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All about literacy centers – with Christina Winter

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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Christina’s resources & blog posts 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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The post All about literacy centers – with Christina Winter appeared first on The Measured Mom.

How one university gives pre-service teachers hands-on training – with Dr. Jodi Nickel

TRT Podcast #159: How one university gives its pre-service teachers hands-on training – with Dr. Jodi Nickel

Dr. Jodi Nickel shares her journey from balanced to structured literacy, and describes how her university pairs teacher candidates with struggling readers in a successful tutoring program.

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Hello, Anna Geiger here from The Measured Mom, and today I'm sharing a conversation with Dr. Jodi Nickel of Mount Royal University in Alberta, Canada.

She describes her journey from balanced to structured literacy and how as a professor she had to pivot when she learned what the science truly tells us about how children learn to read. What she learned really impacted the tutoring program that her university's pre-service teachers participate in. Now the teacher candidates are doing more explicit teaching of letters, sounds, and patterns, and have seen how much students improve with this instruction. I know you'll enjoy our conversation.

There's a little bit of a scratchy sound in the background, and if I was a more expert editor, I'd figure out how to take that out. Don't let that distract you, and I hope you enjoy this conversation.

Anna Geiger: Welcome, Dr. Nickel!

Jodi Nickel: Welcome, and thank you!

Anna Geiger: Thank you so much for joining me today. I found you on Twitter, or X, as we call it now. You had made a comment which got my attention because you are in a position of leadership as you are training future teachers, and you made a switch in what you understand about how reading works, and that's changed how you approach teaching it.

I'd like to talk about that today, but we'll start way back in your teacher training and talk about your experience as a teacher.

Jodi Nickel: I'm from Regina, Saskatchewan originally, and I taught grade 1 and 2 in the '90s in Saskatchewan. My teacher prep program was steeped in whole language. I remember reading Nancie Atwell's "In the Middle" and "The Art of Teaching Writing" by Lucy Calkins. I remember sitting and reading that Lucy Calkins book and actually crying at the joy of children's self-expression and being so excited that I wanted to create that kind of engaging classroom for my students.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, those books are very inspiring, which is why we all were taken in by them, I think. It's not that all of it's wrong, but at the foundation there's a problem.

Jodi Nickel: Yes. Actually, that led to a few years later when I did my master's research and I was researching my students regarding Writers Workshop. The resource teacher at my school was trained in Reading Recovery, and in those early years, Fountas and Pinnell didn't exist. I looked it up, the Fountas and Pinnell leveled book system started in '96, so it was in the years prior to that, but we used a leveling system based on Marie Clay's levels. We had trade books, like "The Carrot Seed" by Ruth Krauss and "It Looked Like Spilt Milk" by Charles Shaw, and all of those books were leveled. It was hard to find leveled books that were appropriate for grade 1 readers.

We also had a basal series called Impressions. I haven't been able to find it to look up what was included in it anymore, but I remember they had a lot of songs and poems that lent themselves to choral reading. Of course we did lots of reading of big books and choral reading, and I would have the poems written on chart paper or we would build the poems in a pocket chart. Then I would create pages of those and put them in a little Duo-Tang and send them home for the children to read to their parents.

Well, interestingly, I replaced a teacher who was recently retired, and she had been using decodable books. The parents came to me because some of the older siblings had been in grade 1 with this previous teacher, and they said, "Well, these were the kinds of books that the teacher was using previously, and we want you to use these too, because the kids aren't really reading these poems you're sending home, they're just memorizing them."

I assured them, "No, no, this is a normal step on the way to fluent reading," and was slightly offended, but I didn't want my students reading those boring phonics books.

As I mentioned, I focused on Writers Workshop for my master's thesis, and the kids loved it! They just relished that time to explore with writing and tell their stories, to tell their cute little stories. I think there was probably some incidental phonics instruction happening during that time, because I was helping them to encode their ideas, but it wasn't systematic.

Now one bright light, I will say, during those years in terms of using evidence-based instruction, was I used a program called The McCrackens Spelling Through Phonics. I don't know if any of your listeners will remember that program, but it was essentially word building and it did progress in a fairly sequential way. I remember the first few consonants and vowels we were looking at were basically spelling "cat, sat, mat," and so on, and progressed to more complex words. That, I think, informed the kind of spelling and coding they were doing during Writers Workshop.

In 2000, I started my doctorate and kind of inexplicably moved away from reading during those years and focused more on educational foundations. While I was doing my doctorate, I was doing some teaching for the university, and those courses were also steeped in whole language and balanced literacy.

Anna Geiger: What years was that again that you worked in your doctorate?

Jodi Nickel: From 2000 to 2005.

Anna Geiger: Okay. So it was still whole language would you say?

Jodi Nickel: Very much so, yeah.

Then in 2005 I started at my current university. I was initially in an early childhood post and then moved over in 2009 to teacher education, which interestingly is a different department. Early childhood and teacher education are different departments. I think it's probably true in some American universities as well.

For the next few years, I was teaching some more of those educational foundations courses. I had an administrative role for five years, and so literacy was actually a smaller part of what I was doing during those years, but when I was, I was teaching literacy courses following a balanced literacy approach. I was talking about shared reading and guided reading and word work and so on. I would've argued that I taught phonics during those years, and I think that most post-secondary educators and pre-service teachers would say that they do.

I remember specifically using my hands to describe an hourglass. You start with a whole, then you go to part, and then you go back to the whole. Whole-part-whole instruction, I think it's a phrase from Victoria Purcell-Gates. So you might do shared reading of a story, then you discuss some parts. You might look at the rhyming words in this book or look at how the author used punctuation or something like that, and then return to the whole text perhaps as an inspiration for writing or to just build fluent reading.

I sometimes poke fun at myself now when I'm explaining to my students how I would use a book like "Down by the Bay," and I would teach rhyming words. Did you ever see a whale with a polka dot tail? Well, sometimes a long A word like whale is spelled with a magic e, and sometimes it's spelled with two vowels go walking, but I had no sense of there being a scope and sequence and that CVCE words like whale are easier, and then you progress to vowel teams later. I don't know that I'd even heard the term scope and sequence. I must have, but it certainly didn't inform what I was doing either in my undergraduate education or in my own teaching career.

Anna Geiger: I think that speaks a lot to what I learned and did in the beginning years. I never had thought of phrasing it that way, whole-part-whole, but that's definitely what it was. It was this idea that we were going to start with this text, for me, honestly, it was whatever big books I had. I didn't have very many, so I would just choose one that I had and I would read it and I would just choose something that we would focus on because the book lent itself to that. Then of course they'd recite it again with me.

I think I looked at that as, I didn't see it as haphazard, which is what it was. I thought it was meaningful context, teaching language in a meaningful context. Also, like you, I didn't have a scope and sequence, and I think I would've thought of that as constraining. Also I thought, well, we have to see from our students what they need to learn next. Of course there is something all about assessment, but that's not what I was doing. I was just kind of guessing. I can definitely relate to what you said.

Jodi Nickel: Yeah, that's true. And you're right, it was based on the resources and there were limited resources, like I was describing pre Fountas and Pinnell, we were just using trade books that had been leveled, and there are not very many books that children could read. I think I also remember using "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" and the kids could read the repetitive part, but they couldn't read the beginning of the book words, "One day a caterpillar sat on a leaf." Well, there were lots of challenging words in that introduction part.

Anna Geiger: As you were teaching this way, did you ever feel like there might be something wrong or that there were kids you weren't reaching? Did you have any questions about it as you were doing it?

Jodi Nickel: No, I don't think I did. I think I was quite cocksure that I was right on track.

Anna Geiger: I did the same, unfortunately. I mean, I think I noticed that some things weren't working, but I figured I just had to just keep figuring out this way of doing it, and I made a lot of assumptions about kids not getting read to at home, and that that was the problem and so on.

Moving on, what happened next?

Jodi Nickel: Yeah, so about 2012 or 2013, a woman who's a very close friend of mine now reached out to me. She ran a nonprofit organization called Calgary Reads. Calgary Reads did all kinds of interesting literacy initiatives in the community, but their core program was they would train volunteers to go into schools and help kids learn to read. And the program they used, it wasn't a pure Reading Recovery, but it was based on Reading Recovery principles. These volunteers would go and listen to a child read leveled books. It was called Read Up, because the idea was that you would read up in levels, and they would make some sight word cards and so on. She said, "I don't think teachers know how to teach children how to read, and I can help. Why don't we get your teacher candidates doing tutoring as part of their coursework?"

So the way our courses are structured, they are in schools a half day week, and they're with us a half day week. They're helping out the teacher and getting to know the kids and so on, but we thought for a half hour a week they could be doing literacy tutoring.

So we started assigning them one child for the entire year, and by the entire year, I mean basically October to March, and they followed that child and wrote a case study about them. I actually think they really learned a lot from that, even though there were some things that we've improved, some challenges with that. I think that by listening to one child read, they really noticed what they needed.

I've written a couple of papers about that. One was called "Tutoring to Build Teacher Candidates' Competence as Reading Teachers" and another is "Learning to Teach Responsively Through Tutoring." I quoted a fellow named Dennis Murphy Odo, who compared tutoring to learning to teach with training wheels, because you can really pay attention to that one child and zone in on what they need.

I remember there was one quote though, where a student was describing a child struggling with a particular concept, and they said, "But I didn't really know how to help them with this because I don't have enough phonics knowledge to do that."

Anna Geiger: Oh, interesting.

Jodi Nickel: Yeah, so I think they were beginning to recognize that they needed more to help them.

Anna Geiger: So what led you to rethink your balanced literacy/whole language approach?

Jodi Nickel: Well, I finally had a sabbatical. It was my first sabbatical in nearly fifteen years after I started academia, and those were really valuable opportunities because I finally had a chance to read more widely.

I have a good friend who's an educational psychologist and we go for walks, and she'd been challenging me on tutoring and was explaining to me that these leveled books left kids guessing and that they needed to be taught more explicitly. She started sending me things to read and to listen to. Of course the first was Emily Hanford's "At a Loss for Words," and I've heard you describe on your podcast, Anna, how you were resistant and defensive at first. I don't know if you want to respond to that.

Anna Geiger: Oh, it's definitely true. Yeah, I'm sure people that listen to my podcast regularly know this story, but that was what got me to the science of reading around 2019 or so, when two people commented on my blog post with that. In a very nice way, they were just like, "What do you think about this?"

I was sure it was wrong. It had to be wrong. It was nothing like what I'd been taught, and I hadn't heard of any of those people she was talking about and quoting, but it did lead me to ask around. Then I realized that actually some people were rethinking what they were doing, and these were the things I needed to read. So yeah, I definitely credit her for getting me started, but it was hard at first.

Jodi Nickel: Yeah. Another was the "Structured Literacy and Typical Literacy Practices" by Louise Spear-Swerling, and I remember looking at the structured literacy practices thinking, "Those look so boring."

She gave me David Kilpatrick's "Equipped for Reading Success," and I think it took me a while to understand orthographic mapping, perhaps I'm still learning to understand it, but I was beginning to understand the role of phonemic awareness in learning to read. I also started reading Tim Shanahan's blog.

I had a period of a few months where I know that I was ambivalent.

I'm preparing for a presentation at The Reading League next fall, actually, and I found an email that I sent to my colleague. I sent my colleague Tim Shanahan's blog, and this is a quote that I wrote to her in the fall of 2019, "This blog has been helpful in clarifying my thinking about shifts in reading instruction and a balanced understanding of the new 'science of reading' that may be just a bit fanatical about phonics first."

So that was where my head was in the fall of 2019. My colleague thought it was very funny that I was able to find this, to unearth this email.

I remember going to PD event and having a conversation with a local administrator who was a huge advocate of literacy and an advocate of Calgary Reads, and I was saying, "But what about all this stuff they're saying about leveled books?"

She kind of allayed my fears and said, "Oh, no, no, it's okay. I think that it's alright for kids to read leveled books when they're just beginning because it builds their confidence."

So I was in this period of transition, but I had a whole year. I mean, I was doing a lot of other projects that year as well, but a lot of reading. I read all of the key authors. I read "Speech to Print" by Louisa Moats, and I read "Language at the Speed of Sight" by Mark Seidenberg, and "Reading in the Brain" by Stanislas Dehaene and more David Kilpatrick and Daniel Willingham and Maryanne Wolf, and so many podcasts and websites and webinars and social media groups.

One that was very influential, because it had videos attached to helping me see classroom practice, was the Reading Rockets "Reading 101" course. I could actually look at a video and say, "Oh, THAT'S what it looks like to do phonological awareness using felts," for example.

So when I returned from my sabbatical in the summer of 2020, we started shifting the content of the course, and I would say the shifting in the content has been kind of gradual. That year we were teaching online, and so unfortunately, the teacher candidates didn't have a field experience at schools that year. I really think the experience of learning the content and then applying it to tutoring, and also seeing it in the schools, is really what makes it stick. So what we had them reading that year was the "Put Reading First" little small book by Armbruster et al, and we really started emphasizing the importance of knowing what the research says. We shifted away from some of the balanced literacy readings in that year.

By the next spring, spring of 2021, we knew that the students would be returning to schools in the fall and that we needed to revamp tutoring. Interestingly, Calgary Reads was also going through a similar transition. They were realizing, "Okay, we need to rethink this tutoring program we've been doing." They had an early literacy advisory of teachers and this group were saying, "You know what? We need to shift things away from leveled books and so on," but they didn't have the opportunity or the time to revamp tutoring.

So I thought, "Well, I've got to pull something together on my own," and so with their help and the help of that early literacy advisory, I just pulled together a little Google Site of resources.

Tutoring initially included simply three parts with about ten minutes for each: ten minutes of word work, ten minutes of listening to students reading, and then ten minutes of adult reading. That was kind of the general framework.

We didn't have any money for a resource, and we didn't feel comfortable asking the students to purchase something when we were still in the process of figuring out what would work for them as well, and so it was just kind of cobbled together, those free resources. We gave them a word work folder with the manipulative grapheme tiles, and I think that helped them understand even the fact that the SH digraph is on one tile, and so it's one sound.

Some of those things I think were beginning to build their understanding, and we did give them a scope and sequence, but it was really broad steps. It really just said first CVC words, then magic E words, and so on. It didn't break it down into the really specific steps that I think would have helped them more specifically.

Partway through that year, so this would've been the winter of 2022 or perhaps late in the fall of '21, our provincial government released a document called Reading Intervention Lessons. That was a bit more structured and helped them, but we didn't have access to that when we were first building the tutoring website.

When it came to the student reading to the adult, we recommended some decodable texts and had some access to digital versions like Flyleaf, for example. So some of them were having kids reading leveled books, because that's what the teachers were giving them and recommending, and some were having them read decodable books.

I should say that our province had introduced a new curriculum, and in that year it was being piloted, so teachers were in a time of transition too. They were really just trying to get their head around, what did it mean to shift from leveled books to decodable books and a scope and sequence.

I think the teacher candidates in that first year or two were starting to build some solid routines, but it was still a bit disjointed and unstructured.

After that first year, we knew that we needed a more detailed scope and sequence, and so we gave them the UFLI, the sort of one page scope and sequence, and that was much more detailed. The UFLI handbook or guidebook only came out that summer, and so we didn't have time to really revamp the tutoring site based on that, but even having a more detailed scope and sequence was really helpful.

If a student was, let's say, teaching the /oo/ sound and they were using the word "tube" and the word "spoon" and the word "few," I could show them on the scope and sequence that tube is way over here in lesson 55 or something like that, and spoon is over here, and few is an atypical spelling, and so you want to save that till later.

The other thing that happened in 2022 is we received a donation of Lit Kits from Calgary Reads, and they are labeled on the box, "A box packed with love and bite-size ideas for joyful reading." That had a magazine of resources, and it was originally designed for parents. It was about this time that Calgary Reads decided to wind down, and I'll tell you more about that in a moment, and so they donated about a hundred of these Lit Kits. So then every teacher candidate had a Lit Kit that they could take with them into schools and it had a whiteboard with markers, it had books, it had games, and dice, and all kinds of resources.

Anna Geiger: Neat.

Jodi Nickel: So then they took our little website and gave them some tools to use with it.

Then the bigger changes I would say happened just this past summer in 2023. As I said, Calgary Reads had decided to wind down and disperse of their assets in something called the dandelion strategy, and part of what they were doing was wanting to take the programs that they had and allow them to grow. So think of blowing off the dandelion seeds and letting those seeds grow in bigger organizations. We were fortunate to be one of the seven organizations that were selected to be gifted some of those funds and the programs.

One of the beautiful things that came from that was the support from some professional web designers. We developed the content, taking what we'd learned in those first two years with our little cobbled together Google Site, and took those resources and beefed them up and improved them and gave them to these web designers. They didn't know anything about literacy, and so they were asking such great questions, "Well, what do you mean by this? What do you mean by orthographic mapping? What do you mean by heart words?" They really helped to clarify the content and created great visuals to really bring it to life.

I had the support in building the content from a local teacher, and interestingly, she's now running her own tutoring company and she has been hiring a bunch of our students, so students go and work with her in her afterschool reading clinic. She knows, "What does a 20-year-old like, and what do they need to know in order to be an effective tutor?" Having her wisdom to help me with developing the content was really, really powerful.

