Anna Geiger's Blog, page 7

Why the science of reading needs the science of learning

��TRT Podcast #169: Why the science of reading needs the science of learning

The science of reading tells us WHAT to teach – but we also need the science of learning. The science of learning tells us HOW to teach – so that our teaching is more effective and efficient.

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Hello, this is Anna Geiger from The Measured Mom. In today's episode I'm kicking off a series of short, to-the-point solo podcast episodes that will serve as a countdown to the release of my new book "Reach All Readers," coming on July 23rd, 2024.

I'd like to start with an endorsement from one of my favorite people, Dr. Pamela Snow. She wrote, "Anna Geiger has managed, with this book, to fill a special gap in the reading instruction library. She has written both from the heart and from a critical, open mind, of her painful but illuminating discoveries about the reading process and how best to support children on their reading journeys. Educators will feel safe, challenged, and informed in equal measure."

I want to thank her for that very kind endorsement.

Now let's get into our first episode of the series, Why The Science of Reading Needs The Science of Learning.

The book is eleven chapters, and in the first chapter I talk about the big picture. I explain the reading wars, discuss some important foundational things we've learned from the science of reading, and then I also explain what led me out of balanced literacy.

Chapter 2 is called The Science of Learning, and in that chapter I explain that the science of reading tells us what to teach, but the science of instruction is how to teach, and that's informed by the science of learning.

The science of learning is everything we've learned from the field of cognitive psychology, and this is so important because when we put the science of learning into practice, our students learn more efficiently and effectively. Think of it as the art of teaching.

One thing we know from the science of learning is that working memory is limited. In other words, we can only keep so many things in our mind as we're trying to learn something new. You may have heard of cognitive load theory by John Sweller, which tells us that teachers need to be aware of the limits of working memory. If we over-complicate our lessons or we don't break things down enough, we overload working memory and our teaching is less effective. Students learn less.

Something else we know from the science of learning is that explicit instruction is a powerful way to teach new skills. Our students don't need to discover everything on their own. Instead, they learn better when we use explicit instruction when teaching new skills, that, "I Do, We Do, You Do" model.

This isn't the teacher just talking at the students and the students listening passively. There's a lot of back and forth, brisk teaching, and quick affirmative and corrective feedback. It's just good teaching.

In this chapter, I break down explicit instruction. I give practical ways that teachers can optimize instructional time, increase opportunities for students to respond, provide feedback, and scaffold instruction.

Reach All Readers is available where books are sold. You can pre-order at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Bookshop, BAM!, or ThriftBooks. Thanks so much for considering, and I'll talk to you next time!

That's all for this episode of Triple R Teaching. For more educational resources, visit Anna at her home base, themeasuredmom.com, and join our teaching community. We look forward to helping you reflect, refine, and recharge on the next episode of Triple R Teaching.

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Pre-order my new book and get a FREE bonus!

You’ll love this reader-friendly guide to the science of reading! Learn how to put the research into action so you can reach ALL readers. Pre-order before July 23 and get my Science of Reading Mini-Course – FREE!

PRE-ORDER NOW

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3 powerful ways to build fluency with the whole class

��TRT Podcast #174: 3 Powerful ways to build fluency with the whole class

These are simple and powerful fluency routines that you can use throughout the day!��

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Hello, this is Anna Geiger from The Measured Mom. In today's episode I'm kicking off a series of short, to-the-point solo podcast episodes that will serve as a countdown to the release of my new book "Reach All Readers," coming on July 23rd, 2024.

I'd like to start with an endorsement from one of my favorite people, Dr. Pamela Snow. She wrote, "Anna Geiger has managed, with this book, to fill a special gap in the reading instruction library. She has written both from the heart and from a critical, open mind, of her painful but illuminating discoveries about the reading process and how best to support children on their reading journeys. Educators will feel safe, challenged, and informed in equal measure."

I want to thank her for that very kind endorsement.

Now let's get into our first episode of the series, Why The Science of Reading Needs The Science of Learning.

The book is eleven chapters, and in the first chapter I talk about the big picture. I explain the reading wars, discuss some important foundational things we've learned from the science of reading, and then I also explain what led me out of balanced literacy.

Chapter 2 is called The Science of Learning, and in that chapter I explain that the science of reading tells us what to teach, but the science of instruction is how to teach, and that's informed by the science of learning.

The science of learning is everything we've learned from the field of cognitive psychology, and this is so important because when we put the science of learning into practice, our students learn more efficiently and effectively. Think of it as the art of teaching.

One thing we know from the science of learning is that working memory is limited. In other words, we can only keep so many things in our mind as we're trying to learn something new. You may have heard of cognitive load theory by John Sweller, which tells us that teachers need to be aware of the limits of working memory. If we over-complicate our lessons or we don't break things down enough, we overload working memory and our teaching is less effective. Students learn less.

Something else we know from the science of learning is that explicit instruction is a powerful way to teach new skills. Our students don't need to discover everything on their own. Instead, they learn better when we use explicit instruction when teaching new skills, that, "I Do, We Do, You Do" model.

This isn't the teacher just talking at the students and the students listening passively. There's a lot of back and forth, brisk teaching, and quick affirmative and corrective feedback. It's just good teaching.

In this chapter, I break down explicit instruction. I give practical ways that teachers can optimize instructional time, increase opportunities for students to respond, provide feedback, and scaffold instruction.

Reach All Readers is available where books are sold. You can pre-order at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Bookshop, BAM!, or ThriftBooks. Thanks so much for considering, and I'll talk to you next time!

That's all for this episode of Triple R Teaching. For more educational resources, visit Anna at her home base, themeasuredmom.com, and join our teaching community. We look forward to helping you reflect, refine, and recharge on the next episode of Triple R Teaching.

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Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you periodic updates about the podcast.

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Pre-order my new book and get a FREE bonus!

You’ll love this reader-friendly guide to the science of reading! Learn how to put the research into action so you can reach ALL readers. Pre-order before July 23 and get my Science of Reading Mini-Course – FREE!

PRE-ORDER NOW

The post 3 powerful ways to build fluency with the whole class appeared first on The Measured Mom.

How to differentiate phonics instruction – with Alison Ryan

��TRT Podcast #168: How to differentiate phonics instruction – with Alison Ryan

Alison Ryan, author of The Phonics Playbook, explains how to differentiate phonics instruction during whole class lessons and/or during small group lessons. I highly recommend her new book, which breaks this down for busy teachers!��

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Hello, this is Anna Geiger from The Measured Mom. In today's episode I interview Alison Ryan, founder of Learning at the Primary Pond and author of a brand new book called "The Phonics Playbook," where she explains how teachers can differentiate phonics instruction no matter their setting.

I know you're going to get a lot out of today's episode. Be sure to check out the show notes where you can see everything that Alison has to offer. Here we go!

Anna Geiger: Welcome Alison!

Alison Ryan: Thanks, Anna. So excited to be here!

Anna Geiger: You have been operating online for quite a while, but I know you also have quite a career in education. Could you take us back to when you started as a teacher and what you're doing now?

Alison Ryan: Yeah, absolutely. I have had many different roles. I started out as a classroom teacher. My experience was in pre-K, kindergarten, first, and second. Then after getting my master's degree, I moved into the role of reading specialist and interventionist, and then eventually helped open a school. I was the Director of Curriculum and Instruction and a literacy coach, so lots of different things. Nowadays I am leading Learning at the Primary Pond and I also do private reading intervention for homeschool kids.

Anna Geiger: You recently wrote a book, which as I record this, is going to be coming out in just a couple of weeks. When this goes live it will be available on Amazon. It's called "The Phonics Playbook."

Tell us about why you wrote this book.

Alison Ryan: Yeah, so I have the opportunity through Learning at the Primary Pond to coach a lot of different teachers and obviously have in-person coached many more teachers. One theme that just keeps popping up is how do I meet the needs of all of my students, and phonics instruction is one area where it is so important to meet the needs of kids.

Do you want me to talk more about that?

Anna Geiger: Yes, definitely.

Alison Ryan: Okay, awesome. Of course I know your podcast, your wonderful podcast, has all kinds of great SOR information, and I'm sure that you've talked about phonics many, many times. We know that phonics is important, but something what's a little bit tricky about phonics instruction is that it unfolds developmentally.

In my book, "The Phonics Playbook," I actually have this image of a staircase, and on that image I'm explaining how kids are ascending up this phonics staircase of different skills and they're all moving through the skills on the scope and sequence more or less in the same order. They're not going to be learning long vowels, imagine that higher up on the staircase, before they learn the short vowels. It's sequential.

But the thing about this is that they're moving up the staircase at different paces. You might have some kids that are on one lower step of the staircase, they're still working on CVC words, but then you have some other kids who are a little bit higher up, they're working on blends, and maybe you have some other children who are working on multi-syllabic words and long vowels.

That I think is one of the biggest challenges of being a classroom teacher in general, but especially when it comes to phonics instruction, because for phonics instruction to be the most effective, we have to target more or less where each child is on that staircase.

It's not that it has to be a 100% perfect all the time. You might have 25 kids in your classroom if you're a classroom teacher and you're not going to be able to teach to exactly where each child is. It's just not practical.

But at the same time, we can't be, for example, expecting kids that are working still on CVC words to absorb information about long vowels. If we're teaching that to them when they still haven't mastered a skill that's lower, so to speak, on the phonics staircase, it's not going to stick.

If this happens over time, what we end up with is kids who are in third grade, fourth grade, and up, and they have these phonics gaps from skills that they never mastered, which then impacts their spelling ability, their ability to read, especially as words get more challenging, like multisyllabic words. We don't want that.

Differentiation we know is a good thing, but especially so with phonics instruction, because it's so fundamental to kids' literacy development. We have to have some level of differentiation.

Anna Geiger: In your book you discuss three different models of differentiation. Can you talk about those?

Alison Ryan: I do, yes. I'll talk later about how you can kind of blend them, but model number one is whole group with built-in differentiation.

Model number two is phonics instruction that takes place pretty much solely in small groups.

The third model is only for kids who read fluently. It is small group reading instruction that also has elements of word study, so multisyllabic word reading, morphology, all those higher skills.

Coming back to the whole group model, it might sound funny that in a book about differentiation, I'm talking about whole group instruction because some people think, well, whole group instruction, that's not differentiated, but it's actually completely possible. It just comes down to intentionally planning the types of tasks that you're having kids do and using the right tools.

For example, if you're thinking about the different types of questions you're asking kids about words. Well, maybe some kids are just ready to tell you what consonant the word starts with, but maybe some other kids are ready to tell you the vowel sound in the word. You can ask questions at different levels to meet the kids where they're at. Does that make sense?

Anna Geiger: Yes.

Alison Ryan: Then when you're doing things like having kids spell words, you don't necessarily have to choose only words that are appropriate for the average child to spell. You can add a word or two that are a little easier. You can add a word or two that are a little bit harder. That way, even if every word is not appropriate for every child to spell, you're still teaching whole group, but there's a little bit of something for everyone.

You can do that also when you're choosing tools and printables for the kids to use. One resource that I love to use, it's actually part of our phonics program From Sounds to Spelling, are these differentiated word sorts where we give you a core word sort.

For example, just to make this concrete, maybe kids are sorting words with OA and words with OW that are both representing the long O sound. We might have your average kid sort where you have words with OA, OW, maybe there are a few things like inflectional ending S or ING. That sort and those words are appropriate for the majority of your kids.

Then you might have the same sort, still OA and OW, but you have words that are a little bit easier. Maybe there a couple less words, maybe the words don't have any S or ING endings, maybe there are fewer blends. There's just less going on in those words for the kids that are maybe a little bit behind or not as advanced as their peers.

You can also have, and I know this sounds like a lot, but once you get in the routine of this, it's really easy to implement. You can also have a more advanced set of words where maybe it's OA words that are OW words that are two-syllable. There's more going on there. There might be some more advanced sounds that maybe your advanced kids have mastered, but the other kids haven't.

Everybody is doing the same core sort, but the difference is the words that they're sorting and working with.

Anna Geiger: For a teacher who wants to try something like that, what's a way to figure out and then keep track of which kids are on those different levels? Then also I'm thinking about a whole class and you're distributing materials, how do you make that efficient when I would assume kids are seated all interspersed with each other?

Alison Ryan: Yeah, for sure. There are logistics that go into it.

With your first question, what I like to do is I'll print out different copies of the scope and sequence for different groups. I'm marking on that scope and sequence what skills that particular group has mastered.

Then when it comes to distributing copies, I might preload them into folders or I might have color-coded folders based upon which group they're in and they pull from there.

This also has to come with lots of discussions about how we're not always working on the same skills, and that's okay, that's normal. In "The Phonics Playbook," I talk a little bit more about that and also mention a read aloud that's good to kind of get kids in that mindset.

Anna Geiger: So even though a teacher might be using this model where it's whole group with differentiation, they still have this idea based on a phonics diagnostic assessment of who's at a particular place. It's not just, "I'm teaching everybody the same lesson and I'll just change the types of questions I ask." There's a lot more to it, correct?

Alison Ryan: Yeah, as long as you have the capacity for that, and I'm glad you mentioned the assessment piece. In "The Phonics Playbook," I give you a whole assessment that you can use with your students. Even when you're teaching whole group, we still want to have a really good handle on where different groups of kids are at, because otherwise we can't differentiate.

So yes, we're more or less doing the same thing with all the kids, but we do have to have that really clear picture of where they are.

Anna Geiger: Okay, so what's the second model?

Alison Ryan: The second model is pure small group instruction. Again, later I think I'll talk about how we can blend whole group and small group instruction, but in this model, the purest form is literally all of your phonics instruction happening in small groups.

This is the most differentiated model that I'm offering in the book because you can have different groups that are different points in your scope and sequence. One group is working on blends and short vowels, and another group is working on vowel teams. You are, again, moving up this phonics staircase with all of your kids, but they're just at different stair steps, so to speak, on that staircase. All of your instruction is happening in that small group, and it's based on exactly what those kids need.

Now, of course, there are definitely some drawbacks to this. One thing that can be really challenging is just the time constraints of the school day. Kids in K-2, often even into third grade, do need daily phonics instruction, so you wouldn't want to use this model if you can only see half or three quarters of your kids each day.

Another piece of this is that it is very time-consuming to plan for. You don't want to have five groups. You can maybe have three groups, but even then, you're prepping materials for each group, you're thinking through the skills for each group. It is very differentiated and it can be helpful when you maybe have a multi-grade class or a class with a big range of needs, but it is time-consuming.

Another kind of way to make this easier is just to have two groups. It's not truly small group instruction, but it's at least more differentiated if you happen to have a class with a big range of needs.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, I know that one way that some teachers have made this work, and it requires buy-in from everyone, but they work with other teachers across their grade level. Therefore you're only teaching maybe one or two groups a day, so you're only prepping two lessons because I know what you're saying. It is a lot because phonics has so many moving pieces for the whole phonics lesson, which I know you go through that in your book too. If you can have other people working with you and kind of pool your assessment data and then form your groups that way, kids can walk to a different classroom. But yeah, it does require a lot of coordination and there are a lot of moving parts.

Alison Ryan: It does for sure, for sure. This is not something where if I had a new phonics program that I was being expected to learn or it was my first year teaching, I don't think that I would attempt this. I would do whole group with differentiation, but if you can pull small group off or at least incorporate some small group instruction, it really can make a big impact for the kids.

Anna Geiger: Some people like to do whole group with... I'm not sure how much differentiation they're putting in there, I'm not sure, but then they do the small groups after, but not every group every day. Can you talk to that a little bit?

Alison Ryan: Yes, we talk about that in the book because there is an option where you can teach your core phonics lesson whole group. You might introduce a skill, maybe do a little bit of practice, but then a lot of the follow-up can happen in small group.

You may need to see your lower groups a little bit more often. You are perhaps reading a decodable text with them, you are having them build words or maybe more words than you did in whole group instruction, and so you can kind of combine that where during the whole group instruction, everybody is at a certain point in the scope and sequence, but then when it comes down into small groups, maybe you're reinforcing, but maybe you're also going back and reviewing a skill. If you're on blends but some kids still aren't totally firm in CVC words, well small group is that time when, yeah, you could reinforce blends, but we want to make sure that they're really firm in CVC words.

If kids are more advanced when they come to you in your small group, it might be blends whole group, but maybe you're even pulling in some blends with vowel teams for those kids or silent E. You can just up the ante a little bit.

Anna Geiger: If teachers would do this model where they do the whole group with some differentiation, and then the small groups, how does it work for them to decide on a daily basis who I'm going to be meeting with and why? Is a lot of it just notes on the fly where I have a clipboard and I'm noticing these kids are struggling, or what's a good path for figuring that out?

Alison Ryan: Yeah, that is hard because on one hand you need to be planned out and intentional, but on the other hand, you also need to be responsive to what is actually happening in the classroom. I don't think there's one correct way to do this, but I'll talk about some different ways that I've done it.

We're talking about combining whole group and small group, and so I of course know, because I'm keeping up with assessment data, I'm doing a weekly dictation, when possible I'm listening to the kids read their blending lines or read word lists. I do have a sense I can kind of anticipate at least a week ahead of time who's going to struggle so I can make at least some tentative plans.

It is hard to make small groups sometimes because you're like, "Well, these kids kind of go together, but not fully," but I do think that it's important to kind of have that planned out based on assessment data where you can say, "These kids go together at least fairly well."

I will plan who I'm going to meet with. My kids that are lower, I will meet with them more often so it will not necessarily be a schedule that's the same every day. We're kind of rotating through the groups.

Then what I like to do is just be really responsive to what's happening. I come in with a plan, but if I see that kids are actually doing well with a skill, then maybe I don't need to meet with them. Or sometimes you think that kids are going to do so well with a skill and then you're like, "Whoa, my advanced group actually is struggling, or just these kids from my advanced group are struggling." I make some adjustments on the fly, and that's usually what works best for me. I start with a plan, but then I'm always kid-watching.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, that's where the art of teaching comes in, and that's something that takes a lot of practice and support to figure out.

Alison Ryan: Yes.

Anna Geiger: If a teacher would say, "Well, of those two models you've shared so far, I think either one of those would work for me based on my setting or my support." How would they decide which one to use?

Alison Ryan: Tthere are a couple of things that I would think about. Two main things are how much time you have, and then the needs of the students.

As far as time goes, ideally you want to have about 30 minutes for phonics instruction in K-2. I know that this doesn't always play out to be that many minutes in a real classroom in a real school, but you want to have that good block for K-2 that they're getting their phonics instruction.

If you have 25-30 minutes but no more, you don't have any extra time where you can be working on phonics for whatever reason, then you really need to do your phonics in a whole group setting. It doesn't mean you can't squeeze a small group in there, but if you have limited time, even fewer minutes than 25 or 30, it pretty much has to happen in whole group for efficiency's sake. So time is one thing I think about.

Then I also always look at the assessment data. If I have kids that are clustered, so to speak, if you can visualize the phonics staircase and the kids, maybe they're not all working on the exact same skill but in the same group of skills, well then I think to myself, I'm not sure that tons of small group is really necessary here because I can target a range of skills in whole group. Yeah, if I can meet with small groups, amazing. That's always a good thing, but I don't have to push myself and feel so concerned about having everybody doing different things in small group when in reality, they can move forward with their phonics learning if I'm teaching whole group.

You want to be thinking about how much time you have and the needs of your students.

Also, speaking on the needs of your students, I've talked to multi-grade teachers, and I did teach multi-grade one year where you have kids that are perhaps just coming off of kindergarten, and then you have second graders that are fluent readers all in the same class. In that case, I do feel like at least having two smaller groups or small groups is really important because otherwise I just don't know how you could feasibly meet all those kiddos' needs.

Anna Geiger: When a teacher is teaching whole group, let's say they've found a way to differentiate within that group. One challenge I feel is still there is feedback, especially when you've got 25 kids and they're all reading the decodable book. I was just in a classroom last week doing that, and I got to listen to maybe one or two kids read and that was it, and then we were done with that part of the lesson.

How can teachers really find out what their kids can do and support them and give that really important feedback with such a large group?

Alison Ryan: Yep, that's the million-dollar question. I guess if we're talking about pure whole group, you kind of have to be really disciplined as far as writing down who you're going to read with each day.

Now, I really have never done pure 100% whole group. I've always incorporated some level of small group. Even if your school is saying, "Okay, these are supposed to be reading small groups." Decodable texts, that's reading, so you can sit down with them.

If I'm teaching whole group and I really want to focus on a certain group of kids or just be physically near a group of kids while they're reading, I might have the rest of the class be reading the text, and then I'll pull one different group each day to sit down at the table and read. Just that proximity of you being near them, even if you're not able to do an extended full small group lesson, you're still closer to them and you can really focus in on how they're doing.

I talk in the book a lot about what I call the differentiation dilemma, where we as teachers really see kids' needs on a deep level and we care about them and we want to meet their needs, but we want to let go of the idea of perfection because unless you're literally teaching one-on-one, you're never going to have perfect differentiation. You want to differentiate where it matters most; you can't do it all. Think about what is most important for this group of kids? What do they most need support with?

Anna Geiger: Yeah, I like that idea of knowing that during this part of our phonics lesson we're reading our decodable book, and I know that these three or four kids really need support, so during this part of the lesson, they're all going to be at this table, and I might not be there the whole time, but it's a reminder to me that I want to be listening into these kids and a reminder to them that I'm there to support them versus maybe getting a little bit lost as everybody else around them is reading.

I know when I was doing this last week in a classroom, there were some kids who really weren't participating during that time, and I would go up to them. They were not disruptive at all, they were just super, super quiet. You can just kind of hide if you can't read, and it just kind of breaks your heart. You have to find ways to really let those kids know you're there for them and then to help as needed.

Alison Ryan: For sure. Partner reading can help a little bit too if you're able to set that up.

Anna Geiger: Yes, as long as you teach the partner not to read all the words for the kid struggling. That's a training that has to happen.

Alison Ryan: For sure.

Anna Geiger: So you have a third model, which is more for kids who are already reading fluently. Can you talk about that one?

Alison Ryan: Yes. The big caution I have here is that this is not for your first grade, maybe even early second grade readers, because in this model you're doing small group instruction, but a big focus is text reading. You've got fluent readers that are able to decode at grade level, maybe even above, and their phonics knowledge is really solidified.

With these kids, you absolutely can have a whole group lesson where you're working on morphology and multisyllabic words, and I recommend that, but you may also want to have some of that instruction that's really focused on specific needs, and that's where small group can come into play.

It could be that maybe ten minutes of your small group is focused on them reading a text, some kind of text, and maybe five to ten minutes of your small groups, depending upon how much time you have altogether, is focused on that word work, the morphology, linking vocabulary and spelling instruction, decoding instruction, and so you're really doing both.

You could also set it up where sometimes a small group is solely focused on text reading, and sometimes you have a small group that's solely focused on word work morphology.

I personally like to do it that way a little bit better because I feel like it's so easy to get into a text that you're reading with kids and working on comprehension, and then you're like, "Oh, we don't have time for word work," and we don't want that to happen.

For this model, I feel like it is still helpful to have some whole group instruction in this area going on, but you can differentiate by adding a little bit into the small group, which may be focused primarily on text reading, and that's okay.

Anna Geiger: For an example, if you're doing multisyllabic word reading with your class and you've got kids who are managing these four- and five-syllable words, but then you have some kids who really need help with just two-syllable words, then you can break it down even more.

Alison Ryan: Exactly.

Anna Geiger: So if you're doing the whole class instruction, you're still, to some extent, going to be using some kind of small groups to support or remediate or accelerate.

What can the other kids be doing? How can you differentiate the center activities?

Alison Ryan: Yes, so I think one of the other challenges is you've got this differentiated phonics instruction going on, fantastic, but then that has to kind of bleed into the time when kids are working independently, not just when they're with you. Because if they're practicing one skill in phonics and asked to practice a different skill independently, we don't have that connection, we don't have that gradual release where they're getting the reinforcement of what they're working on when they're working with you.

I feel like centers don't have to be fully differentiated all the time, but with phonics I do like to have maybe color-coded folders again, where kids know, "Okay, I'm in the orange group and I'm going to pull from the orange folder." (Red, by the way, does not have to mean that kids are low. You don't have to do it like your typical red, orange, yellow RTI type thing.) That can signal to kids, "I need to get an activity out of this folder." You could do bins with color-coded stickers. I love my color-coding.

I know some teachers like to do this, and I've done this several years, a Must-Do/May-Do list where there are certain tasks that the kids have to do and there are certain tasks that they can choose to do. You can give different little menus to different groups of kids. I don't customize it to where it's like every child has their own unique menu, but maybe a third of the kids have this menu and a third of the kids have this menu.

Then to build onto that too, I would think about seeing how you can use what you're doing in small group or even whole group phonics instruction and have that become a center.

For example, if you're reading blending lines whole group, or even in small group, can the kids reread those blending lines as a center? Can they reread a decodable text? Can they write sentences about a decodable text?

This has so many advantages. Number one, they're building that fluency, they're rereading.

Number two, they know what to do because they've already done this activity with you, so it's not something that you have to reteach.

Number three, it makes differentiation in centers or independent work, however you set that up, it makes it easier on you because you're not having to come up with a full range of new activities. You're building on what you're already doing.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, that makes sense.

I know that people have a lot of questions about how to teach English language learners. What does the science of reading say about teaching English learners? We know that they need the same thing that native English speakers need, but there are some considerations, some ways to give extra support. Can you talk to that a little bit?

Alison Ryan: For sure. Like you said, English language learners need explicit, systematic instruction just like all kids in phonics, but they also need even more of a focus on vocabulary and language structures. Tier 1 words, your everyday words that maybe all of the non-English language learners in your class know, those kids may need more instruction on what those words mean.

What we don't want to happen is for them to become so well-versed in phonics where they can decode and they can spell lots of words, but they don't know what they mean.

We know that vocabulary development is so important for all kids, and vocabulary development also deepens word knowledge so that words stick. There's a better picture of the word in long-term memory. All kids need to know what words mean, but especially for ELLs, you're going to have to spend more time on vocabulary. This is true of phonics, but in all subjects and language.

With phonics in particular for my ELL groups, I find that I need to sometimes work with them on fewer words so we can spend a little more time discussing word meanings. So maybe if all my groups are going to practice spelling 10 words, maybe my ELL group is spelling 7 words, and I use that little extra bit of time to talk more about what some of those Tier 1 words mean and give examples, showing visuals like pictures. I'm just slowing the pace so that we can do a little bit more language development.

You also want to get them talking so that they're using the words right, and they're not just listening to you.

Then another thing to watch out for, particularly as it pertains to phonics instruction and reading decodables, is word calling. This is just an informal term that means when any child, it could be ELL or otherwise, is decoding the words of a text, but they don't understand what the text means.

We don't want that to happen, but that can very easily happen with English language learners, especially with decodables, because decodables are a wonderful tool for getting kids to learn how to read, but sometimes they have uncommon vocabulary in them that they might not have heard. Even for non-English language learners, they might have language structures that are different from how we speak, like all text.

All kids need support with this stuff, but with ELLs, you may want to take decodable texts a little more slowly. Maybe instead of having them read through the whole text, you have them read half the text and then you stop and you ask them to retell. Obviously this is easiest in a small group setting, and if they can't retell or there are some points of confusion, then we need to go back and break down the meaning before we continue reading the text.

Again, this means that you may go through decodables a little bit more slowly with your English language learners, but that time is really well spent because you are developing their language skills and you're not just accidentally teaching them that reading is about getting through the book and saying the words. We're really making sure that they understand the meaning of what they're reading so that becomes habit and practice for them going forward.

Anna Geiger: Thank you. That's a lot of useful stuff to think about.

I'm going to move past this now. Thank you so much, this has been excellent for explaining the details of differentiating because I think that's where we tend to get stuck with how exactly does this work? I think you've laid that out really well.

I would like to have you talk a little bit about your spelling phonics program. Someone sent me an email actually a week or two after I had scheduled this interview with you, and she said, "I don't know if you take suggestions, but I would like to suggest Alison Ryan for your podcast."

I said, "Oh, I've actually scheduled it!"

She said I could share this, but this is what she wrote about your program. She said, "I was freaking out because I'd never taught kindergarten before. I was in a new school. The school had moved buildings. I couldn't find the literacy curriculum. I knew I had to find a phonics curriculum to teach my five year olds. I don't know what I typed in the search engine, but From Sounds to Spelling came up, and it was a godsend. The science of reading was not on my radar yet, but I was so fortunate to find this full phonics curriculum laid out for me with lesson plans and resources ready to go."

