Dr. Chase Young: So it may not produce the same results it does in first and up, but if they want to participate, they sure can, because it's a fun activity.

Anna Geiger: Can you talk to me, you said I think it was the second day where you're working on phonics and decoding, is that you moving around the classroom and just helping kids who are stuck as they're trying to sound out all the words, or how does that work?

Dr. Chase Young: Yeah, yeah, there's several ways that we can approach it. Sometimes they highlight the words that they're having trouble with and they work with their group. Also, these texts are great for your small group time, so you're calling groups by Reader's Theater instead of reading a level, or skills necessary, or whatever, but you can actually work through those texts. You can select the texts based on particular phonics patterns if you'd like. You can turn anything into a script, I mean a Wikipedia page, you just throw narrators on it, any sort of trade book, decodable text, whatever it is that you're working with in the classroom can easily become a script.

Anna Geiger: Well that brings me to another question, which is kind of a sticky one, which is-

Dr. Chase Young: Oh I like it.

Anna Geiger: So there's a lot of talk about decodable text, which I am a fan of decodable text, wasn't always, used to be very balanced literacy, just leveled books. But I have some partner plays and Reader's Theater scripts and I have people ask me, "Well, couldn't you make them decodable for first grade?" Which I could work on that, but what's your thought on that, do they have to be decodable if that's pretty much what they're using so far for reading, and why or why not?

Dr. Chase Young: I think the quality of the Reader's Theater script is very important because the whole purpose is to entertain an audience, and I haven't found a lot of great entertaining decodable texts, you know what I'm saying?

Anna Geiger: Yeah, I'm with you.

Dr. Chase Young: So some of the scripts you'll find on my site are actually, I mean there's hundreds of them, and they're pretty much all trade books, Scary Stories from Alvin Schwartz, things like that, so you won't find a whole lot of those decodables on there. But if that's your thing, feel free to make your own, and send them to me and I'll post them.

Anna Geiger: Well, you were saying you did this at the beginning of the day, so was it always the very first thing that you would do and that was the beginning of your reading day, and how long would that take total-ish?

Dr. Chase Young: So on the first day it would take a little bit over five minutes because I'm reading the scripts. If the scripts were long I would just read the first paragraph and leave a cliff hanger and be like, "Oh yeah, and then this is what happens," and then they can decide based on that.

Performance day, it really depends on the length of the scripts, because you're going to listen to all of them. So sometimes it would be up to twenty minutes, but most times it ranged between five and ten minutes a day.

The first study we did was to compare these groups, and I had to audit what I was doing in the classroom. I was like, what am I doing that I don't think works for five minutes? I've got to find something, and I think I dumped daily oral language, those little half sheets.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, I did that once upon time.

Dr. Chase Young: I'm like, yeah, we're done with that. And we compared these groups, and the fluency gains were incredible in the Reader's Theater treatment versus the control. Everything else was pretty similar, but the fluency gains were outrageous.

Anna Geiger: Now how did you measure those?

Dr. Chase Young: So we measured words correct per minute, and also reading expression using the multidimensional fluency scale. So there was about a 20% increase in the treatment group on reading expression, and there was double the norm expectations of growth in words correct per minute in the treatment.

So we've continued to study, and I don't want to get into the research yet while you're still asking questions about the practical side, but I'll get into that afterwards.

Anna Geiger: Sure, well maybe you could talk a little bit, for people who maybe haven't heard of Reader's Theater, how simple it is. I think people hear theater and they might think, oh that sounds like a lot of work.

Dr. Chase Young: We need to build a stage, and costume design. No! Reader's Theater is supposed to be very basic. They get a text, they rehearse it, they perform it. We don't want them to memorize it, if they're memorizing it then the texts are too easy. We don't do props, we don't wear costumes, it is literally entertaining people with their voice, and the text that was selected.

So that's as basic as it is, and it doesn't take long, and we've seen a lot of great growth, and qualitatively too, kids just, they dig it!