Now in terms of developing the content, we only could really give them half hour a week, so we knew we couldn't be doing a full-blown UFLI lesson with all of the steps, but we borrowed some of the core routines, and we had some of the students that had been working for this teacher come to the university and we had professional videographers and they did videos of them demoing some of the activities with kids.

Anna Geiger: Oh, wonderful.

Jodi Nickel: I think those really bring the tutoring website to life for students because you can say, "Well, this is what a visual drill looks like," or "This is what word work looks like." I think that they're really making those powerful connections when they learn the ideas in class and then get to try them out with the students.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, that's excellent. So tell me more about how you help them learn to teach reading in this short setting.

Jodi Nickel: So sadly, we can't really supervise all of them directly, because there are about 90 teacher candidates in 25 or 30 different schools, and so we have to do what we can on campus and then depend on the schools to support them.

We start with tutor training. That was about six hours back in September where we really worked through what does the lesson plan look like, what does the tutoring session look like, worked through the videos, practiced it in pairs, and then practiced designing lessons in pairs. Then they share their tutoring logs that they're doing in schools with me in Google Doc format so that I can add comments. I provide feedback as often as I can, and often they'll email me and say, "What do you think I should do here?" or they'll stay after class and ask advice.

We also get them together in grade groups to share their tutoring plans with their peers and they support one another. In some schools, they are even beginning to lead small groups and some whole class lessons with teachers who are using some of those materials. That's been a really cool experience for them to see that this isn't just a one-to-one intervention, this could be whole class instruction as well.

One of the things that we tried last spring that was really exciting is in the past, even from 2013 on, we had them write a case study about the child they were tutoring and submit it as an assignment where they would make the theory practice connections and so on.

This past April, we had them do a visual showcase. Picture kind of like a research paper or a science fair kind of experience, where everybody created a visual. We had them displayed on smart boards and some on these giant visualization walls in our space, and they had about ten minutes each to tell the story of the child they were tutoring. We invited mentor teachers, invited community members, and we had about six presentations happening consecutively, and every ten minutes a new person started sharing. The visual essentially was a story.

When they were overwhelmed wondering what do I put on this, I said, "Think of a story having a beginning, middle, and an end. The beginning is the child that you met. Who was this child? Were they quiet and reserved? Were they rambunctious and energetic? Were they in ELO? What were they experiencing as readers? What were they like? Then the middle is, what did you do? What happened in your story?" They had been encouraged to take photographs of some of the activities they'd been doing, and then the end was, "What happened? What was the end of your story?"

In most cases, they, I would say, used the CORE Phonics Survey, and so they had little graphs showing how their CORE Phonics Survey results changed over time. In some cases, they had qualitative information like the child said, "I love reading now," or those kinds of things.

It was a really high energy event, and they were pretty excited to be able to talk about all they had done and felt a really great sense of efficacy about what a difference they had made in the lives of these kids. So that was really exciting. That's going to be a keeper. We'll stick with that in the future.

Then what we had them submit in addition to that was what I called an evidence base. What we've been using for the last two or three, I guess this is our third year, we've been using the "Teaching Reading Sourcebook."

Anna Geiger: Yes.

Jodi Nickel: As you know, it's a wealth of research-based information. I ask them to choose five quotes or ideas from the text and then describe how that was evident in their practice. It's really getting them to tie what they're doing not to activities, but to what research is informing the activities that they're doing.

Anna Geiger: I love that so much. That is definitely not something I knew how to do. If someone would've asked me as a teacher, "What research is your work based on?" I would've said, "Well, it's based on the work of Lucy Calkins and Fountas and Pinnell." I didn't know what the research said about it, I just trusted what they told me. That's excellent that they're getting into that so early.

Is the "Teaching Reading Sourcebook" their core textbook, their main textbook?

Jodi Nickel: Yes, that's right.

Anna Geiger: Yeah. Excellent. I know I've mentioned this before on the podcast that it's pricey, but it is worth it. It's very comprehensive and it has the sample lessons all throughout, which is just really wonderful and very, very readable too. It's very nicely laid out as well.

So you've talked about how this one colleague opened your eyes to the science of reading, you got into it, you made some changes, then you realized that the tutoring that you were offering could be changed and improved, and you talked about how your teaching of your pre-service teachers has shifted. If you would go back into teaching in the classroom, how would your approach to teaching reading look different from when you were a classroom teacher years ago?

Jodi Nickel: Yeah. So Margaret Goldberg has a visual, it's on the Reading Rockets site, where she talks about going from activity-focused to targeted instruction. On the left-hand side, it's shared reading, Reading Workshop, word study, read-alouds, Writers Workshop. Those are the activities we're doing, which as you said, we tend to do those activities with the resources that we have. Then on the other side it's more of a focus on word recognition, spelling strategies, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.

It's possible that some of the activities we're doing are the same activities, but they're informed with a different lens. Now I'm not just doing the shared reading because I have a big book to read, but I'm doing shared reading because I actually want to build fluency or I want to work on these specific comprehension strategies. I think being guided by those specific goals is really what would shift for me if I was a classroom teacher now.

Anna Geiger: When I look back to your experience learning about the science of reading, can you remind me what your colleague was, was she a classroom teacher or was she a professor?

Jodi Nickel: No, she was an educational psychologist, so she was working with kids who had complex learning needs.

Anna Geiger: Whatever she did, it didn't make you run away or retreat or not want to be her friend anymore, so do you have any thoughts for us about what did she do right that got you interested in learning about it?

Jodi Nickel: I think she was patient with me, and I do think that we need to give people time to process the ideas.

I had coffee recently with somebody who's in that space right now where she's processing ideas. What she said was, "When I first heard Mount Royal University was doing science of reading, I thought, 'Oh, no!'" And she was alarmed by this, but she said, "But now I look at what you're doing and I'm realizing that maybe it's not so far off base."

I think we need to give people time. So think about my view, my email that I sent to my colleague only four years ago saying, "This might be a bit fanatical." To the skeptics, I think it does look fanatical at the beginning.

I also think that some of those critics, they think that phonics instruction would make them feel like a drill sergeant. In fact, that's what this person said. She said, "You're not a drill sergeant getting kids to just chant out words." I think we need to help them see explicit instruction as fun and engaging.

I also think that the critics would argue that they ARE teaching phonics. As I said, I thought I was. I think I would ask them, what is guiding those instructional decisions about which phonics concepts they're going to teach, and how?

I think the biggest shifts for me in the last few years have been, first of all, that you need a scope and sequence, that you need to teach things in a sequential way, and that leveled texts are not productive.

I found the "Purple Challenge" videos quite compelling by telling that story, and I show parts of those to the students, because they just introduce words that are too complex. Like in those videos, why would you expect a 6-year-old to be able to read the word "fence" and "paint", and even "purple"?

Then the third thing is the idea of mapping sounds, the Elkonin boxes and mapping sounds to graphemes, and I think even that came later.

I would say that recognizing that we need a scope and sequence and that leveled texts are not productive, I think I was understanding that early in my journey. Understanding the process of things like Elkonin boxes or that type of strategy to map sounds to graphemes, that came a bit later.

I think we also have to show the skeptics that they can continue to use all those beautiful books. We always go back to authentic reading and writing from a balanced literacy perspective. The language comprehension strand doesn't go away, we're still doing those rich and meaningful tasks, and we want to engage kids with those beautiful books, and we want them to be writing about authentic topics.

We just have to do some of the explicit work to help them to access those rich topics, that they can't read those complex texts unless we've given them the tools to access them, and they can't write meaningfully unless we've given them some of the tools that will help them to do that.

The other thing I would say about the "Teaching Reading Sourcebook" is that I love that it's structured with the what, why, when, and how. For example, what is vocabulary, why is it important, when do you teach it, and then how do you teach it?

One wish that I have, especially in those vocabulary and comprehension sections, is lessons that are based on actual trade books. I think that that would help teachers to see how you can make them engaging.

I've often taken examples from Reading Rockets, for example, and shown a classroom video of a teacher using those strategies. So here's semantic gradients, and we look at the video of the teacher teaching semantic gradients on the Reading Rocket site, and she does it based on "A Seed is Sleepy," so she's using a real text.

I think maybe that's a growth area for science of reading to show how to integrate explicit instruction with authentic texts.

One source that I think does a nice job of that is ReadWorks. I was looking at the novel studies recently, for example, and they've taken the "Wonder" story, and then they're showing how you could embed some really explicit instruction with a rich text like that.

I think that the message needs to be, explicit instruction doesn't take away kids' creativity, it actually gives them the tools to communicate successfully.

There's also just the energy that efficacy brings. I think science of reading can have a huge boost for teacher efficacy because they finally feel like, "Oh, I'm succeeding here," and for student efficacy. It feels good to be successful. I think it's more empowering for kids when they feel skillful, and it's more empowering for teachers when they understand what kids need and really how to help them succeed.

I guess that would be my message to those who are still holding onto a balanced literacy approach and are skeptical.

Anna Geiger: Well thank you so much for sharing your story, and also that's so exciting about how your tutoring program continues to evolve and improve.

Do you have any specific resources you want to share before we close out for if someone's trying to reach out to a colleague? Do you have any good starting points?

Jodi Nickel: To figure out what to read, I actually followed a video by David Pelc, where I think he called it a Scope and Sequence for Teachers. It tells you here's what you should read first, and it lists a lot of those sources that I read.

Heidi Beverine-Curry, she actually came and spoke to our teacher candidates as part of the teachers' convention last year, and somebody came up to the mic and said, "I'm at another university where we're not learning about this. Where do you think I should go?" It surprised me actually. She recommended they go to social media, and I think in part because it's the conversations on social media where you see people wrestling with issues and pointing each other to the right sources. I feel like I've really been steep in that world for the last few years.

Anna Geiger: Well, wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing. I'll make sure to share those links in the show notes. Thanks again!

Jodi Nickel: Thank you!

Anna Geiger: You can find the show notes for today's episode at themeasuredmom.com/episode159. 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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Recommended resources Information about Mount Royal University’s tutoring program Reading Rockets’ free Reading 101 course Dave Pelc’s Where Do I Start? (A Suggested SOR Scope and Sequence) Dr. Nickel’s publications

Nickel, J., & Chadwick, J. (2022). Tutoring to build teacher candidates’ competence as reading teachers. Mentoring and Tutoring: Partnership in Learning, 30(3), 312-332. https://doi.org/10.1080/13611267.2022.2070990

Webber, C.F., & Nickel, J. (2022). A vibrant and empowering context for teacher leaders. International Journal for Leadership in Learning 22(1), 1-27. https://doi.org/10.29173/ijll2

Burns, A., Danyluk, P., Nickel, J., Kendrick, A., Kapoyannis, T., & McNeilly, E. (2022). Aligning goals for certification and professional growth: Building cooperation among Bachelor of Education programs in Alberta. Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 69(1), 103-118. https://doi.org/10.11575/ajer.v68i1.70703

Nickel, J. & Crosby, S. (2021). Professional identity values and tensions for early career teachers. Teaching Education, volume pending, DOI: 10.1080/10476210.2021.1895107.

Nickel, J. & Jacobsen, M. (Eds.). (2021). Preparing teachers as curriculum designers. Canadian Association for Teacher Education. https://cate-acfe.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Preparing-Teachers-as-Curriculum-Designers_ebook_FINAL.pdf

Dean, Y., Nickel, J., Miller, J., & Pickett Seltner, R. (2021). Creating an academic ecosystem where chairs can thrive: A call for action in post-secondary institutions. Brock Education, 30(2), 99-115. https://DOI.ORG/10.26522/BROCKED.V30I2.875

Nickel, J. & Zimmer, J. (2019). Professional identity in graduating teacher candidates, Teaching Education, 30(2), 145-159. DOI: 10.1080/10476210.2018.1454898

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The post How one university gives pre-service teachers hands-on training – with Dr. Jodi Nickel appeared first on The Measured Mom.

A case for whole group phonics instruction – with Casey Jergens

TRT Podcast #158: A case for whole group phonics instruction – with Casey Jergens

Kindergarten teacher Casey Jergens shares how and why he teaches a whole group phonics lesson before offering small group instruction. Lots of food for thought!

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Hello, Anna Geiger here from The Measured Mom, and today I'm sharing a conversation with kindergarten teacher Casey Jergens. I've already shared interviews that discuss how to differentiate foundational skills from the start, but Casey wanted to share how he has found success beginning with a whole group phonics lesson and then differentiating in small groups.

Now, just to be clear, this is not my preferred model when students are at different skill levels, but I think it's important to hear different perspectives and to hear about Casey's success that he's had with this method. So here we go!

Anna Geiger: Welcome, Casey!

Casey Jergens: Well hi! Thanks for having me.

Anna Geiger: Thanks for joining me to talk about your teaching and differentiation. Can you introduce us to yourself a little bit? Tell us about your teaching experience and what you're doing now.

Casey Jergens: Yeah, my name's Casey Jergens, and this is my tenth year of teaching. I started out teaching in rural Iowa, and then I've spent the bulk of my career so far teaching in an urban setting in the middle of a city in more of a typically underserved population. All of that time was spent teaching first grade, and now for the second year in a row I'm teaching kindergarten.

The school I'm in now is kind of a unique situation. It's a suburban school, but about 50% of our population is made up of multilingual learner students. It's a very diverse school, maybe a little bit atypical of what you'd think, so that's a little bit of that.

I have a master's degree and I just mention that because it's kind of a unique master's degree in culturally responsive teaching and equity. Part of that is the lens of how I approach things and what we focus on there.

Anna Geiger: Do you have a favorite grade?

Casey Jergens: I really like both of them, so it's hard to decide. I like teaching first grade and a lot of great things happen in first grade, but I'm really loving kindergarten too. I'm finding that I really like that first foundational year, so I'm loving both.

Anna Geiger: Talk to me a little bit about how you teach your foundational skills in your kindergarten class.

Casey Jergens: Yeah, my overall literacy block is maybe typical of what people think of. It's 120 minutes and about half of that time is devoted to foundational skills. About half of the time is devoted to that other side of the Reading Rope, if you will, using a content literacy curriculum.

Within that foundational skills block, we really try to align together our handwriting, our phonemic awareness, phonics, spelling, and connected text. It all meshes well together into this block of time.

I do use predominantly a whole group model for instruction. That doesn't mean that I never see small groups, and it doesn't mean that I haven't done small groups. This model that I use now really, in my experience, has led to the best results or the greatest outcomes for learners.

That's just an overview of the block. Is there anything more specific that you want me to dive into?

Anna Geiger: Talk to me a little bit about how you do use small groups and how you decide when and how to form them, etc.

Casey Jergens: Yeah, for sure. Like many people, we start the year with our universal screener, and we use that for two different pieces. One, we're going to look at who's high risk, who's potentially needing that Tier 2 intervention, and then what are our whole group needs?

A lot of times that leads into maybe a deeper dive into a diagnostic piece. In kindergarten, it's a little bit different because we're starting at the beginning, but we do do a letter sounds focus at the beginning, and then that determines where specifically we are going to start.

The first small group that I see is within that one hour block of time, and that's a very fluid group of students really based on what I'm seeing weekly based on progress monitoring. It might be based on just what I saw that day. Who needs a little bit of that extra dosage and who maybe just needs more practice.

I should make this clear. That Tier 2 time is in addition to that block of time. That's going to be a little bit more of a structured group that we're seeing. Some students are going out of the classroom to receive an intervention, and I'm working with a group of students on a specific targeted intervention. I'm using either diagnostic data to determine those small group needs or the universal screening data, and then progress monitoring too to determine who still needs to be in the group, who's ready to exit, and those types of things.

Anna Geiger: So in thinking about this, I think about the year that I did try to do whole group phonics for the whole class, and it was very difficult because it was first grade and I had a little girl who didn't know her letters and some kids who were reading fourth grade material. In the way that you approach this, how would you handle that?

Casey Jergens: I've been in that situation a few times and I think one of things that we first do is going back and looking at that universal screening data and then looking at the diagnostic data. I have a few examples I can share of specifically what I did.

We determine, especially in first grade or second grade, are we ready to begin the year whole class where we need to? Do we need to go back a little bit? Are we ready to go forward? Then are there specific groups?

The final year that I taught first grade, two years ago, I had a pretty distinct group like you're talking about with that one student. They were missing some letter sounds, they were missing some of those pieces. So right there, that was my first group, and we started right off the bat, week two of school, week three of school.

I still kept them in that whole group time, though, because especially what we were doing at the beginning of the year still allowed them to grow in that practice. There may have been a little bit of a struggle there, but we made sure to put some scaffolds into place to support them.

Then for those students on that higher end too, I think one of the things is ... I've never quite had a group that was reading that high before, but I've definitely had students that were above grade level. I think sometimes we see that and we go, okay, they're going to be so bored in this instruction, but that's just never been my experience necessarily that they've been bored.