With that, maybe you could talk to us a little bit about your program and how it's being used.

Alison Ryan: Oh my gosh, that's so sweet.

All right, well, she's talking about From Sounds to Spelling, this is a phonics program that we have for kindergarten, first, and second grade. I created this program years before the science of reading got big, and the reason I created it was because A, many teachers, and I think things are getting better, but many teachers at that time just didn't have anything concrete to teach phonics with, which is crazy!

Then the other piece of this is the differentiation. I've been talking a lot in the book and here about how to differentiate instruction, but the reality is that phonics is just one piece of the day. Teachers are so busy and you really need materials that are pretty much ready to use.

With From Sounds to Spelling, I wanted to create materials that had differentiation tools built in, like those word sorts, even decodable texts at a core level, and then a level that's a little bit easier. I wanted teachers to have those tools that they could just print out and use because I know from experience how much there is to do, and I know how important differentiation in phonics instruction is. From Sounds to Spelling just makes that easier.

Anna Geiger: In addition to your phonics program, you also have literacy clubs and other resources. Can you share what else you offer?

Alison Ryan: Yes, so there's a lot going on at Learning at the Primary Pond. We have a YouTube channel, we have a blog, things like that. If you happen to work with struggling readers, I have a newer membership that is called The Reading Intervention Collaborative, and that includes professional development and printables really just focusing in on serving those kids that are behind in reading, which includes phonics and all the other skills. This is for K-5 teachers.

Anna Geiger: Wow.

Alison Ryan: We have reading specialists in there, special education teachers, English language teachers, classroom teachers, all kinds of teachers in there. I'm super happy with how that's going.

Then, of course, we have our literacy clubs. Those only open up twice a year right now, in January and July.

If you want to head to learningattheprimarypond.com, you can check out all that we've got going on over there.

Anna Geiger: Well thank you so much, Alison. I definitely encourage everyone listening to order your book, so they can learn more specifics about differentiation. We really just kind of touched the surface in this podcast, it's quite a comprehensive book.

Thanks so much for coming on today!

Alison Ryan: Of course! Thanks so much for having me.

Anna Geiger: You can find the show notes for today's episode at themeasuredmom.com/episode168. You'll find links to Alison's book, her From Sounds to Spelling Phonics Program, her website, and all of her literacy clubs.

Thanks for listening. Talk to you next time!

Closing: That's all for this episode of Triple R Teaching. For more educational resources, visit Anna at her home base, themeasuredmom.com, and join our teaching community. We look forward to helping you reflect, refine, and recharge on the next episode of Triple R Teaching.

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Alison’s books and other resourcesNEW BOOK! The Phonics Playbook From Sounds to Spelling phonics program Learning at the Primary Pond websiteAlison’s Literacy Clubs Alison’s Reading Intervention Collaborative membership

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The post How to differentiate phonics instruction – with Alison Ryan appeared first on The Measured Mom.

How to give explicit writing instruction in the primary grades – with Sally Bergquist

��TRT Podcast #167: How to give explicit writing instruction in the primary grades – with Sally Bergquiest

Sally Bergquist is an experienced teacher who has written an explicit, structured writing program for K-2. Listen to learn her tips for getting kids started in kindergarten, gradually building their writing skills throughout the primary grades, and finding the right balance between explicit instruction and practice with feedback.����

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Hello! This is Anna Geiger from The Measured Mom. In today's episode, I spoke with Sally Bergquist, an experienced teacher who has written a writing program for K-2 called Growing Writers. I know that understanding more about how to explicitly teach writing in the primary grades is a question many of us have. I get this question in emails quite a bit, "How can I get my students started as writers and then teach them writing explicitly?" We go through all of that in this episode. I know you're going to really enjoy it.

I also recommend that you check out Sally's website, Growing Writers. In the show notes I've linked to her website, her programs, as well as the research base that she has followed to create her program. A very special thing about her program is that she's developed it over many years as a teacher. She kept refining it and testing it with other classrooms. It's not just a quick thing that she put together; it is well vetted and well tested. I would encourage you to look at that if you're looking for an explicit writing program for the primary grades. Let's get started!

Anna Geiger: Welcome Sally!

Sally Bergquist: Hi! Great to be here!

Anna Geiger: I'm so glad you're here. We've talked over the years and finally found a time to really sit down and tease out all the complexities of teaching writing in the primary grades, particularly in kindergarten.

Can you talk to us about your teaching experience and what you're doing now?

Sally Bergquist: I had a lot of different experiences in my twenties and thirties, starting with work in infant and toddler daycare. I worked for Head Start, I did substitute teaching, I worked in a little alternative school, and then I ran my own preschool when my daughter was that age so I could stay home. Then in my late thirties, I thought I better get a teaching job that pays a little more and has some health insurance and retirement benefits. My daughter was starting first grade, so I got a teaching job and I stayed at that school for 24 years teaching kindergarten, first, and second grade.

In my first couple years of teaching, I saw things that I was doing that were not effective in writing instruction. I saw where kids were getting frustrated and I was getting frustrated, and I thought there has to be a better way to do this. There has to be a gradual way to teach writing where everyone succeeds.

So I started developing writing lessons and working out skills and sequences, basically starting out with how to teach handwriting. What works? Over the years I had many trial and error experiences as I went up through eleven years in kindergarten, seven years in first grade, and then six years in second grade. I kept adding on more skills and working out this sequence of what works, what's the right speed, what to introduce.

Now what I'm doing is I'm trying to spread the word about the importance of writing, and I'm also working on a book on how to teach writing in K-2.

Anna Geiger: Oh, that's wonderful! That is a very needed book, so you'll have to keep me posted on that.

Sally Bergquist: Yeah.

Anna Geiger: When we think about teaching writing and learning about teaching writing, that is just very hard. I know most of what we read out there is for kids who are already past writing a sentence or able to write a sentence, and there isn't a lot out there for kindergarten teachers and first grade teachers who are trying to figure out where to get started from the ground up.

There's also not as much research as we'd like to see. There's tons and tons of research for teaching reading to the littles, but when it comes to teaching writing, there's not a lot of research there. Why do you think that is?

Sally Bergquist: This is a really big reason I think, there's no urgency about it since writing isn't tested. Since 2002 and No Child Left Behind, one of the big mandates of No Child Left Behind is that reading and math will be tested every year. It's high stakes; schools get punished if they're not on track. I think there was a fair amount of writing going on in classrooms in the '80s and '90s. I don't know what years you were teaching.

Anna Geiger: Early 2000s.

Sally Bergquist: Yeah, there was a lot more emphasis on writing and time for it. As soon as No Child Left Behind came in, at least in my school and my state, all of a sudden writing was ignored. In the educational world in America, we base what's important on what's tested, so if something's not tested, it just goes away, and also there's no time allotted for it. Your district isn't going to say you have to spend this much time on writing because there's no incentive to do that; no one's going to care. You're not going to get marked down because your kids can't write. I think the research has followed that tendency.

Anna Geiger: So maybe the research is following the interest? It's following what people are really interested in learning about and that may not be-

Sally Bergquist: Yes! Yes, and the interests are often based on going back to what's tested, what's mandated.

Anna Geiger: Exactly.

Why is it so important to get writing instruction right from the beginning? Why do we need to take it seriously even in kindergarten?

Sally Bergquist: Well, I think we have to start with why is it important to be a writer to begin with? Why be a writer at all? Obviously we know the advantage of being able to read, that's really, really clear and obvious, but I think there are hidden advantages to being able to write. Writing and reading both by third grade, if you're not on track, the same thing happens in both of those skills. It's just that writing is more hidden and in the background, but kids are failing in writing right and left.

Anna Geiger: You said something that made me think that I hadn't really thought about before. What's interesting is that at the beginning, in early school, writing is a hidden skill if you're not being asked to do it very often. It may be that teachers may not know how well students can form a sentence or write a paragraph, but then when you're an adult and you're in the workplace, your boss may never hear you read, but they're definitely going to see the writing that you do, so now all of a sudden, it's very obvious.

Sally Bergquist: Exactly.

Anna Geiger: We also would all probably agree that we tend to judge someone's intelligence by their writing. If someone would communicate through work and not use complete sentences or use fragments or use poor spelling, that reflects on them for better or for worse. That's a really big reason to get it right, and we can't wait until the middle grades to suddenly teach writing; we've got to get started from the beginning.

Sally Bergquist: Yes.

Anna Geiger: Thinking about writing, I think when I was a classroom teacher, I taught third, fourth, and fifth grade first, and then first and second, and I did use Writing Workshop in all of them. That was what I had learned.

I think there are some things to be said for Writing Workshop, I definitely don't want to communicate that it's all bad or anything like that, but at least in the way that I was carrying it out, there wasn't a lot of explicit instruction. There was a lot of, you just need lots of time to do this. Let me just give you the time to figure this out, basically.

It was also a lot of assuming on my part - assuming that they knew how to form a sentence, assuming that they knew how to plan a story, or that they would just figure it out as they went along, versus really thinking about what are the foundational skills they need to get started.

I have so many regrets, so many regrets, but one would be just getting frustrated that a child just wasn't getting started, they just weren't doing it. I was like, why are you ... To me I looked at it as almost as a defiance issue, which shows how little I knew. I just didn't know the breakdown of all the skills that he really had to be able to do to get started. I couldn't see inside of his head. I knew that he could form letters and he could do some basic spelling, so I assumed he had what he needed.

You have created a writing pyramid to clarify all the skills that are involved in writing as well as to show what you believe should be taught as children progress. Can you talk us through why you developed that and a little bit about it?

Sally Bergquist: Yeah. Well, one of the things I learned as I went was how much needed to be broken down. I would try and do something with the class, and my barometer was always, how are the most struggling kids doing? I wasn't willing to leave anyone behind. I would come up with this lesson that I thought was just wonderful and I thought was small enough for everyone to get, and I would introduce it, and then I'd have hands in the air and kids stuck and it was like, wow, even that wasn't enough. I need to break this down even more.

The very, very first level is just simply things like staying seated and knowing how to work quietly. In kindergarten, you can't get started with writing until the kids have those skills because otherwise they're up, they're coming to see you, they're talking to their friend. We go through things like a pencil is a tool, not a toy.

Anna Geiger: Not a weapon!

Sally Bergquist: Not a weapon. Don't play fight with it!

We do simple drawing. I found that kids' fine motor skills really improved when I would teach how to draw really simple things, just shapes and things, even before starting handwriting.

I was all the time thinking about how are they going to be ready for the next step? What do they need to master to really be ready?

Even in first grade, I didn't give kids their writing workbooks until they could demonstrate that they could work silently for five minutes because otherwise I'm wasting time.

The first level is things like pencil grip, drawing, and the handwriting for sure, and even breaking handwriting down into round letters and tall letters.

The next level would be really getting more fluency now that they know how to write all their letters and they're hopefully going along with reading. They're learning about letter sounds so they can use that because writing and reading go hand in hand.

Then sentences come later, sentences and punctuation. I'm hoping that that will be helpful to some people and other people will look at it and see if it makes sense. Here again, it's one more thing that needs researching.

Anna Geiger: So if someone's a kindergarten teacher and they're starting out the year... Let's say they want to have their students maybe draw pictures and maybe, if they're able to, use some letters to label a picture, so the sun might be SN or something depending on what level of development they're at. What would you recommend for the teacher? I'm getting the impression you would not say to dive into that right away, so how do you get yourself to that?

Sally Bergquist: For the first maybe month or so before handwriting, just doing really simple shapes, simple drawing, tracing lines, doing a lot of hand and finger things such as Play-Doh. Some kids haven't done that at home. It's getting their fine motor muscles in their fingers going.

Anna Geiger: Basically you're saying to take some time, do some fine motor muscle type activities, and then build into handwriting.

Tell me how your program works. When do kindergartners start to actually draw their own picture and maybe label it?

Sally Bergquist: Drawing starts right away for sure, but labeling is a difficult skill. I think if I was to ask kids to label, I would be very clear about what that meant. Does that mean just the first letter of a word? How much are you expecting?

I would base success on where I thought that they were. I wouldn't ask for more than I thought they could do, so I wouldn't do it until I knew that enough of them would be successful at coming up with at least that first letter in a word. Then I would say just get the first letter of the word, so they're really clear about what it means. I'm not expecting more than that right away.

Anna Geiger: So at the beginning of the year, you're focusing on the fine motor, the drawing, the handwriting. Then you go into the writing, knowing that some students may be at that point where they can label the pictures, but you're not teaching this exactly or expecting it until you feel that more students can be successful. Is that what you're saying?

Sally Bergquist: Right, and the key word is expect. Kids can be labeling all they want if they want to label and they know how to label, great. But I wouldn't expect everyone to until a certain point, and then I would say, "I know that all of you have learned enough letters and sounds, you're ready to go, and today we're going to do something new and I want you to write a letter that the word starts with next to three things in your picture." I'm being really specific.

Anna Geiger: If you had to break down the lessons in your program in terms of time spent with direct teacher instruction and then students actually writing, how does that look?

Sally Bergquist: Most of the time is writing. Depending on the lesson, it would be anywhere from five to fifteen minutes, five being more kindergarten, and ten to fifteen as kids get into a little more complicated things.

The group lesson is direct instruction of a new concept, saying this is what we're going to do.

Then the majority of the time would be writing and giving feedback, because feedback is really important. I'm not sitting at my desk while they're writing. I'm walking around giving really explicit feedback about what they need to fix, and that's the teaching moment right there. Those are the teachable moments.

Anna Geiger: In the Writing Workshop model, we'd call those conferences. I know I've also heard the term butterfly conferences which would just be quick checking in, not necessarily pulling up a chair and spending five minutes, especially in kindergarten.

Can you maybe give us some examples of what that feedback might look like?

Sally Bergquist: Let's say it's first grade, and they're learning to take words and make them into a sentence and put punctuation in. I would give the words; this is in a workbook.

Anna Geiger: Okay.

Sally Bergquist: The words say, "my dad likes to cook he makes pancakes." How are you going to make that into two sentences? We probably have done some examples together. We're figuring out what letters would be capital and the periods.

Now this would be the part of the lesson that I would expect everyone needs to complete correctly. During that time, I'm walking around and I'm saying, "Oh, I think you missed a capital. Can you figure out where that would be?" I wouldn't say it right away. I wouldn't tell them where it is. I would say, "I'll come back in a minute and see if you found where that should be." Then by the end of that time, they've all done it correctly. That lesson doesn't end with some kids not having gotten it. That's really important.

I would also have a challenge they could go onto because some of the kids are going to finish that super fast and some of the kids are going to take a long time with it. It's going to be harder. I would have a challenge, a prompt, free writing, or something else that they go on to do. There's no, "I'm done." Everybody's writing the whole time.

Anna Geiger: You're having an expectation as to what they're going to write, at least at the first part of the lesson. Does this carry through the primary grades or is this more of a beginner thing?

Sally Bergquist: Yes, that carries through. There's always a skills lesson, and the skills lessons build on each other. So the lesson that we did one day, the next day is just going to be a little different, a little harder. It's not going to be a brand new thing. Then the day after that, it's going to be a little more so that the kids who have never written before they came to school... There's no opportunity for anybody to get lost.

Anna Geiger: Okay. Would you call this dictation, where you're telling them exactly what to write?

Sally Bergquist: No, it's more of practicing the skill that we've just learned. It could be handwriting, in second grade it could be creating a sentence with a when and a where and a conjunction. Maybe there are boxes where they fill in a when and a where and add a conjunction and add an end of a sentence, but it's not dictation.

Anna Geiger: Then, as the students are doing their spelling, I'm assuming the teachers are holding kids accountable for the spelling patterns they've taught them. How does that look?

Sally Bergquist: Well, with my program, they tend to generate a lot of writing in one writing lesson because there's the skills part and then they can free write or do a prompt, so it's impossible to fix all the spelling. I'm mainly focused on them getting the skill piece, and the spelling in the skill piece needs to be correct.

However, if I'm walking around and I see somebody misspelling the word "said" or "where" or "play" or a word that they should know for their grade level, I will definitely have them correct that. I would say, "Hmm. That's a first grade word. That's one of the words we've learned."

Some kids really won't write unless ... They stop if they don't know how to spell the word.

Anna Geiger: How do you handle that?

Sally Bergquist: I always say guess and go. I tell them to underline it. Underline the word that you know is misspelled, and I will come back to it when I'm coming around to your part of the room and I will write it out for you and you can change it. But for learning how to write, it's really important that kids get the fluency. They knew in my room, it's not okay just to sit and wait. You need to keep going.

Anna Geiger: Being stuck on having to spell it conventionally is a stumbling block for some kids. If they're committed to that, then they just can't move forward. There's also research that says that students benefit from using the sound spellings they know to use invented spelling or estimated spelling, whatever people want to call it. But I also agree that if there's a word that they should know how to spell, then you could stop and teach that to them.

Also, I think ... I know with one of my kids when he was young, he's 15 now, but when he was little and I was just doing writing with him at home, he would cry if he didn't know how to spell a word. I did the same thing, exactly what you said. I said, "Well, you can circle it in pencil really lightly, and I will come back to it later."

He was the kind of kid that would remember it after I told him, so it was useful actually for me to tell him. Teachers have to decide what's useful. What is this child going to remember from this? Or am I just telling them a string of letters to write?

Sally Bergquist: Yes. Yes.

Anna Geiger: There has to be some understanding there.

Sally Bergquist: Now, the other time that spelling would come in is if the writing was going to be a final piece. Some of the pieces of writing that they do would start out as free writing, and then we would have a project that we would do where they'd take one of those pieces and I would do some editing mostly for them, and I would fix the spelling. When they do their final piece, that spelling needs to be correct. That's the other time that the spelling would be corrected.

Anna Geiger: That's an interesting thought because I just gave an in-person spelling workshop recently and we talked about that. I had someone come up to me after and ask, "Can I put things up in the hall if the spelling is not conventional?"

I've always struggled with that a little bit because with the really young kids, sometimes asking them to rewrite their piece can be really, really hard. I think I've done both. Sometimes I've typed it with the corrections and they've illustrated it and then it goes in the hall, or I told her that something you could do is put their best work in the hall with almost a disclaimer like, this is how spelling works with young kids and this is what we're doing.

Do you have any thoughts about that?

Sally Bergquist: I tend to have kids do the right spelling if it's going to be a final product. Now I would feel differently if there's an ongoing thing in the hall every week. Some years I've had clips in the room where we're just constantly putting up new things.

Anna Geiger: It maybe depends too the length of the writing. If they're writing two sentences about a picture, maybe the expectation there can be we're going to fix all these words and copy them correctly. But if they've actually written a whole story, and oh my goodness, they've worked so hard to write the story, and then they have to copy it again, that can be a little-

Sally Bergquist: Yeah, I know. They hate that, but it really makes them proud at the end if they do do that. They're so proud. They have put so much work into it. I will say that I think grade level matters a lot in that too.

Anna Geiger: Yes, for sure.

Let's talk about quantity of writing. When I was doing Writing Workshop, I followed Lucy Calkins and all her recommendations. Of course we know that she's really off base with reading, and a lot of the writing too. There wasn't really a lot of explicit instruction in some of her lessons, and there was a big focus on just getting them to write - just write, just write, just write, just write. Versus let me teach you how to write. It was a lot of expectation that there would be a lot on the paper.

I remember when I started ... I don't think I followed Lucy Calkins at this point, but my first year of teaching I was teaching third, fourth, and fifth grade, and I had a third-grader who loved to write. He loved to write! I did Writing Workshop, and he'd just do pages and pages, but I could not for the life of me figure out anything of what he wrote! The handwriting was pretty bad, but also the ideas were so confusing. There was no connection. Even though he was technically doing what he was supposed to be doing, he was producing a lot of writing, looking back, I can say, well, what exactly did that accomplish? What was he getting better at? There has to be a line there.

What's your perspective on how to work students up to more writing and how do you decide when your expectation should change?

Sally Bergquist: There's a part of me that really agrees with the fluency piece that kids do need to write a lot, but I think they also need that skills lesson where they're not allowed to do that. The lesson has nothing to do with what they're writing about; it's more of an exercise. They get exercise. It's like if you're doing a sport, you do a warmup. You do drills. Or in math, you do drills. You learn your math facts.

With a kid like that, there would be certain times when you say, "Okay, your job is to write three sentences that..." (Assuming they're up to that level - the sentence level.) "That have to do with a time that you got wet or went swimming or something like that, and I expect periods and..." All the things that they're not doing. "I expect neat handwriting. It needs to be neat."

The problem is that some kids have never had to stop and do that, and so by that time, there's spacing, there's handwriting, there's so much. It's a lot easier just to have them acquire the skills along the way. Spacing is a skill that needs to be taught that makes it easier to read kids' writing. That's another thing in the writing pyramid that often is overlooked in early writing. You just assume spacing is easy.

Anna Geiger: I like your analogy there of sports where kids need to practice writing a complete sentence or maybe more than one sentence on a topic, and it's closely monitored and feedback is right there before we necessarily set them off to do it. Or maybe if there's time they can do it, but that may not be the focus. Our focus might be on helping them perfect those skills in the smaller activity, and then as time goes on, we transfer those expectations to the longer writing. Would that be true?

Sally Bergquist: Yeah, and the nice thing is that when you've taught something, then when you're going around and giving feedback, you can say, "Remember when-

Anna Geiger: Exactly.

Sally Bergquist: "Remember yesterday we practiced with this?"

And they can go, "Oh, right," and you're not going around trying to explain something that doesn't make sense to them or that they haven't practiced.

Anna Geiger: Yes, agreed.

This makes me think more about ... And I'm not going to promise to be an expert on Lucy Calkins' Writing Workshop program, but in some of the lessons I've seen and used, it was a lot of focus more on content than on foundational skills. Everyone talks about the small moment. How many small moments do we have to write about? It wasn't a lot of, like you said, going back and saying, remember when we talked about how to form a sentence? There wasn't much of that that I saw. Maybe things have changed, but not when I saw it. It's that assuming side again, assuming that they can write a small moment without all these foundational skills.

Speaking of foundational skills, I hear this question a lot. How do I teach kindergarteners to write a sentence? How do I even begin? What are your thoughts on that?

Sally Bergquist: Yeah. Well, I don't introduce sentence writing until they can write four to six lines of writing on their own. I think it's important to introduce concepts when children are ready to use them, otherwise a sentence is just a vague concept. They aren't ready to use punctuation until they can generate a certain amount of writing.

When most of the class can generate four to six lines of writing, which would equal several sentences, that's when I would say, "Hey everyone, you are writing so much. Now we're going to learn about where periods go." If they can't apply it to what they're doing, there's not much motivation.

Anna Geiger: That's interesting. I haven't heard of it being done that way. It'd be interesting to hear what other people think about waiting until they can produce a lot of writing, because, as you say, then it applies.

Sally Bergquist: Yes.

Anna Geiger: It applies to what they're doing. It's an interesting way to think about it.

Sally Bergquist: This also has to do with cognitive overload. Punctuation takes a huge amount of mental space to figure out. If kids are still not to the point where they can figure out a lot of sound spelling or how to just keep going with words on the page, now you're adding another layer. You're saying, "Now make sure you get all the periods where they go," while they're still trying to figure out what they're going to say and the words and the spacing and the handwriting. That's another reason why I wait, because it's adding a huge layer of mental burden, thinking burden.

For teaching how to write a sentence or what a sentence is, I start with picture cards - a who and a doing what. I don't start with their own writing. I start with them writing a sentence based on pictures, and they're silly. It has to be fun! All these basic skill things have to be fun, so the cards are funny. You might pick an octopus driving a bus or something, and then your sentence is, "The octopus drives the bus."

Then it's writing a sentence and then learning to add another sentence. A big mistake that kids make is when there's a pronoun coming up, they don't start a new sentence. "The octopus drives the bus she drives the bus to school."

Anna Geiger: A lot of adults do that too, actually!

Sally Bergquist: Yeah, that is part of the code to crack. I've found there are certain things that if you can crack them, it solves half the problems right there. So learning what a pronoun is, and then learning to look for did you start a new sentence? Then the rule is if there's a conjunction there, oh, it keeps going. If they know what a pronoun is and a conjunction is, right there, they've cracked a big code of punctuation.

Anna Geiger: So your writing program integrates handwriting, sentence structure, syntax, and grammar, all those things come together?

Sally Bergquist: Yes, when they're ready for it.

Anna Geiger: During the writing time that the students have, you've talked about prompts, you've talked about writing what they want to write. Do you have a preference for that? Do they always get to choose if they do a prompt or write on their own? And do you have strong feelings about the use of prompts?

In the past, I was always very anti-prompt, probably because when I was at school there was no instruction with a prompt. It was just the prompt was there and you were just supposed to write, there was no instruction. Maybe you can talk to me about that.

Sally Bergquist: Yeah, I think they're both really important. Some students will get stuck on one topic and they will write about that every day if you let them unless they're directed otherwise. But if kids have a prompt every time they write, or it's always a teacher-led activity with a final product, and it's always within certain bounds, then writing becomes something they're doing for someone else. They don't own it.

I think when we allow kids to write something just because they feel like writing about it that day, there are some really cool things that happen. As we get to know them better, we find out what's going on their lives and what they're interested in, and other kids in the class get to know them better, especially if you have a sharing time which I think is extremely important. I always had a sharing time as part of my writing lesson, because that's what writing is for. It's for sharing with people, so that's really cool. We get to know them better.

The other thing is that I discover hidden talents when I let kids write about what they want. I had a second grader who watched the History Channel, and he would write about these historical battles or historical castles or things like that and write about these facts, and it was amazing! The other kids in the class got to learn from his example.

That's the other thing, they get ideas from each other when they can do that. If somebody writes a story about a butterfly, as soon as you know it, the other girls are all writing about butterflies. I'm being a little bit gender-specific there, but that tends to be how it is. Or you find out who has a sense of humor. Some kids are just hilarious, and you just wouldn't have known if you hadn't given them that chance to write about what they want and introduce them to different genres.

Anna Geiger: Yeah. That is something I remember, absolutely, is that you really got to know your kids as writers.

As a mom now, a couple of my kids really enjoy writing. One of them is my third son, he's 12, and just this morning he was printing "The Daily Pickle," which is the newsletter he writes about our family. With six kids, there's always something going on. A lot of his stories are completely made up, and he's usually the hero, but they're very funny.

We could go on and on, but as I told you, I have to run so we'll have to wind it up, but I would like you to spend a couple of minutes talking about your writing program. I'll also be sure to link to anything you want me to link to in the show notes so people can learn more about it, especially your writing pyramid article and other things that you've summarized very nicely on your website.

Talk to us a little bit about your program, why you wrote it, and who it's for.

Sally Bergquist: Yeah. Well, I took twenty years to write it, seven years for each grade level, so there's been a lot of trial and error that went into it. I'm very proud of that because I think there's no program that you're going to buy that has spent that many years-

Anna Geiger: Being tested and updated, right?

Sally Bergquist: Yeah, and it's also been tested by a number of other teachers around the country. I tested it on other teachers in my school and district as I was doing it and got feedback. So yeah, it's just very complete. There's no doubt.

The teachers that have tried it have told me that it's so comforting because they can just turn the page the next day and it's like, ah, here's what I'm going to do. They don't have to plan over the weekend and figure out what comes next.

Teachers have also told me it's so nice because the kids know the routine.

Anna Geiger: Yeah.

Sally Bergquist: They can actually run it themselves. They know exactly what's expected.

That's the other thing I've found that's really important. The workbooks are the same, the lessons are different, but it's the same format. They relax into it. They relax into it because they know you're not going to be throwing something brand new at them all the time.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, there's a lot to be said for that. A lot.

Sally Bergquist: Yes.

Anna Geiger: I'll make sure to link in the show notes to your website and your programs where people can learn more.

Thank you so much for taking time to talk to me about teaching writing, especially in kindergarten. I know that's a hard thing for teachers to wrap their heads around, so hopefully we got into some practical weeds here so some people could see what this looks like in a real classroom.

Sally Bergquist: Great! Well, it's been wonderful. Thank you!

Anna Geiger: You can find the show notes for this episode at themeasuredmom.com/episode167.