You may be thinking about those students that may not participate. Well, I did this for ten years and didn't have a single kid not participate. One year I had three students with autism that all participated. We had some students that just, the reading was their greatest struggle, so I spent more time with them. Tutoring time turned into let's prep for your Reader's Theater time. If you want to make it work, you can, it's really, really simple.

Anna Geiger: So I'd love to hear about the research then and what you've learned.

Dr. Chase Young: Okay, cool. So we did a study not too long ago, because we know there are many studies out there that says that it builds fluency, word recognition, automaticity, words correct per minute, and expression. So we set up this study with a few hundred kids in Texas. We actually had a lot more, but it was August 24th, 2017 we were supposed to start it, and that's when Harvey hit, so a lot of those schools that were actually signed up to participate didn't open again for a very long time. So we saw just a few hundred, and we implemented the Reader's Theater treatment, versus their typical school instruction. We did it for eighteen weeks, and we used the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test, the fourth edition, which is a standardized, really well established, valid and reliable instrument for pre and post testing on decoding, vocabulary, and reading comprehension.

Anna Geiger: Okay.

Dr. Chase Young: Then we did this magical process called propensity score matching, which is actually just to match the groups, treatment versus control. So we lose some of the student's data, but we get a one-to-one match on, we have a boy who scored this on the pre-test, who is Hispanic, who is whatever, matched with someone in the control. The whole idea is to measure apples to apples.

So we balance the groups the best that we can so that we can be more confident in our results, and essentially we found out in vocabulary and decoding, it was pretty much the same growth. So that was cool, we were like, all right, well we're in step.

But when we looked at reading comprehension, the treatment group significantly outperformed the control group on the reading comprehension measure, and we could be pretty confident in that because of the tests that we used and the statistics, the matching that we used on the analysis. So we could say, this Reader's Theater treatment really worked similarly in vocabulary and decoding, but also better for reading comprehension.

Anna Geiger: Why do you think that is?

Dr. Chase Young: So that's funny, speculatively, and also based on some of the research, there is a very strong connection between reading prosody, which is the nerd word for reading expression, and reading comprehension. Theoretically it makes sense as well because if you're reading something and you're reading it with expression that matches the meaning, it indicates that you understand what you're reading. So with the emphasis on thinking about what the text means and being able to process that, and then essentially convey that meaning with your voice, there really was a very strong focus, implicitly even, on reading comprehension.

Anna Geiger: That's really cool. Okay, what else did you find?

Dr. Chase Young: Oh gosh, so we go further. So we publish that study, and I'm mucking with the data. I don't know how I thought of this, but what I did is I separated, I had the control and the treatment, and I separated each by gender. And I was like, I wonder what the differential effects of Reader's Theater are on gender, based on gender?

We know that there is a gap that starts early in life where boys trail girls in literacy, and it's decades old, it's historic, as long as I can look back. And so we compared the growth in the treatment and the control groups by gender.

The control group for decoding, it started with the boys lower than girls, and they grew, but it ended with the same gap, boys lower than girls. It was the same for vocabulary, and the same for reading comprehension.

But we looked in the treatment group, and we saw that gap in the beginning where boys were below the girls on all three measures, but then we saw, after the post test, that in the treatment group the boys, on all three measures, ended up outperforming the girls. And we were like, what?! This is crazy! So then we just pulled out the boys and compared them, and the boys significantly outperformed the boys in the control.

So this Reader's Theater thing had a VERY positive impact on boys and I was like, oh my gosh, I could retire, this is an awesome finding. It's not THE answer, but it is an answer, but the problem is we didn't know why.

I'd sit down with my research team, it's me and Tim Rasinski and Trisha Durham and Linda Miller and Forrest Lane, and some other people, and we go, "Why is this happening?"

So we did a true mixed method study out of need and surveyed the boys. We sent out these surveys that we developed about how do you feel about Reader's Theater? Do you like it? Do you think it makes you a better reader? Things like that.