I think a couple of things, like keeping a quick pace, moving along in your scope and sequence, and continuing to make sure you're moving along quickly, will keep those kids engaged. Especially in first grade, we always added multisyllabic words into what we were doing. I remember specifically a group of boys that I had that were above grade level, and they just ate that up! That was really a way to push them forward. I also would take those students and we might continue to grow in fluency. Some of those types of things.

Anna Geiger: One thing I'm trying to work out is, say we've got a class of kids and the grade level skill is CVCE words, but I have kids who still aren't reading CVC words yet and kids who are beyond. I guess I'm wondering what exactly are those kids who are much below the grade level skill getting out of the whole group lesson?

Casey Jergens: I think it's important for them to hear the modeling. I think it's important for them to continue on. I guess it's not been my experience when I got to CVCE words that many students weren't able to continue on with that. If we're doing a dictation or when we're reading the words, they can join us because of the modeling or the scaffolds that we're putting in place. It could be just something like choral reading. It could be something like we are segmenting the sounds together and then they're writing it. I guess I can't really think of a specific time where that really impacted them, and I feel like it continues to push those kids forward.

Anna Geiger: I think the argument on the other side would be, we know that to get these kids caught up to grade level benchmarks and maybe beyond, they need lots of instruction where they're at. So the argument would be, well, why don't we differentiate from the beginning so that instead of doing the whole group where they're not getting exactly what they need, they can get it during this time and then additionally in Tier 2. What's your thought on that?

Casey Jergens: Well I guess I don't necessarily completely disagree with you on that. I get what you're saying, but what I worry about though is... I think that sounds really nice when we sit here and talk about it and it's like, "Okay, we're going to put these groups together, and this is the focus of this group and this is the focus of that group." I think what actually happens in reality in a lot of situations though is that group is always going to stay behind.

We have to talk about how do we take this group of kids and yes, go in and fill in what they're missing and what they need, but we've also got to make sure they're making accelerated growth towards the end of it, so that they don't always stay in that group that's behind.

If I'm taking this group of kids and we're spending X amount of time just on CVC words, waiting until everybody's showing 100% mastery of that, but now I've got another group that's in CVCE words, and I've got another group that's in vowel teams, and I've got another group that's doing r-controlled, now we're continuing to spread that gap. We're making that gap even bigger, I guess is what I would see.

Maybe I'm not explaining it in the best way. I guess what I've seen by starting everybody at that same place, using your data, has allowed for us to close gaps a lot quicker.

Anna Geiger: Okay, help me with that part. If you're using data, aren't you seeing that these kids are behind, so therefore we need to give them a different kind of instruction instead of the on-level? How does the data inform the whole group?

Casey Jergens: I'll go into a couple of examples if that's okay.

Anna Geiger: Sure.

Casey Jergens: I was thinking back and looking at some data from the past, and a good example of this is probably seven or eight years ago when we were first shifting this focus. We had been balanced literacy before.

We came in, we did our universal screener, and only about 25% of our kids were meeting that benchmark at the beginning of the year. We gave the diagnostic. This is the beginning of first grade, and many, many of our students were lacking letter sounds and couldn't blend or encode CVC words.

So we made a decision as a grade level team. We sat down and said, "Okay. What are we going to do about this before we dive in to where we were supposed to start?"

Even though we had some kids that were ready, we spent the first six weeks and we did a letter sound of the day. It's actually a model that I use in my kindergarten classroom now. But in first grade we started and we did a letter sound of the day, and we went through and reviewed. By the fourth day we were blending and encoding CVC words.

By building on that, by the end of that six weeks, 80% of the kids had letter sounds. They were blending and encoding CVC words and we were ready to move on. There was maybe still a little group that hadn't completely mastered that yet, but we moved into that next phase and they still got that additional small group where we were continuing to fill in those gaps.

Anna Geiger: Thanks for explaining that. Basically from what you were saying, you saw that most of the kids were well below, so you did a whole group, basically, a whole class intervention.

Casey Jergens: Right, because what we didn't want to do is we weren't going to take 75% of the kids and do a Tier 2 piece.

Anna Geiger: Sure.

Casey Jergens: Thinking about what you're saying, another option we could have done is grouped it out. We were being told at the time, you're going to figure out how to do this whole group model that everybody's going to do.

We still, by the end of the year, made it to our end of the year expectations. I had in my notes that the class moved from 25% to 75%, which 75% is maybe still a little bit lower than what we'd like to see, but this is also year one of the shift. That's pretty good.

Fast-forward about five years, my first grade class came in and about 60% were meeting that benchmark. Now we're not going to go back whole class necessarily, so then we're using that diagnostic and of the eight that didn't meet, about four were just under.

We consider those kind of the bubble kids. They're not going to need a ton to get them where they need to be. A lot of what we were doing whole group really fit their need. Typically, first grade maybe reviews CVC words, or they start getting into digraphs with CVC words, maybe starting to get into some of those consonant blends. If you've got your letter sounds, a lot of those things are really applicable to you. You can do that.

Then I had a group that I really did need to see every single day. We had to go back and backfill in those pieces. What I saw was what I was doing with them in small group, they could still apply that to what we were doing in whole group. By the time we got to December when we were doing magic E or CVCE, they had caught up enough to where that was attainable to them.

Anna Geiger: First of all, going back to what you said before, I definitely agree that if the group is very similar, like you said most of your class was at a very low level, then it makes perfect sense to do the whole group instruction.

Interestingly, I've been reading some work by Carol Connor. She did a lot of work on differentiation and notes interesting things that she found. By differentiating in small groups, both in comprehension and foundational skills, she found that it was much more effective to teach skills in small group in terms of outcomes. A lot of that makes sense, like just the idea of having a small group because you have kids close together and you can give better feedback and everything.

But I also know that a teacher has so many things to manage. If teaching in a small group is helpful, that's great, but we don't necessarily want to do small groups for the sake of small groups because that's just not practical, and because the kids that aren't in small group aren't getting the teacher's attention, or at least not a lot of it.

I know when we talked before we did this, you'd mentioned your concern that the lowest level kids in small groups just tend to stay there. I think back to the balanced literacy model, which I did also at one time, and that was true because I certainly wasn't doing any MTSS or anything. They just stayed there. There was no extra double dose of instruction to catch them up or to get them closer, so that is definitely a problem.

If teachers are grouping by instructional need, and you've got kids that are quite behind maybe in the scope and sequence, and then you're not doing anything extra beyond that, that is definitely a problem.

Tell me more about why you think that's so important that everybody gets the grade level skill, even if they're not necessarily there.

Casey Jergens: Well I think you touched on it, and I'll add in, I agree with you. We don't want to do the groups for the sake of doing groups, so then what does that look like?

One of the things I think about is what are the other kids doing? We have to have that discussion when we're doing this. We know a lot of the research, like you mentioned, says, yeah, a small group focused on a specific targeted area, it leads to these great outcomes for kids and it's wonderful. But in a classroom of 26 kindergartners and I'm seeing four kids over here, what are those other 22 being asked to do that's effective and not a time waster?

I think when we look at some different models of what different curricula put into place, that's where I struggle with the mindset of, "We're going to see three groups a day because that's what this curriculum says I should do, so I'm going to make these groups." Well then how much time are kids spending maybe practicing skills away from the teacher? Is that helping those students that are behind?

Whereas in this model, they're getting all of that instruction. Yes, maybe a little bit of it is a little bit out of their reach. I think it's important to remember that I'm talking from a kindergarten and first grade perspective. This might look completely different if I was a third grade teacher because now I've got larger gaps to fill in.

I think some of that is it's a little bit expensive in terms of planning, time, resources, thinking about what the other kids are doing, and also thinking about how it may be just a little bit inefficient. If I've got this one hour or two hours of my day, what's the best way I want to spend that time? Assuming it's just me by myself, how am I using myself during that hour of time? That's one of the things why I think this is a better way to do it.

I think I also will just add in that my outcomes at two different schools and two different grade levels have spoken for themselves because I was definitely that person. Like I said, seven or eight years ago, we were doing not only the guided reading groups, but there was a time where we did do the skills groups and I was the person really arguing for that. I think what shifted my mindset was seeing how impactful this actually was switching it to the other way.

Anna Geiger: Tell me about your outcomes. What specifically did you see?

Casey Jergens: Well, in multiple years of teaching first grade, the last few years, we're looking at 90 to 95% of kids leaving at grade level. That year that I talked about where we came in and I had the two groups that I saw and they moved up, that year 95% left at grade level and the one student that didn't was right under there. Not only that, we were looking at 90% to 100% of kids making aggressive growth.

A valid argument for not doing it the way I do is you were talking about those kids reading at the fourth grade level. Well, that was always a huge concern of mine, and it made me nervous because I'm like, well, I'm not seeing them in a small group, am I meeting their needs? When I saw that those kids were still making aggressive growth from the whole group instruction, I was going, oh, they are. This is meeting a need. They are still making that growth.

Looking at my kindergarten class from last year, by the middle of the year last year, 100% of the students were on grade level...

Anna Geiger: Congratulations.

Casey Jergens: ...on the universal screener. Not only that, I actually pulled it up here, I think all but one student made aggressive growth in that time span. We look at typical growth, and aggressive growth is more than what you'd expect in that time span.

We haven't done our midyear screening yet this year, but if I'm looking at my progress monitoring data, every student is on track, and this year I started at a much lower spot than I did last year. We've been able to continue to close those gaps.

If I look at things like letter sounds, this year 16 out of my 24 students came in with 0-3 letter sounds, so we started in with our letter sound of the day. We were following some of the most recent best practices using letters and things like that that they talk about. Now 24 out of 24 students, 65 days later, are all showing mastery of at least 85% of their sounds. There are some who are still mixing up B and D or something like that.

It almost surprises me. I was a little nervous. I was like, is this going to work this year? It really has shown that it has.

Another thing I'll say on that is I think about some of the kids I have in my class this year that came in at high risk, or I've got two students in my class that are newcomers to the country. They're not only getting this, but they're also developing their language skills. I'm looking at where I would've potentially placed them in a small group at the beginning of the year, and I'm going, would they have been making this much growth if I had only been seeing them in maybe that 15 or 20 minute group versus them getting this hour of instruction? Some of them, they're now reading the decodable passages that we're doing. They're flying through our dictation and things like that. That's really what has sold me on this model of instruction.

Anna Geiger: I think it's important to think about what it looks like for a single teacher versus a group of teachers working together because I agree that if you're doing this on your own, which is what many teachers find themselves doing, it is really hard to meet with your students enough if you're doing small groups.

I know the ideal situation is to work across the grade level, group across the grade level, if you choose to start that way with the small groups, if needed based on data, so that the kids actually get every day 20 to 30 minutes of targeted small group instruction. I know that some schools make that work, but I also know that if you're just getting started or other people aren't on board with that, that could be difficult.

There was another thing in Carol Connor's work, I don't have a study to share on this, but she was talking in a presentation and she said that when they compared kids who had the whole group lesson versus the differentiation... It was a high poverty school, and what they found was the kids that were higher to start didn't really grow that year. They just stagnated. You said your experience was different.

Maybe we can just close out with how you make your whole group lessons effective for everyone, because there's a lot of skill involved in doing that. If someone hears this and says that's what I want to do, I just want to do the whole group and then differentiate as needed, but their whole group instruction is not impactful, then they're not going to see the good outcomes. Talk to us about how you do that.

Casey Jergens: I agree that that's probably the most common question that I get is people are saying... I'll just back up a second before I go into it. I see a lot of people... I'm sure you're familiar with UFLI, it's kind of taken off, which is that model of whole group followed by this is what kids need to go in. I do see a lot of people going, "Well, I taught the lesson exactly hoe the book said, and then these kids aren't growing."

That's where that teacher training comes into play too. I've had a lot of that, so I can really decipher and discern what we need to be doing.

I think for some of the higher students, I think some things in the lesson are moving along that scope and sequence pretty quickly. At this time in my kindergarten classroom, we've gone through our letter sounds, we're going back through, we're almost through our second round of letter sounds, but on the second round of letter sounds, we're really focusing on the encoding and decoding piece. Most students now are showing mastery of CVC words, so now we're starting to get into words with four phonemes in them. Well, I'm noticing that the kids that are really globbing onto that are some of those higher learners. I've even started here and there putting in a word like sunset and showing some of them.

Even little things like that to show some of your higher learners how those words work, or sometimes more advanced spelling rules where I might tell everybody about it, and it might be over the heads of some kids, but those kids are globbing on to it like, "I understand this word starts with a C because the vowel is an A." For many kindergartners right now, that's not a typical thing I would expect them to have mastered.

One thing I do do to whole group differentiate is everybody has in their book box what we call a fluency sheet. I did the same thing in first grade, and we spend a few minutes each day going into it. It's also something they can do if they finish work early.

Everybody does have something a little bit different tailored to their needs. The majority of kids have CVC words or CVC sentences. Some kids have additional sentences, or they've moved on to words with consonant blends in them, or words that have maybe even a two-syllable compound word. As the year goes on I might even take first grade fluency passages and put those into some of the kids' fluency folder. When they get that out, they're practicing something that's attainable to them, but yet pushing them forward in that sense.

Another great way to do that is in my students' book boxes, they have their books that they find in the classroom library, but then they have a specific folder that I have them put their decodable books in, and so that if we need to, we can pull that out. That's another great way is in my decodable library of books, I can find books that might be a little bit more advanced and we can put that in students' folders. That might sound complicated, but it's really not. It's much more flexible, but it is helping meet the needs of some of those students who are ready to move beyond that.

Those are just a few maybe more simple things that I can think of.

Anna Geiger: One more thing, when you have the whole group lesson, how long does that take?

Casey Jergens: So the whole group lesson right now is anywhere from 30-45 minutes, but I want to make sure it's clear that that's not me standing in front of kids in seats for 45 minutes. We're doing a different task every five minutes during that time, and we're moving pretty quickly. Our routines are down and it's all flowing together very nicely.

Anna Geiger: Then you do differentiation after that, which you don't count as Tier 2, correct?

Casey Jergens: During that time, I would say I don't consider that a Tier 2.That might look like... For example, today I actually flipped it because schools have weird schedules, as people know. We actually did our 10-15 minutes time at the beginning of our block, and students were practicing their decodables around the room. I pulled over three kids to the table and we worked on some additional decoding together in that group while the rest of the kids were practicing their decodable texts independently or other skill practice that they have in their boxes. That was more just based off of a need that I saw.

Then yesterday, students at the end of the block of time were playing the roll and read games that we see, and they were practicing that. I actually, instead of taking a group to the table, decided to target specific students and I just monitored them while they were playing the game and provided feedback, "Oh, let's go back and read that one again." I had them situated at a table near each other, so they weren't being singled out by any means, but I could really monitor that and make sure I'm monitoring the rest of the class too.

In the additional 20 minutes a day of Tier 2 time, if needed, I can see a more systematic, structured group of kids. I'm fortunate to work at a school where we have a large, wonderful intervention staff that can help see some of those students. Right now I have three students that go out to that, and then the rest of the students are not receiving any Tier 1 during that time.

Right now I'm not actually seeing a group just because I don't currently have a specific need at this current time. We're doing some testing, I'm doing some one-on-one work with specific kids, and that kind of thing. Maybe after our midyear testing there might be a small group that falls out based on after we do that universal screener again.

Anna Geiger: So far, I have not learned of any specific study that has tested these two things we're talking about, as in comparing quality whole group instruction with differentiation built in, and then a little differentiation afterwards, versus differentiating from the beginning and then adding on Tier 2. So I think data is really what we're looking at, and if what you're doing is getting your kids where you want them to go and you're seeing growth across the board, that's wonderful.

I think probably people will want to reach out to you and learn more maybe if they have questions or this is something they want to do, or if they're trying to make the most of the time that they have, so can we share your Twitter in the show notes?

Casey Jergens: Yes, of course. Yep.

Anna Geiger: Is there any other way that people can get in touch with you, or is that the best way?

Casey Jergens: That's probably the best way.

Anna Geiger: Okay. All right, well thank you so much for taking time to talk to me and explain how you make things work in your classroom.

Casey Jergens: Thank you.

Anna Geiger: You can find the show notes for this episode at themeasuredmom.com/episode158. 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 A case for whole group phonics instruction – with Casey Jergens appeared first on The Measured Mom.

A special education teacher’s journey from balanced to structured literacy – with Melanie Brethour

TRT Podcast #157: A special education teacher’s journey from balanced to structured literacy

Special education teacher Melanie Brethour was a balanced literacy teacher until her son struggled to learn to read. As she learned about how to help him overcome dyslexia, she dove into the science of reading and hasn’t looked back.

 

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Hello, Anna Geiger here from the Measured Mom, and today I was able to talk with Melanie Brethour. She is a special education teacher who became interested in the science of reading when she learned that her son had dyslexia. That sent her down a path of learning what it would take to help him learn to read, and she hasn't looked back.

I absolutely love the advocacy work she does for the science of reading and all the ways that she educates teachers through her Instagram account and through her Twitter account. She's made it her mission to help not only the teachers at her school, but teachers everywhere learn more about the science of reading. I know you're going to enjoy our conversation.

Anna Geiger: Welcome, Melanie!

Melanie Brethour: Hi, I'm very happy to be here!