I do encourage you to check out Sally's website, and particularly her program, Growing Writers. Just a note, if you're looking at it and the price seems too high for you, note that if you are a classroom teacher and your district will not pay for it, she does offer a discount. Scroll down and you'll see her email address where you can contact her for help deciding if the program is right for you.

Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you next time!

Closing: That's all for this episode of Triple R Teaching. For more educational resources, visit Anna at her home base, themeasuredmom.com, and join our teaching community. We look forward to helping you reflect, refine, and recharge on the next episode of Triple R Teaching.

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The post How to give explicit writing instruction in the primary grades – with Sally Bergquist appeared first on The Measured Mom.

How to understand education research – with Nate Hansford

TRT Podcast#166: How to understand education research: A conversation with Nate Hansford

Nate Hansford, author of The Scientific Principles of Teaching, equips teachers to discern whether or not a study is high-quality, and whether or not to apply its results to their teaching. We follow that by discussing particular pedagogies that research does not support. I highly recommend his book, which takes the mystery out of education research for busy teachers.

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Hello! This is Anna Geiger from The Measured Mom. In today's episode I interview Nate Hansford, a teacher and author, and his most recent book is called "The Scientific Principles of Teaching." In today's episode we talk about how teachers can evaluate education research, and then we go more specifically into things like balanced literacy and constructivism, things that we may have thought were supported by research but may not be. I hope you enjoy our conversation, and be sure to head to Amazon and check out his book. Here we go!

Anna Geiger: Welcome back, Nate!

Nate Hansford: Hi! It's really cool to be back on your podcast. I actually love being a returning guest on a podcast. I think it's kind of special because you get to know the host a little bit better.

Anna Geiger: When I talked to you a long time ago, I'm sure it was over a year ago, I had wanted to talk to you about research and how that works and how teachers can understand it, because that's something you've spent a lot of time on.

Now we get to talk about your book in which you really break that down for teachers called "The Scientific Principles of Teaching: Bridging the Divide Between Educational Practice and Research." I was able to get an advanced copy and read through it, and my notes are all over it.

I would love to talk about why you wrote it and what it's going to do for teachers. What was your goal in writing it?

Nate Hansford: I think my main goal was to promote teacher self-efficacy. I think we've been inundated by the celebrity model in education of, "I'm the expert, therefore you should trust my opinion, and everything I say is science and fact." We're in the science of reading movement now, and I think that's largely been a good thing, but at the same time, I think we're still kind of trapped a little bit in that celebrity model. There are a lot of celebrities in that space, and sometimes they do sort of say, "It's science because I said so." This is not to pick on any one individual person, but I think that's a dangerous idea.

I've heard some people defend it and say, "Well science is too complex for teachers to understand; they're not scientists. They just have to listen to trusted experts." I think that's really problematic because how are they determining who's the expert if they don't have any base-level understanding of science themselves?

So part of the goal of writing the book was to give teachers a very basic understanding of science, when it comes to social sciences at least, so that they can understand if the arguments they're hearing make sense from a scientific perspective, but it was also to give them a broad overview and summary of education research so that they would have an informed position or understanding when they heard new information.

The real goal was so that teachers could evaluate scientific claims themselves with some level of efficacy because I really think if we want to have an evidence-based teaching movement, we need to have teachers who understand evidence.

Anna Geiger: You've talked in the book about how there's this divide between educational practice and research. In other words, what teachers are doing may not be informed by research, or we think something is, but it's not. Why do you think there is that divide?

Nate Hansford: I think it comes right back to the same thing about celebrity culture. Even in universities, I think that exists. How many professors absorbed that Fountas & Pinnell/Lucy Calkins/Marie Clay model of reading instruction? Not necessarily because their research arguments were compelling, because they didn't really present a lot of research, but because the story they were selling sounded compelling. I feel like we've just been inundated with that for so long.

Look at learning styles. I think a lot of people in that evidence-based teaching perspective know that teaching to learning styles isn't really an evidence-based pedagogy or teaching method, and yet it was so popular. I live in Canada, and we actually put it into law. We had policies by the Ontario government saying, "You will teach to learning styles," and it was like every single program or class or course I ever took in education said, "You have to teach to learning styles."

In fact I remember thinking, even before I had learned anything about research, that there was just something about it that just didn't sit right with me. It didn't make sense in the sense that I get this boxed quiz personality test and I find out my personality, and then suddenly the teacher's going to know better how to teach me?

It just doesn't seem to make a ton of sense. If you're a musical learner and your teacher is teaching you via musical style, is that really going to be effective? Am I going to learn math via music? Does my music or math teacher need to make a rap about every single formula? It just seems so impractical and illogical.

Yet it was a very attractive idea to a lot of people, I think, because like a lot of pseudoscience, it hinges on a little bit of truth. I think that's what pseudoscience in general does; it takes a kernel of truth and tries to make it universal.

I think we all do learn a little differently. I'm sure somebody would debate me on that, but I think most people would accept that. We all have different strengths and weaknesses. There are definitely people out there who seem to be better at math than language, although I would even argue a lot of that might be coming down more to personal preference because they are actually similar parts of the brain where we learn that skill, but I think that little kernel of truth made people really willing to accept that idea of learning styles.

I think it's led to a big divide between what is popular in education versus what is evidence-based, and I've seen a tremendous amount of progress in that regard over the last four years.

When I first started talking about this and writing about this and blogging about this, I just felt like I was this one weirdo in the dark screaming out on the internet like, "Hey, everything that's popular is not backed by research, and everything that's backed by research is not popular!"

It's probably nothing to do with me, by the way, but it does really feel like a lot more people have come into this space and are having a lot of success. Shout out to Emily Hanford who did her podcast, "Sold a Story," on this very topic, a little microcosm of it at least, and millions of people listened to that podcast.

I think we've made progress, but I think we've got to be careful that we don't fall down the same rabbit hole. I do see people who are selling programs, for lack of a better word, and I'm not going to throw any individual under a bus, but they are trying to claim the science of reading is very specific to their topic or their program. I've heard people say this exactly, "My program is the REAL science of reading program." Whereas I don't know that you'd find too many real experts who would agree with that statement.

Anna Geiger: I think, first of all, it's this whole idea of understanding what exactly scientifically based research is, and what that even means for something to be research-based.

I know when I had my first balanced literacy course that I sold a number of years ago, I had somebody ask me, "My principal wants to know if it's research-based."

At the time, I was like, "Well, I think so. I mean, I'm doing it!" - it was a balanced literacy course. I was like, "Well, it's based on the work of Fountas & Pinnell and Lucy Calkins." That's what I told them. That's literally what I told them. My assumption was that they'd done the research and I was following in their footsteps, so yeah, it was. But I didn't even know where to go from that.

That's a really nice thing about the beginning of your book is it really lays out what exactly is scientifically based research, and you talk about all the little picky things that we need to know without getting too deep. You talked about effect size and things like that in a way that's very readable. I think teachers might want to read it a couple of times, but it's definitely very readable, which is great because when you first get your hands on a scientific study, it's very overwhelming.

There was a quote in a book I read, "The Reading Glitch," that said, "For most teachers, the idea of sitting with a research article is about as appealing as eating a bowl of cold sauerkraut," which I agree with, at least at first.

You show us things to point out, you show us things to take a look at, and you're also good at helping teachers see the gaps in the study or what makes a study unreliable, or maybe not as trustworthy as we might like.

Maybe we can talk about that, what are some factors that affect the quality of a study? Like people say, you can find a study to support anything, but that doesn't mean you're going to find a quality study to support anything. What are some things that regular teachers can keep their eyes out for?

Nate Hansford: The first thing I would point out is to identify what kind of research it is, because I would say 90% of research, and this is a rough estimate, I'm not citing an exact figure here, but I would say 90% of education research is either theoretical or a case study. That's problematic because those aren't really studies.

I think when people hear the word "peer-reviewed" or "in a research journal" or "this is written by a researcher," they assume that it's science, and that's not really accurate. There are so many papers that aren't REALLY science. Even the Reading Rope, and not to throw the Reading Rope under the bus, it's a great graphic, but I often see people's cite that as science. In fact, I've even seen reading companies cite, "My program is efficacious because of the Reading Rope."

I'm like, "Whaaaaaat are you talking about?" when I see that, because that's not a study on their program, that's a visual representation of a theory of reading instruction. You can't cite the Reading Rope as scientific evidence because it's not science, it's a visual representation of a theory.

One thing we can think about as the basic scientific model for all sciences is we that have to test ideas. We have to have experiments. In education, generally, the basic model of an experiment is that when we test, one group gets the treatment or the teaching method that we want to test, and one group does not. If you have a study that has a control group and a treatment group, you automatically know this is a real scientific study on teaching.

If you have a paper that's like, "We have one group of students," then that's a case study. It can be interesting and it can give us interesting data, but it's not really a hard science version of education research.

Similarly, if you have no case study and you just see a summary of their opinion, then you know again, that's more of a theoretical paper. A lot of things that get published in education journals are just that, either a case study or a scientific theoretical paper.

The basic study format is a treatment group versus a control group. That's the first thing to look for.

Generally speaking though, I don't think teachers should read individual studies unless there's only one study on the topic. Let's say you're thinking about adopting a program and you find out the company has a study on their website. Well then, it might make sense to read that study and get a little bit of understanding of it.

For the most part, it's something to avoid because education studies can show a really wide range of results. I've talked about this before. I think this leads to the myth of, well, science can't make up its mind.

I've talked about this before with the analogy of the egg. Everybody's heard on the radio or the news, "A new study shows eggs are good for you," or "a new study shows eggs are bad for you."

They're like, "Oh, scientists can't make up their mind!"

It's not that the scientists can't make up their mind, it's just that we see variability in science! So you have to look at what does the average result show. That's why looking at one study, especially the one new study, is really kind of useless for the most part, because unless you read every study on a topic, you actually don't really understand what the science shows on the topic.

Luckily, we have papers that summarize all of the research on a topic, and the best form of this, in my opinion, is meta-analysis because it'll tell you what was the average result.

As an example, I am submitting a meta-analysis for peer review on Reading Recovery. It's not published yet, but I did publish a summary to my blog. In that study, we found some Reading Recovery studies showed really, really positive large effect sizes. In fact, we found one study with an effect size over 3, which is enormous for Reading Recovery!

Anna Geiger: Right, that's crazy. Crazy.

Nate Hansford: And we found studies with negative effect sizes where the students who got the Reading Recovery treatment did worse than the students who did not receive the treatment.

So if I want to prove Reading Recovery works, I would just cite the study that shows the effect size of 3. If I want to prove it doesn't work, I could just cite the study that has a negative effect size.

That's why it really doesn't make sense for teachers to be reading one individual study unless it's the only study on the topic. If it is, then you've got to be like, "Well, that's interesting. We've got one study, but we need to see more research."

That's why, generally speaking, if you're a teacher, I think it makes more sense to read a meta-analysis that's going to tell you what does ALL of the research show instead of trying to read all of the studies for yourself or become super literate on evaluating the quality of individual studies and trying to pick out what's the best study on the topic, because that gets real complex real fast.

Anna Geiger: How can a teacher evaluate the quality of a meta-analysis? They're not all created equal either, are they?

Nate Hansford: No, they're not. There are tons of criticism papers out there of meta-analysis, and I will throw one little dig at the people who write those criticisms. I think usually when people write a criticism, it's because they don't like the results of a specific meta-analysis. They're kind of grumpy, and this meta-analysis proves something works that they hate or vice versa, it proves something doesn't work that they love, and they want to be like, "Ah, the real problem is the meta-analysis."

That said, a good meta-analysis should be only looking at experimental studies, studies that have a treatment group and a control group. When you look at meta-analyses that are done before the 2000s, and there are tons of them, oftentimes they included studies that were both, the case studies where it's just the treatment group and no control group. That creates really enormous effect sizes if you include those studies.

Generally speaking, if you do a meta-analysis, the first thing I would say to look for is did they exclude case studies? You go to the inclusion criteria section and you read the section that says did they exclude studies without control groups? If they didn't exclude studies without control groups, it's not going to be a very good meta-analysis, truthfully. There are some exceptions to that rule, but it's too complicated to get into in a podcast.

Another thing to look for is did they use a moderator analysis? I say that because a moderator analysis shows how results changed in different scenarios, because sometimes meta-analysis shows a pedagogy works or a teaching method works in one scenario, but not another.

For example, there was a growth mindset meta-analysis that came up last year, and it got criticized because they gave one effect size, and they didn't really have a good moderator analysis. They didn't show how does this change across different scenarios?

Anna Geiger: Okay, gotcha.

Nate Hansford: Looking to see do they have that moderator analysis is another key thing for me.

Then some of the really high quality meta-analyses will have even more advanced stuff like a regression analysis, or they'll include things like what were the results for standardized assessments, because studies that don't use standardized assessments tend to show higher results.

The more level of control, the more they've modeled what happens in different scenarios, what did different kinds of studies show, in my opinion, the better the paper is.

Anna Geiger: Your book tackles a lot of different pedagogies, as you call them, in education. For example, you talked about multiple intelligences theory and learning styles, and we talked about that a little bit previously. In general, what are some education fads that have been popular over the years or even currently that aren't based on science?

Nate Hansford: Yeah, I think obviously the big one that's going to come to mind for us right now is balanced literacy.

Here's a funny story, I saw Shanahan a couple of years ago write in response to an article I wrote criticizing balanced literacy. He wrote, "There's no such thing as balanced literacy." He didn't qualify it in any way, and I actually emailed him about it a couple weeks later and I was like, "What is he talking about? Obviously there's a thing called balanced literacy. I was taught all about it in university and all these teachers are teaching balanced literacy!"

But I think he's right. The reason I say that is because when I look at the definitions of balanced literacy and I look at the definitions of whole language, I can't tell the difference. I really think, truthfully, that balanced literacy is a rebranding of whole language.

I think the same could be said for science of reading. I think in a lot of ways science of reading was just a rebrand of systematic phonics, because with systematic phonics, the big criticism you got was that they're only teaching phonics. So we came up with this term of structured literacy or science of reading, and we're like, "No, it's not just phonics. It's other things too!" It was a good rebranding; I think it worked really well.

I think with balanced literacy they were trying to say, "Oh, we're not JUST teaching whole words. We're teaching phonics too, a little bit of phonics, a little bit."

The problem is that if you look at a whole language definition, they said the same thing because whole word instruction actually came before whole language instruction. It was just that they were teaching kids to memorize words. They weren't teaching phonics, so they came out with whole language and said, "We teach ALL of language, including phonics," and it's really all the same stuff.

We've been really having the same debate for 20 years, but truthfully, it's kind of been settled for 20 years from a science perspective, in my opinion. We know a systematic phonics approach, or a science of reading approach, or a structured literacy approach, whatever you want to call it, is more effective than a whole language approach or a whole word approach. That's the really big one out there right now.

I think another one that comes up a lot more in math is this idea of inquiry-based learning. You hear things like productive struggle or you hear discovery-based learning. Not in my current school board, but in previous school boards, I won't say any specific ones, I've been told things like, "Never teach the kids a math formula." I hear that all the time.

It was funny, I got in a debate on Twitter about that and somebody said, "Nobody's saying that."

Somebody angrily replied to them saying, "I'M saying that!"

I was like, "Okay, yes, there are people because this person's arguing for it," but there's no research to support this idea of never teaching formulas.

I think in a lot of ways, the whole language movement is really connected to this idea of not teaching directly, not teaching explicitly. It really is just like a reinvention of the same argument. We're really talking about explicit instruction versus implicit instruction, and, for the most part, research seems to support a more explicit approach over a less explicit approach.

I think the danger of having that discussion too is that we can get into this dichotomy of saying it's DI versus inquiry-based learning, and that's probably not true. There are probably incidences where we want to use inquiry-based learning and there are probably incidents where we want to use explicit instruction or direct instruction, whatever you want to call it.

We really need to find that balance. The term balanced literacy is actually not a terrible term. We do need to have a balance of things in our instruction, and we need to consider the holistic well-being of the kid as well as their academic success. But largely, we know that the more explicit your instruction is, probably the better the academic outcomes are going to be.

A lot of what we need to do in a classroom, I think, is balancing how do we make school a fun and engaging place, while also making it a place where they're going to learn a lot?

Anna Geiger: Yeah. Well let's talk a little bit more then about Chapter 13, which is constructivist teaching versus traditional teaching. Can you talk a little bit about the way you see the difference between traditional and constructivist teaching? How are they different? I know there's a lot of nuance in there in terms of things that are hard to tease out, so maybe talk to us about that.

Nate Hansford: Yeah, well it is incredibly difficult to talk about actually because there's so much complexity here and nuance.\

Constructivism was originally a learning theory that basically said learning doesn't happen in a straight line; it's going to be unique to every student, and their social experiences are going to impact it. There's some truth to that. How many people learned all of their learning in a specific sequence exactly as their teacher intended them to learn?

Whereas the traditional understanding of learning really came more from this idea of learning being linear - you learn step one, you learn step two, you learn step three, you learn step four - and your teacher gives that knowledge to you.

Whereas the constructivist idea was, well, kids are going to discover some knowledge. They're going to discover some from here, some from there, and they're going to really make their own understanding.

If I have to say which learning theory is better, I'd say constructivism, but then we get into can we teach based on a constructivist model and be like, "We're going to intentionally make our teaching non-linear and non-explicit," then it gets a lot more foggy.

This is a shout out to Corey Peltier who is always saying it's not supposed to be a teaching method, it's supposed to be a theory of learning. We had a whole bunch of teaching methods that were based on this constructivist learning idea, and to some extent, we can say this fits under a progressive model under education.

I kind of hate that idea because it phrases this as a left versus right thing, and I think that's a very dangerous idea. I don't want to politicize education. There are good ideas on the left about education and there are good ideas on the right about education. Which I hate to say because truthfully, I'm not very right wing, I'm pretty left wing, I'm pretty progressive myself.

But when we break that into a teaching method, it becomes very difficult to teach based on this linear step-by-step method.

Then evaluating it is even more difficult because, like I said, there's not one constructivist teaching method. It's like a hydra; it has ten heads and there are so many different ideas and schools of thought.

Here's a shout out to someone who I don't agree with, generally speaking. I've seen Dr. Sam refer to balanced literacy and whole language as a constructivist teaching model for reading instruction. I would actually agree with him on this point, that it's a constructivist approach to teaching reading. Where we would disagree is I would say that that's probably not a good idea, and he would probably say it is.

Some things included in that constructivist model include things like problem-based learning, discovery-based learning, inquiry-based learning. These are all just different constructivist models. Even some of these ideas like cooperative-based learning fit into this constructivist model too.

If you want to ask, is constructivist teaching effective, then you've first got to ask, well, which version of it? Because there are so many different versions.

Then you have to ask the question, in what context? Because okay, maybe discovery-based learning doesn't work, but does problem-based learning work, and does it work for a certain subject or a certain grade? Those are all very different questions. Phrasing things in this dichotomous lens is difficult.

I will say that this is one area where I think the media and education do a bad job of reporting on sciences. We often refer to things as evidence-based or not, good or bad, science-based or not. Generally speaking, it's probably more of a continuum of evidence. Does something have a lot of evidence, a little bit of evidence, or some evidence? Where's the context which makes sense?

Unfortunately I think it's really easy from a marketing perspective on all sides of these debates to just say, "This is the answer." Saying something really nuanced is not very sellable, it's not very marketable, because people want easy answers. I think we have to always balance being...

You and I are in a similar role. We're both teachers. We're both trying to communicate science to some extent to teachers. I think we fall into this problem where the more we simplify what we say, the more marketable it becomes, the more easy it is for people to understand, but the less likely that what we're saying is accurate. Then the more accurate we become, the more nuanced we become, the harder it becomes for teachers to follow what we're trying to say, the harder it becomes-

Anna Geiger: Yeah, that's all so true. That's so true. So what's the answer?

Nate Hansford: I don't know. I'll get back to you on that. I'm always playing with this balance, and truthfully, it becomes harder and harder for me because over time... I'm a teacher, but I enjoy research, and I've been dabbling a little bit more and more into research, and my understanding has been going up a lot over time.

I started this project really in 2018, and my knowledge is way higher today than it was in 2020 or even 2022. I find I want to talk with more and more nuance the more I learn, but then I always worry that I'm disenfranchising the people who want to listen to what I have to say the more that gets added to it.

I think you just have to keep that in your brain like, "Okay, I have to balance accuracy with people understanding what I'm saying. If I start to tell people about P values and confidence intervals in my conversation, I might lose them." But you might have to understand those things yourself if you want to understand these things on a deep level.

Anna Geiger: I think sometimes it's helpful when talking to teachers of different... Maybe for someone who's a beginner to something it helps to say clearly, "I'm simplifying this. There's a lot more to this. I'm going to give you the bare minimum." Sometimes that can help, I think. When I hear people say that to me, that helps.

Nate Hansford: That's solid evidence. I've got to keep that in mind.

Anna Geiger: One nice thing about your book is that you talk about all those different things, like there's a chapter on constructivist versus traditional, and at the end of each chapter you have summary points to remember, which I always love because they're very, very helpful. Then you have some reflection questions so teachers could talk together about some of these things.

You also break it down very clearly with research references. I don't have it right now, I just have all the pages printed from my printer, but when I get the actual book, I can see it as something that I can constantly refer to because I know that the evidence is listed there. I think it would be a resource for teachers where if someone says a particular thing is based on science, they can look it up and see what references you've shared.

What about teachers that want to stay current? I know you are unusual in that you really enjoy digging into research, and most teachers aren't going to do that or conduct meta-analysis. What's your best advice for teachers, because we've talked about how you don't want to just follow an individual, but at the same time, in some ways, we need to rely on people to translate for us because teachers aren't necessarily going to have the time to do that or the time to learn how to do that. What is your advice for teachers?

Nate Hansford: Yeah, I think I've got to give them a multifaceted answer, if that's okay.

Anna Geiger: Sure.

Nate Hansford: This book is actually a second edition, and I think it's a lot better than my first edition, a ton better, but evidence changes over time. There are so many things that do change over time, and my opinion is constantly changing on things. I recently wrote a blog about changing my mind about Reading Recovery three or four times.

I think one of the resources you can use, there's actually a website called Visible Learning MetaX where John Hattie has kept a database of all meta-analyses in education and he has them broken down by topic. You can click on almost any topic in education and then you can see how many meta-analyses have been done on the topic, and you can see what is the average effect size for them. Then you can see, if you look more carefully, you can see what is the context? What grades was that for, et cetera? That's a really valuable tool that's really quick and easy to use. Just go to Google, type in Hattie MetaX, and then look up the teaching factor that you want to look in. That's the simplest answer.

Now, there are people out there who'd be like, "Well, we can't just look at meta-analyses, you've got to understand deeper than just the one effect size." I think then it does pay to follow some people in this space. I think when you're choosing people, it helps if you have a basic understanding of research to know if what they're saying is true, because if you follow people and they say, "What I'm saying is true because case study X or because Scarborough's Rope or the Simple View of Reading," not to throw them under the bus, those are all theoretical things. They're not necessarily hard science.

I think when you look at people, you should be asking, are they citing research studies to prove their point or to support the point? I think that's really important.

I know you, Anna, you're a podcaster, but you're interviewing a lot of researchers in the field, so I think you have a really valuable insight as being a teacher who's talking to researchers in person on a regular basis.

I think finding these voices is really valuable. I think you're a good person to follow. I think Dr. Shanahan is a good person to follow. I was actually just funnily going through my book citations, and I think I cited Shanahan 27 times. John Hattie is a good person to follow.

I think just asking yourself, is this person citing research when they say something to support what they say? I think that's really valuable. At the very least, are they talking to researchers on a regular basis because I can think of a handful of podcasters in this space who also just constantly interview researchers, and I think that's also a valuable lens to look through.

If you don't want to do the research yourself, you have to find people who are actually staying up to date with the research.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, and even if the person you ask doesn't know, they could say, "Let me ask around." I have a professor that I reach out to a lot and she'll share some articles with me if I'm trying to find out if there's any research on a particular topic. Sometimes it's about who you know that can find things for you.

I think that what you said before was really spot on where if you're asking somebody about something and they try to cite something that's not an actual research article, then it's the wrong person to go to. Thankfully, as we know on Twitter/X, it's really a place to share these things, which was surprising to me a couple of years ago. As you start to follow people, these things start to come up in your feed and all of a sudden it's not history anymore.

Nate Hansford: I don't know why it is, but I find academics tend to be on Twitter more and teachers tend to be on Facebook more.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, Facebook isn't the place.

Nate Hansford: I've gotten some valuable information from Facebook over the years, but I feel like you do tend to get more opinions from the classroom on Facebook, and you tend to get more research cited on Twitter. I have no idea why that is. I think it's so weird that the academics have chosen Twitter and the teachers have chosen Facebook, but that definitely seems to be a thing.

I think another valuable sign is if someone says, "I don't know." You talked about that. If they say, "I have to look that up," that's a great sign. If people are like, "I don't know," or, "That's not my area of expertise," or were like, "I would have to look that up," that means they're being honest.

If someone's like, "I know everything about everything," that's a terrible sign because literally nobody knows everything.

Anna Geiger: I heard a presentation with Jan Hasbrouck at one time, who of course we know is really about fluency - she knows many things, but she talks most about fluency. She said something, I can't remember it exactly, but it was like, "Whenever someone asks a question about comprehension, I want to go hide," or something like that. She was just open about this not being her top area, and of course, I'm sure she knows a ton about it, but she recognizes that she specializes in certain things. Like you said, that's really comforting to hear. You don't want to hear somebody think they know everything.

Nate Hansford: I feel that way about assessment. People sometimes ask me questions about assessments, and I'm like, "Ooooooooh, don't ask me about that. Ask somebody else."

Anna Geiger: Yeah, for a lot of questions that people ask me, I have a list of places to send them to get the answers if I really don't know.

Thankfully, we can all keep learning, and your book is a great way to get teachers to feel like they're not completely in the dark when someone shares details of a study, that their head doesn't have to spin when they hear effect size. They can get the general idea of what that means. That's where we all have to start, is just become familiar with these basic terms and then we can start to be part of the conversation.

Nate Hansford: And I don't think it's that complicated. I heard this idea that, "It's too hard for teachers. They can't learn it."

I don't think that's true! I'm a teacher. I'm in a classroom every day. I don't expect everybody to have the same passion for research that I do, but I think it's kind of condescending and demeaning that we say, "Well, teachers don't need to know research." I disagree. I think it's pertinent to our jobs.

Anna Geiger: Well you're doing a great job of making this a thing that teachers can aspire to now that there's a guide basically to understanding research, and then the way you broke down specific areas. I'm really excited for your book to come out - for real. Now I don't remember, I don't know for sure when this podcast is going to air, but probably about the time that your book is coming out, so can you give us the exact date?

Nate Hansford: I forgot to look it up. I was starting to look it up. I think it's April 26th.

Anna Geiger: Okay, I could update that.

Nate Hansford: My conference is on that day too, so it might be just in my head like, "Oh, day of my conference, day the book comes out," and my brain's just confusing dates, but I do know it's at the end of April.

Anna Geiger: Okay, good. I'll update that when I add the ending to this.

Well thanks for talking about it. I'm really excited to get my hands on it, and I know a lot of teachers will be too!

Nate Hansford: Thanks for having me on your podcast again.

Anna Geiger: As it turns out, Nate's book is being released on May 7th, 2024, so head over to Amazon and get your copy, and you can find the show notes for today's episode at themeasuredmom.com/episode166. Talk to you next time!

Closing: That's all for this episode of Triple R Teaching. For more educational resources, visit Anna at her home base, themeasuredmom.com, and join our teaching community. We look forward to helping you reflect, refine, and recharge on the next episode of Triple R Teaching.

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The post How to understand education research – with Nate Hansford appeared first on The Measured Mom.

Teaching students to read longer words – with Dr. Devin Kearns

TRT Podcast #165: Teaching students to read longer words – with Devin Kearns

Dr. Devin Kearns explains why popular syllable division methods may not be the most efficient way to teach students to read longer words – and what to consider instead.

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Hello, it's Anna Geiger from The Measured Mom, and today I spoke with Dr. Devin Kearns, an education researcher who studies reading disabilities, including dyslexia. He designs and tests reading interventions and works with teachers and schools to implement them. He's also written a number of articles about helping students learn to read longer words, and that's what we're focusing on today. We discuss syllable types and syllable division, and what might be the best way to help students learn to read those longer words. Here we go!

Anna Geiger: Welcome, Dr. Kearns!