We did this qualitative analysis and found out the boys really liked it because of the collaborative nature, they liked entertaining their friends, a lot of the scripts we were using were humorous as well, they liked the comedy, and they just overall enjoyed it. It was a lot of movement and noise, and they liked that aspect.

Those were the major reasons why they really preferred this way of practicing reading. I remember, I tell this all the time, but I love this answer. One of the questions asked the boy, "Does Reader's Theater make you a better reader?"

And he said, "No, because it's fun."

Anna Geiger: Interesting, interesting.

Dr. Chase Young: Yeah. So those were some of the reasons that we found that this had a profound impact on boys and could be one of many ways that we can help close that gap, not just through Reader's Theater, but other reading activities that incorporate the collaboration, the noise, the movement, the comedy.

Anna Geiger: When I think about all the benefits, first of all, it doesn't take long, that's a huge deal. Second, not only are kids practicing reading, but they're also practicing being in front of people and speaking out loud by themselves, which is a really big deal for a lot of things. And then so interesting that all the work they do transfers to other texts, which is what you find when you're assessing them.

Dr. Chase Young: Yes, mm-hmm.

Anna Geiger: Is there anything else you want to share with us about your research or Reader's Theater in general?

Dr. Chase Young: I think it's important that we remember that we are those wonderful scientists who are also artists and we take what we know about Reader's Theater and we can do other things.

For example, we could use that same format with completely different approaches like poetry slams. Students choose poems individually, or maybe in pairs that they co-read, and go through the same Monday through Friday type format where they're thinking about overall meaning, the word decoding, reading expression, the practicing. Then instead it's like a poetry slam, and everybody wears black and berets and they snap, clap, and drink coffee. I wouldn't put caffeine in any of their coffee, but you can really make that happen.

Another thing that I recently started using is something I call TAD Talks, and it's weird, it's just a spinoff of TED Talks, but it doesn't stand for anything.

Anna Geiger: Okay.

Dr. Chase Young: So don't ask what T-A-D means, it's just TAD Talks. And what I have them do is we find really strange, interesting things to present to the class. They put together PowerPoints, or whatever, and they rehearse in a weekly format much like that.

The texts are very important, because people have to want to listen. It's maybe not for everybody in the class, but I recommend it for your struggling readers as an extra thing that they can do.

But I use clickbait, like the stuff you see on your social media feeds, like strange state laws. So they go up there and they present why you can't wear blue shoes on Fridays in St. Louis, or whatever, or they just have a list of them and they've practiced it, or the most dangerous cities, we all click on that one, it's like, where does my city fall? The top ten most dangerous cities, or the top ten most active cities.

So all of my texts are literally coming from all that clickbait, and then they rehearse it and they stand up and they give their TAD Talk, and students really love it because it's wildly interesting information.

There are endless things you can do with this framework of starting with the decoding, and automaticity, and moving into understanding the story so that you can convey the meaning with appropriate expression. You can do that with pretty much anything.

Anna Geiger: Well, I would really like to see you in action, I'm sure this is so much fun. My own kids would love it. Thank you so much for taking time to talk, I know people are really going to appreciate this, and I have a lot to say to people who question whether Reader's Theater is backed by research, I've got lots to say.

Dr. Chase Young: Oh, well there's plenty of that on my website too under downloads.

Anna Geiger: Awesome, great.

Dr. Chase Young: Anna, it's great talking to you! We did this very quickly, nobody knows that you emailed me like two days ago and here we are!

Anna Geiger: Yeah, I know, you're very efficient.

Dr. Chase Young: That's awesome.

Anna Geiger: Thanks so much.

Dr. Chase Young: Yeah, thank you.

Anna Geiger: You can find the show notes for this episode at themeasuredmom.com/episode101. Talk to you next time!

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Artfully Teaching the Science of Reading (with Tim Rasinski & David Paige)
Links to published articles written or co-written by Dr. Young
200+ FREE Readers Theater scripts






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The post How to implement Readers Theater appeared first on The Measured Mom.