Anna Geiger: Thank you so much for joining me. On this podcast we always love to talk to people who have found their way out of balanced literacy and now understand and apply the science of reading, and you're definitely one of those people. Can you tell us a little bit about your background as a teacher and then what led you into the science of reading?

Melanie Brethour: Well, I'm going to start right away. It's really because of my son Benjamin that led me down this, I would say, rabbit hole of science of reading obsession, because I was taught balanced literacy really through osmosis. Even my curriculum is based on a very balanced literacy approach and I've been pretty much in special education, I would say, for the majority of my career. I've taught many different behavioral classrooms, also students with learning disabilities, but I always taught them based on what I was taught in my university program.

Then when my son was starting kindergarten, that's when I started to realize, as a teacher, that he was having difficulty. I went into just finding out why was he having so much difficulty remembering his letter names and sounds. That was really a red flag for me.

Here where I live in Montreal Quebec, we learn two languages, English and French, so I actually thought, "Well, it's because he's learning a second language. It's difficult. He's in French immersion. We're Anglophones, and we speak English at home." I really just brushed it off as he's having difficulty maybe because of the second language.

Then it just continued to get more difficult. We went to see a speech and language pathologist to find out a little bit about his difficulties. They couldn't diagnose dyslexia though until he was the age of nine and a half, so we went through ALL those difficulties.

He was getting support. However, because everybody here was taught the same way I was, we were really reinforcing those balanced literacy strategies of guessing, the three-cueing. I was reinforcing that at home, memorizing words. So he really didn't get effective intervention, I would say, until I started learning about what was effective.

I had no clue! I really thought balanced literacy, guided reading, was the best thing for him, and I was doing that at home. So he really is my reason why I went down this journey.

Anna Geiger: What was it that led you away from balanced literacy? Was it a particular book or a podcast or an article? How did you see there's another way?

Melanie Brethour: Well when he was diagnosed with dyslexia, I felt I knew enough about dyslexia as a special education teacher, but it turns out I didn't. Just like I didn't really know how to teach reading. I remember watching a dyslexia 101 webinar. I was obsessed with watching TED talks and I was like, "I need to learn as much as I can about dyslexia." That's when I first heard about Orton-Gillingham, Wilson, Barton, and evidence-based interventions and the science of reading.

It was like this aha moment of, "Wow, I never heard of any of this!" And I'm a teacher that loves professional development, I love learning, and I'm open to trying new things. It's just mind-boggling to me that I had never heard of any of this in my circle.

It seems to be there are a lot of teachers all over the world that were not taught any of these effective strategies or these things about how we learn to read. That was really the aha moment.

That's when I also started learning about the science of reading. I joined the Facebook group with Donna a few years ago, and that's kind of when it led me down the rabbit hole. I took courses, PD, everything and anything that I could get my hands on, to not only help my son, but then obviously transform my teaching.

Anna Geiger: So were you your son's tutor or did you get special help for him?

Melanie Brethour: This was during the pandemic, which was a little challenging. I looked at Orton-Gillingham because I wanted him to get effective intervention during that time. He was also just diagnosed and we were home, so I actually took the Orton-Gillingham associate level training and I asked them if he could be my student. Now they don't usually do that, but they made an exception for me because it was during the pandemic and getting another student to work with in-person was impossible, and so I was doing Orton-Gillingham lessons with him. I did my practicum with my son Benjamin.

Then we actually decided to find a school for him. He finally, unfortunately only starting in grade five, was able to get the intervention and teachers who are knowledgeable about how to help students with dyslexia. It's like a special school.

He unfortunately did not get the intervention early on, and that's why I'm very passionate about spreading awareness to parents about "Don't wait for a diagnosis, don't wait and see." I even said that when I taught grade 1 at one point and I would say, "Don't worry, just wait a little bit. There's going to be this light bulb that goes off."

I said all those things and now I tell teachers, "When you know better, you do better." That's my motto I live by. But I did all those things; I just didn't know.

Anna Geiger: So how is he doing now?

Melanie Brethour: You know, we know that it's a continuum from mild, moderate, to severe, he's definitely in the severe category. He really struggles still. He has improved so much, don't get me wrong, but as a thirteen year old, he's definitely not at level. He's gone for speech and other tutoring and he has me as well, but I don't always recommend that, to be your child's teacher. It's definitely very different from working with students at school to your child at home. But during that time, during the pandemic, it was definitely something. But he has made huge gains.

Another piece to all this is the mental health piece that I see at home. That's another something that I want to even talk about more on my social media because I don't think people realize the mental toll it takes, and I've seen that firsthand with my son.

So he's doing well. The school that he's at is fantastic. I actually cried at the IEP meeting, but in happy tears, because for the first time it was like finally, you're speaking the same language I'm talking. I was just so happy. His confidence is building.

I often think that if he did get the intervention early on, would he be as severe? He would definitely be in the severe category, I believe, but would he be maybe mild or moderate? That's always in the back of my mind. I have this guilt, he's my baby, and you don't want to see your child struggle.

Anna Geiger: Of course.

Melanie Brethour: Especially as a teacher, seeing your child struggle and not wanting to go to school, it really breaks your heart. I wear two hats.

Anna Geiger: This reminds me of speaking with Lindsay Kemeny. You probably heard her talk before about her story with her son with dyslexia too, and she talked about the same thing with the mental health issue, and I think he was only in second grade when it was diagnosed as being very severe.

That's just more to your point about getting help early. It's not going to hurt to look into something, and it can help to hopefully prevent some of this later on. But I'm so glad he's in a place where he is getting support now.

When you look at the teaching that you've done as a special educator, talk to me about how that's morphed. Can you tell us how you used to support students and how you do now, now that you understand?

Melanie Brethour: Well, we're not really big on programs here for some reason. I don't understand that, and I feel like now that I know what evidence-based programs are, I'm the first to be like, "Why am I reinventing the wheel? Everything is there."

Before I would beg, borrow, and steal to make a lesson, but it was really based on guided reading, with the three-cueing and the memorization. I remember covering up the word and just showing the first letter and saying to the student, "Look at the picture." I cannot believe that I didn't question how this was a reading strategy. It's mind-boggling; I just I cannot believe that.

So I did all that. I did everything that you're not supposed to do.

After learning about the body of research called the science of reading and just looking at what are the things that you should be letting go of and what should you be doing, I started making changes. And I'm still learning. I always tell everybody I'm constantly learning. I don't consider myself an expert because the research is always changing. There might be something I do in my classroom this year and I might change next year, but it's definitely a structured literacy approach.

I've used a few different programs, just trying things out that are evidence-based and explicit. I used to not even teach the rules. I would just be like, "This is the /k/ sound, this is the letter C. English is a crazy language."

I didn't know the rules. I think I was 42 when I first learned the Cat/Kite Rule, and my students know these rules now. They know the floss rule. There's no assuming that they will learn through osmosis, it's explicitly teaching them.

I work with students who are struggling, and I'm really hoping with my school and my school board that the Tier 1 is going to change because I realize as an interventionist, we call it a resource teacher, I cannot see the majority of the students in the classroom. It's been like that for the past few years, and we said there's a problem and we need to make some changes.

There is change happening, which I'm really happy about, at my school. We're doing a book study with Lindsey Kemeny.

Anna Geiger: Oh, good.

Melanie Brethour: Just a lot of little things like that, so I'm really happy change is coming.

Anna Geiger: So you're saying that there are a lot more kids that need to see you than you can possibly meet?

Melanie Brethour: Yes, yes. I started even using universal screeners. I was doing the running records and we were using PM benchmarks, which was very much like-

Anna Geiger: Fountas and Pinnell.

Melanie Brethour: Yes, exactly, and I felt like I was a guru for that. I had it all planned out.

We switched to universal screeners last year, Acadience, and it's been a game changer. That's one thing that I highly recommend. Then using diagnostics, and it was a lot of reds, a LOT of red students, at well below benchmark. It was a little concerning.

I think over time teachers are realizing too, the classroom teachers, the core Tier 1 teachers, are realizing that things have to change as well. I think it's not saying you're doing something wrong, it's just that like me, we weren't taught this. I know that for my colleagues and many teachers around the world, it's the same thing. The university programs were not teaching us effectively, unfortunately.

Anna Geiger: When I look back to it for myself, I think a lot of it is a confusion about comprehension and where that begins. For me, a lot of the things I was doing, like guess the covered word, use the picture to help, three-cueing, the context, it was all because I thought that I was, by doing that, focusing on meaning, which is of course the goal of reading, or comprehension is the goal of reading.

But to understand that we have to develop these foundational skills first was something I was, I don't know, I think it was drilled into my head that you never practice skills in isolation, that skills work was drilling and that was wrong.

Were there any, would you say, light bulb moments as you started learning about this where things suddenly made sense?

Melanie Brethour: Well, I think the memorization of words. I remember with my son, I would be constantly drilling these and even sight words, which I learned that that's not the right definition either. It's a word that you automatically recognize. But I would be drilling him with these cards that I used with my students, and he had it in class, and I would get frustrated because I'm like, "You just saw this word."

I didn't know as much about dyslexia. I think that's a huge piece. Now I know obviously, but then I'd be like how many repetitions does a student need? It's not just memorizing the word; it's that process of orthographic mapping. So having him do it using, I like the heart word method, that's something that I changed as well with my students and my son.

I just felt, "Okay, he's actually getting it now. He's able to not only write it, but read it."

I always said that "what" was like our nemesis word. He would say /w/ /��/ /t/ or something like that every time. It was just like that was kind of the aha moment of the sounding out, even those irregular words that can be very challenging for our students that are struggling.

That was a method that I noticed even with him, that he was having more success. I always call him my little guinea pig. He would be doing all those things.

But there are so many aha moments. I've really transformed I think everything pretty much, but I'm still learning. I'm not a classroom teacher, I work with students who are struggling, and there are so many. But as I said, change is happening.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, I remember when I was first teaching first grade. It wasn't my first year of teaching, but my first year in the primary grades, and I really didn't know much about teaching reading. I thought, "Well, I can figure this out." Before that I taught a group of three grades at once, so now this first year of first grade was just one grade, so I thought, "I can figure out how to teach reading."

I didn't do very well that year, to be honest. I remember I had one little girl who had spent two years in kindergarten and didn't know all her letters, and I spent three months teaching her to read the word, "the." It took her that long to remember the word, but I remember what I was doing. I was just writing it on a paper, having her try to remember it. It was total memorization.

There was nothing about, "This is TH, and in this word TH says /th/. This is E, and this word E says /��/," Not says, but you know what I mean. I didn't understand the importance of breaking words down and explaining the parts, which is what you're talking about too, so that kids can actually connect the sounds to the letters in their brain and map those words.

What about reading material? Were you using leveled books with your intervention students? How has that changed?

Melanie Brethour: I was. And then you look at The Purple Challenge, that video really resonated with me. It was, again, an aha moment. I had all those leveled books. I had them nicely laid out. I even had which students and which level would they be at. That is something that I've obviously changed.

I'm not saying leveled readers are... I've seen that where people say, "I'm throwing out my leveled readers!" They're still books. It's just that for emergent readers and our students who are struggling, they're not going to have learned that concept yet, especially in kindergarten and grade one, so we're kind of encouraging them, especially if we ARE encouraging them, to guess based on the pictures. I don't use leveled readers. I really use decodables. My principal has been great, and I was able to purchase some decodables. I use UFLI as well, so I use a lot of those passages for my students who are where I know, based on the scope and sequence.

Anna Geiger: Do you have any ideas for teachers who are trying to help other teachers that they teach with? Because I think you're maybe in sort of a similar setting since your school is still a balanced literacy school. Do you have things that you can share, or ways that can get them interested in the science of reading? For you, it was your son, but many people don't have that situation and they feel that what they're doing is working.

Melanie Brethour: I feel like if you tell teachers, "This is what you have to do," then there's resistance.

I came in, and they know my story with my son and all that, and I actually had the data from our universal screener. I spoke to my principal, and I said, "Can I share this with the whole staff and say, we have a problem here. We need to do something differently." That's when I kind of did a little spiel about using evidence-based intervention programs.

It was saying, "We have a problem. Now what are we going to do? Most of our students cannot read proficiently."

I've done some things, like I'm doing a book study, as I said. Not everybody's doing it, but it was open, and I have a lot of interested people.

You did that incredible thing with the science of reading podcasts, your 500 podcasts that you listened to and you organized by topic. So I did Popcorn and Podcasts where I just picked some of the go-to ones that I thought my staff would like, and I left them in the staff room and they just took a bag of popcorn with the QR code.

It's just little things like that. I personally feel you can't be pushing it down anybody's throat. I think there's a bit more resistance.

Now I have a few teachers at my school that see the results. They have that data now to say, "Look, they're still struggling, but they've made gains. We're closing the gaps."

Anna Geiger: So data talks, but of course you need the right data collection tool. Is your whole school using Acadience now or how is that working?

Melanie Brethour: So I am the resource teacher. I'm the main one, and I have my partners. Last year I pretty much said, "We're going to use universal screeners, Acadience, and I want to try this out."

We screened the whole school last year. We did it three times with them, and I trained my partners at the time. This year too, we're doing the same thing. I do the universal screening with my two partners. We'll be doing that again in January for the second time, and then we share the data with the school, the staff, the teachers.

I find it's just a game changer. I used to use, as I said, the PM benchmarks, and I mean, it just takes forever to do. It's really not convenient in terms of time.

That's what we do at our school, and I have a very supportive principal and VP where I just say, "Can I do this?" And they're like, "Sure."

Anna Geiger: That's great.

Melanie Brethour: I don't know if every school's like that, but yeah.

Anna Geiger: So if I think back to myself as a balanced lieracy teacher, if someone had come in and said, "We're going to do this assessment that we're going to share it with you," I don't think I would've had any clue what it was even about or that it was valuable. Did you have to get some buy-in from teachers to realize why this data mattered?

Melanie Brethour: Well, that's it. When I did the initial assessment, I always sent a little email saying, "We're going to be trying something new this year," and I gave them the reason why, but I feel like sometimes teachers don't even have time to read a full email.

That's when I met with the whole staff and shared the data for the whole school. I didn't even share the data with everybody per class. I said, "This is the issue with our school," because I didn't want anybody saying it was only certain teachers. I mean, there were lots of reds everywhere though, so I don't think it really mattered.

Then I sat down with each teacher and I gave them a color coded report to say, "These are the students that are in red, well below benchmark. These are the students in blue, green, and yellow."

Then that's how I made the intervention groups, pretty much the reds. Yellows too, we are trying to- But still, this is very new process for our school and even for me.

But I just find it so important. I explained that there's longitudinal studies to say that if a student in grade one is not reaching the benchmark by the end of grade one, they only have a 10% chance of catching up. I shared that with my staff. It's such a sad statistic. I'm sure many who are listening to that have seen those studies where if they don't get that early intervention, they're going to be struggling for the rest of their academic careers.

So that was a huge piece that I shared with the staff and I said we have the data. It's almost like a crystal ball to say, "These are the students that if we don't help them, they're going to struggle for the rest of their lives, unfortunately."

I think that's the huge thing about universal screeners that's so different from before where it was just, "Okay, they're struggling," but now we know that they have that longitudinal data.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, that's great. I have not heard of someone sharing that with their staff.

I think that's so great, because like you said, so many of us just think, "Well, they'll just catch up." That is a thing you hear, "Everybody catches up by third grade", which is ridiculous, and it still goes around in Facebook groups! And so to give them that information from the research to show them how important it is that you take care of this now.

But of course, as an intervention teacher, you can't do it all. As you said, it's a balanced literacy school, are the teachers able to make some changes in their instruction to help as well?

Melanie Brethour: They have, and I even had some of them get on board with UFLI, which is great.

There are many programs that I've tried out. I think a structured literacy approach is fantastic too, but it's a lot of professional development in the sense that you need to be able to, like an Orton-Gillingham lesson, make your own lesson. It's a lot of PD on your part, and I find time is really difficult for teachers sometimes.

UFLI was one that I felt could be something that teachers could try out and see. I said, "This is not your whole curriculum. This is not your whole program. It's just one small piece," especially for our younger grades. I have a few teachers who are doing it.

I just always share things with them like instead of memorizing words, I know we love the cards, but there has been some change. I'm very fortunate that they know that I'm really passionately obsessed about this. But again, I don't force it down anybody's throat. As I said, I just find it doesn't work. But there have been changes. I've had one teacher adopt another program and she's had such success with that.

Anna Geiger: What's she using?

Melanie Brethour: She's using Really Great Reading. She's a classroom teacher, and she actually has the weakest students. It's just phenomenal the gains that these kids are making with an evidence-based program.

It is just little things like that. I said, "Let's try using decodables, don't use the leveled readers, especially for an emergent reader." I do try and send emails and things like that with small tips. I do a newsletter each month where I share them.

Anna Geiger: Yeah. Wow.

Melanie Brethour: Yeah, I use those to share all these little tidbits and things like that.

Anna Geiger: Well, I know that people who are listening are very interested in the things that you're sharing that they want to help other teachers at their school. I know a great place they can go is Twitter or X which was a surprise to me. I learned about that from Kate Wynn when I was interviewing her. I was like, "Well, where can I go to get more information?"