Devin Kearns: Thank you! Glad to be here.

Anna Geiger: We're going to talk today about polysyllabic word reading, which is something you're known for. You've written quite a few articles about it that people often refer to when trying to figure out what's the best approach for teaching kids to read those longer words.

Before we get into that, could you talk a little bit about how you got into education and what you're doing now?

Devin Kearns: Yeah, sure. My journey to education started with my youngest sister who had a hard time learning to read when she was little. When she was six and I was thirteen, sometimes I would do the twenty minutes of reading homework, and she really hated it for obvious reasons. It was hard for her to do.

Later, it became clear that one of the reasons she didn't know how to read well was because she'd been given inadequate, insufficient reading instruction. I didn't know that at the time, but her difficulty was part of what inspired me to become an educator.

I taught then, much later of course, in the Los Angeles Area Public Schools, and I was inspired through that because the schools that I worked in were low income schools. There was a lot of educational need, and I felt compelled to really help with that, it had a service orientation.

I taught in the schools for seven years, and my first couple of years I had a really hard time teaching kids to read. Again, part of the reason was that I hadn't been given good advice about how to teach reading, and so my students didn't learn to read very well.

That was why I then actually took a part-time job in my spare time. I worked three days a week in the evenings and on weekends with kids with reading disabilities. I learned how to use scientific principles of reading, the programs that had an evidence base, and I realized that the problem had not just been that I was a new teacher when my kids couldn't learn to read, but that I hadn't been given good advice.

After that, the outcomes for my students were much better, basically because I knew what to do, because I had been given the right instruction.

Those were the reasons then that I decided to become a higher educator. I wanted to help other teachers avoid the mistakes that I made, and I decided that the best way to do that would be to be a teacher educator. That's how I ended up where I am.

Along the way, I also started asking a lot of questions about the kinds of things that I did, that even though there were certain programs I used that had a strong evidence base, I sometimes wondered about certain parts of them and whether or not those pieces were effective. I wondered what things we were doing that might be optimally effective and what things could be even better, because as well as we're doing helping kids learn to read, there's always room for improvement, and there are a lot of kids who aren't getting better at reading fast enough.

I've always been interested to think about how can we do more for kids more easily and make this process better, so that's how I ended up where I am today.

Anna Geiger: If we go back a little bit, and you talked about how at first you didn't know how to teach reading and then your reading teaching improved, could you compare those two approaches? What were you doing before you really learned, and then how did that change?

Devin Kearns: I did a lot of exploration activities. We would do things with word sorts. I would have a baggie of slips of paper, or whatever, and the kids would sort them into categories. Then I would ask them to infer what the category was, which took a lot of language, a lot of them explaining, trying to tell me what the pattern was and them trying to infer that pattern, and it didn't work very well.

It also wasted a lot of time because, first of all, it wasted a lot of my time cutting those things up, and then when I didn't cut them up, the kids had to do it. Then we even had little books the kids would paste them in. I can't even believe the amount of paper that we wasted having kids cut these things up and put them in books. I feel like I kept the Elmer's glue company in business with all the glue that was wasted doing this. Basically it was really inefficient; the kids didn't learn enough, quickly enough.

I did a lot of let's just read books, and I would ask the kids to figure out the word for themselves, and I would pause for a long time and let them think about it and encourage them. I would try to come up with books I thought were high interest and things like that, all of which seemed like a good idea because I'd been told that those are the kind of things you do. You focus on motivation, you focus on getting kids to think about the words and use various strategies.

What was not clear to me is that what you need to do is help kids focus on the letters in the words when they're trying to figure them out. The letters have the answers, and that's what I hadn't been told.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, that's very similar to my experience. I definitely did a LOT of word sorting, and again, it was like I was afraid to tell them what it was, that I couldn't just directly tell them. They had to figure it out. That was the whole point. Yes, we pasted them in notebooks as well!

Devin Kearns: It's amazing, what a cultural phenomenon. We didn't teach probably in any of the same places, and yet we did the exact same thing. Isn't that wild?

Anna Geiger: Oh yeah, we must be about the same age.

You say "polysyllabic" instead of "multisyllabic," and so I used that in my questions that I prepared, but can you explain why? Is there a reason why you choose that word?

Devin Kearns: Yeah, I went back and forth on this a lot when I wrote my first big academic paper about long words. I had been doing a lot of academic reading about this, and if you look at the academic literature, it's split down the middle, polysyllabic versus multisyllabic.

The reason that I went with polysyllabic was that the paper I wrote that was my first big academic paper in a fancy journal was on polymorphic words that were also polysyllabic. I was trying to figure out which word was I going to use, and I was like, "If I'm using poly for morphemes, why am I not using poly for syllables?" They're also both of Greek origin and poly is more frequently used with words of Greek origin.

So I thought from there, "I'm just going to go with poly, because it seems more consistent, and about half the people do it," and so that's why I went with that.

I know it was a weird decision because it did sort of put me in the space of being the ONE who says that. You can always tell I wrote it if it says polysyllabic, although some people have started to say it now.

I don't really care, and sometimes I just say "really long words," just because it's easier and no one has to take a stand on which one is right. But I don't really care. It seemed internally consistent at the time.

Anna Geiger: Gotcha, gotcha.

You're often quoted when people are debating what we should do with syllable types or syllable division, and you probably know that.

Devin Kearns: Yeah.

Anna Geiger: Can you tell us, in your view, what syllable information is important for students to know?

Devin Kearns: Yeah, so first of all, kids have to know that words have syllables.

They need to know that syllables are anchored by a vowel, and in the case of reading a vowel, a letter. It's the idea that every syllable has at least one vowel.

Rollanda O'Connor, who's a researcher who studies reading and has done a lot of really successful interventional work in phonics, has turned that term into ESHALOV - Every Syllable Has At Least One Vowel. You just need to know the idea that every syllable has a vowel, or multiple vowel letters. One of the things kids need to know is that if they're going to break a word into parts, every part, every syllable, has to have a vowel, so that's the first thing.

The second thing they need to know is how to determine the pronunciation of single-letter vowels. When you have A, E, I, O, U, or Y by itself, without another letter next to it, it's not in a vowel team, it doesn't have an R after it, then it's hard to know what to say because there are really three options. There's the long sound, the short sound, and then the reduced vowel, the schwa sound. It's not easy to figure out which it is, and you need to know that there are three options.

You definitely need to know the long and the short. I don't know of any program that has conclusively shown that kids need to know the schwa sound per se, I'm not sure about that. What I do know is that if kids don't have a strategy for long and short, it's really hard to read words. Researchers who have studied reading interventions that have polysyllabic word strategies involved, long and short, have been successful.

What I add to that, kind of along the lines of syllable types, is the idea that if a vowel comes at the end of a word, it says the long sound, and if a vowel is in the middle of a word, or the middle of a syllable, it says the short sound. That is the same idea as open and closed syllables.

I've sort of concluded that we don't need to use the term open and closed, because it's extra information that kids don't need. But they do need to know that there's a reason that a vowel letter might be long or short, and so they can look at those, and they can determine which one it might be.

Then they do need to know that at the end of a word, if you have a final L-E, it says the /l/ sound. What people call the stable final syllable, or consonant-le, that's a very consistent pattern in English, that the L-E says /l/ at the end of a word, so that's helpful for them to know too.

Those are things they definitely need to know about syllables.

Anna Geiger: One thing I've heard you say before in presentations is that the one thing you want people to walk away with is NOT to use the open/shut syllable house with the doors. Can you explain that a little bit about what your issue is with that?

Devin Kearns: Yeah, so the syllable house is a technique for helping kids remember the terminology of open and closed and the sounds that go with open and closed.

For the uninitiated, the syllable house idea is that when the door to the syllable house is closed, the vowel is closed in and has to say the short sound. When the house is open, when the door is open, the vowel's at the end of the syllable and can say its name, can go outside and say its name. I guess it's free to shout its name kind of thing, and so it says the long sound. That's the strategy.

The reason that I don't think that's a good idea is that it's a form of meta knowledge. I was describing this yesterday in a presentation, it's like double meta knowledge. Meta knowledge is knowledge about knowledge.

What would be really important to know about long words and about single letter vowels is that there's a predictable way to determine the pronunciation of the vowel. The idea of open and closed is that you can determine the pronunciation is short when the vowel is in the middle or at the beginning, and it's long when it's at the end. That's been given the term open and closed, but the terms open and closed aren't really necessary.

It has a linguistic base. There is a reason that we use these terms like open syllables, they're called tense syllables. When the vowel's at the end, it's a tense sound, and it's related to linguistics. When it's in the middle, it's a lax sound. Open and closed are terms in linquistics that people use in association with the tense and lax distinction, but it isn't necessary for children to know that.

I cannot think of a reason kids would need to actually know that they're called open and closed syllables, except that you're trying to give them a way to remember that the vowel has the long sound or the short sound. That's the idea.

So the question is, why do they need to know the term open, to know it's long, and closed, to know it's short? That's meta knowledge, that's extra stuff to know about the pattern that isn't actually necessary. So that's one thing.

In my judgment, it's adequate to say it's a long vowel syllable or a short vowel syllable. It has a long sound, it has a short sound, it doesn't need another name.

Now, as an aside, I'll say vowel team syllables or whatever, those are often also long vowel syllables, so you'd have to come up with the idea that if it's a singular vowel, it's a long vowel syllable and so on.

I say that only because I know skeptics will tell you that I'm wrong, because I don't know about this... I know a lot about syllables and sometimes I have to say these things so people know I actually do know what I'm talking about.

That's one level of meta knowledge, knowing open and closed.

Then there's a second level of meta knowledge, the house itself. The house itself is an extra form of knowledge, which is saying you have to understand this idea of this house. The idea of understanding the house is to help you understand the terminology open and closed, which then allows you remember the pronunciation of the vowel. It's like two layers of extra stuff that I think isn't necessary.

I will be clear, it's well intentioned; I don't think people are doing it just to make kids' lives difficult. That's not what they're doing. People think they need to know this stuff, that they need to know this in order to help them understand open and closed, and open and closed are really important for understanding how to read long words.

To one extent, I agree, but it just takes it so far to a point that's not necessary.

Anna Geiger: What would you say about the other syllable types? Are you in favor of teachers teaching, for example, long vowel patterns, and then having them read lists of words with those long vowel patterns? You would maybe say that you don't need to teach them that these are vowel team syllables, just teach them to read words with those patterns. Would you agree with that?

Devin Kearns: Yep, that's exactly what I'd say.

Anna Geiger: I know some people would say that there is no such thing as syllable types. Lyn Stone calls them zombies; she says there really aren't syllable types. But then many, many people also will say there are, so I am confused by that a little bit.

Do you think that they exist? Is it useful for teachers to know the syllable types?

Devin Kearns: I think it's useful for teachers to know that that's a concept that exists, but here's an example of how the idea of a syllable type is a problem...

One question is how many syllable types are there? People argue whether there are six of them or seven of them. There's the digraph syllable, which covers vowel teams, and then you have the diphthong syllable, which covers /ou/ and /oi/. However, some people who tell you that don't acknowledge also that every long vowel is also a diphthong, /��/ /��/ /��/ /��/ /��/. They're diphthongs too. The /��/ is really the only one that's not so much of a diphthong, but the rest of them are diphthongs. So if that's the case, then why aren't we calling them diphthong syllables also?

We have this other category placement, which is a digraph category, which also doesn't really work, because then we have things like I-G-H, and unless you're going to say the G-H is silent, and the I is an I by itself, which I wouldn't, I just put them all together and say it's one pattern, well, that's not a digraph anymore. That's a trigraph. So are we going to call that a trigraph syllable? I think the problem is that you end up with these increasingly complex divisions and so on.

English is what they call a quasi regular language. There are lots of things in the phonics system in English that work well. Really, the consonants are easy to figure out most of the time. They're pretty predictable, not all of the time, but often the consonants are predictable. Vowels are less so, and that's what makes it more quasi regular.

In English, everything is going to resist saying that it is always this sound; it is always this way. That's true of language in general, but it's particularly true of English. For Finnish and Bosnian and other languages, they are really transparent. In Finnish, when the vowel is longer, they put two of it.

Anna Geiger: Oh, nice.

Devin Kearns: For example in the word aakkoset, it says /��/ at the beginning, and there are two A's to show it's not akkoset, it's aaaaaaakkoset.

But in English we don't do that all the time, and a lot of it is just historical. So I think it's helpful to understand the idea, but it's helpful to have a nuanced understanding too which is that, "Well, yes, those are diphthongs, but these other things are diphthongs too." I think, generally, my feeling is that it's helpful.

I think it's even helpful for teachers to understand syllable division, even though I don't recommend teaching it, because it's in the ether and there is some consistency to it in certain circumstances, so I don't think it's a bad thing to learn about.

Anna Geiger: Let's talk about that then. In Orton-Gillingham type programs, there is very specific syllable division. Anyone listening that's familiar with those programs knows how those work.

When I first started teaching first grade years ago I was definitely a balanced literacy teacher, and the program I was given to teach was Saxon Phonics, and I didn't like it. Now, I didn't have any belief in explicit systematic phonics instruction, so I'm sure that definitely got in the way, but I was also overwhelmed at the time by the very, very exact syllable division strategy. I thought, "Is this really worth our time? This is so many steps."

I wouldn't say it was as extreme in my Orton-Gillingham training, but there was a lot, and it took 15 minutes of our lesson for just a few words. "Let's look. Let's label all the vowels. Let's look where to divide them. Let's label the syllable types. Now let's sound it out. Now, of course, we have to adjust it for the schwa."

Like you said, they are extreme, and it is good for teachers to understand how words are split up, but maybe you can talk about... I know you've talked about percentages and how these aren't always very reliable. Maybe you can speak to that.

Devin Kearns: Yeah, so in terms of those division patterns, there are two kind of primary ones. The first one is the VC/CV, and the vowel is divided between the consonants, and the first syllable is closed and the vowel is short, so it's a short sound.

That's pretty reliable actually. In the study that I did of this, it was 79% of the time that you divided a word with that pattern and it worked. 79% of words all followed the rules. 15% of the time it didn't because of the schwa sound, so it didn't truly violate the rule. Then for some other ones, it was something like the A says /��/, rather than saying /��/ or /��/. So for the most part, the VC/CV one works the way it should; it says the short sound.

The second major one, the V/CV one, is not very reliable, particularly for the letters A and E. If you're trying to guess the pronunciation of a vowel letter, you're trying to figure it out, and you do the V/CV, that does work more than half the time for A, I, O and U. It does work more than half the time in two-syllable words. It works less than half the time with the letter E, and that is when you get rid of the schwa as an option.

When you add in the schwa, NONE of them work more than half the time. That's not true, for the U it actually is pretty reliable, but the rest of the time we don't know which it is, right? And that's with two-syllable words! If you add in words with more than two syllables, it's an even bigger a mess.

Basically, it turns out that for the V/CV, it's really unreliable. It's very hard to tell what the pronunciation is going to be of that vowel before the consonant, so it doesn't make a lot of sense to teach kids these really detailed rules, because they don't work as well as we'd like them to.

Again, I think teachers should understand that there are these ways you can do these kinds of things. I think it's interesting. I know for me, I had never been taught that. I didn't have Saxon Phonics, I didn't have anything like that. We had Literature Works, and as far as I was concerned, it didn't.

I first learned about this when I had Orton-Gillingham type training, and I was mad! I was like, "Why didn't anybody tell me this before?!" But then over time, just like you, I spent so much time doing it, and it was really laborious, and I just thought, "Do we need to be doing this?"

That's why I started to study it further and found that actually maybe not so much.

Anna Geiger: I think that can be a little upsetting when teachers say, "Okay, well, I finally have this thing that I think works, but half the time, or whatever, it doesn't work, so I have to tell the kids, 'Well, sorry, it doesn't apply here.'"

What hope do kids have? What can they do?

Devin Kearns: Two things about that. One is that, and I'm going to say something that sounds really counterintuitive, it's possible that teaching them something that doesn't work that well is maybe not a bad idea, which sounds funny.

Let me explain it further. Now this is particularly true, I think, for older children or for adults. I have this great quote from a paper in Annals of Dyslexia that involved an adult with dyslexia. The quote basically says that, "Not until I learned syllable division was I able to read." That's basically the message from this adult, really making a strong case that this stuff is essential.

I think the idea is that even though it may not work all the time, it gave this reader, this person, a way to get started. It gave them some confidence that there was something that they could do.

Edward Fry of the famous Fry word list, he talked about some of these patterns that we teach kids as their tools just to get people started. As long as you have some confidence that you can figure it out, then you can start down that road.

There's a reason to do that, and that's why I think teachers see benefits for kids. I think that's why teachers find that some kids like it and some kids respond to it. It does give them confidence, and when you're teaching it, you give them lots of examples that do work, especially to start, and then you give them the ones that are more complicated later, and so they can build some confidence that they can understand the system. Even though it doesn't work perfectly, it kind of gets things going, and so that's one thing.

There's a reason to say that in the end it's not a terrible, terrible idea to do it. It's certainly better than a strategy that doesn't involve looking at the letters at all, which is what the old picture strategies and so on involved.

So I'm not going to say that syllable division has not helped children. I don't think that's true. I think it probably has helped a lot of kids, but I always say this, "Is it possible if you had done something different, could the kids have done just as well or even better?"

What I recommend is a flexible division strategy that doesn't involve the application of these very strict rules, and it just gets you out of some tricky things.

There are backup syllable division rules for all these things! So for a word like chicken, it's a C-K, so you have to divide it after the digraph. Now we have an extra thing we have to do, and if you don't have that rule, literally kids can divide it after the C-K, if we don't have a rule. Then as long as it looks okay and they say, "Chick," and then, "en," it's fine. But if you don't have that, then there's a long list of things you have to add to it. That's again because English is quasi regular.

Simpler is better. Also, it's faster and it's more likely to be something kids can do when they read.

Anna Geiger: How would you explain a flexible syllable division strategy?

Devin Kearns: Yeah, the first thing I said already is that they need to know... Let's talk about single letter vowels. It's a little bit easier if it's not those. If it has a single letter vowel, the first thing you do no matter what is to... You can mark the vowel, so put a dot under the vowels. You don't need to put a V. I always try to think about what's the simplest way we can do this? Then mentally, once they have learned this, they can do it in their brain. I have them put a dot under the vowels, or sometimes if it's a vowel team, I'll have the kids underline it, or if it's a vowel-R, or something like that.

You mark the vowels, and then you know that you have to have at least one vowel in the syllable, so you divide it so that there's a vowel in each one.

The idea is that you divide it between the syllables, and there isn't a specific rule about how to do that, as long as the parts look okay.

For example, say your word is describe. You can't do D-E-S-C-R, because S-C-R doesn't occur at the end of a syllable, right? But it could be D-E-S and then C-R-I-B-E, des/scribe, even though people would say, "No, no, it's de/scribe." It really doesn't matter because of the schwa anyway, actually. You can break it up in various ways, multiple of which are correct, and then, if the result isn't a word, then you try it the other way.

Let's take the word major, for example. If you break it up after the J, and it is true that J doesn't occur at the end of syllables, but really, as long as it sort of works, it doesn't really matter. It can be flexible. So if you have the J at the end, now the A is in the middle, and we know that if a vowel is in the middle then it's a short sound. We can call it a short vowel syllable, or we just know that a vowel in the middle is a short sound. That's maj.

If you use a little card to divide it up, or use your finger, then take away the second part and you have or, so we now have maj/or. We blend that together, maj/or, maj/or, right? You have to turn the /or/ into /er/, because that's the flexibility part of this too. That's what phonological awareness is, having the flexibility to turn it into language that actually makes sense.

Then you adjust that and you say, "Okay, well, that didn't work, I need something else." That didn't work, meaning I didn't locate a word in my brain that sounds like that.

So then I switch it. Now I cover up the J, and now it's M-A, ma/jor, ma/jor, ma/jor, ma/jor. Yes, that's a word, and I can keep on going.

That would be the strategy to do something like that, and that does depend on knowing the word, the target, at the end.

If you don't know it, there are two things. One is when you're teaching kids phonics, it's a good idea, for the most part, to teach them words that they are a little bit familiar with.

The second thing is that if they don't know it, and they do it and their answer is wrong, but they don't have to say it to anybody else, like it's a brand new word to them, like a name or something, it doesn't actually matter if they say it wrong in their brain because there's nobody else to say it to anyway. The only problem is it can result in some embarrassment when you say it one way in your brain, and then later you say it out loud and everyone's like, "No, it's not Yosemite National Park, actually it's Yosemite."

Besides those situations, you should always be linking to the lexicon, finding the word in your brain that it's linked to.

That's the strategy, it's much simpler, AND something you can use easily as you're reading.

Anna Geiger: That's a hard thing to accept, I think, that they can't always land on the right word unless they've actually heard it before, but that's true with both ways, that's true with the syllable division, the very picky syllable division, and the more flexible stretegy like you said. That, of course, points to the importance of reading aloud to kids and getting them familiar with as many words as we can.

Do you recommend for a second grade teacher, or maybe a late first grade teacher who's teaching kids to read polysyllabic words, do you recommend making that a specific part of their phonics lesson, for a certain amount of time every day, and you just have a list of words that you practice with?

Devin Kearns: Yeah, it always just depends. I think that kids need strategies for reading long words. The reason that I started studying it was because nobody did it at the time. Yeah, I think that giving kids time on those kind of strategies is a good idea once they've gotten down a lot of the fundamental concepts about monosyllabic words.

You can have kids practice with polysyllabic words, even if you aren't teaching strategies for reading them. I know there are certain Orton-Gillingham based programs that do that, even before they've taught syllable division and all that. They'll teach things as though there are two syllables, like Wisconsin, even without dividing it up, you can see there are three.

Anna Geiger: So starting with those more regular ones.

Devin Kearns: Yeah, exactly.

Anna Geiger: The predictable ones.

Devin Kearns: Yea, the ones where you can look at the parts, or whatever, simply. Building in opportunities to practice reading words like that is a good idea. The more strategy they have to read long words, the better, especially after first grade, because basically once you hit grade two, almost all of the new words kids learn have more than one syllable. More than half of them that they learn will have more than one syllable.

Anna Geiger: I can't remember, I think it was from Louise Spear-Swerling, where she talked about how when you decide to teach your students some kind of syllable division strategy, like the one you said, even simple with the dots and the lines, that it might be four to six weeks of ten minutes a day or something like that, until they internalize it. That's like what you said, the point is that when they get to longer words, they don't necessarily have to get out their pencil and mark it up, but they've seen that words are predictable, and that there's a pattern in there. It's not just something they have to just guess at.

Devin Kearns: You got it.

Anna Geiger: Maybe we can close out with talking about morphology a little bit. I think you've written about that as well. Does that help kids with learning disabilities learn to read longer words? And if it does, how should that instruction be carried out?

Devin Kearns: Morphology is really valuable for teaching kids with reading difficulties. In one of my first big studies, the one I mentioned before, I decided to compete morphology against letter sounds. I thought really the power is in the instruction of letter sounds, and if you look at the way kids process words, we're going to find that they're tuning into the consistencies of the letter sounds.

My study was to ask, "If kids know all the letter sounds in these words, can they read them, versus if they know all the morphemes in the words, can they read them?" I was convinced it was going to be the letter sounds that mattered, and it wasn't true. It was really the morphemes that made a difference.

If the kids could read the morpheme, they could then read the whole word, which in retrospect is pretty obvious, because morphemes are bigger pieces, they're bigger chunks. That's what makes them powerful is that they give kids a bigger chunk of letters that they can use, so it actually helps break up the word a little bit more easily. You don't have as many little pieces you have to break it into, and you can give students strategies that allow them to do that.

There are so many polysyllabic words are also are polymorphemic that it actually can reduce the size of the reading problem dramatically. If you think about one of those made up long words like antidisestablishmentarianism, it's actually not that hard to read if you find all the affixes, and most of the parts of the word are affixes. If you can give kids a strategy to do that, it actually reduces the size of the reading problem.

For some kids with really severe reading difficulty, some of the phonological practice that we give them is very hard for them and doesn't seem to get easier very quickly. For those kids, having a strategy that allows them to think in bigger chunks so that they don't have to do as much phonological manipulation, that's a really, really good thing.

Teaching kids affixes is so helpful - to pronounce them and know what they are, but particularly for the purpose of phonics, knowing how to pronounce them and then recognizing them in words, finding them.

Some programs where kids circle them, I think that's a fine idea. Then you can break it apart, and you can get the base or the root word, or the root, whatever terminology you want to use, depending on what it is. Root would be not a word, like aud in audible, or whatever, base word being an actual word. You get down to that base word or that root, and then you can build it back together. So, aud, and then ible, audible, and so on. That would be a strategy that would be really helpful for students to do that.

Some people have done language play things where you can add on and take off different affixes, and that's in some programs too. Those kinds of strategies where you basically can look at affixes, and then sometimes manipulate those, can be really helpful.

Really the key is to help kids identify affixes, and then use those to peel them off. There's a strategy called peeling off where you peel them off of the word, find that base, and then put it back together. It can be really helpful for kids who have phonological processing difficulty.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, I was just going to mention that because I remember reading that, and maybe it was in one of your articles, with the peeling off idea. It also takes that attention away from having to label each section. So for the A-U-D, you wouldn't have to look at that as a diphthong syllable, or whatever you'd call it, it's just the root that you've learned to read, and by that point they should be able to do that.

Is there anything else that you'd like to share before we go? Would you like to talk about Phinder or anything else, or any projects you're working on?

Devin Kearns: Yeah, well, since you mentioned Phinder, I'll talk about it. I created a website a really long time ago now, where people can go to find words for phonics lessons. So if you're trying to remember A-I words, and you cannot think of a single A-I word right now, but you have to teach a lesson on it tomorrow... This is what happened to me because when I taught at a clinic, they were tutoring lessons for kids one on one, and so I was always like, "We're doing A-I tomorrow and I can't think of words."

I made this website to help people do that. It's pretty helpful. Actually, one point of pride is that UFLI, which most people know now, that manual, they actually used Phinder to find a bunch of the words in UFLI.

Anna Geiger: That's great.

Devin Kearns: Yeah, so that's one thing.

The other thing I want to say is, in all the syllable stuff, it's gotten a little heated, but I want to make sure that a few things are clear.

One, we are on the same side. The people who were upset with me about this, we are on the same side. I believe in systematic, explicit phonics instruction to a really great degree. The reason that I am making these points about syllables is not because I want to give anybody a hard time.

I would really like to not have to say anything about Orton-Gillingham programs that is not positive, because it's so much better than the alternative. Data doesn't support every single thing about these programs, but it is absolutely the case that things are evidence-based on the whole, and they are. Several Orton-Gillingham programs have positive effects, that's been shown to be true over multiple studies. Orton-Gillingham as an approach has decent effects overall. They're not dramatic, but I think probably because it's hard to write your own program, which is kind of what you have to do.

In general, those programs are not bad, but they have in them some strategies, and this one is a pretty big piece of it, but it is important to know that it doesn't have a great evidence base.

I didn't decide to do this because I wanted to make it difficult. I just wanted to think about whether or not this is actually worthwhile.

What I want to put to the folks who sort of disagree about this is that everyone on that "team," so to speak, believes in the science of reading. At least we say we believe in the science of reading. That's the moment we're in, where people say, "I believe in the science of reading," and a lot of those same people are people who teach syllable division.

I also believe in the science of reading, but if we're going to believe in the science, we have to be scientific about it, which is to say that if the science doesn't take us in the direction that we want to go, then we have to challenge our preconceptions and basically say, "Actually you know what? That is not strongly supported by science," so that we're willing to accept new information and challenge our own beliefs.

If we don't do that, then we're going to "lose" in the science of reading debate. For people who are sort of the antagonists in this, it's easy to poke holes in the science of reading if it's evident that science of reading people are not being scientific. That's the danger we face, is that people aren't willing to face their own preconceptions and accept that maybe they're not right. If that doesn't happen, then we're easy targets.

That's why I started doing this was because I don't want to be that person. I don't want to be stuck in a situation where I'm having to say to myself... I'm basically lying to myself in order to support a viewpoint.

I just want to actually make a plea to people who don't agree about this stuff to think about the idea that we need to think scientifically.

I don't think all of the evidence is against syllable division, and again, as I said, these Orton-Gillingham based programs have positive evidence, so I don't want to say that they don't. I just want to challenge people to think about, if you want to win the science of reading war, then talk about science and believe in science.