She said, "Oh, go to Twitter."

"Really?"

I'd never used Twitter at all, but it is! There's a great subgroup of people that talk a lot about the science of reading and share things like that statistic that you shared and helpful research articles. Really all you have to do is just go on there and find somebody like you or me and follow a lot of the same people they're following. You will start curating, every time you log in you will get useful information. I think that's surprisingly a good place to start getting the types of things that you're sharing.

Then of course, there's Instagram and other social media things, but you talked about how you took courses and read things. What were some things that really were helpful to you?

Melanie Brethour: Well I was very fortunate that when I joined the Facebook group Science of Reading-What I Should Have Learned in College, that they didn't have nearly as many members now. Sometimes I find it a little overwhelming with all the information, but I still think it's one of my go-tos in sense. Join that group. They're fantastic.

They gave me a scholarship to take Top 10 Tools which I was so thankful for. I found that was fantastic.

My Orton-Gillingham training has been incredible as well. That was a great background in terms of just learning about dyslexia and structured literacy and all that.

On my bucket list is LETRS, but unfortunately LETRS is not available in Canada.

Anna Geiger: Oh, it's not?

Melanie Brethour: No, I keep on bugging them! My fellow Canadian SOR people want that as well. That's on my bucket list.

I've done Really Great Reading's training as well, which is completely free. I try and share as many free resources as I can.

I've been fortunate because my school board does give some money each year for professional development that you can pretty much choose what to use it on, which is fantastic. I've gone to many fantastic conferences, like The Reading League. I went this past October which was fantastic.

Anna Geiger: I was there too! I'm sorry I didn't see you there!

Melanie Brethour: Oh my gosh! I'm going again. I cannot wait. I'm going again.

Anna Geiger: I hope to go again too. Yes, definitely.

Melanie Brethour: Yeah, and that's the thing you were saying about social media. I never thought social media was such a positive thing in the sense of connecting, like I would never be sitting here with you. It's just incredible, the community out there. I just find this to be fantastic.

I agree about Twitter. Kathryn Garforth, she was the one that told me about Twitter as well, and I go, really? She goes, "Yeah, you have to join." I was already on it, but I'm like, really? I was shocked, but I find that it's fantastic, and if anybody like you makes a tweet, I get so excited!

Anna Geiger: I don't do it very much, but I'm working on it.

Well it was so nice to talk to you, and I know your Instagram is @soarwithdyslexia. Is that what you are on Instagram?

Melanie Brethour: Yes, so I played with the words of the Science of Reading - SOR - with Dyslexia, and it's just bringing those two together. If somebody just thinks it's only about dyslexia, it's not. It's about helping ALL students in your classroom, and parents too. I get a lot of parents who hopefully follow as well.

Anna Geiger: Great! I'll be sure to share that in the show notes as well as your X account, and anything else that you let me know you want me to share. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us.

Melanie Brethour: Well, thank you so much for having me. It was truly an honor speaking with you.

Anna Geiger: Thank you.

Thank you so much for listening. You can find the show notes for today's episode at themeasuredmom.com/episode157. 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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What does research say about teaching preschoolers?

TRT Podcast #156: What does research say about teaching preschoolers? with Dr. Susan Neuman

If you have questions about what the science of reading has to say about preschool, this is the episode for you! Dr. Susan Neuman, early childhood expert and author, discusses what research has to say about play-based learning, developmentally appropriate practice, and building oral language and vocabulary in preschool.

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Today's episode is a real treat. You get to listen to my conversation with Dr. Susan Neuman.

I reached out to Dr. Neuman because I love her book, "All About Words," that she wrote with Tanya Wright. It's all about teaching vocabulary to young children, and so I reached out to her to talk about that and then I realized that she has done so much more than write that book. She's the editor of three volumes of the "Handbook of Early Literacy Research" published by Guilford. She has written many other books. She's a specialist in early literacy development. She even served as the U.S. Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education.

What an incredible career she's had, and yet she was so kind to sit down and talk with me. I know you'll get a lot out of our conversation about how the science of reading applies to preschool.

Anna Geiger: Welcome Dr. Neuman!

Susan Neuman: Well, it's nice to be with you!

Anna Geiger: Thanks so much for agreeing to talk with me today about early learning and the things you've learned over the years.

You have quite a background. Could you walk us through what got you into education and up until what you're doing now?

Susan Neuman: Sure. I began in education, not necessarily because I planned to be a teacher. I really did not plan to be a teacher so much as someone who was really interested in issues of poverty, issues that I felt education could address.

My central focus initially was how do we get people out of poverty? How do we ensure that so many of our children who are not successful can be more successful? That brought me into becoming a teacher.

I was a fifth grade teacher, I began there in a high poverty school district, and I ended up feeling like I was not doing very much good for these kids. I loved them to death, I gave them a lot of emotional and social support, but I felt that I wasn't developing the kinds of teaching mechanisms that could really enable them to be successful.

I also recognized that at fifth grade, these children were already so far behind. My highest learners were on the second grade level, and frankly, as a new teacher, I just didn't know what to do. I mean, I was beside myself in trying to figure out what I could actually do to support them.

So I went back to school and I became a reading specialist. I enjoyed that, working with small groups, helping children become better readers, but then again, I was stymied by the fact that many times when you're a reading specialist, you take children out of the room, out of the particular context, then put them back in the room and they end up doing just as poorly as if I had never taken them out.

So my frustration continued. That wasn't the route I wanted to take. I went back to graduate school and eventually got my PhD and said, "How could I do research that was applied, that could really help children more directly than what I felt I was doing initially?" And so I got into higher education, first at Eastern Connecticut State University, then at Temple University, then the University of Michigan.

Then I went to government and I became Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education under George W. Bush. There I learned a different set of skills. I learned how we can begin to really focus on equity issues related to creating federal guidelines and recommendations that could really ensure children's success.

Then I went back to the university and now I'm at NYU and enjoying my years doing research and doing teaching as well.

Anna Geiger: So what are your areas of research right now and what type of classes do you teach?

Susan Neuman: I teach in early childhood. My focus is on helping teachers or prospective teachers learn how children learn in these very early years.

One of the things I focus on, and sometimes I feel successful and not successful, is I feel to be a good early childhood teachers, you have to get in the mindset of the child. You have to understand what being a child is like. As a result, I think what we begin to do is we develop interactions and programs that are more sensitive to the very young child at all ages from infancy through Pre-K. That's what I primarily do.

I do a good deal of research also looking at screen media and how screen media can affect young children as well as programming and what programming might best support young children.

My focus is trying to create strategies, both in communities and in schools, on how we can best help our children.

Anna Geiger: That's so interesting. That wasn't on our list of things to talk about, but I'm really curious, what kind of things have you found in terms of your research around screens and teaching with those?

Susan Neuman: Well, we learned that some screening of educational programming can actually be very efficacious for young children. They learn vocabulary, they learn skills, they concentrate. It's almost, if you have really good educational media, it's almost explicit instruction in small bits, if you can keep it at small bits.

For example, we only have children watch about three minutes at most. That's all their attention can really take, and we look through eye tracking so we can actually gauge their attention much better. You can see when their attention starts falling, and that means that their comprehension is also falling.

We're finding that certain media, think something like "Between the Lions" bits, a couple of bits really can be very helpful in terms of giving children the strategies, but also the visual images, of certain vocabulary words that can actually be very helpful for them.

Anna Geiger: So it's helpful in small doses.

Susan Neuman: Very small doses. I mean, again, we're talking three minutes at most because then their attention really drops off dramatically.

Anna Geiger: That might be useful for a teacher to know if I want to show a little clip to teach my class something, I'm going to keep it really brief.

Susan Neuman: Exactly. Let me just add one more thing. We're finding that children who have a little bit of letter name knowledge, they actually develop some basic print knowledge when that print is on-screen and it can be really helpful for young children. Programs like Noggin's, "What's the Word" for example, have words on top of the screen. We find that children can actually begin to develop some print concepts and orthographic mapping on the basis of very, very brief images on screen.

Anna Geiger: Wonderful. Well that's good to know.

I wanted to talk to you a little bit because you've done so much work in this area and edited handbooks about early literacy and so on, about play-based learning, because I don't really know much about it. I hear people talk about it just in conversation. I hear people say, and I don't know if this is connected, but I'll hear people say, "These are the ways I'm teaching my three year old her letters," and someone else says, "Let them play. Everything should be play-based."

What exactly does play-based mean? What does research say about that?

Susan Neuman: Well I think it means many things, so I think there's not one definition. There are some curricula that just essentially have children going into settings and play. They get to choose their play, they get to review their play, plan, and do review. HighScope, for example, is a play-based curriculum. Basically, it believes that children learn through play and teacher interaction while children are engaged in play is a very good thing.

But there are programs that are playful learning and that tends to be a little bit different. That could be a guided play-based program. In other words, the teacher would have some goals in mind and those particular goals would be defined or identified or engaged with through play.

This is very different than just allowing children to play. The teacher might have objectives. They may have specific vocabulary words they want the children to learn. They might have specific goals to determine whether or not the child has learned. It's guided in ways that really provide a careful scaffolding of what children should learn.

I'm a fan of guided learning. I'm not a fan of total play-based learning because I think in many of our schools, we need to have some guidance and standards and goals. Those goals really help us see teaching in early childhood in a very different way than in kindergarten or first grade. It really is child-led, but also guided by the teacher so that the teacher can say by the end of that guided play that the children learned certain concepts of skills.

Anna Geiger: So you would say that it's okay for teachers to have an objective for children to learn the alphabet, for example, but the way we go about it might be different than we would in kindergarten and first grade. Is that kind of what you're saying?

Susan Neuman: Definitely. Again, we have to get in the mindset of the child, and when we think of the child, they're not sitting around wanting to learn about A or /a/. They're sitting around learning, trying to actively engage in their world, so how can I take that engagement and those wonderful curiosities and how can I meld it in a way that helps children learn their letters and their sounds, but in a meaningful way?

Anna Geiger: Another thing I hear people talk a lot about is if someone is trying to teach something to someone who's young, people will say, "Well, that's not developmentally appropriate." Is that concept supported by research? And what does that... I don't think everybody agrees what that means either, but what would that mean?

Susan Neuman: Right. I wrote a book on that.

Anna Geiger: Oh, okay!

Susan Neuman: We focused on language and literacy learning and developmentally appropriate practice. I think originally what developmentally appropriate practice was designed to do is say, "Look, we can give two year olds flashcards and they will learn their letters because they like us and they're trying to please us, so they'll learn those letters. But is that necessarily appropriate for a two-year-old?" In other words, should they be engaged in playful learning? Should they be engaged with other children and learn social interactional skills? What is the best thing we should do at what age?

I'm a fan of saying that two year olds should learn about how to engage with others, cooperate, share, and investigate in interesting and exciting ways. I'm all for that. I'm not all for flashcards at that level. In fact, frankly, I would never want children to be using flashcards, period.

So I think developmentally appropriate was a concept. It was not an exact definition, but it basically said kids develop differently. Some kids learn to walk very early on, others take more time. Let's understand that children's development is not one thing and that there are variances across different children based on different experiences.

Let's also recognize that while some children can do some things early, do we really need to have them read at age two? No, we don't. There are other more important skills, frankly, that need to be developed during those years.

Then finally, the third part of developmentally appropriate practice is let's recognize that certain cultures have certain feelings about things. For example, some cultures don't expect parents to teach. They expect children to go to school and be taught, and so the parents' job would be to love and nurture their child, but not necessarily to help them with homework or anything like that. Different cultures would have different requirements or different sensibilities that might affect developmentally appropriate practice, and we need to take into account all of those things when we think about that concept.

Anna Geiger: Thank you for explaining that, that helps a lot. When I think about people kind of tossing that around, do you think they think there's a list somewhere of things that are appropriate by grade level? Is that what they're trying to say? Because it feels like some people have decided this age is not appropriate for that and this age is not appropriate for that. Is there any sort of research at all to back that up?

Susan Neuman: No. In fact, one of the things that we found, which was really disturbing, is that some teachers began to take letters down and numbers down in their Pre-K classrooms because they said it was not appropriate. Who says that? Kids LOVE to learn their letters. They love to sing the alphabet song! In other words, there's no hard and fast rule on what is developmentally appropriate or not. I think the term has been misused very often and often as an excuse for not teaching.

In my view, early childhood teachers should teach content in developmentally appropriate ways, should have objectives, all of the things that we would expect our other teachers to have, but we do it in a way that is appropriate for the child and the child's age.

Anna Geiger: So when you talk about developmentally appropriate, you're talking less about content and more about approach. Would that be true?

Susan Neuman: That's right. That's very much it. I think that these young children come to school and they're filled with interest in learning about science concepts. I could teach pretty sophisticated concepts to young children, very young children, but do it in a way that is really meaningful to them. Get outside, explore their world, look at those beautiful colors, and then understand what those color names are, not by sitting in a class and learning what is yellow and what is blue.

Anna Geiger: So it really requires a teacher to be really conscious of the things she wants her students to learn, and then have flexible plans for teaching those things. Would that make sense?

Susan Neuman: Yes. Flexible plans that vary according to the development or where the child is.

One of the most challenging things that teachers will find is even in a Pre-K class, there are children who have not had many experiences in book reading or experiences in a whole bunch of things that other kids will already have, and there will be a diverse set of skills and strategies that these kids have. Trying to find activities that meet the needs of these different children is sometimes a real challenge.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, it's the art of teaching that you just learn over time.

Susan Neuman: Yeah, it's the art of teaching.

Anna Geiger: You've written SO many things, which now I need to dive into all of it, but especially what I've loved most recently is your book "All About Words" that you wrote with Tanya Wright. It's a very, very accessible book about building vocabulary and oral language with young kids, and really it goes up to second grade. I recommend this for anybody. It's a short read and very practical.

Can you talk a little bit about how preschool teachers can build oral language and vocabulary, maybe some of the more appropriate ways?

Susan Neuman: Yeah, sure. One of the things I'd like to just start out with saying is that oral language and vocabulary in my world are slightly different.

When you and I talk to young children, we will try to use colloquial language for the most part. We may enter into a couple of sophisticated words like, "That's gigantic!" But our goal in oral language development is to create a conversation, an ongoing conversation, with children. As a result, we'll often use common language, common terms, to expand and enhance that conversation.

But vocabulary development is often the language of schooling. Some of our children will come to school and they'll have a rich oral language, but they won't necessarily have had experiences with books and with other opportunities to learn more the language of schooling, which is more formal, sometimes a greater concept load, and more dense in materials.

Therefore we started a program that is called WOW, and the reason we did that is we wanted the children to come to school and say, "Wow!" It's actually the World of Words. Basically what we did is we said, "Children learn vocabulary best when things are connected. They have to be connected to children's worlds." In other words, when children learn about weather, they can learn so much about weather when we give them books that focus on different kinds of weather, so that they see repeated words in different contexts again and again.

"All About Words" is really about helping children begin to develop concepts that are related to common groupings of words. What we know is that when that begins to happen, children develop categories, and categories are the foundation of conceptual learning or comprehension.

In our work, what we've moved to is how do we teach vocabulary in very visual ways? Because children are visual and their long-term memory is developed when we teach them something that is very visual that then becomes part of their long-term memory. We group things in ways that make sense for children, and we have interesting topics.

One of our topics, for example, is called wild weather. It's not just weather, it's not just rain, it's blizzards and it's all sorts of interesting things. Children are just fascinated, and what they do is they begin to understand the difference between wild weather, like a blizzard, and when it's just snowing. They begin to develop differences in concepts and those concepts will enable them to go to third grade and fourth grade and really develop the kind of comprehension and background knowledge that they will need in order to be successful.

So we've been very successful in teaching vocabulary very early on, again, in very developmental ways through books and talking and experiences.

Anna Geiger: In your book you talk about text sets, and I really love that idea where you put together a set of books, fiction and nonfiction both, on a particular topic. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Susan Neuman: So we've grouped these books. We have five books in a text set, and the text set often begins with predictable books.

Predictable books are very easy for children to remember. For example, if I do "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" Most of the children, if I'm in Pre-K, will say, "Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see? I see a green frog looking at me!" They'll memorize it. They just do it. They will use their entire body to express themselves. Young children are very physical.

What we do is we begin with predictable books because what we're trying to convey to children is that I'm not reading TO children, I'm reading WITH children. Your collective responses are a part of the reading experience, and I want you to experience it.

So we begin with very predictable books, and they become mnemonic devices for young children. They will remember it. I'll say to my students, "Eating once, eating twice, eating chicken soup with rice," and they will still remember it. It might've occurred when they were five years old, but those books, again, are very memorable.

Then we'll move to what we call a narrative nonfiction. Narrative nonfiction are storybooks that have a good beginning, middle, and end, yet they'll often have the same vocabulary that the predictable book had. So children have a mindset already for what those words are, and then they're applying it now to a story, which is a little bit more complex than a predictable book. What we'll do is we'll recall and we'll engage them with lots of interactive talk.

Then our final book in this text set is an informational book. This is a book that is strictly informational and will likely have more dense material and a higher concept load, but it will have the same vocabulary that they've heard from predictable book to narrative book now to informational, so they're successful.

They have mastered these words again and again in very different contexts, in very different genres. What they're learning is the differences in genre features, but they're also learning the differences in words, and as they experience those words, it's going deeper and deeper and deeper into long-term memory.

Anna Geiger: Right, so instead of just reading a book on weather today and a book on community helpers tomorrow, we read a set of books over time.

In the back of your book "All About Words," there are some examples of text sets. Teachers can choose those books of different genres and then you've got a list of topic words, challenge words, and supportive words.

Can you talk about the difference between the vocabulary types?

Susan Neuman: So when we talk about text sets and topic words, we're generally trying to focus on nouns because nouns create mental imagery, and I'll often use picture support for those nouns. I'm trying to show children what they are and trying to get them into an image that they can recall. Those words will be the centerpiece of what a text set will have.

Then we focus on supportive words, and supportive words are words that support your ability to talk about something. In other words, one of our topic words might be goldfish, and one of our supportive words might be fishbowl. Where do fish live at home? In a fishbowl. But we're not going to focus too much on that word because it's not very common. They won't see it tons of times, but it helps them and supports them in how they are learning words.

Then our final category is challenge words. Now these are really fun. In our text sets, what we'll also do is we'll say, "Time for a challenge!" The kids will wonder what's the challenge? Then we'll say, "Today we're talking about pets, and we know that pets are tame and they live with people. I'm going to show you a picture, and you tell me whether it's a pet or not a pet."

This is a word that's newly introduced, and I'll show them a picture of a snake and we'll say, "Is a snake a pet or not a pet?"

Some children will say, "Oh, it's not a pet because it lives outside and pets live inside with people." Other people might say, "I found a garter snake and it's become a pet and I take care of it and it's become tame."

In other words, the challenge word is designed to really engage children in identifying what is or what is not a member of that conceptual grouping or category. What it helps children do is it helps children extend their vocabulary beyond what they have just learned. It not only does that, it concretizes the sense of the category or the concept.

In other words, I can clearly say to a child, "Is a spider an insect?"

And the child will say, "No, a spider is not an insect because an insect has six legs and three body parts and a spider has eight."

Now, you might think that that's very sophisticated, and it is, but we have four year olds who are doing that kind of thinking. One of the things we know is that with developmentally appropriate instruction, we can accelerate learning, but in ways that really engage children in fun activities and thinking.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, and kids like vocabulary. I know my youngest, he's in second grade now, but when I was reading a lot to him before he went to school, and we were reading a bunch of Jack and the beanstalk books. One of the words was bargain, so I taught him the word bargain, and for, I don't know, at least a year afterwards, any time he heard the word bargain, he was like, "Mom! Bargain! I know what that means!" They do notice those things.

Let's switch gears a little bit. We talked a little bit more about comprehension and vocabulary, but what about getting kids ready for the code? Things like learning the alphabet and sounds, maybe even sounding out words, and phonemic awareness. What do you feel is the best way, the best approach, for preschool teachers when it comes to getting kids ready to read or even maybe some of the kids reading? What do you think about that?

Susan Neuman: We need to teach phonological awareness in those early years, and essentially what that is, and I want to make clear, is that it's not phonics. Phonological awareness is the ability to hear and distinguish sounds in words. When we move toward phonemic awareness, we're interested in having them hear individual sounds in those words.

What we do in preschool is we do an activity every single day that focuses on phonological and phonemic awareness.

First thing, we teach the alphabet. Alphabet skills are really important because they begin to help children identify print in their environment. In other words, it makes them more aware of print in their environment and they love it because they feel... I always say to the children, it's the pledge of allegiance to literacy in schools.

What it means is that we begin with the alphabet song. We teach a few letters at a time. Over a short period of time, children really do know their letters. They know them in sequence and out of sequence.

Teachers are very good at doing the alphabet on the whole. They are not as good about phonological awareness, which is the sound. We do very simple games with children. We begin with just some common books. For example, "I'm Going on a Bear Hunt," where we teach children to just repeat words, "I'm going on a bear hunt. I'm not scared!" And do all sorts of things where they're using their hands and they're using their bodies to segment words in a sentence.

Then we move to rhyming activities, which are so fun. Teachers should be singing to the children and singing with the children every single day and doing some very simple rhyme activities. "I'm going to say two words. The word is bat and bag. Do they rhyme?" The teacher can do some very, very simple activities in rhyming.

Then we encourage segmenting and blending, which is, again, very easy to do. "I'm going to say a word. Let's segment it!" We have teachers who will do something like, "/b/-/��/-/t/, bat," where we get children to segment and blend words. Teachers should not segment unless they also blend those words together. I encourage teachers to do this for 10 minutes a day, just 10 minutes, but make sure it's in your lesson plan because if you say, "Oh, hey, I'm going to get to it," then it doesn't happen.

I'd encourage them to get rid of some of the boring calendar activities, which take a lot of time in circle time, and I'm not so sure how exciting that is to young children. I think that circle time can be really a time where they talk about scheduling, phonological awareness, and a good shared book reading.

Anna Geiger: Yeah.

How about writing in preschool? Some kids, depending on their spelling development, actually can use a letter or two or more to represent words. What can you tell me about that?

Susan Neuman: Well, children will need to focus on their writing. It's very evident when I go into classrooms what places are focusing on writing and what places are not.

I think some very basic encoding activities are great for these children. For example, "I'm going to say the word 'bad.' Can you write the letter that made that first sound?"

Children should have some practice in writing and just forming the letters. What we do is we focus on uppercase before we focus on lowercase, and the reason is because their hand muscles aren't necessarily well-developed. It's hard for some of these children to write, so the writing shouldn't take tons of times.

Whenever I get a chance to go into a classroom and ask the child to write their name, which is the first thing they should begin to write, they're so delighted. They love it because it's a sign of literacy. Sometimes they fall in love with certain letters and just will write the same letters again and again and again.

I encourage teachers to have a little writing center in their classroom with big fat pencils and maybe markers and paper right there so the children can actually practice their writing.

Anna Geiger: Well, we could just go on and on. There are so many things that you know about, and I wish people could see this because you have such a big smile on your face when you talk about all the things. You're obviously very, very passionate about what you do, which is so wonderful.

I'd like to talk at the end a little bit about some of your favorite things that you've written or shared, but first, you have done some interesting work eliminating book deserts. Can you talk about what that means and what you've done?

Susan Neuman: Well I have to say this is an absolute passion for me. When I first went to Temple University, I took a walk with families and I realized that if I took a walk to their school, I would literally find no books in their environment. There was no print in some areas of poverty in the city.

I began to recognize the difference in some environments compared to others, that some environments were flush with opportunities to read and a library right there and bookstores right there, and other places were just, there was just no opportunity for children to read or see books. The problem is even exacerbated during the summer when Head Starts are closed, when lots of child care programs turn into camps, which are wonderful, but not necessarily print-rich environments. I have worked hard in many different ways to really promote more access to books.

One of the things I've done most recently is really focus on reaching families where they are. Let us understand better where communities do their work, where people in their communities do their work. Some parents, frankly, are a little bit frightened of going to the library. They're worried that they might have library card problems or privacy issues. They worry that it's an institution and they won't know exactly what to do and how to select a book or who to talk to. They're a little bit awed by the librarian who is wonderful and supportive, but still a little bit awed.

As a result, what we've done is we've begun to say, "Instead of expecting families to go to a library or to go to a bookstore, could we bring books to where they are?"

And so we've focused on bringing books and putting books in laundromats, putting books in barbershops, and putting books in homeless shelters and social service communities. We're working now and hopefully we'll get funded to put books in visitation areas for incarcerated parents.

My belief is when children begin to see books early in their world, very early in their environment, there comes to be an expectation that books are part of growing up and part of our lives. When they're beautiful and shiny, they act like toys for children. You'll see if you go into these settings, you'll see that they actually pick them up and bring them to their parents because they want to be read to.

So that's been the greatest emphasis of our work in recent years, really trying to find places so that children are literally surrounded by books in every opportunity they have.

Anna Geiger: That is amazing and very inspiring. Is there a website or an organization that's running this?

Susan Neuman: No, I just work with organizations. Right now I'm working with Barbershop Books. I've been working with Too Small to Fail and First Book. Many of these organizations are trying to bring books to families. And so I've had the... And JetBlue. How could I forget JetBlue organization? Many of the organizations actually have social responsibility offices, and so I've been working with those offices to bring books to many different communities. We've done it all across the country.

Anna Geiger: That's amazing.

All the years that you've been working, what are some of the things that you're most proud of? You've edited so many books and written so many articles. What do you want people to know most, to see most?

Susan Neuman: Well, I want them to be a bit more sensitive and flexible and respectful of families who live in poverty. Their lives are difficult. Many times we've had interventions that actually say, "Be like me, middle class, spending time with our children all the time," and these parents have three jobs sometimes. They're struggling to make their rent and to buy food for their families.

So what I've tried in much of my work is to sensitize people to other ways of thinking. Let's get out of our mindset into the mindset of someone who is living in extreme difficulty. Let's understand that.

The second thing I think I've tried to do is, as I mentioned before, I've tried to often think like a child and design interventions that speak to the child and their interests and their engagement. I am convinced, absolutely convinced, that we underestimate so many of our children's capacities to learn and to think and to explore. I go into these rooms and I see these bright eyes, these beautiful children, and I say, "By giving them an opportunity, just look at what they're capable of!"

I often want to take a snapshot and just show people and try to convince them that we are wasting so much human capital that could be so helpful and so promising in our culture.

I guess those are the things that I've really tried to convey in my research. Sometimes I used to say to my graduate students, "I want to write a research article that will make people cry. It will make people understand that it's not just about numbers, it's about real people experiencing real hardship." Let's understand. Let's be a little bit more thoughtful and understanding.

Anna Geiger: Well, thank you for that and for all the work that you've done.

Do you have any current projects that you would like to share?

Susan Neuman: We're currently in schools in, again, high poverty communities, focusing on knowledge-building curriculum and the promise of engaging children in rich content learning while doing, again, developmentally appropriate activities. That's really, really exciting.

The other thing that we are focusing on is how can we use video and books together as a strategy to help children both find reading more engaging, frankly, and accentuate and accelerate learning. Those are the two projects that we're currently engaged in.

Anna Geiger: Well, wonderful. Thank you so much, and I'll be sure in the show notes to link to as many things of yours that I can find. I know there's quite a lot, that might take a while.

Susan Neuman: Thank you so much.

Anna Geiger: It was such a pleasure to talk to you. And thank you so much for taking the time.

Susan Neuman: Thank you. Take care.

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Books written or edited by Dr. Susan Neuman Nurturing Knowledge , by Susan B. Neuman and Kathleen Roskos All About Words , by Susan B. Neuman and Tanya S. Wright Handbook on the Science of Early Literacy , ed. by Sonia Q. Cabell, Susan B. Neuman, and Nicole Patton Terry Learning to Read and Write: Developmentally Appropriate Practices for Young Children , by Susan B. Neuman, Carol Copple, and Sue Bredekamp Changing the Odds for Children at Risk: Seven Essential Principles of Educational Programs That Break the Cycle of Poverty , by Susan B. NeumanSelected PublicationsNeuman, S.B., Kaefer, T., Wong, K.M., Developing Low-Income Children’s Vocabulary and Content Knowledge through a Shared Book Reading Program, Contemporary Educational Psychology, 2017Neuman, S.B.,��The information book flood: Is additional exposure enough to support early literacy development?��The Elementary School Journal, 2017Neuman, S.B., Wong, K.M., & Kaefer, T. ,��Content Not Form Predicts Oral Language Comprehension: The Influence of the Medium for Preschoolers.��Applied Linguistics,��2017Neuman, S. B., Kaefer, T., & Pinkham, A. M.,��A Double Dose of Disadvantage: Language Experiences for Low-Income Children in Home and School.��Journal of Educational Psychology, 2017Kaefer, T., Pinkham, A. M., &��Neuman, S. B.��,��Seeing and knowing: Attention to illustrations during storybook reading and narrative comprehension in 2���year���olds.��Infant and Child Development, 2016Wong, K.M. & Neuman, S.B., Educational media supports for preschool-aged English Language Learners. Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development, 2016

The post What does research say about teaching preschoolers? appeared first on The Measured Mom.

The power of spelling inventories – with Dr. Pam Kastner

TRT Podcast #155: The power of spelling inventories with Dr. Pam Kastner

Dr. Pam Kastner walks us through the wonderful complexity of the English language and explains why spelling inventories are a powerful tool for informing instruction.

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Hello, it's Anna Geiger from The Measured Mom, and in today's episode, I got to speak with Dr. Pam Kastner. She is an expert in many things, as you'll learn by hearing her incredible bio, but one thing she's especially interested in these days is spelling.

We talk a lot about the foundations for English spelling, and then we get into the power of a spelling inventory. We'll be talking about that, and we'll also learn more about PaTTAN, which is the organization she works for, and which offers a wonderful free conference every two years. This year's conference is coming up. Enjoy our conversation!

Anna Geiger: Welcome, Dr. Kastner!

Pam Kastner: Thank you, Anna! It's such an honor to be here.

Anna Geiger: People that are familiar with the science of reading have heard of your legendary Wakelets, the Pam Kastner Wakelets, and you have so many resources in there that you've curated for teachers and people that want to learn more about the science of reading.

I know that there's much more to you than your Wakelets. You have a long history of being an educator. Can you walk us through how you became a teacher and what you're doing now?

Pam Kastner: Sure. Like many educators, our journey probably began in the elementary classroom with an amazing teacher or another teacher on the road to our education. Mine really began in second grade with Ms. Swanson. She was absolutely just an amazing teacher, and I have always wanted to be a teacher ever since I was a little girl.

I was very fortunate, I think, when your passion and your life's work come together. When I became a formal teacher, when I wasn't, like many people do, teaching my teddy bears and what have you, I was mainly a kindergarten teacher for about 18 years and loved every single moment of that. It still is the highlight of my life truly to watch little ones unlock the code and learn to read. It was very empowering to see kids do that and to see how they felt about becoming readers.

While I was in public schools, I was also a reading specialist and I was a district data coordinator. In that process, I became also a Distinguished Educator for the state of Pennsylvania. Distinguished Educators were educators with experience who would go into and support schools that were at risk. Mainly, they were former superintendents or curriculum directors, and I was one of only two teachers that were selected in the state for that. It was quite an honor a number of years ago, to serve in that role and also to learn from the colleagues that I had the opportunity to learn from. It was an incredible experience.

I was granted a leave of absence for three years, so there I was. I left home and was working across the state with groups of Distinguished Educators doing reviews and then embedded in a school district for nearly two years to support them as they moved forward to improving literacy outcomes for kids.

I returned to the school district, but the state pulled me back in, and I was asked to interview potential other Distinguished Educators and ended up doing that beside the executive director of PaTTAN.

PaTTAN is the Pennsylvania Training and Technical Assistance Network. PaTTAN is the professional development arm for the Bureau of Special Education, the Department of Education in Pennsylvania. I serve as a state lead for literacy in that initiative. Certainly we support initiatives across deaf, hard of hearing, autism, math, you name it, soup to nuts. I've been there almost, which is hard to believe, 15 years, and I've been the state lead for seven years now. Again, that has gone really, really quickly.

I was talking to you earlier about my six grandkids. In addition to my obsession with my family, my life really is revolved around my family and literacy. It truly never really feels like work.

I also have the honor of serving as the president of The Reading League Pennsylvania and am on their editorial board.

I have the great honor as well to be an adjunct professor at the Mount St. Joseph University in the doctoral program and the master's program and the reading science program.

In addition, I do do some consulting across the country as well.

I'm busy, but it's a life of purpose, and I think that's what we all hope that we have. I feel very, very, very fortunate to be a part of this literacy community, which is so supportive. It's big, but it's also very small.

Anna Geiger: So I know in all the study and the things that you research and share with others, the thing you're very interested in right now is spelling. This is the culmination to our spelling series, and we're going to talk specifically today about spelling assessment and how to help that guide instruction.

First let's lay the foundation a bit, in case someone has not heard the other episodes in this series, and start by just talking a little bit about the complexity of English spelling.

Let's start by defining morphophonemic, which is how we describe English spelling. Some people think English spelling is crazy because we don't have a one-to-one match for every sound, but English isn't supposed to work that way. Can you talk to us about what morphophonemic means?

Pam Kastner: Yeah, I love that word actually. It's such a rich word. It's like being word conscious, right? It's so good to have that word in your mouth.

In the simplest terms, it means that our written language, our English orthography, our spelling, is based on both meaningful units and speech sound units, so both of those are contributing to how we spell.

But what's so rich and robust about our language and makes it so logical and predictable really is also the marrying of speech sounds and meaning. If you look at the term morphophonemic and we break it into its morphemes, it's unlocking not only how we will pronounce it but also what it means, which I think is so wonderful about our language being so rich. It's "morpho," meaning form or structure, those meaningful units. Of course, "phon," meaning those individual speech sounds. Then the "ic," the suffix, is telling us it's an adjective that's describing how those things are related.