Anna Geiger: Also teachers don't have to feel like even though they might appreciate a particular program, they don't have to be convinced that every single piece of that program is the best way. There are other things to look into, and not every piece of any program works for every child.

We can start in the same understanding that we need systematic, explicit phonics instruction, but how to carry that out can look different depending on who you're working with.

Well thank you so much! Are there any other future projects you're willing to share?

Devin Kearns: Well, right now I'm doing a lot of work with schools and teachers on data-based decision making, actually, so how to help teachers make really good decisions about what individual kids need. To your last point, not everything works for every kid.

In this project, what we do is we tell teachers, "Start with a program and teach it with fidelity." That means if it's an Orton-Gillingham based program that involves syllable division, do it as designed, because these programs do have evidence.

Then we evaluate the data. Every six weeks we come together after teachers collected weekly progress monitoring data, and we look at student performance.

Then what we do is we make adaptations. We actually change the program, but we're not doing it just because we think it's a good idea. We do it systematically based on data, and it's a big gear shift for teachers to basically say, "Hold off, don't make changes yet, look at the data and look at the data regularly."

We're teaching teachers how to do that, and it's really exciting! It's a lot of fun for me because... We're teaching teachers how to do this at schools, and I just love to go and listen to teachers talk about their kids, and look at the data for the kids, and figure out what can we do to help this kid better. It's really fun to do. It's so much work for people to figure out, but we've created some tools to make it easier for people.

Our project is running right now just in Connecticut. If you have Connecticut colleagues, we're looking for partners for our next year's project. Soon we'll have a website and free available tools to help teachers to be able to do that.

Anna Geiger: Oh, exciting.

Devin Kearns: That's really exciting coming up. Yeah, so it's going beyond just the program itself and into how do we make adaptations, and I really like that work.

Anna Geiger: That's wonderful, and that's what teachers really need help with these days is figuring out what to do with the data, and how to use it to help students.

Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate talking to you!

Devin Kearns: Yeah, it was really fun! Thanks for giving me the opportunity to share these things and asking these really good questions. I hope that people come back and ask you questions and email me questions too, and I want to continue the conversation. We're all hopefully on a similar side, so I want to meet people where they are.

Anna Geiger: Awesome. Thank you.

You can find the show notes for today's episode, including a link to Dr. Kearns' program, Phinder, at themeasuredmom.com/episode165. Talk to you next time!

Closing: That's all for this episode of Triple R Teaching. For more educational resources, visit Anna at her home base, themeasuredmom.com, and join our teaching community. We look forward to helping you reflect, refine, and recharge on the next episode of Triple R Teaching.

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Contact Dr. Devin Kearns Find him on X (Twitter) Email: devin(at)devinkearns(dot)comPhinder Use the Phinder tool here Articles written by Devin Kearns (and others) Teaching world and word knowledge to access content-area texts in co-taught classrooms The role of semantic information in children���s word reading: Does meaning affect readers��� ability to say polysyllabic words aloud? The Neurobiology of Dyslexia Helping Students with Dyslexia Read Long Words Why Children With Dyslexia Struggle with Writing and How to Help Them

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The post Teaching students to read longer words – with Dr. Devin Kearns appeared first on The Measured Mom.

How to teach sentence comprehension – with Nancy Hennessy

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TRT Podcast #163: How to teach sentence comprehension – with Nancy Hennessy

When our students struggle with comprehension, it may be that we need to go all the way back to the sentence level. In this episode, Nancy Hennessy discusses many different ways that teachers can help improve students’ sentence comprehension. You may want to take notes!��

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Hello, this is Anna Geiger from The Measured Mom. In today's episode I got to speak with the wonderful Nancy Hennessy, who has written "The Reading Comprehension Blueprint" and co-wrote "The Reading Comprehension Blueprint Activity Book." She really is an expert on all things reading comprehension, which is so helpful because, as we know, comprehension is so complex it's hard to break down, and she really does that very well.

In today's episode we narrow in on sentence comprehension, talking about specific ways you can help students understand sentences. As Nancy Hennessy quotes Cheryl Scott in this episode, sentences are the worker bees of the text. When we're trying to get students to understand text, we often have to narrow it down to the sentence level, and this episode will help you do that, so let's get started!

Anna Geiger: Welcome, Nancy!

Nancy Hennessy: Thanks so much! I love this opportunity. You're doing such good work.

Anna Geiger: Thank you. I'm so pleased that you joined me to talk about reading comprehension, but before we get into that, could you talk to us about your history in education and what brought you to what you're doing now?

Nancy Hennessy: Well, first and foremost, I'm a teacher. I began as a teacher of children and adolescents, and now primarily I work with adults, with other educators learning together. I worked in public school for many, many years, everything from the classroom to the central office, regular and special education.

Along the way I realized that when I was a special ed teacher at the middle school, I didn't know how to teach those boys that were in my class how to read, so I connected with what was then the Orton Dyslexia Society, which became the International Dyslexia Association. I became the president at some point in time, along the way making many friends and learning so, so much from the researchers and other practitioners. Ultimately I became one of Wilson's lead trainers a number of years ago, and I have some background in Orton-Gillingham as well.

Along the way, certainly continuing to work with teachers, teach teachers, and ultimately connecting with Louisa Moats and becoming one of the original group of national trainers, then having the privilege of working with her on the second edition module that had to do with comprehension.

That really launched my interest. Up until then, many people I think would describe me as "the decoding queen" because of my interest and my passion for making certain that young people and adolescents learned how to read. But I began to realize how deep comprehension, and as I was leaving public school and retiring, I began to really focus on comprehension.

I developed a full day training, The Blueprint, and as I worked with teachers, as I consulted with educators in schools, they kept asking me, where's your book? And I kept saying, what book? I'm not writing a book. But eventually I did write a book.

I continued to work with educators. I've certainly developed workshop courses primarily focused on comprehension, and of course, most recently I co-authored an activity guide to go along with The Blueprint.

I think first and foremost, I want people to know that I'm still a teacher, that I truly believe we all learn together and that we all need to continue learning. It is our work.

Anna Geiger: That's very interesting that you started out, like you said, "the decoding queen" with all of your Orton-Gillingham training and everything, but then you went off in a different path as a main focus, which is a blessing to teachers because there's a lot out there for us on decoding, but not as much on comprehension.

I think, like what you said, it's so complex and you've managed to distill it, or summarize it, in your Blueprint. So can you walk us through what The Blueprint is exactly?

Nancy Hennessy: Sure. All right. Stepping back and thinking about the science always informs what it is that we do, so what is it that we knew about comprehension?

We could turn to several different models. We could turn to that wonderful visual metaphor, the Reading Rope. As I began to dive more deeply into that, I realized that not only is comprehension complex, but we have to acknowledge all of the language processing skills that go into comprehension.

I began to think about a framework, and that's what The Blueprint is. It's a framework, it's a master plan. It is not a unit organizer or a lesson plan. One can derive those from The Blueprint, but it is a framework that reflects really those research models with a focus on language comprehension, the importance of developing oral language early on, and then thinking about how one goes about translating.

The Blueprint provides a scaffold structure for educators. It begins by asking educators to think about what are their goals, what is the purpose? It identifies the need for content goals. If we think about what's the ultimate goal of comprehension, it is to learn. It is to gain knowledge. It is to use that knowledge in our lives to participate fully. It's thinking through what are the critical understandings, what's the knowledge that you want students to take away?

Then what are the literacy goals that we need to put in place in order to accomplish that? Processes equal quality products. It's thinking about vocabulary, sentence comprehension, knowledge, that includes text structure knowledge and background knowledge, and then the ability to work at these different levels of understanding including imprints.

The Blueprint provides direction in terms of what are the critical contributors, how do you go about designing and delivering instruction, but it also provides educators with some sense of what are the questions they need to ask themselves in terms of each of those different components of The Blueprint.

For instance, with vocabulary, what are the words we need to teach? What should we intentionally, on purpose, teach? How do we go about doing that? What do we need to do in terms of developing independent word learning strategies and so on? The questions that go along with those contributors really come right out of the literature as well.

It's very much based in the science and hopefully provides an opportunity for teachers to think through the curricula, because it's curriculum agnostic, and the programs that they're using, and to be thinking about what is it that our students need? What does the curricula or the program provide? Where else do I need to supplement and enhance my instruction so that all of my students are able to read with meaning?

It's quite complex. I love what UCAT says about comprehension. It is not a single skill, it's not a strategy. It involves a broad range of skill and knowledge, and I think we have to keep that in mind.

Hopefully it's helpful!

Anna Geiger: When I think of your Blueprint, what I love about it is that you focus on the content first, not like many of us did in our balanced literacy days where we picked a strategy and that was the focus. We would say, well, our goal is that our students learn to compare and contrast. Whereas your goal might be for students to learn the difference between frogs and toads or whatever they're reading.

What I like about The Blueprint too, I think, is that it provides basically things for teachers to consider as they're about to teach a text. I don't remember learning very much about how to teach comprehension except for to ask questions, and the book really dives deep into things like syntax and things that we don't give a lot of thought to, because as good readers and comprehenders, we may not know what's going to trip our students up. Your book helps teachers figure that out.

Nancy Hennessy: Yeah. I think one of the things we have to step back and think about, and certainly the RAND Reading Study Group kind of provided direction for us, is what is it that goes into the making of meaning and then this ability to walk away with this overall understanding of what it is that you've read? When the reader comes to text, they really have to be thinking about what are the ideas that the author has provided for us? The author does that initially through the use of vocabulary and syntax sentences. Beyond that then how do those ideas link up? How do they connect with one another, that cohesiveness that's so important? Then what's the knowledge that we have to integrate?

I don't mean to say this in a sequential way because this is really very much a recursive process, but what's the background knowledge, including our knowledge of text structure, that will allow for us to go deeper, to go beyond the surface of the text, and then what do we walk away with?

All of that connects back to these different components of instruction, and knowing your students, knowing what your students need, what they're bringing to the text, and what the text demands is particularly important.

Anna Geiger: Like you said, there's just SO many things that go into it. There's text structure, there's vocabulary, etc.

I thought today we would zero in on sentence comprehension because I think that's a tricky one for teachers to really look at a sentence and know what about the sentence is tricky. I thought we'd talk about some specific ways to build sentence comprehension, and maybe we could start with why it's important to break down an individual sentence for students and why teachers haven't maybe done this traditionally.

Nancy Hennessy: Well, I think that the program and curricula that perhaps we've used in the past have been very focused, as you said, on strategy. We've not thought about all of these different levels of language processing that are necessary in order to make meaning of the text.

One of the individuals that I've turned to in the past in terms of her work is Cheryl Scott, and she talks about the fact that if in fact we're not able to deal with the complex sentences that we find in academic text, and that begins with read-alouds, if we can't deal with that, no amount of comprehension strategy is going to help us out because the sentences really are the worker bees of the text.

Then Richard Zipoli points out for us the fact that we really don't attend to this in curricula or program, so how can we expect our teachers, our educators, to be thinking about this? We have an emphasis on vocabulary and background knowledge, which is very, very important, but the reality is these things are all interconnected. They work, as the Reading Rope would tell us, in concert with one another.

Thinking about, again, Cheryl Scott's words, the sentences are the worker bees of the text, one by one they add up to the gist.

Anna Geiger: That's very interesting.

Nancy Hennessy: Yeah, we have to be thinking about can the students not only pull out the meaning of the words, but can they understand how those words work together in order to convey an idea? Those idea units, we successively aggregate those as we read, and that's what allows us to walk away with an overall understanding.

Anna Geiger: One of the activities that's becoming popular for helping kids learn about sentence structure is sentence anagrams where you have the words all mixed up and they put them together. I think too often kids just get those and then they're just supposed to do the work without any guidance. Can you give some tips for how to get students started with those and how to support them as they do them?

Nancy Hennessy: Yeah. Well, I think even prior to working with the anagrams, if we can just back up a little bit, I think one of the things that has to happen is we need to begin to teach students how we build sentences. That happens somewhat, I think, when we're teaching them about writing. When we teach them about the parts of speech, the phrases, the clauses, and so on, the building blocks of sentences, there tends to be a focus on form. What I would call form is their names, noun, phrase, clause, independent, dependent, and so on. There tends to be focus on form instead of on function. What do they do in terms of meaning?

We begin, first and foremost, with teaching them where's the who in the sentence? Oh, that's a noun. Where's the do? What's happening? That's a verb. Where's the which one? What kind? Explicitly teaching that and giving them opportunity, modeling that, even through sorts and so on, through organizers, structured organizers.

Then when you give them the words on cards, scrambled sentences, you can say to them, all right, look for the do words, look for the happening words, find the verbs. You can make the connection then to the label, to the form. Now go and see if you can't find the who words or the what words that connect to those do words and any describers, which one, what kind, how many, where, when, how. Using questions that connect back, I think, allows for them to use anagrams. I think anagrams can be very powerful.

The other thing I would say is, I think sometimes when teachers begin to think about instruction, they think about this as separate from the text. It needs to be from the text. Again, choosing sentences from the text to work with. I think that's particularly important. Sometimes we need to modify the sentences a little bit, dependent upon where the students are at. I always talk about fidelity with flexibility here.

At the same time, I think it's very important not to make this an isolated activity. The integration, I think, with the current curricula, with the program, is particularly important.

Some steps would be capitalization and punctuation, look for that first. That's a good clue. Now look for your verbs. Now look for your words that connect your who or your what, your nouns, your describers. Then look for those words that link up, that connect up, like your conjunctions, your prepositions.

To do that, they have to understand how those words actually convey meaning. In the words of Louisa Moats, a sentence is a linguistic frame in which these categories of words kind of slot in, and we have to understand how those words contribute to the meaning.

Yeah, anagrams can be lots of fun, but there's some instruction that has to happen in order to use them meaningfully.

Anna Geiger: When I think of teachers getting started with those, in the primary grades they might be reading a text and then afterwards they put the words of the anagram up and they work together with the class. I like the idea of starting with a verb versus the noun, and I think we might think we should start from the beginning of the sentence, but nouns can appear in many places in the sentence. That may not be the smart place to start, but we know that the verb kind of anchors it. Thanks for explaining that.

Let's talk about questioning. So you have talked about having a sentence, perhaps from something that you've read to the students, fiction or nonfiction, and then you're looking at the sentence and you're asking questions about it. Could you walk us through what that would look like?

Nancy Hennessy: Sure. If you took a sentence from... Let's say you're working on a unit that has to do with personal identity, and we're working with little ones maybe in first grade, and we're reading "Chrysanthemum." We might have read that aloud to them, dependent upon where they are with their reading skill. We would be modeling for them, having them listen to the sentence.

Here's a sentence from "Chrysanthemum," because I pulled one so we'd have an example, "On the first day of school, Chrysanthemum wore her sunniest dress and her brightest smile."

Now if we've directly taught them about the who and the do words and the which one, what kind, how many, and when and where, we could go back and we could use the phrasing, "Let's listen again to the sentence, 'On the first day of school.' What question does that answer? What does that tell us about Chrysanthemum? Oh, that tells us when this happened, on the first day of school. Who's this about? Who wore her sunniest dress? Oh, Chrysanthemum did. What did she wear? She wore her dress. What kind of a dress is it? She also wore her brightest smile. What kind of smile was that? Her brightest smile."

It's just working through a sentence, and pulling a sentence that perhaps is a little longer as students work through the grades, but even beginning with read alouds, the sentences are complex. They're long, they may have phrases, clauses, embeddings within them, and we need to kind of parse them for the students, separate them out into these varied components.

The other thing that I often think about as they move through the grades is using a structured organizer. It looks a lot like a sentence frame. It's got a column for the who or the what, a column for the which one, what kind, how many, and so on. As they're capable of reading, we can give them the words on cards.

An example might be something from "The Founding Fathers," which is expository text. It would be more like sixth or seventh grade. We could give them varied words and we could have them do the sorting. The reality is once they do this sorting...

Here's a sentence, "The founding fathers are a group of men who were key figures in initiating American independence from Britain and establishing American government." That's a pretty long sentence, and that's what begins to happen as they move through the grades, the sentences are more dense, there are more ideas, they're longer, again, they have more embedding.

Pulling out words, having them sort words, putting them into structured organizers, and even saying to them, can you make a sentence now from this, orally and then perhaps in writing, begins to allow for them to deconstruct these more complex sentences that they encounter.

It begins early on though, it has to start with those read alouds early on. As we're developing that word recognition capability with decodable texts we also need to be reading to them these texts that are age and grade appropriate and parsing and modeling for them how we can work our way through the text with questions.

Anna Geiger: A nice thing about this activity too, taking the sentences apart, is it doesn't have to take very long and this can just be part of your routine. After you read aloud, you pull out a sentence. Building up over the year, that's an incredible amount of experience they've had working with sentences.

I know about what you said too, when you see what kids have to read in third grade, like with my own kids, and then I see their fifth grade social studies book, it's a big leap!

Nancy Hennessy: It's unbelievable! Cheryl Scott and then Richard Zipoli, they talk about the fact that we've got these long sentences. We have sentences where sometimes the who is separated from the do because of embedding, sometimes it's active versus passive voice. We have to be aware of all that. That's what our children are going to encounter if in fact, they're going to be able to work with texts that go beyond decodable.

By the way, we can use decodable text as a base for building this understanding as well. We can reinforce with our decodable as we are developing these language comprehension capabilities. I always talk about intentionally teaching and incidentally on purpose teaching. It begins early on.

Anna Geiger: Can you talk to us about another strategy in your workbook called Picture Prompted Generation?

Nancy Hennessy: For Picture Prompted Generation, the examples in the activity book really come from my co-author, from Julia Salamon, who is currently still working in school, and so it has that connection to students that's so important. She particularly likes using pictures from the Library of Congress, National Archives, and so on, but always, always connected back to what it is that you're reading.

I know one of the examples we have in the book is a picture of the pioneers moving westward. We would be reading "Westward Ho," for instance, and different texts, both narrative and expository text, but we'd be using a picture to begin to talk about the experience, and what one sees within the picture, and then the construction of sentences.

I think what's important is we're always thinking about not only understanding the sentences that we are reading pulled from text, but we're also thinking about how we can compose sentences based on our own understanding. It's this integration of reading and writing, and visuals are a wonderful way of doing this.

I think we also have an example of one for sentence generation, and it happens to be the Wright brothers. Of course I live right here in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, so I'm very familiar with Wright Brothers National Park. But again, it would be connected back to thinking about the texts that we are reading, why they were pioneers, for instance, and always connecting it back to a big idea of critical understandings.

Then thinking about can we use a picture of the plane taking flight? Perhaps we can provide a prompt then, a kernel sentence, and this is very frequently something that's done in writing instruction, explicit writing instruction. The picture then helps to prompt both oral, to talk about it orally, and then the written component.

Questioning is very important, structured organizers are very important, pictures are very important. There are a variety of strategies that we can use to help students parse the sentences.

Anna Geiger: Pictures are so useful even in the primary grades, right? Like you said, the oral language is so important.

Nancy Hennessy: Oh, absolutely. I think we have another picture that has to do with puppies. Sometimes our critical understanding might be revolving around animals, the treatment of animals, the characteristics of animals, and so on. Even just taking a look at these puppies as we read stories about puppies and generating some language around that.

I can't stress enough this connection between oral and written language. I mean, we can't be forgetting about that.

Yes, in the early grades we're developing those word recognition skills. If we know the Reading Rope, we're developing the lower strands, but at the same time we have to be focused on those upper strands as well. Then throughout the grades, giving students opportunity to have conversation about what it is that they're reading and then moving to their writing.

Anna Geiger: So start with that oral sentence building and then move to writing when they're ready to do that.

One thing you talk a lot about, and one thing I read a lot about when it comes to syntax and things, are phrases and clauses, and I think a lot of teachers don't know the difference. I have to remind myself! How does that come into teaching kids, and when do we start being explicit about phrases and clauses?

Nancy Hennessy: Well, I think we can begin to be explicit early on. Even as we're doing read alouds, we can be talking about a phrase that describes a who or a what or a phrase that describes what's happening.

"The little boy," that's a noun phrase, "ran quickly," that's a verb phrase. Again, focusing on function first. "What's that telling you about what's happening? Oh, he ran. How did he run? He ran quickly."

Phrases have everything to do with a group of words that work well together. They don't have both a who and a do, they have either one, and I think that's important, but they answer the same questions really as parts of speech. That sort that I was talking about, even word cards, you can put phrases on word cards and you can have students begin to do the sort, or you can do that orally with them. I think you can begin early on.

The thing is we have scope and sequence for writing, but we don't have scope and sequence for comprehension. The reason is because the texts that we're reading don't follow a scope and sequence. Oftentimes people will say to me, where's the scope and sequence for comprehension? It isn't there, it isn't there.

As much as possible, we should try to align what it is that students are learning about in written expression, but it doesn't always totally match up. It may call for a stopping for a moment and doing a little bit of pre-teaching and explicit teaching so that students are able to work their way through.

I will say this, if I were thinking about a sequence in terms of sentences, I would start always with the parts of speech. Look at how those words convey function, move to phrases, and then clauses.

Then of course, clauses have both the who and a do, so we need to teach them about that. There are varied types of clauses, and so we can start with whether it's independent/dependent, that type of language, but it gets a little tricky when you get into the upper grades, like a relative clause. In that "The Founding Fathers" quote that I just read to you, "who were key figures," is a relevant clause.

We have to keep thinking about what it is that's being introduced in written expression that we can connect to and what's not. We do some mini lessons then so our students are able to parse those sentences.

Anna Geiger: So would you say the point of learning about phrases and clauses is to understand their function within a sentence?

Nancy Hennessy: Always, always, always. Because within a clause, you're going to find, for instance, you'll find a who and a do, whether it's a subordinate clause or not, or a dependent clause, whatever we want to call it. What's really important, though, when we teach clauses, is we need to teach those signal words, and we need to directly teach the meaning of the signal words.

That comes into play when you begin to talk about complex sentences. Oftentimes, again, in written expression, we're teaching students about those complex sentences and what those conjunctions mean, but we need to carry that over into comprehension and remind our students that those are signal words. They're telling us something about the text, and of course, and some of them are very specific to expository text.

Anna Geiger: When I think about the phrases, and like you said we can start very young, it might make sense when teachers are doing sentence anagrams with young kids to maybe have a noun phrase on a card and a verb phrase on a card.

Nancy Hennessy: Yes! They absolutely could do that. That's a very good idea. They absolutely could do that. That would be a nice way to start for them.

Anna Geiger: Let's move into types of sentences and when and how to teach them.

Nancy Hennessy: Okay. Again, if we begin to think about scope and sequence for written expression, we know we begin with simple sentences, but that's not going to really be the case when we are reading academic texts. So yes, we want students to understand, first of all, that simple sentences convey an idea, but even that gets complicated when we begin to talk about, well, how many whos are there and how many dos are there?

I think we have to think about this in a systematic way and pull sentences again from our text and have some conversations about how many who's do you see here? How many do's do you see here? How many what's? Then thinking through and teaching them that, again, when we think about complex sentences, we're going to have one thing that depends on the other, and what's the word that signals that? What kind of relationship is it signaling? Is it signaling time? Is it signaling that there's something connected, additive? That's the simplest one, and time is not so difficult, but when you get into "because" or "although," that becomes more difficult.

That is somewhat developmental and sequential and we should understand that about our students, even though we may find those types of signal words early on in even read alouds.

Then of course compound sentences conveying again, how many ideas are you looking for here? You can separate them out; they're independent of one another.

Those are sort of key things to be thinking about so they understand the logical relationships that occur within the ideas in those types of sentences. Again, it is not so important to me that you teach them that it's a simple compound/complex sentence. It's more about how many ideas are we looking for, and how do the ideas relate to one another?

Anna Geiger: You talked about signal words, and I think one of the great ways to work on recognizing and understanding how signal words connect parts of the sentences is through sentence combining and expansion, which I think are getting a lot of attention these days. Can you talk about those?

Nancy Hennessy: Yes. Well certainly when we think about sentence combining, there is a scope and sequence for that. It's Bruce Saddler's work and he gives us a very nice sequence. He begins by saying to think about combining adjectives and adverbs, for instance. That's the very first thing he talks about.

I often think about, can we pull sentences from the text? We can also modify them a little bit. For instance, if we're reading "Tuck Everlasting," a lot of fourth and fifth graders read that, you could say, "We know one of the characters is Winnie, and we know that Winnie felt afraid and she felt disheartened, but those are represented in different sentences in the text. How would one combine that? Oh, Winnie felt afraid AND disheartened. We're using that little combining word, that word that signals combination or additive."

Then of course, we can look at some of our other texts, particularly expository text, and there will be other types of signal words that we see there that will allow for us combining.

When one looks at his scope and sequence, you begin to see combining compound subjects, predicates and so on.

The other thing about those signal words, and this is kind of interesting, is they're also cohesive devices. What do I mean by that? Well, one of the ways that authors combine ideas or integrate ideas within the sentences or between sentences is by using what are called cohesive devices. They fall into two categories, one is conjunctions and sometimes prepositions. It's the tying up of ideas. If we say something like, "when this occurred," well "when" is a signal that we've got some time going on here and it's going to connect up with the rest of the sentence.

Here's another one, "When the grasshopper found itself dying of hunger, it saw the ants distributing..." and it goes on. That's obviously from a fable, and what it's signaling to us is there's a connection here between when the ants were distributing and what happened when the grasshopper noticed this, so that's a tie-up.

The other type of cohesive - making things coherent, organized, hanging together - would be what we call cohesive ties. The most popular one among that would be pronouns. So again, "When the grasshopper found itself dying of hunger it," who's "it"? Oh, it's the grasshopper. We can find lots of examples of that.

We also use synonyms and substitutions. If we went to, "The founding fathers are a group of men." Who's a group of men? Oh yeah, it's the founding fathers. That's something that's very difficult for struggling readers, by the way. Some readers that are more proficient get that, struggling readers usually don't. We need to directly teach that, explicitly teach it.

Anna Geiger: A good way I've seen to do that is where you have a text that you're reading, a complex text you're reading with the class, and you have yours displayed so that everyone can see it. You're identifying those cohesive ties and then having them circle and draw back to the word or phrase that it's connected to.

Nancy Hennessy: Yeah, that's right. That's right. I've seen teachers actually do that. They take varied text, whether it be something that's narrative, expository, a newspaper article, and so on. It's that coding. Oftentimes I'll talk with teachers about coding. You can underline certain things, you can circle other things, and so on. Yeah, that needs to be taught directly, explicitly, and in a systematic way.

Anna Geiger: You've really helped us narrow in on sentence comprehension which is such, I think, a hard thing to wrap your brain around. Thank you for all those examples. Those were super helpful.

I want to give an encouragement to anyone that is listening to make sure they check out your book if they haven't already. "The Reading Comprehension Blueprint," which talks about everything reading comprehension, but also sentence comprehension, and then your activity book, which you co-authored and recently, very recently, published, which gives really specific examples for teaching these skills across the grades. I highly recommend both.

Nancy Hennessy: Thank you so much. I greatly appreciated the opportunity to talk with you. I love talking about sentence comprehension!

Anna Geiger: I can tell!

Well thank you so much. People can also find you online. I'll be sure to link to as many workshops as I can find on YouTube, but I know there are a lot that you've given that people can check out to learn more, and there are other podcasts you've spoken on as well. Thanks for all you do for teachers!

Nancy Hennessy: Thank you for all that you and your colleagues are doing as well.

Anna Geiger: Thank you so much.

Nancy Hennessy: Bye.

Anna Geiger: You can find the show notes for today's episode at themeasuredmom.com/episode163. Talk to you next time!

Closing: That's all for this episode of Triple R Teaching. For more educational resources visit Anna at her home base, themeasuredmom.com, and join our teaching community. We look forward to helping you reflect, refine, and recharge on the next episode of Triple R Teaching.

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Books by Nancy Hennessy




The Reading Comprehension Blueprint
The Reading Comprehension Blueprint Activity Book (with Julia Salamone)

Presentations by Nancy Hennessy on YouTube

Constructing the Comprehension House
Sound to Syntax
Meeting the Challenges of Comprehension Instruction
Inference: More Than Filling in the Gaps
Weaving the Rope: The Strands of Skilled Reading




Other references




A case for the sentence in reading comprehension,��by Cheryl Scott
Unraveling difficult sentences: Strategies to support reading comprehension , by Richard Zipoli

 

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The post How to teach sentence comprehension – with Nancy Hennessy appeared first on The Measured Mom.