It's a perfect word to describe our English orthography because it unlocks it right there when you know about the speech sounds and the morphemes. So, for me, that's morphophonemic.

Anna Geiger: What would you say would be the different factors that influence English spelling?

Pam Kastner: Well, throughout this podcast, I'm going to refer back to a number of researchers whose shoulders we all stand on. For example, Dr. Moats has been long interested in spelling and doing research on spelling. Rebecca Treiman would be another researcher, I would always look to her research. Suzanne Carreker's research as well, and Virginia Berninger's.

When I think about spelling and why it's logical, it's not crazy. We think about the influence of basically five principles. Again, if you're a LETRS trainer, these would not be unusual to you.

For example, language of origin. What's so wonderful about our language is our written language represents the influences, over time, of other languages. So depending on, in some cases, where the word originated from and maybe how it's changed some, how it's been adopted through other languages, will influence how we spell and/or how we pronounce it.

Just in terms of quick examples, going back to morphophonemic, I know from the PH spelling and the /f/ that there's a Greek origin to those words. I'm not calling it mor-/p/-ophonemic because I know the influence of Greek there is going to indicate the pronunciation and the PH is going to be a /f/. So it's a signal to me, its origin.

Another example that's used often is the spelling CH. If the word comes from Anglo-Saxon, we're going to pronounce it with a /ch/, like church. If it has a French influence, like chef, we're going to have the /sh/. Then back to our Greek friends, if it has a Greek origin, it's going to be pronounced /k/ like chlorophyll.

So it's not crazy, and I think that's what makes it so rich and wonderful to talk about our language. Kids absolutely love hearing and being these word detectives, figuring out, "Oh, that's why." I love hearing them say, "Oh, I know why. That's because it's a Greek word. That's why I pronounce it that way."

So language of origin will have an influence, for sure.

Then, of course, we map speech to print. That's why the alphabet was created, to represent language permanently.

Back to that morphophonemic. If we think about the map between phonemes and graphemes, especially when we're spelling, and then the reciprocal from graphemes to phonemes when we're reading, this relationship between speech sounds and the graphemes, the phonemes, the individual speech sounds, and the graphemes, which are the letters or letter groups that represent those phonemes. We spell in that way too.

Position matters, where in a word the sound falls. For example, today it's raining in Pennsylvania. My long A, because it's in the middle of a syllable, is going to be spelled with an AI. If it was at the beginning of the syllable, it would be an AI as well.

But if I'm hoping for a ray of sunshine today, that long A is going to be spelled with an AY because of its position. The position matters.

I think that's so important, again, to share all this richness with students so that they understand it as well and it makes sense to them.

Of course, back to our word morphophonemic and the meaningful units. We spell by meaning as well. We always spell by meaning, but those combining forms of meanings, how we're adding them, become more complex as we go up the grade levels.

We want to be helping kids from the very beginning. From kindergarten I was teaching my students, if it was "cat" and then we had the /s/, yes, I want you to be able to decode it and pronounce it, but also know that S has meaning. Both of those morphemes have meaning, but that S represents more than one.

We want to start that right from the beginning. Showing kids, basically, maybe I wouldn't be using the word morphophonemic or maybe I would, because if kids can learn Tyrannosaurus Rex, they can learn morphophonemic.

Our language is morphophonemic, and we spell by both meaning and sound, and so, meaning, morphology is really critically important.

Word study beyond basic phonics is really critical for both decoding and encoding spelling.

I think I got that all except orthographic conventions. Scribes, many years ago when we were moving from spoken language to written language, put some constraints on letters. I think probably everybody, well I'll just speak for myself, but when I learned why is it "give" and "love" and "have," because no English word ends in V. I was like, "Oh my gosh!"

We have these conventions, and it's also influenced the syllable types.

So yeah, those five principles really. Again, I refer back to, of course, Dr. Moats' work in "Speech to Print" and in LETRS, where those are highlighted as well. It's not my research, it's certainly others.

Anna Geiger: I like the way you talked about how we can tell our students, even if we choose or not choose to use the word morphophonemic, but when they're spelling, to tell them sometimes we spell for sound and sometimes we spell for meaning. This ED at the end, even though it says "jumped," we're going to use an ED because that means that it already happened.

I never really thought about explicitly saying that to kids, but that makes a lot of sense. Even in the early grades, you can do that.

Pam Kastner: Yeah, and you make a perfect example there and one I use often in training with teachers and with students, is that morphemes have stable spellings. They are pointing to meaning.

Thinking about writing, if I'm a student and I'm thinking about something that happened in the past, I know I need to use the ED spelling for that morpheme. ED is a perfect example of our morphophonemic language and ones I use often as well - wanted, landed.

I think those are perfect examples of morphophonemic. The morphemes remain a stable spelling. The ED is pointing us in the direction that it's happened in the past. These words are showing us how sound and meaning are working together to influence it.

The thing is, and I'll speak for myself and I think many others, we didn't necessarily learn about our own language in our graduate work or undergraduate work, so we cannot teach what we do not know, right? The more we know as an educator about our language, the better we can teach our students.

Anna Geiger: At the end, I'll make sure to get some references for you for places teachers can learn about that. Because like you said, there just usually isn't room made for this in teacher training.

We've touched on this in the past, again, but I think we can never define them enough for people who are new to this. It took me a while to grasp all of them. Let's define phonology, orthography, and morphology, and we might as well do etymology as well.

Pam Kastner: Okay, so phonology is the speech sound systems of a language. It is how we can sequence and combine phonemes within a language. If we're thinking specifically phonology, it's a study of that. Right?

Anna Geiger: Okay.

Pam Kastner: So in our language, there is always a little bit of discussion around how many phonemes are in our language, but the general consensus is there are 44 phonemes in our English language, and they can be represented in orthography more than 250 ways. That's what makes our language so complex and rich.

An orthography is how a written system is represented, the language is represented, in written language. Back to our morphemes, "ortho" meaning straight, and "graph" meaning writing, so it's correct or straight writing. It's how the speech sounds are correctly written in language.

We know, especially with our long vowels, there are often many ways we can spell them, but we have a correct way we spell them in our language, and so that's orthography. We think about orthography and spelling pretty much synonymously, encoding.

Morphology, again, is back to those meaningful units within a language.

Etymology is where did the word originate from?

All of these are influencing how we spell. We need to teach all lenses of language.

We didn't mention semantics here, meaning. We didn't mention syntax, the part of speech.

The more a student knows about a word, how it's spoken, how it's written, what its meaningful parts are, where it came from, its part of speech, its meaning, it's bonding all these things together. That's why we never want to teach in isolation. All these things are interdependent and integrated.

The more a student knows about a word and its language lenses, the more accurately and quickly they will access it for both reading and for spelling. Language is literacy and literacy is language. I don't know who said that, but give them credit, whoever you are out there, because it truly is that they're reciprocal. Literacy rests on language, so we want to be teaching all those language systems, and of course, we want to be teaching them in a structured literacy way.

Anna Geiger: We have talked about how it's important for teachers to have an understanding of each of these, and of course, it's going to grow. It's not like, okay, now I know everything there is to know about one of these areas. Particularly with morphology, you're never going to be done learning morphology.

Pam Kastner: No.

Anna Geiger: There's an ending to learning spelling patterns, mostly, although there are still some things that you might still be learning. But when teachers understand all these areas, then they can help their students understand why we spell something a certain way versus telling them to memorize spelling. That's really what it's all about, right?

Pam Kastner: Right, versus saying, "I don't know why it's spelled that way. English is crazy."

Anna Geiger: Yeah.

Let's move into spelling assessment. When teachers really have an understanding of phonology, orthography, morphology, or at least a baseline understanding, they can look at an assessment and see what types of errors students are making and where to go next. Let's walk through that.

First of all, could you define qualitative spelling inventory?

Pam Kastner: Yes, so a qualitative spelling inventory is a list of spelling items that rank from least complex to most complex, like CVC's to derivational suffixes at the end, in a very intentional way where you're sampling a student's knowledge of that phonics pattern.

A word example is given, I say the word, then you say the word, I want that word in your mouth. I provide a sentence to nest it into meaning. Then basically, I just stop talking and the students spell. It's a very, very, very powerful tool that I think is severely underutilized across the country.

Dr. Moats I believe has said this, I'm pretty sure it's her who said spelling is visible language. It's language written down. It's telling me what students know about language around that particular pattern, that phonics pattern, that encoding pattern I've asked kids to spell.

It doesn't take long to administer, maybe 10 minutes. It can be done whole group. You want to make sure kids aren't copying from each other. All you need is paper and a pencil without an eraser. You want to have that first attempt, to be aware of that, or they could use a pen.

The power really is in the analysis. I always say when you're collecting data, you want to be doing something with it.

For the schools I have the honor of working with in Pennsylvania and across the country, I strongly recommend that they do a spelling inventory with every single student when they do their typical universal screening. It takes about 10 minutes, and it's going to give you an added lens.

It's a way to sample students' understanding of language through phonology, orthography, and meaning, because you're offering that through a sentence.

Then analyze that, look for error patterns, so that it can form your instruction intervention. It could be at the individual student level, it could be in small groups, it could be whole group, and it could give you information back about your whole system, about your curriculum, and/or your instruction. So it's a very, very powerful tool.

The one I default to, of course, is Dr. Moats' LETRS survey. It is copyrighted. If you're a LETRS trainer, certainly, you have access to that. The Words Their Way Developmental Spelling Inventory is another spelling inventory that I've used with schools. The Words Their Way program is not explicit, not systematic, however, the spelling inventory is fine. That one is free and follows very similar...

When you look at a spelling inventory that follows that scope and sequence from least complex to most. Yes, those would be two examples.

Anna Geiger: So let's go back a minute. Let's say I'm a first grade teacher and I'm doing DIBELS or I'm doing Acadience three times a year, would you say also that each of those times that I'm pulling students individually to do those assessments, I would just do one spelling inventory to the whole class so that it's just done in ten minutes altogether?

Pam Kastner: You would do one spelling inventory, yeah. One spelling inventory with whole class. It's a whole class administration. The administration is really very brief. It's not very long.

There's so much power in the analysis, especially if you have the honor of being a coach or a consultant or a reading specialist working with a group, or if you're a teacher working in your own team. When you're analyzing them with knowledge, it's so powerful, especially when you're looking for trends in your classroom and across classrooms.

We've uncovered lots of things by looking at spelling inventories, from individual, to classroom, to grade level in the school, that are informing our next steps.

It is language written down. If you can spell a word, you can read a word, but the encoding is going to show me what you know about language, and it's permanent. I can look at it later or I can use it to inform me where the reading is in the moment.

It's such a powerful tool that I think is so underutilized and can result in really deep professional learning for educators around language, but also, most importantly, changes in instruction that have better outcomes for kids because that's why we all get up in the morning, right?

Anna Geiger: Yeah, so I'm thinking about if you're giving the spelling inventory and you're telling your students, "This is just for me to see how much you know about spelling. Just do your very best. I'm not going to grade it. If you try something and you don't like it, just draw a line through it so I can still read it, and write your final spelling, because I want to see all the things that are happening in your brain."

I had not thought about that before, about having them not erase, but that's a really good point.

I can see a teacher looking at those and saying, "Okay, I already know what I'm doing in my whole class or small group phonics and dictation. How do the results of my spelling inventory carry over to what I'm already doing? How do I connect them?"

Pam Kastner: They 100% do! You can put these spelling inventories out in an array and evaluate, "Okay, who's got some strengths here with language and who doesn't?" You can tell immediately what they need.

Let me give you an example from the lens of way up here. So the school was moving towards the science of reading and engaged in practices that were related to that, and they had purchased programs that were related to that as well.

When we looked at their spelling inventory results across the grades, we started seeing this pattern over and over and over again. Kids were spelling phonetically but not with the correct graphemes. They were representing each of the phoneme sounds in sequence, which we want, of course, with a grapheme. But oftentimes, especially with the long vowels, they were using a letter name to represent a letter sound, and that's not unusual. So goat was G-O-T and stone was S-T-O-N.

What it told us when we looked at their scope and sequence is that they were doing a good job with the phonemes. Kids were able to segment and understand that we have to represent a phoneme with a grapheme.

However, it's pretty apparent that either the curriculum that they were using and/or the instruction was not happening, or not happening enough with practice, in order for kids to store those spellings for this word in memory.

When you keep seeing that pattern over and over and over again, all right, that's a curriculum instructional issue that's happening at that grade level. If it was happening in one classroom, we'd say, okay, what's happening here? What's the makeup of the kids this year? That happens every year where we have different students.

Also, if I see a pattern of kids making errors on something that's been taught and many in my classroom are having that error, will I waste my precious time teaching that in small group? Yes or no? I would say to them, no. This is something that needs to be retaught effectively and practiced, don't miss that practice step there, in whole group.

Or if these kids are having problems with digraphs, yet I've taught that, then it's a small group. I'm going to pull them for direct instruction here.

It's visible. I don't have to think, what do I need to do? It's right there staring me in the face, and it can inform school, grade level, classroom, small groups, and the individual level. It's one of the most powerful tools out there I think that's not being used.

I seriously have been obsessed with them a little bit because I just think there's so much power in that analysis. Also, having those conversations with teachers, analyzing them with teachers, is a very rich, robust professional learning experience.

Anna Geiger: When you talk about system-wise, you're looking and you're seeing, like you said, across the grade level, that they're not spelling long vowels. They're just using a single vowel. So that informs your Tier 1 instruction. We need a meeting to talk about what we can do to improve this. I understand that.

Pam Kastner: You can ask the teachers, "What do you think is happening?" Ask them because they know, right? Yeah.

Anna Geiger: Where I have a few questions more is when it comes all the way down to the individual student. Let's say I have a group of students. I may be differentiating my foundational skills and I've got a group that's doing long vowel teams, but I have a child who can read that really well, but then it looks like... Say we're pretty far in the long vowels, but they're still mixing up AI/AY, which I'm seeing on the assessment. How do I handle that?

Pam Kastner: It always goes back to explicitly teaching that and then practicing that.

It might mean reading lists of words that have the AI/AY pattern, minimal pairs, so that we're really making them pay attention.

It would influence the decodable text that I would select. Maybe they can read it and you've seen them read it, but they need repeated practice. It's back to shared statistical, right? They need lots of opportunities to see it, read it, and spell it so that it forms that high-quality lexical representation, that mental orthographic image, that's stored in memory for that word, for how we're spelling the long A in that particular word.

So we want direct explicit instruction, practice through word chaining, word lists, decodable texts, of course, dictation.

If I was dictating, if I was saying, "Rain," I would remind the student, "Where do you hear that long A sound? Oh, it's in the middle of a syllable! How do we spell that? Right! We're going to spell it with an AI." Because I would've previously taught that positional, so I'm linking my dictation to that. That's how I would start with that student.

Anna Geiger: So often spelling lags behind reading, right?

Pam Kastner: Yes.

Anna Geiger: So let's say I'm doing my small groups and I'm teaching IGH or whatever else, and then they're spelling that in our dictation, but there are some earlier skills they're missing, but only one is missing them. Practically speaking, how do I fit in that instruction, I guess?

Pam Kastner: Well, I think that's always the million-dollar question, but we can't... These skills are essential. I'm sure you've heard the term, Swiss cheese kids, right? They've got these holes. We have to go back and teach that.

If it's an individual student in a small group, it might be a group of one, or pull in another student who is skilled at that so the student isn't feeling so isolated. But you have to go back and teach those things. They will show up later, and especially when they start getting into multisyllabic words.

We want them to have very high-quality lexical representations of these words, to have them stored in memory.

I think we've all... I've done this, maybe you have, I don't know. Where you spell a word and you write it down and then you look at it and go, "That doesn't look right"? Right?

I always think that's so cool when that happens because it's like it's not jiving with the stored memory you have for it, and you're looking at it and you know that something's not right here.

We want kids having these strong lexical representations so that they can use them in reading and spelling, because we know that people judge your writing by your spelling. If you are not spelling accurately on a job application, it's going to impact you.

Spelling does have an impact on your life. It's going to help our reading and it's going to help our writing, so why aren't we doing it?

Anna Geiger: Yes, for sure.

I'm going to summarize some of the things we talked about.

We initially talked about the complexity of the English language, morphology, orthography, phonology, etymology, and why it's important for teachers to find a way to keep learning about that so they can communicate that to their students so that their students understand that there's reasons for how we spell certain words.

When we give a qualitative spelling inventory, maybe three times a year, and we compare scores across the school and the grade level, we can see if our Tier 1 instruction is working for spelling. If not, we need to figure out some holes.

Would you say that it would make sense to follow up with a diagnostic after?

Pam Kastner: Yes. In some cases, yes, especially when some of the spelling that you can see... Really, that's what I love about it. You can look at a spelling inventory that's very discrepant and you can know right away that we need to do a phonics screener, we need to do a phonemic awareness assessment, we need to do spelling.... Where are they? Can they spell out their names? Because maybe they're that far back. Maybe they're not even there yet.

So, yes, it's a tool that can be used in so many ways. It can be used summatively to look at, at the end of the year, how did we do? You can see the progression, which is so cool because it's visible language.