How to scaffold preschoolers’ early writing skills – with Dr. Sonia Cabell

TRT Podcast #162: How to scaffold preschoolers’ early writing skills – with Dr. Sonia Cabell

When you understand the stages of early writing, you’re better able to support beginning writers. In this episode, Dr. Sonia Cabell reviews a framework for teachers to evaluate, support, and extend the writing that young children produce. This is a must-listen for preschool and kindergarten teachers!��

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Hello, it's Anna Geiger here from The Measured Mom, and in today's episode I had the privilege of interviewing Dr. Sonia Cabell. She's an Associate Professor of Education and Reading Education/Language Arts in the School of Teacher Education at Florida State University, and research faculty at the Florida Center for Reading Research. As you'll see, she's also a former teacher and a very down-to-earth researcher who really helps teachers understand how to apply what researchers are finding out.

In today's episode, we talk about how to help preschool writers move through the next stage of writing development. I think this is a really important episode for anyone who's teaching beginning writers, whether that's preschool or kindergarten. I know you're going to get a lot out of this in terms of how to figure out what to do in the moment and how to provide high or low-support scaffolds as appropriate. Here we go!

Anna Geiger: Welcome, Dr. Cabell!

Sonia Cabell: Thank you for having me!

Anna Geiger: I got to hear you speak at Plain Talk, and you talked about supporting young writers. It was super interesting because I think this is a question a lot of people have when they're trying to figure out what to do in preschool and kindergarten with beginning writers.

We're going to talk about that today, but before we do, could you introduce yourself and let us know how you got to where you are now?

Sonia Cabell: Sure. I'm Sonia Cabell, and I'm an Associate Professor of Reading Education in the School of Teacher Education and in the Florida Center for Reading Research at Florida State University. I started my career as a second grade teacher in Oklahoma, and then I went on to become a reading coach during the Reading First days in the early 2000s. I was a reading coach in Oklahoma and Virginia. Then I wanted to keep learning, and so I went to the University of Virginia and did my doctoral work there from 2005-2009, and I stayed on as a researcher at the University of Virginia until 2017. Then I moved to the Florida Center for Reading Research and Florida State University.

Anna Geiger: I think what's really neat about your story that a lot of people, I think, forget, is that you are a researcher, but you were a teacher.

Sonia Cabell: Yeah, I was a second grade teacher.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, and it's really good for people to know that, that not every researcher is someone who's never stepped foot in the classroom. A lot of people tend to think and discount some of that, so thanks for sharing that.

Sonia Cabell: Yeah, I think that researchers, depending on the field that they're in, a lot of psychologists don't have a reading background, but a lot of those of us who are in the School of Education, or the School of Teacher Education, do have a teaching background.

Anna Geiger: It's always nice to have that frame of reference to go back to in your head as you're thinking about recommending things for schools.

Sonia Cabell: Absolutely, and it's important to also be in touch with what teachers and districts are thinking about, what they prioritize, because it is quite different than what researchers prioritize.

Anna Geiger: Yeah.

We're going to focus today on early writing, and I think when we're teaching preschoolers and kindergartners, we might focus more on letter names and sounds, and then the early reading. Why is it important to also address early writing?

Sonia Cabell: Well I like to talk about how writing relates to supporting not only later writing, but also later reading. I talk about it as writing into literacy. I think about how writing can be used as a vehicle for developing the early literacy skills, both the language skills as well as the code-related literacy skills, needed during the early years to set the stage for reading. I think it's a big missed opportunity that it seems like we're not engaging. Research shows that we're not really engaging in writing as much as I think we should during the earliest years.

Anna Geiger: I wonder if that's partly because it's not as straightforward as a scope and sequence for teaching letters and sounds, and as we'll talk about, it's a lot more nuanced, and a lot more of a teacher really analyzing where a child is at and making instructional decisions. It's not always laid out for you, so I think that might be part of it.

Can you talk to us about the early writing framework which explains how early writing develops?

Sonia Cabell: Sure. I developed this framework, and it was published in a 2013 Reading Teacher article. This is really a framework that is not for teachers to group students and say, "You're a scribbler and you're on letters and letter-like forms," but rather it really was developed for preschool teachers to understand how to support the variation that occurs naturally in their classrooms.

I have four levels here. Two of them are in the pre-alphabetic phase, when you think of Ehri's phases, and two of them are in the partial alphabetic phase.

At level one, children are drawing and scribbling, and at this point, they might think that their drawing is their writing. When you ask them to write, they might draw instead.

Then it turns into drawings that have a scribble next to them, and they point to the scribble mark as the writing, and that's a really great accomplishment. At first they're drawing and scribbling, and that scribbling over time tends to then mirror the language that they're exposed to, the written language they're exposed to, left to right, top to bottom, in English.

Then they move on to writing with letters and letter-like forms. This is where their writing still has no correspondence with the message, with the sounds and the message they're trying to say, but they are using letters that are most familiar to them, and letter-like shapes, and sometimes numbers and dots and things like that too. You'll see letters of their name repeated in their writing. They could be writing long stories, and then when they read it back to you, they're not going to read it back the same way every time. It's going to change.

At those levels, one and two, drawing and scribbling, letters and letter-like forms, they're still in that pre-alphabetic stage, the phase that Ehri talks about, where they really don't yet understand the alphabetic principle.

Then at level three, they're writing with salient and beginning sound. Salient sound is something that sticks out to us, like in the word lava, the /v/ might stick out to us and be salient because it tickles our lip. When you're writing the word elevator, they might write the letter L because they hear the letter L at the beginning, and they often use a strategy, a letter name type of strategy.

When they're writing with these salient and beginning sounds, they're showing that they have grasped the alphabetic principle, that they understand that what I say can be written down using sounds, roughly from left to right, in our language. When they have that, when they understand that our speech stream is made up of sounds that they can write down, that is an amazing accomplishment.

Then they start doing inventive spellings, I call them estimated spellings, because they're not just making them up, they're estimating what they know. Then it becomes more complex, and they move to writing with beginning and ending sounds. Later, beginning, middle, and ending sound of a CVC word, so it grows in sophistication over time.

The early writing framework really blows up what's happening in that preschool period of drawing and scribbling, letters and letter-like forms, writing with salient and beginning sounds, and writing with beginning and ending sounds. The reason I developed that is in order to help the teacher understand where they are, and how do you move them to the next level.

Anna Geiger: Would you say that some students don't necessarily show all these phases because they're not given, or taking, opportunities to write or draw?

Sonia Cabell: Yeah, so it's interesting. Children aren't going to naturally perform however you want them to perform, so even in one given day, they might show you bits and pieces across phases, and I've definitely seen that. They might be in one center where they're scribbling, and then they turn around and they can write their name just fine, and then they're experimenting on a paper where they're doing...

When I talk to teachers about how do you know what level they are, you want to look at several writing samples across a week to see where are they functioning. Go to the highest level at which that they're functioning and scaffold that. If they do have a grasp of the alphabetic principle, continue to grow that. If their highest level is writing with letter-like forms, scaffold them toward the alphabetic principle. For me, it's really about the scaffolding and the verbal supports that you're providing children, and the conversations that you're having to support them.

Anna Geiger: You've explained how understanding these phases, which as you said, students can be hopping in and out a little bit, but being aware of those phases and what's the furthest, and then seeing when students do something that fits a particular phase, knowing that can help us to know where we're taking them. We have to make decisions about how to get them to the next phase.

Can you give us maybe some specific examples of a particular type of writing that a teacher might see, and then what they should do next?

Sonia Cabell: So my colleague, Stefanie Copp, has been a partner with me in this work, and she's at the University of Lynchburg. We recently have an open access article we put out called "The Rising Star Scaffolding Guide." This provides teachers with a way to think about what children are doing, and the way to think about their moves while writing, and the way to think about the conversation.

There's an example I often use of a child named Juliet, she's actually Stefanie's young daughter, who was really young at the time.

She was asked, "So what are you writing?"

"I'm writing about my mom." Then the child writes a string of letters that are letters largely from in their name.

The teacher thinks about what is the child's level of writing development here? This child was writing with letters and letter-like forms, so the teacher now wants to try to offer a lower support scaffold to help the child do the thinking. Offer a little bit of a scaffold so the child can do the thinking.

So the teacher says, "Okay, the first thing we do when writing a word is think about the sounds we hear. What's the first sound you hear in mom?"

And Juliet says, "I hear /m/," and she writes an A on her paper.

Now the teacher here knows that she needs to continue to scaffold her so that she can write the M, so the teacher says, "You heard /m/, and I did too! What letter makes the /m/ sound? Let's look at the alphabet chart. Is it M or A?" She reduced the choices there. She used a tool, the alphabet chart, and then reduced the choices. Is it an M or is it an A?

Depending on the child, you could reduce those choices even further apart so it's very obvious to the child and then when they say M, you say, "Okay, let's write M."

In that exchange, you see the teacher basically was helping her to think about the sounds they hear because she was not necessarily thinking about the sounds you hear, but she was able to do that with the teacher's support.

Now let me give you another example where the child is further along.

The teacher says, "Can you read me what you're writing so far?"

The child says, "Shark Boy and Lava Girl," from that movie, and it was a letter V that the child wrote.

The teacher looks at the early writing framework and thinks this child is in salient and beginning sounds, so I'm going to continue to provide support, starting with a low level of support so the child has to do the thinking.

The teacher says, "You wrote V for lava. What other sounds do you hear in lava? llllaaaavvvvvaaaa?" You often want the child to say it back too, "Lava, say the word with me."

So now the child wrote LV, and the teacher provides another low support scaffold to help ensure the child got it right. The child is extending from just a V to an LV, that's really great!

The teacher says, "What's the next word you're writing? Remember to stretch it out and write all the sounds you hear."

So the teacher isn't demanding that the word lava be written conventionally yet. The child is not there yet, but she's helping him use his literacy skills and his growing knowledge of the alphabetic principle to write more sounds he's hearing in the other words he's trying to write.

That's the kind of scaffold that I'm talking about. Scaffolding children's code-related literacy skills that can help them. They're doing a lot of the thinking and a lot of the work here, rather than the teacher doing the work and just spelling it for the child, which really won't do much for them. If they have to do the work there, then you can see how that work that they're doing when they're writing can translate into their decoding.

Anna Geiger: Really doing this well requires two things on the part of the teacher. It requires knowledge, like you said, of the early writing framework, and then also a lot of skill, in-the-moment skill, which can be tricky and takes time to develop.

Can you talk a little bit more about the difference between low and high support scaffolds, and maybe some examples?

Sonia Cabell: I would think coaching would be needed, right? Knowledge and coaching, because what I am talking about is in-the-moment. I think there are a lot of in-the-moment supports, both for literacy and for language, that we can give for children.

My colleague, Tricia Zucker, and I just wrote a book called "Strive-for-Five Conversations" that has these same kinds of ideas in it to promote language comprehension. How do you scaffold in the moment, to provide more support or more challenge?

More support can be also thought of as a downward scaffold. Some of those things might be reducing choices, like I showed. There might be a fill-in-the-blank, like I say part of a response and the child fills in the rest. Or really intensely, if the child still doesn't get it, I might just model it. "I hear /m/, and the letter that makes that is the M, I'm going to write an M. Can you write M?" That is a higher support scaffold, but it's also called a downward scaffold.

The ones that are less supportive and allow the child do more of the thinking are also called upward scaffolds that provide a challenge. Some of those are helping children to continue to think beyond what they're doing. In the realm of language, this would also be asking them an inferential type of question. This would be asking them, pushing them toward more abstract thinking. In code-related ways, this would be having them listen for more of the sounds, having them do more of the task on their own, and supporting only where they need it. The idea here is how can I provide a challenge to the student at the level where they are, that would still provide them with a challenge?

Anna Geiger: Yes. Let's say a preschool teacher is listening to this and is thinking about providing opportunities for their students to write in preschool. Would there be any time where you would say, "We're all doing writing right now," or is this just more as it comes up at centers, or as they just do it in their free time? How do you frame this, or is it just kind of as it comes up?

Sonia Cabell: Well I think that there are many ways you can write in preschool settings that are terrific. What I'm talking about now assumes that there is writing going on, but in a lot of classrooms there isn't writing going on.

There are ways, like you just talked about, to put writing into meaningful and naturalistic kinds of ways, like in centers and things like that.

Susan Neuman and Kathleen Roskos did work in the 90s that showed that just by putting in some of these writing tools and having children engaged more with literacy, with dramatic play centers and things like that, there are benefits. It could be things like taking a prescription in a doctor's center, taking a order in a restaurant center, filling out paperwork when you're going to see the vet, or things like this, so that's one way.

Teachers often have a morning message that they do as a whole group, and that can be an interactive share-the-pen kind of activity, or it could be a teacher-modeling kind of activity.

There's also child-dictated writing, where the child doesn't pick up a pen, but the teacher writes down what the child says, sometimes verbatim. They might put it with quotes and then read it back so that the child knows that what they say can be written down.

There are also writing centers that are devoted to things.

There is also journaling that could go on where all the students, or a small group of students, are writing in their journals and the teacher is circulating.

Writing doesn't have to be just pencil and paper or with markers. It could be with your finger. It can be with magnetic letters. There are a lot of different ways that we can write that doesn't always involve us having the pen or pencil in our hand.

It goes on a continuum of the teacher doing the writing, to sharing the writing, to the child doing the writing. In all of those ways, we can scaffold children's literacy where they are.

Anna Geiger: I guess I'm having a hard time picturing for teachers, like where's the more explicit versus the... You know what I'm saying?

Sonia Cabell: Yeah, I think this is a compliment to that explicit instruction.

Even in preschool, the teaching of letter names, letter sounds, phonological awareness, these things need to be explicit. Even with preschoolers, that's the best way to learn letter names and letter sounds for example, not embedding it in shared book reading and things like that, but more explicit.

But that doesn't mean that we don't do it. Embedding it in shared book reading still has its place. It's called print referencing, and you're drawing children's attention to print while reading.

In the same way, this is a compliment, the scaffolding that I'm talking about is a compliment, to what you're already directly teaching them.

In kindergarten classrooms, there's usually a lot more writing going on, and you can scaffold children. You know what you've taught them, and you hold them accountable to what you have taught them. You scaffold, "Remember, we learned about this... What was the next... How do we think about this?"

In addition, when you're teaching and doing your phonics instruction, there should be writing going on too. Sometimes they might have a dry erase board where they're writing a word or writing whatever phonics pattern you're teaching them at the time, so they're having practice. That spelling and the code-related skills go hand-in-hand.

I want to be clear, I'm not talking about a whole language or balanced literacy type of approach, that would be devoid, or would reduce the value of phonics. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about you have those things already in place, and now you're using every moment to scaffold their writing through the conversations you're having with them, and the ways that you're helping them through the thinking and moving them forward. I think it's both/and.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. I think to your point, you have to provide opportunities for them to be doing this.

Sonia Cabell: Absolutely.

Anna Geiger: So if all you're doing is dictation and your explicit lessons, but you're not giving them a chance to work on their own writing, then there's no place for you to build on what you've been teaching in an authentic way. Is that what you're saying?

Sonia Cabell: Yes, that's what I'm saying, and it's interesting because I learned this lesson the hard way. I was so excited about the scaffolds that when I started over a decade ago working with classroom teachers to implement this, what I realized was, "Whoa! They are not even doing writing activities, so how is this going to make any sense to them?"

My colleagues, Hope Gerde from Texas A&M University and Gary Bingham from Georgia State University, have been studying preschool writing for a long time and have developed some good writing supports for teachers and training for teachers in how you incorporate writing into your classroom. Their work shows that in preschools, there still is very little writing going on. There's not a lot.

Now we have read-alouds, as I would say an almost ubiquitous practice, but unfortunately, that's not necessarily true in preschool. My colleague, Beth Phillips, and I are working on a study where observations have taken place in 85 preschool classrooms, and it's shocking that sometimes there's not book reading, which is really, really shocking.

Anna Geiger: That's sad.

Sonia Cabell: I thought it was ubiquitous.

Anna Geiger: Yeah.

Sonia Cabell: You have more and more people reading books with children. A lot of times, they're pointing out the print. My advisor in grad school, my long-term mentor, Dr. Laura Justice from Ohio State University, created that print-referencing strategy. I would say that in curricula that I see, that it's a practice in there, that you point to print, and you draw attention to print. There are important things that happen around the language conversations in book reading, it's really important.

But I would say I'm trying to raise the awareness that also, let's not forget that children naturally also want to write, and how can you make that so it's not just like a drill-kill kind of writing, where they're copying all the time? Because when they're copying, they're not necessarily thinking about the letters and the sounds, or anything like that. They're just copying a form.

Anna Geiger: Yeah. No, I totally understand that, so thank you.

I guess just as a summary, you talked about the early writing framework, and how when teachers understand how the phases of writing kind of progress, then they can look at a child's writing and know, "I know where I want to take them, so what can I say that's going to take them there?" Then if I think they need a lot of support, I'm going to give a lot of support, but I'm not going to start there. I'm going to start by giving just a little bit of support to begin with. Then in order for students to have these opportunities, and for me to respond, they have to have opportunities to do authentic writing, which could be in response to something I've read to them. It could be, for preschool, working at centers. But it needs to be in addition to the explicit instruction that I'm giving,

Sonia Cabell: Right. These aren't necessarily all either/or things again. They need to be writing for meaningful purposes because that matters also to their motivation as to why am I doing this? But they also need explicit and systematic instruction, so it's not that we throw away one.

I think sometimes there's a straw man created, where people think like, "Oh, if it's explicit and systematic, then it's going to be drill skill, kill, and it is not meaningful." I think that those are weak arguments personally, because I think that I've never seen a...

I think that as a teacher, we want to make things meaningful for children and learning meaningful for children. I would encourage teachers to continue to grow their own knowledge, and then take from their resources in books that they have, and really critically think about those and how they want to move forward.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. It just requires that knowledge to begin with, so you have a filter.

You've mentioned your book that you recently published, "Strive-for-Five." Can you talk to us quickly about that and any other projects that we might have to look forward to?

Sonia Cabell: Yeah. "Strive-for-Five Conversations," the lead author is Tricia Zucker, who has been my friend and colleague for about 20 years. We met in 2004, and we taught together. She was the best kindergarten teacher I ever saw. I was her reading coach. She was the person who was like, "Sonia, come in here and model this for me."

I was like, "You don't need any help!"

She and I did our doctoral work together, so we've been kind of tied by an invisible string our whole lives, we like that Taylor Swift song. We do research together, and we wrote this book together that was born out of a lot of the research that we've done, both independently and together.

The Strive-for-Five idea is you go for five turns: I say something, you say something, I say something, you say something, I say something.

That Strive-for-Five term was really coined by David Dickinson, who was a professor at Vanderbilt University for many years. He's retired now, but he's an emeritus professor there. He championed this Strive-for-Five phrase.

The idea is that sticking with a child for five turns can really grow their language. A lot of times, the teacher says something, the child says something, and the teacher says, "Good job."

Anna Geiger: Yeah, exactly.

Sonia Cabell: And then I move to the next child. Or I ask a question, the child answers incorrectly, and I move to the next child. But what if you just kept with that one child for a few more turns, and scaffolded and supported them, either challenged them by asking another open-ended question, or supported them further by reducing choices to guide them towards the correct answer, versus kind of giving up on them.

We don't even realize, like as a teacher I didn't even realize I was doing this, switching to the next child, but that's the most common pattern in the classroom. What we're talking about is a marginal shift in what teachers are already doing throughout their day, which is having conversations. We're not saying that they're not having five-turn conversations. What we're saying is just think about how you could be even more deliberate in how you're scaffolding children's language and knowledge during conversations.

We tie Strive-for-Five conversations to Scarborough's Reading Rope that Hollis Scarborough developed, which incidentally, I got to see her original drawings of that, the other day in Pennsylvania...

Anna Geiger: Oh, really? How Cool!

Sonia Cabell: ...and I got to spend some time with Hollis too. That Reading Rope has been so instrumental, I think, in helping the field see how reading works. We have a chapter on each of the sections of the language comprehension portion.

Anna Geiger: Okay, okay.

Sonia Cabell: You can also build children's language in having these conversations within the context of their writing too, having conversations about their writing, so we're excited about that.

If listeners are interested in birth to five, my colleagues and I through NAEYC, in 2022, led by Tanya Wright, myself, Nell Duke, and Mariana Souto-Manning, we wrote a book for birth to five, "Literacy Learning for Infants, Toddlers, and Preschoolers." We have chapters in there on the alphabet and phonological awareness. We combine those chapters actually to help teachers see that phonological awareness is important because you have to tie it with alphabet knowledge in order for them to break the code. We have writing, comprehension, and texts to teach, so we have that book that came out in 2022.

Then in 2023, those people who are more interested in maybe what the research says directly, through Guilford Press, I was the lead editor on a volume that was also edited by Susan Neuman and Nicole Patton Terry, called the "Handbook on the Science of Early Literacy."

Anna Geiger: Yeah. All those books you mentioned, I do have, I'm still working through all of them.

Sonia Cabell: Oh, you do? Oh, thank you!

Anna Geiger: Yeah, I've spent a lot of time in the handbook with the chapter about the alphabet with Shayne Piasta, but I know there's so much more, so many books to read!

Sonia Cabell: Shayne is, to me, one of the go-to people for knowing what we know about the evidence on the alphabet.

Anna Geiger: Yeah.

Sonia Cabell: Yeah, she's a go-to in many, many ways, but that's just one of her expertise areas.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, she has great way of explaining what we know for sure, and what we're still waiting to know for sure. Yeah, she's my go-to expert for that too.

Well, thank you so much. I'll be sure to link to all the books that you mentioned and any articles that I find by you.

Is there anything in the works that you're excited about?

Sonia Cabell: Well, I'm always excited about my work; I do love what I do! I think some of the projects that I'm working on in terms of research really have to do with understanding even more the conversations that are going on. I'm looking at conversations in preschool and in kindergarten, and the back-and-forth exchanges, understanding where teachers' conversations are naturally richer. I do have some evidence from one of my prior studies that teachers seem to have these naturally richer conversations in science settings, so I'm exploring that further. I'm really excited about the research that I'm doing.

In terms of books for practitioners, I've got some things in my mind that aren't really ready to talk about yet.

Anna Geiger: Not ready to talk about, all right! Well I'm going to put a bug in your ear to think about a writing one. That's needed.

Sonia Cabell: Thank you.

Anna Geiger: Well, thank you so much, Dr. Cabell! This was great, and I know that people are going to get a lot of out of our conversation, so thanks so much for joining me.

Sonia Cabell: Thank you for having me! I really appreciate it.

Anna Geiger: You can find the show notes for today's episode at themeasuredmom.com/episode162. Talk to you next time!

Closing: That's all for this episode of Triple R Teaching. For more educational resources, visit Anna at her home base, themeasuredmom.com, and join our teaching community. We look forward to helping you reflect, refine, and recharge on the next episode of Triple R Teaching.

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Articles by Dr. Cabell (and others)




How do I Write … ? Scaffolding Preschoolers’ Early Writing Skills
The Rising Star Scaffolding Guide: Supporting Young Children’s Early Spelling Skills
Using Strive-for-Five Conversations to Strengthen Language Comprehension in Preschool through Grade One��
Asking Questions is Just the First Step: Using Upward and Downward Scaffolds��
Going Nuts for Words: Recommendations for Teaching Young Students Academic Vocabulary




Books by Dr. Cabell (and others)




Strive-for-Five Conversations: A Framework that Gets Kids Talking to Accelerate Their Language Comprehension and Literacy
Literacy Learning for Infants, Toddlers, and Preschoolers: Key Practices for Educators��
Handbook on the Science of Early Literacy





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The post How to scaffold preschoolers’ early writing skills – with Dr. Sonia Cabell appeared first on The Measured Mom.

All about literacy centers – with Christina Winter

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TRT Podcast #160: All About Literacy Centers – with Christina Winter

Unless all your students are at the same skill level (highly unlikely!), you will need to meet with small groups during the school day – even in a structured literacy classroom. But what are the rest of the students doing? Christina Winter walks us through how to choose literacy centers, how to teach students to do them independently, and answers pretty much every question you might have about how to manage this time in your school day.

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Hello, this is Anna Geiger from The Measured Mom, and today I have a treat for you. I'm interviewing Christina Winter of Mrs. Winter's Bliss, a real-life friend of mine and also someone I've known of for a long time in the online space. She's been operating her website, Mrs. Winter's Bliss, for some time. She was a classroom teacher for over 20 years where she was known among her staff as the Queen of Centers.

I know you'll figure that out in this episode, because she really gets into the weeds with me and talks about all the specific things that you should keep in mind when doing centers and how to manage them, so they go smoothly and you can meet with your small groups without interruptions. Let's get started!

Anna Geiger: Welcome, Christina!

Christina Winter: Hello, Anna! So good to be here!

Anna Geiger: Christina is a real-life friend of mine; we connected at The Reading League event in New York in October of 2023. It was wonderful. Christina has also been on the podcast previously, and I'll make sure to link to that in the show notes.

Maybe you could just give us a quick couple of sentences about who you are and what you do.

Christina Winter: I am a former first-grade teacher for over two decades, and I now am not teaching in the classroom, but I work with teachers, kindergarten, first, and second grade teachers, and you can find me at my home website, Mrs. Winter's Bliss.

Anna Geiger: Wonderful.

You have become an expert in centers, and that's what we're going to talk about today. But first, I'd like to just lay the foundation.

Interestingly, there are conversations in big Facebook groups that we don't need centers anymore, now that we're not doing guided reading, or that there's no need for small groups. Some people say they were really a waste of time, which I find really interesting and kind of sad, because we know that even if, as some teachers do, you teach a whole-group phonics lesson, you still need small groups after, because unless you have a really unusual situation, which I've never heard of, your whole class is not going to be at the same skill level. You have to fill gaps, and you should challenge some kids. If you're doing that, you need something for the rest of the class to do, which is where centers come in.

Then also, the method that I prefer, if your students are at different places in their foundational skills journey, that you differentiate from the beginning, and hopefully with other teachers so they don't have to spend a ton of time doing centers. Realistically, you probably would need at least 30 minutes of center time per day, if you're working to meet the needs of everyone in your class.

But there's another reason for centers too. Can you talk to us about that?

Christina Winter: I understand where people are coming from when you're in these groups and you hear it's a waste of time. It can be a waste of time, BUT if centers are done correctly, they are really effective and really engaging for students.

Let's take a minute to think about the "I do, we do, you do" model, that gradual release of responsibility. We know that our students need a lot of practice, and those early learners, they need tons and tons of repetition, tons of practice, to reach automaticity, to reach fluency. Wiley Blevins reminds us that skills can take four to six weeks to get to mastery, and we need to be teaching for mastery.

But our curriculums are moving so quickly! So literacy centers are the time that our students really need to practice new skills, but practicing skills that we have explicitly taught.

We have to teach them and then work with them, again, that "I do" - I'm the teacher. I model it for you. "We do" - that's our guided practice. Then the "you do," where our students are actually practicing. We're releasing responsibility and giving them the opportunity to practice.

Wiley Blevins tells us that when students are engaged in authentic reading and writing activities, that is where learning is solidified. That's where our skills stick. For that, I really think that literacy centers are such an effective way for our students to really master skills as we teach them.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, so it's that automaticity piece.

I think one thing to remember about centers that I did not get as a teacher was that it should be things kids can do independently. You might not necessarily teach something and then right away, that type of activity goes to the center, because you haven't done it enough times with them.

For them to be able to do it independently, it's got to be something they know pretty well, which might feel like, "Well, what's the point then? It's a waste of time." But it's like you said; it's the automaticity piece. It's being able to do it very quickly so that their brains are freed up for that more complex work.

Christina Winter: Right.

Anna Geiger: What is your opinion about the best centers for a classroom that's aligned with the science of reading?

Christina Winter: I really share with teachers that Dr. Archer says, "Teach the stuff and cut the fluff." Right? I am Team No Fluff. We want to think about the core five, and that is writing, word study, independent reading, listening center, and then a partner center. That might be a partner game or a partner reading. I recommend just really sticking with those core five centers.

Then think about having consistent activities. We know, if we're thinking about 5, 6, and 7 year old students, it's a lot if you're continually changing out the centers like, "This week, we're going to do this Sight Word Bingo, and then next week, we're going to do this stamping activity," or something like that.

We want to be really, really consistent, because our students actually thrive when there's consistency, when there's predictability. So rather than every week changing out all the different centers, maybe we're going to keep those centers for a month. Like you said, let it become familiar with students. We want to keep the same center for a month, but then switch out the skills, those skills that are the repetition, the practice of what you're actually teaching during your Tier 1 instruction with your students.

For example, you might have a roll and read fluency center, like fluency phrases. Say you're working on digraphs, so you're going to have roll and read fluency sentences that are digraphs. Students are going to do that the first week, and then the next week you might have other digraphs, or maybe you're moving into long vowels with silent E.

Again, they know exactly what to do because it's consistent. They're not having to learn a whole new center-type thing; they're just practicing a new skill, if that makes sense.

Anna Geiger: Yeah. When you talked about word work, that would be practicing phonics skills, correct?

Christina Winter: Yes.

Anna Geiger: Then tell me a little bit about how you would do a writing center. That's one I struggle with a little bit, because it seems like there needs to be more guidance for that one. How do you make that work?

Christina Winter: I like to do writing based on whatever skills we're working on.

When we did narrative writing in my class, when I taught narrative writing to my students during writing time, then we could do narrative writing prompts, or I had narrative menus or things like that so they could make a choice, but then write their own story. It was following up, again, on what we're teaching in our whole-group instruction.

Anna Geiger: Can you give us an example of a specific activity that would maybe NOT be the best choice for a center?

Christina Winter: Yeah. We do not want to just give our students busy work, like coloring. We do not want students to be doing lots of cut and paste, where most of their time is doing those cutting and pasting and gluing activities. We also do not want to be doing activities where students really aren't getting any type of feedback, for example I've seen teachers have these clip cards where the kids have to clip on the medial vowel sound, or something like that. Well students could just be clipping and they have no idea if they're doing it correctly or incorrectly.

We want students to have a way to know if they're doing the skill correctly. Sometimes you can find puzzles, or something like that where it only connects if it's correct.

We also don't want to be giving students... I know teachers might do this, but we want to move away from that. We definitely don't want to be putting in a center something that you have not already taught your students or practiced with your students.

So I understand why people might be feeling like, "This is a waste of time." I know there's a lot of chatter when I'm in Facebook groups about, "Independent reading - that's such a waste of time. It's a waste of time."

It is not a waste of time if it's done correctly. You have to put in a lot of scaffolds. You have to put a lot of things in place so that you do it correctly. I talk about with teachers that it's really thinking it through before you jump right in. You really have to go slow to go fast with your students.

Anna Geiger: So I read something recently in "Powerful Writing Strategies for All Students" by Karen Harris, Steve Graham, Linda Mason, and Barbara Friedlander. They said, "Don't PEE. No PEE-ing in the classroom." What they meant was Post, Explain, Expect, which I was so guilty of that as a teacher, and as a mom too.

It's basically saying, "Here's what you do. Here's the poster. Here's what you do. Now go do it," without any of the "we do" in there. It's just telling them what to do with very little modeling, and then just expecting.

It's kind of like at home when I tell them to wash the bathroom counters, and they're like, "Okay," but I just put my hand over it and it doesn't feel clean. Well, I never showed them exactly how to do it. I just expect them to.

What would you say in terms of how long does it take to get them started, and do you just have them do one particular kind of center to start and then gradually add more? How does that work?

Christina Winter: I call it "Teach, Model, and Practice," where I am super explicit like, "This is what we do. This is how we do it. Let's practice it." We go really slow to go fast. If we want our students to do something, we have to be super clear on what exactly we want to do.

I know for teachers sometimes that feels like, "I don't have time for that, because I have all these other things I have to do," but really, if you take a step back, move out of the emotional piece, and if you really think about it, it's your job to think about what your ultimate goal for literacy centers is. Yes, we want to give our students the opportunity for practice; it's important. But it's also really, really important, like you were saying earlier, that we have the time to meet in our targeted small groups, to really help our students in that small group.

If we have constant interruptions, if kids are off-task, if kids aren't engaged in meaningful learning opportunities, we're wasting their time, for sure. We know every minute counts for every kid, every single day, so we really have to set them up for success, and we really have to go slow rolling out our centers.

For me, it took a month. The first week of school, I probably didn't even start talking about centers, because there's so much going on the first week of school, but by the second week of school, I'd have my center chart up on the wall. I'd have all my center cards flipped over. I would say to the students, "Friends, we are going to do this thing called literacy centers. I'm going to teach you how we do it. When we flip all these cards over, then we get to start."

Each day during what would be our literacy center block time, what I would've allotted in my daily schedule, I would say, "Okay. Today, I'm going to talk to you about independent reading. What is independent reading?" I would talk to them about, "How do you find personal space? How do you find a book? Where do you keep your book box?" We go through ALL the things.

I have a membership, Leaders of Literacy, and I actually have checklists of all the things that you need to actually teach. It sounds simple, but it's not. Our kids come with all these varied experiences and all the things. Again, if we have clear expectations, if we want the minutes to count, then we have to really, really be explicit in teaching them every single step of how to be successful.

So it does take a month, but pays off if we put that time out and we practice every day.

Then the next day, we might say, "Okay, yesterday we learned about independent reading, and this is what it looks like. Remind me." We might even talk about what happens when you're not independently reading and all of that. Then we might be ready to move and add on another center, and practice that together. I might show them a writing prompt and talk about what writers do when they're at the writing center. Then we can even practice, and everybody's doing the same thing so we can give feedback.

Another thing I really, really love to do, and the kids loved it, they ate it up, is I would take my iPad at the time, or your iPhone, or whatever, and I would record them as we were practicing. Then I would pop the video up on the smart board, and we would talk about all of the things that we saw that were proof that our kids were actually doing what they were supposed to be doing - that they were engaged, that they were on task, that they were learning and working, and things like that.

So yes, it's a slow, slow process, but it's so worth it.

Anna Geiger: Does that mean that you wait to do your small group instruction till that month is over and you've really trained them to do their independent work?

Christina Winter: Yes, I definitely have to wait. Now, as teachers, we are very creative, so we will find ways to sneak it in, because at the beginning of the year we have a lot of that beginning-of-the-year testing and assessments and all of that. So either I would find times, little pockets throughout the day, or I would just have to be really, really creative. Sometimes I would have to do some seatwork instead of all that literacy center training, because we have to get those assessments done. It's really, really important. But we can't just throw the kids out there and set these bad habits for them for the rest of the year.

Anna Geiger: That's a really good point, that if you rush into literacy centers without explaining, you could start bad habits that are hard to undo. It may be at the beginning of the year when you need to pull individuals or whatever, that they're doing something that's less... It's not what we want to see long term, maybe even some coloring or something, but just knowing that there's a purpose to it.

Also, as you're training them to use the centers over that month, or however long it takes, you can give them meaningful stuff. You're right there to give feedback, so it's not wasted time. You're doubling it up, but it'll be more focused time, more targeted time, as soon as you're able to start your small groups and your center time.

Christina Winter: Right, and after all that, like I was saying, about how I flip the cards over one by one as we're talking about the centers, then I put the kids' names up there, so it's a big thing. It's like the grand opening, right? The kids are so invested and so excited, and it's like, "We are starting! Show me now how you are going to do it when I call your group. You're going to walk over to your center." Then we all watch group number one as they get their clipboard and they get their paper, and we're like, "Wow, look how they're getting started right away! Look how they're finding their own personal space!" and all of that.

During that first week, usually that first round of rotations, I try not to pull small groups because I really want to rotate through the classroom. I really want to be there, not to tell them what to do, but to elicit from them like, "What are you going to do? I see you're almost finished sorting your words on your word activity here. What are you going to do when you're finished?" I let them tell me. "Oh, I see you're having trouble logging into the computer. What could we do?" I look for things like that and give them that feedback.

I think it really, really makes a difference if we can kind of make ourself available, because once that week is over, I'm not available anymore, and they know that's part of the thing. There are only certain reasons, if there's an emergency, that they can come interrupt the teacher. They know.

Anna Geiger: When I think about organizing centers, I've seen it done in different ways. Some have been where the kids have a folder with a list of all the centers that they're supposed to accomplish during the week, and they just check them off when they're done. They have a lot of choice about what they do when, and you've got more of a rotation.

Can you talk to me about what you think is best and why, or if there are different options, and how it would work?

Christina Winter: For myself, with first graders and kindergartners, and I even think maybe beginning second graders, I really think that they need that scaffold of structure, "I am going here. I'm going to do this." I think that is helpful for them. Now kids do like choice, but we need to give them a limited choice.

Earlier when I was talking to you about narrative prompts, I would have a menu or something where there would be pictures, and they could write different stories, like a fall story about going apple picking or about riding their bike, or just some topics that they could write about. So they could have a choice, but the choice wasn't, "Am I going to go do writing?" or "Am I going to go do reading?"

Can you imagine if you're six years old and you go to the writing center, and your teacher's like, "Oh, write a song, write a book, write a menu, write a..." That's way overwhelming to a child. We really just need to give them what I say is a limited choice.

So yes, I believe that we should be assigning our students the center that they're going to go to, and then offer them some choices once they get there.

Anna Geiger: But a small amount?

Christina Winter: Yeah.

Anna Geiger: The tricky part, I think, for teachers is figuring out the pairing thing. If I have two students for partner reading, one of the recommendations for partner reading that I see often is to basically figure out... Order your students by skill level in terms of maybe words per minute or something like that, and then break your list apart. If you had a class of 30, it'd be child 1 paired with child 16, child 2 with child 17. So you're not pairing super low and super high, but you're not also pairing the very high together or the very low together.

But if you were to do it that way, that gets tricky, because they're going to be pulled for small group at different times. How do you make sure that they get their buddy reading done, and that their partner's available? I guess that is my question.

Christina Winter: I have tried both ways when I'm grouping students. I've tried doing heterogeneous and homogenous grouping. I think each year, I kind of look at my students and what's working and what's not.

Personally, I really like when my students are grouped at the same level. In first grade, there can be confusion. There's a lot going on. I had 24 students, and there are six different center groups going on, because I like to have four kids in a group, so that's six groups going on in my classroom.

If I'm pulling kids to the table, we don't want kids to feel like they're missing out, or let's say they go get a partner, and then their partner gets pulled to the table. That's frustrating. I'm always thinking about, again, we want all the minutes to count.

I definitely had buddy reading at a different part of my day during my whole-group instruction, where I'd pair my kids like that. I think that's spectacular. But as far as partner reading or partner games, if they're kind of in a similar skill level, I think that works also.

I think it also works because some of your centers are going to be differentiated. If you're doing word study, even though in your Tier 1 instruction you're working on long vowels, some of your kids aren't doing that. You want to have a situation where red group is going to pull their word study work. They're all doing the same activity, but maybe just different skills, so they can pull and actually practice the skills that you are teaching with them at the small group table.

Then that would be less confusion, because if everybody in your group is pulling from the same folder, other kids aren't like, "Oh, no. I'm in the blue folder. I'm in the green folder." All of that. Keep it simple for them.

It's also protecting their self-esteem. We know that when they feel successful, they're really more willing to take risk and work harder also.

That is what I like, but I really want to mention that we have to make sure that our groups are flexible. As kids progress or have different needs, we're not just like, "Oh, no, you're in this group. You can't leave the group." Make the groups flexible, whether it be through some kind of diagnostic assessment or just assessment of what you're seeing with your students. Just kind of keep that flexible grouping going.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, and I'll just put a plug in there for Tier 2 instruction within the MTSS model. That's how kids can catch up, right? Not only are you giving them that instruction in your small groups, but the kids who need extra support might be getting it from another teacher, and that's especially how they might make faster gains and be able to move into a different group.

Back to what you talked about colored folders. So would you say that if... Let's say you call your low group your green group. Of course, you wouldn't say low to the kids. Would you say to make their center activities differentiated by color so they know what they need, like the green folder is where their stuff is, or were you saying not to do that?

Christina Winter: Yes. I would definitely do that.

Anna Geiger: Okay. Yeah, I agree too. It makes it much easier for everybody, and just to-

Christina Winter: Yeah. Well, again, it's practicing skills for automaticity. It's not like, if green group was still working on CVC words, but then in your scope and sequence, what you're working with your whole group is long vowels, well, my friends in CVC, they need practice on that. They don't need practice on a skill that they're not quite ready for yet.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, that makes sense.

Christina Winter: Yeah.

Anna Geiger: Do you have any troubleshooting things for managing students at centers? In all the years that you did them, can you think of common issues and how you would solve them? Things that teachers might expect to have problems with?

Christina Winter: Well, I think, as mentioned earlier, we really want to be proactive rather than reactive. Really thinking it through, and again, going slow, explicitly teaching things. I mean, I taught my kids how to use a glue stick. It seems funny, but I never had kids drying out their glue sticks! We really want to teach those exact center procedures and routines.

Talk to them about, "What is your personal space? What does that look like? What do you do when you're stuck? Is it okay to interrupt the teacher?" Our kids are really, really capable, but we just really, really have to teach them, and then we also have to reinforce it.

This is one of my secret strategies that really, really works. I did something in my class called Star Students. I would have a Post-it or a little notepad, however you want to do it, and I would tell my students, "I am always looking for Star Students." And so, as I'm at the reading table, as my kids are out working, and I'm working with my small group, maybe during transition as another group is coming, or maybe just what I can see at the corner of my eye, I would be able to note down who's doing what.

For instance, say Ella, she got started right away. Zachary had a hard time figuring out how to get logged in on the computer, so he went over and asked his friend to help him get logged in, things like that. Then after centers, we would come back together at the end of centers, and we would talk about what happened during centers, like our closing time, and I would say, "Okay. Today, I want to tell you about the kids on my Star List."

It was just that reminder, that positive reinforcement reminder, of the expectations on what students should be doing, because they're six years old and they might forget, and they need a lot of repetitive practice hearing. But it was just a really, really positive way for students to be reminded all the time of what they were actually supposed to be doing.

Also, I know certain centers might be difficult for kids, and so I could positively reinforce them on the first day that that center is rolled out or something like that.

Anna Geiger: That is such a great idea. I can picture for a teacher, if I were doing that, I would probably have a list of all my students on a clipboard with a space next to them so I could keep track of every day, "Oh, these have already been the Star Students. Who else?" I want to look for things they're doing right.

Christina Winter: Exactly. Definitely, and I think kids want to do well. They definitely want to do well, and it feels good for them to be recognized. So however you want to do that, if you want to do tickets or no tickets or just to cheer, it's up to you in your classroom, but it is really, really powerful.

Anna Geiger: We're getting into the weeds, which is wonderful, because I think that's what teachers want. They want to know the little specific things.

Let's talk a little bit more about specifics, and one would be, what do they do when they're done with their activity? Sometimes it might be, "Do this until time's up," or it might be like, "You do it, and it's finished." How does that work?

Christina Winter: Again, we want to be proactive, not reactive, so we're setting our students up for success. As I'm teaching my students, "Okay, this is a word-building activity that you're going to do at the center," I'm telling my students, as we are talking about it, before they even go to the center, "Friends, tell me something you would do if you finished early."

Six hands are raised, and they're like, "Mrs. Winter, we could turn it over and write a sentence with one of the words. We could think of other words that have that same spelling pattern. We could get the magnets out and build the words with the magnets. I could quiz a friend on my words."

They're thinking, and they come up with all these great ideas, but the thing is, is that they know it's not okay... We have established it is not okay that you just stop and you just lay on the carpet, or you come up to me with it, "Mrs. Winter, I'm done!" That's not okay. If you need to go back and finish other work at your table from earlier, or you want to go read a book, that's fine too, but you must be engaged in learning. There's never going to be an, "I'm done."

Another thing is, we want to be looking for centers that are a little more open-ended. If you're doing a writing center, we don't want just a writing center with a prompt where they fill in the missing words. We want something that can be more open-ended, lends itself to different, varied levels of students, and talk to them about, "If you've finished your writing, then you can add a picture. Maybe you want to label your picture or go back and read your work," and all of those kinds of things. It gives them the power to know that they can make a decision on what to do next.

Anna Geiger: Back to your independent reading center. What would be your expectations, or what do you think teachers should do for an independent reading center for kids in, let's say, K-1, who are still reading decodable text in their phonics lessons? How would that look?

Christina Winter: Yeah, that's really a really good question, and we definitely talk about that inside Leaders of Literacy. I actually was so inspired by Margaret Goldberg. She was on the Amplify podcast a while ago, and she was talking about this in the kindergarten teachers that she worked with.

I set up a system in my classroom where we equate it to healthy eating. Healthy eating means that we eat all of our nutritious things that grow our brain first, then we have dessert, right? So when we think about reading independently, we're going to read all of the books that are growing our brains and helping us to become good readers, that would be your decodable books. Whether it be the books that you're working on in your small group or books they've already worked on or decodable sentences, all the things that they can read, books that they can read.

Then from there, Margaret was talking about this idea of book browsing. We want to be careful; we don't want to call it looking at the pictures. That's taboo, but we call it book browsing, because if your classroom has a classroom library and they have access, especially to those nonfiction books, they could still learn a tremendous amount by looking at the pictures.

Kids love dinosaurs or butterflies. They can still look at the pictures and get information. Maybe you have access to books that have no words in them, wordless books, like "Good Dog, Carl" and things like that. They could still have an opportunity, like as a dessert, to do some book browsing. Kids love, love, love to read books that you have previously read. If I read "Tacky the Penguin," they definitely want to book-browse that book. It might not be at their level, but I'm not going to say, "No, you can't read it."

But the majority of the time that they are doing their independent reading should be reading books that they can actually read, working on decoding, making those minutes count for our students. We have to remember, we're going to call those kids out during the Star Student time. We're going to say, "I noticed that Anna read three of her books from her book box. Then later, she found that book on butterflies, because Anna loves butterflies. Anna, tell us something you learned today when you were book browsing." Kids love it. They love it.

Anna Geiger: Thank you, that is so helpful.

So I'm thinking about in your small groups or your whole group, there may be a time then when you're reviewing books, and at some point, you might say something like, "Let's move this book into your center or independent reading books," however you do that. It might be in a folder, it might be in a gallon bag, could be in a magazine-type box where they have a place where they get their books from.

Then there's an expectation, whatever you decide that is. I don't know if you might say to read three, or read five, or read one of each, and then give them the freedom to... Again, like we said, you'd be practicing that a lot, so they would know this is the expectation, you do have to start with this, and you have to actually read it. In that first month, you're really going over that.

Christina Winter: Yeah. And the kids... I mean, that's part of the beginning when you're rolling out the new centers and you're talking to them about, "Why is it important for us to pick THESE books to read?" We want to become better readers. What happens when we can read? All of these amazing things happen. We can be successful. We can learn. We can do all these amazing things. There's all this buy-in from your students when you set them up to understand that.

Anna Geiger: What would you say to somebody who said, "Well, I don't have room for centers"? What can you do when you're limited on space?

Christina Winter: Get creative! You don't have to have a ton of space. You can just dedicate a certain area. I just really want to say to be consistent. If you have writing center activities, if you don't have a lot of space, put your writing center activities in one of those shower caddies, where the kids can grab it and they can take it to their table, or a clipboard, or wherever. Just really be consistent on where you put that, so the writing center would always be on that bottom shelf.

I used to use Ziploc gallon bags. You can just put some activities in that, clip it up to your whiteboard, and that would be where they could find it.

You just want to take all the confusion away, so if you are consistent and you put the things in the same place every time, there's never, "I can't find the... Where do I..." all the things. There's a procedure they know.

You can do that and be really thoughtful about the spaces in your classroom. I know that the computers are really exciting sometimes for kids, so we don't want to put certain centers where kids are facing the screen, and they can see what's happening on the screen, because they might get distracted because it almost looks like a video game. It's not a video game, but it's exciting to see, even when kids are wearing headphones.

Really be thoughtful in how you lay out your room. I like to put my writing center... If you do have a writing table, like a table, I like to put it facing the wall, because kids are not looking out into the classroom. They're looking at the wall, then the wall can have anchor charts and things like that also on the wall.

Just be really, really thoughtful, even thinking about the patterns of traffic in your classroom and spacing kids out. For example, sometimes we'd have a build-a-poetry center or something like that, so thinking about where that would be where it would be out of the way of traffic and things like that too.

Anna Geiger: When you did centers, did you have... When you were finishing up your small group, did you have a warning time where you said, "Oh, time to transition or clean up," or anything like that?

Christina Winter: Absolutely. Again, because I'm super type A, I started off the year in first grade always very structured. I would do round one, where I'd work with a small group, the kids are doing center one, their station number one, and then I would ring a bell. I tell my kids, "Hands on your head! Look at me!" Then I would tell them, "Okay, friends, great job! Let's clean up and move on to center number two. If you forget where you're going, go up to the center chart."

It's really, really structured at the beginning, but then soon I would just ring a bell and they would move. It's like this release of responsibility, giving it over to them. By mid-year to the third quarter of the year, I would start putting one of those timer clocks where it kind of counts down the minutes. Have you seen those?

Anna Geiger: Mm-hmm.

Christina Winter: I would just mark it with highlighter tape and say, "This is where center one is going to be finished. This is an approximation. Let's talk about the word approximation. If you have a few more words to write in your story, do you have to move exactly when the..." Kids are so literal, right, so we talked about, "You don't have to move exactly there. Finish up that last sentence, and then you're ready to move."

By the end of the year, it wasn't like I was telling them anything to do other than, "We're going to get started," and "We're going to clean up and meet at the carpet." Generally, I do a lot of singing, so when it was time to clean up, I would just start singing a song, and we would just clean up and move on over to the carpet.

Yeah, definitely, I think especially for K-1, being really, really structured at the beginning, and letting them feel success and guided, and then releasing the responsibility to them as they become more capable.

Anna Geiger: We've been talking a lot about K-1, but I recently had a question from someone about second grade centers. Much of this just transfers over, right?

The independent reading time might not be decodable texts; it might be some other books that they're working on, but there's an expectation that we're not just grabbing new books every day, that we're working on books and then when we're done, then we can choose new books.

The partner reading, that's easy to do with partner plays, reader's theater, or it could be some passages from ReadWorks. There are lots of options there.

Listening to reading, they can still do that, although I know one thing I've read is that if you want them to actually build fluency, they need to be reading along, like actually reading with the recording. That would be something to practice with second graders, for example.

Certainly, you could do writing for second grade.

Then word work, that's easy, right? You can just use the phonics games and things like that.

So this is very applicable up through the primary grades, and certainly you could think of it in a different way if you need to do it for older students too. But this is not just for K-1, just to be clear about that.

We're winding down now, but I know some people would say, I get this email a lot, "How do I store all of your resources? How do I organize them?" Do you have any tips for organization of center material?

Christina Winter: Well, my number one tip is don't put it in a pile.

Anna Geiger: Guilty.

Christina Winter: I am guilty of that too, right? You're so busy, you're a teacher, and you're like, "Oh, I'll just put it on this little counter right over here." Then you have a mountain of things to file, and then you're like, "Oh, it's so overwhelming. I'm just going to throw it away."

I just think that you find a system. I personally like to organize my centers by center type, so if they were roll a fluency phrase, I would just put them in order as skills progressed.

Anna Geiger: In like a filing cabinet or something?

Christina Winter: In like a filing cabinet, yes.

But some people like to do it seasonally. That works too. Just figure out a system, and then keep up with it. You can also teach parent volunteers. If you're lucky to have a teaching assistant as you're changing out new centers, you can teach them, "This is my system. Could you help put this away?" during those times, those minutes that they have. Just really keep up with it.

Anna Geiger: That would be kind of similar to the idea of taking a month, possibly, to teach students how to use centers. That's the time that you spend thinking of a system, and then following through on it, and it will save you so many headaches and time in the future. You don't have to reprint, refind... I won't even go into that, all the things I lost as a teacher because I didn't have a system, so it's worth figuring that out.

I know, maybe in the show notes, I'll look around and see what I can find. People have different ideas, using those big plastic tubs from craft stores with the lid that pops up, also magazine-type racks. I'll see what I can find for people to see, something that might help them.

This has been fabulous. You've answered so many of my picky questions, which I really appreciate.

Can you talk to us really briefly about the center resources on your site? I'll definitely link to all your posts about centers, but also, your membership and how that works.

Christina Winter: Awesome. Yes, if you go over to Mrs. Winter's Bliss and you just use the search bar and type in "literacy centers," I'm sure you will get at least ten blog posts that touch on a lot of these things, maybe a little deeper.

I also have a membership called Leaders of Literacy, and it's a community for kindergarten, first, and second grade teachers. I have a whole video course that walks them through step-by-step what are the good centers, how to plan for centers, how to prep your centers quickly, how to organize, how to get your groups, how to launch those step-by-step with checklists of all the things that you need to teach, model, and practice with your students. That's all there.

But the members also love that they get meaningful center activities that are already created, and I'm really mindful. We don't want teachers on Sunday afternoon cutting out snowballs and... We want them to be effective but also low-prep, because teachers have so much to do. We have created really meaningful activities that are as low-prep as possible, not fluffy, but meaningful for students. We open the membership three to four times a year because we like to really welcome a new cohort of teachers in, making sure we can support them with everything they have. I can provide a link, and you can share that also if anyone is interested.

Anna Geiger: Well, thank you so much, Christina. This was fabulous!

Christina Winter: Yes, thank you!

Anna Geiger: You can find the show notes for this episode at themeasuredmom.com/episode160. Talk to you next time!

Closing: That's all for this episode of Triple R Teaching. For more educational resources, visit Anna at her home base, themeasuredmom.com, and join our teaching community. We look forward to helping you reflect, refine, and recharge on the next episode of Triple R Teaching.

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4 strategies to limit disruptions during literacy centers



How to keep kids on task during literacy centers



5 literacy centers every classroom needs



Christina’s membership: Leaders of Literacy




Ideas for organizing center materials




5 simple ways to organize math and literacy centers (Farrah Henley Education)



4 tips for organizing literacy centers (Mrs. Winter’s Bliss)



Organizing literacy centers (Sarah’s Teaching Snippets)



Organizing phonics materials (Sarah’s Teaching Snippets)

 

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What should small group instruction look like? with Deedee Wills

TRT Podcast #161: What should small group instruction look like? – with Deedee Wills

Deedee Wills was once a kindergarten teacher who trained other teachers to implement guided reading. In today’s episode she shares information from her recent Plain Talk presentation, explaining why we need to move away from guided reading and how to give intentional, effective small group instruction to beginning readers.

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Hello, it's Anna Geiger from The Measured Mom, and in today's episode I talk with Deedee Wills. You might know her from her website, Mrs. Wills Kindergarten. She's been operating there for a long time and has been selling on TPT for a long time as well.

A really neat thing about Deedee is that she was very much a balanced literacy/guided reading teacher and teacher educator for a long time, but when she learned about the science of reading, she made a big switch and she's open and honest about her journey and even was able to present at the Plain Talk Conference this past winter. Today she shares some highlights from her presentation at Plain Talk all about how to teach small groups in kindergarten. Here we go!

Anna Geiger: Welcome Deedee!

Deedee Wills: Hi, how are you?

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

Deedee Wills: I am glad to be here.

Anna Geiger: Deedee was actually instrumental in my journey coming into the science of reading. I've shared before in this podcast how when I first learned that Emily Hanford's article, "At a Loss for Words" was throwing punches at three-cueing I felt pretty upset by that. I went into a Facebook group asking, say, "Hey, I know a lot of you do the same thing I do. You teach the idea of guided reading with leveled books. How would you react to this article?"

I was really surprised that people came out saying, "Yeah, actually she's right and here's why, and here's what you should read."

That really surprised me because that's not what I was expecting. I was expecting people to show me exactly how to break down her argument, but nobody did that.

You were one of the people that chimed in there and listed a lot of books for me to read. I didn't know you personally at the time, but that was really eye-opening for me because of all the success that you've had sharing resources online.

Then you said, "Finding out that MSV, (three-cueing) is bad for kids is like finding out that your only child is a serial killer."

I've shared that before and people might think that sounds a little over the top, but for people who know, they know that it really does feel like that.

Deedee Wills: Yeah, yeah.

Anna Geiger: It was just really tough, so hearing that from someone like you really, really helped a lot.

Way back when I was learning about the science of reading, I did reach out to a lot of people. You were one of them and I said, "Hey, can you just talk to me on a Google Chat because I'm really struggling with some of these things," and that was super helpful.

But you weren't always there, so can you go back in time and talk to us about how you got into teaching and what happened over time to shift your understanding?

Deedee Wills: Well I would love to say that I was always there, but I wasn't always there. When I first started teaching, I got hired at San Diego Unified School District where I taught as a first-year teacher. Out of 44 teachers, there were 40 of us that were first-year teachers because this was a state-watched school. It was at the risk of being taken over by the state because of being low-performing.

When we were all hired, they completely moved veteran teachers out and brought new teachers in because we all didn't know any better, and so we spent a lot of time receiving additional training. We had experts coming in from all over the world, literally all over the world, to teach us about guided reading. We had three hours of professional development every week on guided reading.

We used that approach with a group of students who were 96% second language learners, 100% free and reduced lunch, the students who were the most at risk, at risk, at risk students, and we saw growth at the end of the first year. I taught second grade at the time, and then at the end of the second year, we also saw growth, and so that was, I'm doing air quotes, that was "proof" that guided reading worked to me and to everybody else at the time. Now this was the early 2000s.

Then we moved out of state, and I taught in Missouri and kept doing the same types of practices. Nobody was really using a differentiated approach to instruction, so we had a lot of students who were falling through the cracks. I started doing guided reading and I saw "gains," again, air quotes here, with my students, so they asked me to become the instructional coach after being there for a couple of years.

This is kind of a long story, and I know that you're probably sitting comfortably in your chair there, but they sent me for an additional two years of training on something called Guided Reading Plus, which was a Linda Dorn and Carla Soffos kind of approach.

So yes, I did that again and taught all of my teachers about the joys of balanced literacy and specifically guided reading.

I missed the classroom, went back into the classroom, and used guided reading in my own classroom.

Here's something that I really noticed is that when you start off the year, you see those four to five students in your intensive and intervention group. They are slow to learn, they are needing lots and lots of practice, and you meet with them every single day. I have this kind of mental image of me grabbing them by the shirt and pulling them through kindergarten, really sitting with them, they're working really hard, I'm working really hard. By the time we get to the end of the year, then they are just about at grade level, and I send them off to first grade and then all of a sudden I see them going down the hall in first grade to the intervention room and in second grade, the same students go to intervention. I mean year after year after year of them continuing to have this reading thing be elusive.

It was not only just those four to five students, it was the group that's a little bit higher than them, but not quite at grade level, the same type of thing.

When we started to see the test results in our schools, specifically the one in San Diego, because I did keep in touch with people, and then in Missouri, the same thing happened. We saw initial growth and then a leveling off where we were seeing what statistically we're hearing even now with about 40% of our fourth graders not reading at grade level.

So I was thinking, "Well, that's just the way that it is, right? 40% of the population aren't going to be proficient readers," and I carried on my day in this way. I carried on for years and years of me really being an advocate for balanced literacy thinking that's just the way that it is.

Then one of the things that I do as I do these webinars is ask, "What should my next webinar be about?"

Somebody asked me, "Well, would you tell us how you teach high frequency words or sight words?"

I said, "Yes, I will do that!"

As I sat there and thought about it I thought, "Well, how DO I teach them?" Then I realized that I didn't teach them, I assigned them, and then we practiced them, but I never really explicitly taught them.

So I went with my friend Google down a rabbit hole that led me ultimately to Emily Hanford's... Well, I went on to Reading Rockets first and then eventually made it to Emily Hanford's podcast.

It was a really painful period, not because I was wrong, and I'm just getting kind of teary thinking about it, but I was thinking of those students that were in my kindergarten class, that were in my first grade class, who year after year learned that they were not successful, and I believed, and those who worked with them believed, that they just weren't going to be successful, and this is just the way that it was. I know how that carries on to adulthood.

So I had a lot of guilt, but as soon as I started to really dig into it, I had so many aha moments that I knew I couldn't go back.

I kind of went public with the way that I thought this, and now I don't. One, hopefully encouraging people who were in the same shoes as I am to say, "Yeah, we can shift our thinking," and really we want to make sure that we're constantly shifting our thinking.

One thing that Emily Hanford said to me and a group of other people was that we want to always remain humble and curious.

If I were to ever get a tattoo, I don't have one, but if I ever were, I feel like that would be one that I would want to get. Because as an educator, everybody should be remaining humble and curious because the moment we think we know everything, we're going to hear something different that's going to shift our thinking a little bit and make our instruction a little more effective. So that's my journey.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, and I love that you're willing to be open about it. I just think that's so important because it's easy to pretend that we've known all along, and that certainly makes us look better, but people really need to know the struggles that we've had so that they can make those changes too.

There are just so many things that are hard to wrestle with, and one of those would be small groups. You recently presented at Plain Talk, which is incredibly impressive. Most people listening know about Plain Talk. It's one of the big, big, big science of reading conferences every year down in Louisiana.

You talked about small groups, so I'd like to talk today about maybe the difference between small group guided reading lessons versus more strategic small group lessons and how that looks in a classroom.

Deedee Wills: I mean, going to Plain Talk was certainly, I had a little bit of an imposter syndrome because I'm there with a lot of thought leaders and researchers. Although I am a researcher, I research what other researchers have done, I'm not actually conducting the studies myself.

But what I found was I could speak to the practitioner part of it, and that was something that I think I've always been able to do, and I was really glad that I had the opportunity.

When talking about small group, the first thing that we want to make sure that we have really clear is how we want to get away from that MSV model. For a lot of teachers, what I'm hearing when I go out and speak at different conferences or in other groups is yes, we are doing a science of reading approach to instruction as our core curriculum, but when it comes to small group, they're still using leveled text, and so there's a disconnect there for that.

I was just recently in a conference in Chicago and there was a teacher attending a session that wasn't on small group instruction, but she was really having a hard time seeing, "Well, what is wrong with MSV at those earliest levels? Why can't we stay with leveled text and let them go into this other type of instruction later on?"

When I broke down why that is an issue, she was like, "Now it makes sense," so if you would like for me to talk a little bit about that, I can.

When we talk about leveled texts, and I'm going to go to the kindergarten level, we really start with these super predictable texts that are, "I like the horse. I like the donkey. I like the whatever," and the pictures really carry all those meanings. If a student is really good at holding some oral language in their head, they can find that pattern, that sentence pattern, and it looks like they're reading. Obviously we want to have students exposed to those high frequency words, but if they're only memorizing those and not really reading them or looking all the way through, that becomes very problematic.

The example that I just gave is a simple example of a text, but when we get to maybe the end of first grade or maybe perhaps even the end of kindergarten, depending on the reader, you can have a text that has words in there the student doesn't know, maybe context words, and if they make a few miscues on those and the meaning is no longer carried with the picture, then you see how comprehension breaks down.

One example, I'm going to go ahead and look at my example from my slides, because I can't remember a thing by heart, but one example in a leveled text, the text says, "Deep inside of the ear is a membrane called an eardrum." If a student reads it, "Deep inside the air is a memory called an eardrum," you can see how meaning starts to break down. Within several sentences you can see where these misconceptions are happening, students are guessing, and now all of a sudden comprehension becomes an issue.

So we really want to make sure right from the very beginning that we can see truly what skills does the student have under their belt in the phonics world, the phonics and phonemic awareness world, so that we can make sure that we don't move ahead before they're ready. We don't want to move ahead before they have those skills grounded in that alphabetic principle.

We want to make sure that they really have all of their letters and sounds that they can blend and segment so that when they come to a word like membrane, they can look all the way through there and say, "Well, no, memory doesn't make sense because I don't hear the sound of B or an R really next to the membrane part." We don't have the N sound in there, and so all of those things.

We definitely use meaning as a way to check that decoding part, but we don't use it as that first line of defense, that guessing.

We think about balanced literacy, remember that activity called Guess the Covered Word?

Anna Geiger: Yes, I had the book.

Deedee Wills: I mean, I loved that activity! It was so much fun! I mean, we were just guessing, but then I think about it really we were guessing, looking at that first letter and maybe a couple more, but not really going all the way through.

The other part that is a problem with those leveled texts is we're putting words in front of them that they don't have the phonics skills yet to decode. That controlled text isn't there, so they're constantly having to guess this word, guess this word, guess this word.

Boy, if I want to have somebody practice a skill... If I'm going to be like a pole vaulter, I'm not going to be a pole vaulter, but if I'm going to be a pole vaulter, there would be no reason for me to practice throwing a football. That's not going to help me.

That's kind of what happened in small group. We did this little thing called word work, which feels like it's phonics-based, and it feels like we're doing phonemic awareness practice. Then we say, "Now you're going to read this book and you may or may not basically encounter this phonics skill or this pattern, so godspeed, good luck to you."

That's kind of what happened in leveled text, so we really want to make sure we have that controlled text. That's where decodable texts come in. Yes, so that is why that's important.

Then your question of how does it look different is that we're not using leveled texts. We're using more of a controlled text that matches what the students' skills are at that time and kind of what they're acquiring plus that text really matches closer to an independent level than that-

Anna Geiger: Instructional level?

Deedee Wills: Yeah, that mystery level that we've done before, so that instructional level. So it's closer to independent than it is to that previously learned instructional level.

Anna Geiger: I think also when I think about guided reading and model lessons, it's kind of that phonics is the afterthought at the end of the lesson. So at the end, if you have time, you do some word work, whereas probably these strategic groups, especially in the primary grades, that leads the way. We're focusing here on our word-level skills, and then we're applying it, versus, "Oh, by the way, here's some word-level work we could do if we have time."

Deedee Wills: And we never have time.

Anna Geiger: No.

Deedee Wills: It's so funny how we're always like, "Okay, well we'll try to get it next week!" and we don't. So yeah, there's never enough time.

We always want to frontload that with these more structured texts as well. That's part of it is the materials that we use are going to be different, but also the way that we structure those groups are going to be a little bit different as well.

Like I said, I'm constantly reading and learning more things, so there's a really good chance if you ask me to come back and talk to you about this a year from now that I might tell you something different. But this is where I am right now in my understanding is that not every student needs to have a thirty minute leveled text or guided reading or decodable text lesson. They don't all need to have a book lesson.

Some students need strategy lessons. I might pull a group of students who just need letter work.They might just need practice identifying the letter, handwriting that letter, and then producing the sound that goes with it. We want to do all three of those things at the same time, because we know that the way that the brain works is that they're all interconnected, and when you practice all three of those together, it helps anchor those letters to the sounds. Then that fine motor practice of handwriting, it also helps anchor that as well, so we want to include that in our strategy group.

If I had a strategy group that was letters and sounds, the letter-sound strategy group, I would meet with them for five to seven minutes and we would work on that strategy and would just be working on encoding, decoding, and recognizing.

The way that it might work is that I want to think about what my core curriculum looks like because I want to make sure that I'm delivering instruction that matches. If your core curriculum is good, I should just say that, if your core curriculum is good, then you want to make sure that it matches.

So if in the core curriculum, on an everyday basis, we are hearing the sound, saying the letter that represents that sound, and then hearing the sound and writing the letter that represents that sound, and those are things that are happening on a daily basis, then we want to make sure that we're mirroring that because we don't want to give them a completely different type of instruction because that sort of falls into...

This is my analogy that I use, but if I'm going to teach somebody something, I want to make sure I deliver the instruction the same way in, so that I can get the same output back. That memory needs to be tracked consistently in for a student, so it could be pulled out consistently for the students.

I always think about if I'm going to plant a garden and I have a hoe and I'm going to get my garden ready to put that seed in, I take that hoe and I'm going to hoe a row, and it doesn't make sense for me to go all over the garden hoeing rows when I need to make sure that I'm getting that little trough deep enough to drop the seed in. I don't want to go all over the garden doing it; I want to go over the same space again and again and again so that I can build that pathway, or a neural pathway is the same way of thinking about it.

So if I'm doing that in my whole group instruction, I want to make sure that I'm duplicating that in my small group instruction so that students can retrieve that memory, right?

Anna Geiger: So are you saying using the same kind of lesson routines, is that what you're talking about?

Deedee Wills: Yes. I'm talking about the same routines. So instead of maybe using slide decks, which I do, PowerPoint slide decks, maybe I'm using letter cards. I could still use the slide decks if that's what I have, if it's easy for me, but I can also do little cards so they can see those and they can make the path of motion with their arm, right? T says /t/. Then we do another one and B says /b/, and all of those sounds. We will warm up with that, so that's going to be something that I want to make sure that I keep in there.

We want to stack that deck for student success. So if I'm meeting with my students who in the previous years I would identify as my intervention group, they may not know a lot of letters and sounds, they might only know five letters and sounds. I want to make sure I include those five, and then I add the additional ones that we're going to be practicing at this moment in time so that we have success, success, success, struggle, struggle, success. We want to have lots of successes for them.

I've also been learning a lot about cognitive load theory. We don't want to give them struggle, struggle, struggle, struggle because they're not going to hold onto those skills. We really shouldn't be introducing more than four at one time that they don't have solid already. We want to make sure that we're giving them a lot of reinforced things that they already may have in their long-term memory, and then the things that we're putting into their short-term memory with enough exposures to move over into their long-term memory.

So the materials that we're going to use are going to be the similar types of materials, but the ones we're going to select are going to be really tailored to the students that we have in front of us so that we can give them lots of chances for success. Again, they might have it in their working memory, but they may not have it in their long-term memory, or they might have it in their short-term memory, so we want to make sure that we give them lots of exposures to move that over.

Anna Geiger: Okay. So you've described what you would do with a group that's still struggling with letters and sounds. What would be another group you might have?

Deedee Wills: Well you'll have students, depending on the time of year, those students might also, six months later, be struggling with blending and segmenting.

We would do the same type of a thing. I would give them the same type of skills, so I'm going to show them a CVC word, and we're going to practice tapping it and blending it. Then I'm going to tell them a CVC word, and they're going to practice spelling it and writing it. It's the same type of thing.

After we've done that kind of warmup, whether it's letters or segmenting and blending, then we could do some more handwriting activities. We could play a game so that we're really seeing those again and again. We want to make it highly engaging. After four to five minutes off you go, you're back to your student centers.

I typically would have two strategy groups during a day's small group period, and then two with a decodable text that I would have.

For that group, we would again provide the same type of instruction. We're going to do some phonemic awareness activities where we're blending and segmenting. We're going to be looking at words that are within that scope that they're practicing, maybe it's CVC words maybe it's digraphs. We're going to practice those words where they're blending across the line nine words in that little kind of family of what we're working on. Then they'll do some dictation along with sentence dictation. We just want to make sure that we're giving them both that in and out kind of type of instruction. Then we would go into using a decodable text.

Now that is something that there's a lot of different discussion about what decodable texts should look like.

When Deanna and I wrote our decodable texts, we really wanted to make sure that we got away from anything that looked like leveled texts, so we removed a lot of pictures from the book. We have a picture on the cover, and then in each of the text pages, we don't really have any pictures at all. The only pictures we might have would be a little rebus for a story word that's needed to carry the story.

I know a lot of other people will put that in an illustration, which I think there's no problem with that, but we just wanted to really have ours be removed from that possibility because sometimes, what do they say, the devil's in the details. Sometimes we just lean into that and sometimes it's really hard to know what students are doing or not doing.

So that rebus would be in there and students would have a highly decodable text. Most of our books are 70+% decodable, so they would be practicing that CVC skill again and again.

If we're now working with a group that has a silent E, they're going to be seeing CVC words and silent E words, because we want to make sure that we're not just doing the skill of the week, because students really figure that out quickly, don't they? "Oh, these are all short A sounds, or these are all short I sounds," so then they overgeneralize that. We want to make sure that they're not only just practicing this particular activity, but all of those previously learned skills that they've had. We want to make sure that we include those into the text as well.

Then the students will be able to take that book or that text home to practice or perhaps maybe with a partner in the classroom so that they'll have some additional exposures.

Also before we actually start to read the book, we're going to orthographically map any of those high frequency words that they need to have a refresher on or might be new to them. Maybe we needed those words in the text to carry the story, but they haven't been done as the whole group, so we'll go ahead and include that instruction right then and there.

Again, the same idea of what we do for our strategy groups, we don't want to throw a whole bunch of words at them, here are 72 words that we're going to orthographically map. We're going to keep it to a short number, three to four, so that the working memory isn't just overloaded. It's the same kind of idea.

That's really kind of the crux of that decodable text. We do ask some comprehension questions, but as you know, comprehension and a decodable text, it is tough. It's tough to have really deep conversations about a book that doesn't have the text complexity that matches their oral language.

In kindergarten, their oral language far exceeds their decodable language, so really we do all of our comprehension, most of our comprehension work, through a read aloud activity where I'm doing the decoding and the students are doing a lot of the thinking work. That's building their oral language and their ability to interact with the text in a deep way.

But we also want to ask a few questions on those decodable texts to make sure did they get that? There are times when I'll ask questions. Some of them are right there in the text like, "What was the color of the sled?" It was red. "What was the name of the dog?" It was Ted.

It might be something along those lines, or it could be more of an inferential. "Why do you think the dog took the blah, blah, blah? If you were in that situation, how would you get the blah, blah, blah back?" Something that's asking them to think beyond the text, but they have to get the big idea of the text in order to get there.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, and even if we might not be able to ask really deep questions, there are things we can do like teaching them to answer in a complete sentence, start with the end of my question. There is a lot we can do with oral language, even though, like you said, those texts aren't typically written for deep thinking.

Deedee Wills: Yes.

Anna Geiger: So overall, you're talking about starting with a lesson for everyone and then differentiating based on need.

Do you find that there's a way to challenge the kids who are beyond what you're teaching in the core lesson?

Here's my impression, you can tell me if I'm wrong, but my impression is a lot of teachers do this model, and they say, "Yeah, we meet the needs of everybody," but then what ends up happening is there isn't time to challenge the kids who are beyond the scope and sequence. What is your thought on that?

Deedee Wills: Well I think you do need to challenge the students who are beyond in the scope and sequence. Sometimes those are students that learn in spite of us, those are students who are like, you just got to get out of their way!

However, what we do know is that although their reading abilities might be really high, oftentimes their spelling abilities don't match that. Over time, that becomes problematic for them as well when they just keep moving on and on and on and on, versus really making sure that they understand that phonics skill and how to spell that as well.

So yeah, you can meet with your higher group. They're not going to need as much instruction as your students who need multiple exposures to master a skill, but meeting with your higher group once a week to do a decodable text that's above what you're doing as a whole group instruction, I think, is a really good idea.

In kindergarten, if you have students who come in who are reading at a first grade level, they're probably not spelling at a first grade level. That's kind of where you can begin with that group is to say, "Okay, they're reading really well, but when I look at their writing, I'm noticing that it's not transferring to their writing. That might be a place for me to pull them into a small group."

Again, the way that the lessons are structured is that we're not just reading, we're also spelling with that dictation part of it. Also, conventions are something where it's a little slower for students to learn, so you have a chance to practice that as well.

I've always believed, and I don't know where I heard this quote, but I know I didn't make it up myself, but every student deserves a year of growth. If you have a student coming in at a first grade level, they still deserve a year of growth. One, because that's our job, but two, as a parent, we don't want them to think that they've come and wasted a year, or that we want parents to think, "Oh, maybe they need to skip a grade," because I think that's really dangerous when we think about all of the skills they have to master.

Sometimes they're really strong in just one, and skipping a grade at those early grades is, I don't want to say dangerous, but I think it can be... It's not always beneficial for them to do that. Maybe their math skills aren't there, their writing skills might not be there, maybe their maturity level isn't there or maybe if they are... Do we want them to be the last person in their high school to get their driver's license or graduate when they're 15?

Those are things that we don't always think about as parents when they're five and six, but later on in life, sometimes it doesn't set them up to be necessarily a leader because of the difference in maturity levels.

Keeping them challenged within the grade level, I think, is our responsibility as well.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, yeah, for sure. So basically the takeaway is if you're going to teach phonics with your whole group, it is required pretty much that you follow up with some small group instruction because, of course, they're not all going to be learning it at the same pace. Some kids are actually going to be beyond your scope and sequence and may need support in other ways, including spelling, but also challenging them with skills farther along in the scope and sequence.

Those groups are going to change based on mastery, so if someone is in that alphabet group, but they're picking those up pretty fast, then they're going to need to move into a different group.

Deedee Wills: Absolutely.

Anna Geiger: Do you think that this is overwhelming for teachers, this idea of what groups do I pull and how do I decide who's in them? Do you have any practical tips for working through that?

Deedee Wills: Yes. While I'm doing a whole group lessons, now, just to be clear, I go in and work with classrooms, I don't have my own classroom now. But when I go in and I work with classrooms now, while I'm doing whole group, I keep a clipboard so that as I am showing slides, I'm kid-watching the entire time. You can't watch 22 kids at one time, but I'm kid-watching at the same time.

I might be looking at these four students today and those four students later, and I'm just watching to see how quickly are they responding, is there automaticity mastery there, or are they just kind of lagging behind and letting other students kind of carry it? There's nothing wrong with that, but that just tells me they don't have mastery, or that it could be one of the problems, they also could be doing pencil erasers, so that could be also the issue. While I'm also doing dictation, I'm noticing.

I'm looking for four pieces of information while I'm doing that whole group. I'm looking to see if they see the letter, can they name it? If they see the letter, can they tell me the sound that it makes most frequently. If they hear the sound, can they tell me the letter that represents that sound and can they write that sound with the right path of motion? Those are the four pieces of information that I'm constantly gathering on this clipboard.

I have this table. It's nothing fancy, but I just code it, so I is for identify, E is for encoding, D is for decoding, and F is for formation. I just write down as I notice, "Oh, I'm noticing that this group of students all are having trouble with the /m/ sound," and letter formation for M, because they're all McDonald M's, which we don't want to even... No, we're not going to do a McDonald's M.

I'm noticing that, so that's telling me I can pull them for a quick letter group. Now, some students might need to see me three times and be like, "I'm good to go, I've gotten them straightened out." Other students are going to need to be in that group a little longer. It's very flexible.

I think that, I know we've always talked about flexible grouping, but sometimes we want to have them be in nice, neat groups so we can call it the blue group or the red group. I think that's kind of limiting for us when we put them in a group and leave them there because they should be moving in and out of that group very flexibly.

What I do is I say, "Can I see so-and-so?" I just call their names and they come to my table. I don't name them the hamsters or the guinea pigs or anything like that, because you might be a guinea pig this week, but next week you might be a fox. I don't know, it's keeping those groups really flexible.

When you have it all on one table, so you'll have the students' names across the top of the table, and then the letters down the side of the table, it's like graph paper, and you can really quickly go through and see the letter P, who needs that letter. You see which letters they need.

That's a really easy way for you to say, this is my small group maybe for this week. I'm going to pull these students for this week. Just don't be afraid to move students in and out.

You may have your letter strategy group. You might have two different letter strategy groups. You have the students who are further along in the alphabet, and you have students who are still learning several letters and sounds. You might have several different alphabet groups, especially at the beginning of the year. You'll have more alphabet groups than you'll have blending and segmenting groups.

Anna Geiger: Yeah. Thank you.

Before we kind of close off, maybe you could give us just a little overview of the whole literacy or reading block, about how much time would you spend in each area, like that whole group lesson. How much time might you, obviously it changes in each situation, but just in general, what might be the time for the small groups and then for the language comprehension piece that you mentioned earlier?

Deedee Wills: Sure. The whole group science of reading lesson, that's about 40 minutes when you include the phonics instruction and the high frequency word mapping and that sort of thing. That's a 30 to 40 minute drill activity, very explicit. Yes, we love to explore things, but we know that's not the best way for them to get that information. It should be very quick.

One thing I was just going to say, one thing that teachers tend to get a little bit bogged down with that whole group instruction is they're wanting their whole group to be with them so they don't move on to the next slide until everybody has answered the first slide, right? What we know is that there are going to be some students who are just going to be not quite there yet.

If you structure those lessons well, and that's a whole different time we could talk about it, but where first they're attempting and then they're verifying the work, so they're attempting and verifying. The students who don't know what's happening, they may not be able to attempt well, but when they verify, they're still practicing that skill.

You'll want to keep pace with about 60% of your class, so if 60% of your class is with you, then you're on the right pace. If you have only 20%, you're going too fast. If you have 100%, you're going too slow. You'll just want to keep pace with about 60% of your class with those lessons.

Then for small group, about 40 minutes a day for small group instruction would be about the minimum.

The problem is what are the rest of the students doing? That's the big thing. You don't want to have the bulk of the students doing work that's not allowing them to practice skills that they need, so you have to be very good at differentiating your centers so that they're actually working the entire time and engaged in skills that they need to over learn to work on mastery.

Depending on how well you feel about your center time, that's a whole different time that we could talk about that as well. But you want about 40 minutes for your small group instruction.

Reading comprehension is about 20 minutes. It's teachers doing a read aloud. Five days is what we do for a close reading, very similar to the way Doug Fisher talks about his close reading, where we're re-engaging with the same text over five days to dig deeper. There is a ton of student conversation taking place during that time where the students are really doing the meaning-making while the adults have asked questions. You could do some writing response in that period of time, but really 15 to 20 minutes for that whole group interactive read aloud time.

Then writing instruction is also really important. You'll want to have about 40 minutes for writing instruction, and that's for that composing part of it.

Then the last part is your handwriting instruction. You want to make sure you're having five minutes a day of handwriting instruction. That's very explicit, not handwriting practice, but instruction. This was a statistic I really found surprising is that students need five minutes a day in kindergarten and first grade, every day through those two years, in order to really build handwriting fluency.

So yeah, I mean, that's just another thing that we have to make time for, but in small group and during dictation, we can add that practice part of it, but that instruction needs to be really explicit. Five minutes a day; it doesn't have to be a lot. It's better to do five minutes each day than one 25 minute lesson a week.

Five minutes each day working on handwriting fluency, making sure that we're starting on the right place of the page. We have so many first graders that are starting at the bottom, and second graders and third graders starting at the bottom. That's a big problem when it comes to fluency and really takes a toll by the time they get to fourth grade.

We want to make sure that we're including those parts, so I think I covered all of those. Did I cover them all?

Anna Geiger: Yes, yes. Great job.

Can you talk to us a little bit here at the end about your place online and where people can find you and maybe a little bit about the Educator Summit?

Deedee Wills: Sure. So yeah, I am Mrs. Wills Kindergarten. If I could talk to my 2010 Deedee Wills, I would've said, "You know what? You might go beyond kindergarten with your blog," but she didn't listen to me then. But it's Mrs. Wills Kindergarten on Teachers Pay Teachers, on Instagram I'm @deedeewills, and then on Facebook I'm also Mrs. Wills Kindergarten.

Someday I'm going to be a TikToker. I have a very sad little TikTok channel that gets ignored, so I haven't done much with that. But yeah, that's where you can find me.

Then the Educator Summit is an online virtual training conference that my husband and I started several years ago, and we've had some amazing people including you, thank you so much for being part of that, over the last three years. We are no longer the owners of that; we have sold that company, but I'm still on as an advisory. You've met the new owner, he's completely lovely, but it allows teachers to watch content online, on-demand, for ninety days.

We have some amazing subject matter experts on there, as well as some inspirational keynotes, but we're really content-driven. We're not the rah, rah, rah, but it's very entertaining on top of informational. Each summit has had over 6,000 people, and this year I think it's going to double, so we're really excited about that. It means that we have those same people returning. To me, it means that people are finding value there and that it's something that they are looking forward to. So yeah, that's going to be starting on June 1st this year.

Anna Geiger: Great. Well, thank you so much.

Deedee Wills: You're welcome.

Anna Geiger: It was, as always, a pleasure to talk to you and see you and to hear all these things explained for teachers who really appreciate it.

Deedee Wills: Well, I appreciate you having me. Thank you so much. I can't wait for your book!

Anna Geiger: Yeah, me too. Thank you for listening. You can find the show notes at themeasuredmom.com/episode161. Talk to you next time!

Closing: That's all for this episode of Triple R Teaching. For more educational resources, visit Anna at her home base TheMeasuredMom.com and join our teaching community. We look forward to helping you reflect, refine, and recharge on the next episode of Triple R Teaching.

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Resources with Deedee Decodable books and resources (created with Deanna Jump) Website: Mrs. Wills Kindergarten Find her on Instagram The Educator Summit

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The post What should small group instruction look like? with Deedee Wills appeared first on The Measured Mom.