It can be a formative tool because it's informing Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3.

Certainly, diagnostically, it's pointing us in the direction of finding out they may be in their pre-alphabetic phase of Ehri's Phases of Word-Reading, if they're representing the first sound and the last sound, but we don't see any internal. Then we know we need to focus on segmenting, for sure, to make sure they can segment. Then we need to focus on phoneme-grapheme mapping.

It's like right staring in front of me what I need to do as a teacher. How often does that happen? So many times we're trying to... It's like a puzzle, it's a mystery. We're trying to figure it out. Not with spelling. It's right there in front of you, what you need to do.

Anna Geiger: Also, it's a good reminder to teachers that just because you may have taught it, not all the students have mastered it. You have to reteach in some cases.

Then also, I think this power of a spelling inventory is really important for third grade and up. I know when I started teaching I taught third, fourth, and fifth grade in a combination classroom, and I did not know... I knew very, very little about English spelling. I was a good speller, but I never really thought about why words were spelled that way, so when I had students who were in third grade but spelling a word with A-consonant-E instead of a vowel team, I didn't even know where to go. I just kept ploddng along thinking, "Well, we'll have our weekly spelling lists."

We can realize for those older grades that you've got to tackle this, because it's not going to get better without explicit, focused instruction for that particular child, however you decide to do it. Even if you say that 10 minutes a day I'm reserving for working with kids who need this. Sometimes they just need to be told; it may have never been explained to them.

Pam Kastner: Yeah, I think we all have the experience of kids saying when you're working with them, "Why didn't anyone teach me this before?" I think we've all experienced that.

Anna Geiger: So the inventory can help us see where the holes are and help us make a plan.

Pam Kastner: Yes, for sure. Without a doubt it can help you make a plan.

Certainly, if you're having a walk-to-learn or during your WIN time, that's what many people call it, What I Need time, we can share students and work on those skills. Then everyone gets what they need, because certainly, if they're great spellers and great at decoding, we want to extend their learning too. We want to make sure that we're growing all kids.

Anna Geiger: Yes, so we talked about how teachers really need to educate themselves on this. What are some favorite resources that you have for teachers that you recommend? We have your Wakelet. We do have that.

Pam Kastner: Yeah, no doubt. No doubt. I wasn't going to talk about me. Certainly, Louisa Moats' "Speech to Print" is seminal text. "Unlocking Literacy" from Marcia Henry is an outstanding book. "The Logic of English" from Denise Eide and "Beginning to Spell" from Rebecca Treiman are both good. I have Lyn Stone's "Spelling for Life." Louise Spear-Swerling has a great book on structured literacy, and Louisa did a chapter in that on spelling, but also the other language systems. Actually, PaTTAN did a book study of that, so I'll give a little plug there. That's recorded and curated.

Those are pretty much some default ones if you want to start your spelling journey. I love David Crystal's "Spell It Out" for figuring out why words are spelled the way they are, and "The ABC's of Spelling and All Their Tricks," that reference book. I have a whole bunch downstairs, but these are ones that I run to.

Certainly, I look at research. I was just reading research again last night, and it was confirming how when a student has a strong lexical representation, there's evidence that it increases their reading speed, and we know we want them to be fluent so that we can focus on the meaning.

There's ample research out there, and has been for decades, about the importance of spelling as a linguistic skill that can benefit, again, all those language systems. We're not teaching in isolation. But it seems to be... In this new age, it seems to be old. It's not. It's a part of everything. It really should be taught.

Anna Geiger: Yes. Well thank you so much.

Before we go, I just want to give you a minute or two to talk about PaTTAN's literacy conference. I don't know if that's what you call it.

Pam Kastner: Yeah, that's so nice of you.

Anna Geiger: I've always been so impressed by the videos that you guys put out on YouTube, and I think it's free, right?

Pam Kastner: It is free. Yes, it is free. It's coming up, and we have over 80 presenters again. The registration's going to be up February 28th on www.pattan.net. There will be lots of banners there to point you in the right direction.

It's held every two years and is absolutely 100% free for anyone in the entire world. You do have to have a PaTTAN account. You have to do that, but again, creating the account is free.

We're really, really honored that our keynote speakers this year are Holly Lane, Kareem Weaver, and Dr. Anita Archer has always been a big part. She's always the end note because everyone knows she's a master teacher and a consummate professional. She truly does look at every single presentation and then synthesizes those and summarizes our symposium. It's a wonderful mix of who's who. It really is.

Anna Geiger: I know!

Pam Kastner: We've got the who's who of the literacy world, the heavy hitters, but also lots of practitioners, because of course, we always want to be rested on the foundation of evidence and research and keep current with that. We also have to translate that evidence, and we need to hear voices from the teachers who are doing it every day, translating that into practice.

When I was a kindergarten teacher, and I still really consider myself a kindergarten teacher, I wanted to hear from other kindergarten teachers. Like, how are you doing that? Tell me. I want to see it. Teacher voices are so essential to this process, and we honor those at PaTTAN, along with the researchers.

Anna Geiger: Well thank you so much for all the things that you have done and continue to do for teachers everywhere.

Pam Kastner: It's my honor and pleasure. Thank you so much for this time. It's good to be with you.

Anna Geiger: After I pressed stop, Pam and I realized that we had not given the dates for the upcoming PaTTAN conference, so that will be June 11th-13th, 2024. If you're listening to this episode after that date, be sure to check PaTTAN's YouTube channel, where they have recordings of previous symposiums.

I also want to say that, in this episode, we talked very high-level about the power of a spelling inventory, but if you'd like to know more specifics about how to really dial into the results and know exactly what you need to teach, I would check out a presentation that Dr. Kastner co-shared; it's called Spelling: Visible Language to Inform Instruction and Intervention. It's about an hour long, and it's on YouTube. I'll link to that in the show notes for today's episode.

Speaking of show notes, you can find them at themeasuredmom.com/episode155. 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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Recommended resources The Kastner Collection: Dr. Pam Kastner’s Wakelets Speech to Print , by Louisa Moats Unlocking Literacy , by Marcia Henry Spelling for Life , by Lyn Stone Beginning to Spell , by Rebecca Treiman Uncovering the Logic of English , by Denise Eide Structured Literacy Interventions , by Louise Spear-Swirling The ABC’s and All Their Tricks , by Margaret Bishop Spell it Out , by David CrystalPaTTAN’s Literacy Symposium Register here for the 2024 Symposium Recordings of 2022 Symposium

The post The power of spelling inventories – with Dr. Pam Kastner appeared first on The Measured Mom.

Navigating the complexities of English spelling – with Lyn Stone

TRT Podcast #154: Navigating the complexities of English spelling – with Lyn Stone

Lyn Stone helps us navigate the complexities of English spelling in a way that makes sense for students and teachers. We discuss morphology, etymology, tricky spellings, and even get Lyn’s opinion on teaching “blends” and syllable types. Enjoy!

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Hello, Anna Geiger here from The Measured Mom, and in today's episode I got to speak with Lyn Stone.

Lyn Stone is the author of three books, "Reading for Life," "Spelling for Life," and "Language for Life." She also offers many online courses, is an international speaker, and she's also an instructor. She spent many years teaching the kids who really, really struggle with reading, writing, and spelling. It was a true privilege and honor to be able to speak with her.

I actually saw her speak at The Reading League's event in October of 2023. I don't know if my American friends who are listening remember that day when we had the emergency broadcast system, the national thing, the first time we've ever had this happen everywhere, and everybody's phones were beeping like at the same time? That happened to be during her one-hour presentation that she flew across the world to give, because she lives in Australia, and she was a very good sport about that. It was a great presentation, and she was also a very good sport when we had some connection issues while recording this podcast.

I made my old mistake of not choosing the correct microphone, but Lyn is very clear and always articulate, so I know you'll get a lot out of this.

I just want to say upfront that Lyn has some different opinions than other people. There are definitely different ideas in the science of reading community, surrounding things like the idea of teaching blends and the idea of teaching syllable types. So I wanted to address those and let you hear from Lyn and hear her perspective.

In today's episode, we really work through how to teach English spelling, even though it's a complex system. I hope you enjoy it, and here we go!

Anna Geiger: Welcome, Lyn!

Lyn Stone: Thank you!

Anna Geiger: I've read all your books and I've taken most of your courses, and just this past October I got to hear you speak in real life at The Reading League Conference in New York, and I even got a picture with you on the sidewalk. I'm really excited to be able to talk about spelling with you today, so thanks so much for coming on the podcast.

If you could start by introducing yourself and telling us about how you got into education?

Lyn Stone: Okay. So I'm a linguist, which means that I studied the structure of language at university. When I graduated I went over to Australia, so I studied in London at University College in London, and then I graduated and went over to Australia. I got a job at a Lindamood-Bell Clinic in Sydney, and I was trained in what they called the ADD program then, but it's now called LiPS.

The Lindamoods were one of the first people to actually talk about phonological awareness, and how important that was for literacy acquisition, so I did a lot of very in-depth phonological and phonemic awareness work with children and adults who were struggling to read and write.

I learned all of their stuff, and sort of moved up the ranks a little bit, but then they left Australia, and so I cast around for another job and found a job in a speech pathology clinic, and that's where I learned Spalding. That's one of those classic Orton-Gillingham programs. I learned that, and then did that day-in, day-out, combined with LiPS and so on, for a few years.

I kept finding gaps though in the programs, especially for children who were really struggling, so I started to write solutions to those gaps, and that became "Spelling for Life." Then it became "Language for Life," which is to do with grammar and syntax.

That's basically my history. It is a Tier 3-built career. I still have a practice, but now I have staff running that practice. What I do now is I consult to schools, so I fly around everywhere, and I work with systems rather than individuals, while my staff at home keeps the home fires burning and see individuals in small groups of struggling children and adults.

Anna Geiger: Interesting. So in your work with schools, what specific things are you doing?

Lyn Stone: So what schools will do is, they'll contact me and say, "We're starting or we are halfway through, or we're at this point on our science of reading, science of learning journey and we want to improve things, can you help us?"

What I do is I act as a critical friend, a thought partner. I'll train their staff, I'll do whatever it is that they need to take the next step towards a more research-informed approach to teaching literacy. It sends me all around the world. I'm very, very lucky and I'm very lucky to work with such dedicated schools as well. It gives me huge hope for the future of education.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, so how long have you been doing the consulting work?

Lyn Stone: On and off for quite a long time, over a decade, but I've now really focused on that. I do consulting, and I also run professional development, and from that professional development then there will be more consulting and so on. I've actually trained two other consultants, that's how big it's getting, and in 2024, they'll be on board as well doing consultancy work. So yeah, it's at least over a decade, but I've been running professional development though since, gosh, it's got to be since the late '90s.

Anna Geiger: Oh wow.

Lyn Stone: It's actually really scary.

Anna Geiger: That's great.

Lyn Stone: But there you go!

Anna Geiger: So spelling I know is one of your passions, and you have such a fun way of talking about spelling in your book. In the beginning you talk about spelling as being "much maligned and misunderstood." Can you explain why you wrote that?

Lyn Stone: Well, the English spelling system is complex. We know that, right? The migration patterns in England and Britain for the last 2000 years have been really complex. It has a lot of words and it has a lot of influence, and because of that, it's not a transparent system.

We've got 26 letters, and SO many words that we have to spell with those letters, that the system has grown to have complexity. Because of that, and because teachers are not really given the tools to teach that well from the beginning, then what happens is it gets this reputation for being somehow crazy, irregular, weird. And that's not true. It's actually a really, really elegant system, but it's a complex one.

With any alphabetic system, it's one that some human brains don't take to very well. Dyslexic people find it difficult to wrestle with print, and English is particularly difficult for them.

It gets maligned that way and it gets misunderstood, because it's not actually crazy at all. It just needs some really deep thought and good training to communicate about that. Even children and adults with dyslexia CAN get to certain pretty good levels of spelling if they get the right instruction.

Anna Geiger: And so I think you would say that understanding English spelling includes understanding different layers of language, maybe you would call it that? We've talked about things like orthography, morphology, and etymology. Can you talk about those things and how they relate to spelling?

Lyn Stone: Yeah, that's what makes it complex because it's not, "Here's the alphabet and this letter represents this sound. The end." That would be great if it were transparent like that, and there are lots of languages that are transparent like that.

What English has and what makes it complex, is that it has orthographic rules that drive it. For instance, things like that you don't use the letters CK at the beginning of a word. Some of the rules are really logical and easy to spot and easy to just understand by osmosis. Like with CK, we don't use that at the beginning of words, and people stopped doing that quite quickly, if they do it at all.

But there are things like CK at the end of words, where you don't precede that with a consonant, and you don't precede that with a vowel digraph typically. These are the orthographic rules that govern that system, and you have to have those rules because again, we have got so many words with a very small amount of letters, so we have to have ways of mixing them and marking what's pronounced and what's not pronounced and so on. So that's the orthographic layer and that makes it complex.

From that orthographic layer, there is the origin of the words. We make choices regarding what sequence of letters we have based on where the words came from. So it's not enough just to listen to the sounds of words, you've also got to know a little bit about the fact that there are stories of words.

So if you hear a /k/ at the end of a word, and it's a word derived from French, it's pretty likely that it's going to be QUE. So you've got etymological stuff going on there. If you see a PH in a word, it's pretty likely that this is a Greek base somewhere for a /f/.

Then there's the morphology as well. And actually all of it is inextricable, but morphological things are things like ... Well, it's not just about UN, and PRE, and the letter S, and the letters ED, and the letters ING. Morphology also works in tandem with spelling, and you have things that change up morphemic boundaries. You've got things like the word "act," but if you add the suffix ION, now you've got a pronunciation change to "action." It's not "act-tion," because that's actually inefficient to say.

So there's all of these layers that can be systematically taught, and they definitely can be integrated. It's always my goal to try and help teachers to do that effectively.

Anna Geiger: I think you call them exceptional words in your book, is that right? Words that we might consider irregular.

Lyn Stone: I don't really name them. What I do say... So there is a word stories wheel that we have in there, and within that wheel it says, "This word is exceptional because ..." That word isn't doing what you'd expect it to do, but there's always a reason why a letter sequence doesn't appear as you'd expect it, and that's a concept that's worth exploring.

So in "Spelling for Life," I talk about this, there are seven major reasons. However, a caveat, those are the stories and they're fun, but it's the practice that makes the difference. It's how you practice, and I know we are going to come up to a question about practice as well.

Sometimes we can get caught up in showcasing our amazing etymological knowledge and not planning for the practice. Spelling practice is really, really important.

So yes, definitely talk about the stories of words, but don't make that everything you do, because that's not the bit that they remember, or the bit that they have to remember. What they have to remember is that sequence. Tell them the "why" once.

It's a bit like comprehension strategies. You can tell them them how to do it a few times, but you've got to get down to actually wrestling with the thing, right?

Anna Geiger: Sure, sure.

This is not a question that I had submitted beforehand, but I would like to talk to you about your feeling about spelling rules, and what rules you feel are worth teaching and how you feel about that. Do you feel that students should be able to say the rule to apply it? There are just a lot of different opinions about that in the science of reading world.

Lyn Stone: Let's start with a broad view. Let's start with the overview, and the overview is this: spelling, English orthography, is a system, and that system is governed by rules. It has conventions. So whether you use the term "rules" or not, you're using them and you know them. If you have a lexicon, and you can instantly and effortlessly retrieve words for spelling, then you know the rules, whether you can say them or whether you can't say them, they exist and you know them.

That's our broad view. These things exist, these conventions. It's not a dirty free for all, right? That's the first thing about spelling.

Therefore you, as an adult with a complete lexicon, say if you're an educator and you've done it, you've achieved it, and you know how to spell, why would you keep that from people? Why would you keep it from them? Because not everyone is just going to learn this through exposure to print. Not everybody is going to learn this through osmosis, right? Why not tell them how it works? If you tell everyone how it works, you're going to bring everyone along with you. So of course, teach the rules.

Now, what does that actually mean? It doesn't mean I want a bunch of children in a classroom to be able to parrot stuff. That's saying the rules exist, but it doesn't say how to use them.

What I want is for children to have enough of a rationale around the system, and that includes irregularities, and it includes some technical terms like vowel, and consonant, and digraph, and final silent E, and so on. I want them to have enough of that to be able to make high quality decisions in my absence about letter sequences. That's what I want, and what that comes from is practice, good quality practice.

Anna Geiger: Well, as long as we're talking about practice, we'll move that question up. Can you talk to us about what good spelling practice looks like and doesn't look like?

Lyn Stone: Three things are important, I think, when you're practicing spelling. I'm a good speller, I'm lucky. I've got that sort of brain where I can look at a word and it's in basically, and that helped me build my lexicon really, really, really fast. I can't park my car straight and I don't count that well, but I can spell.

Okay, so what is it? I've questioned myself for many years. What is it that I do rather than just use my photographic memory? What is it that I do when I struggle with the word? How do I put the words I struggle with, even as a good speller, into my mind?

It is always using three things. Therefore, if you're going to practice, these three things even help terrific spellers.

The first one is that I need to analyze the structure of the word. I need to know why that sequence is that sequence. That helps me remember it when I look at why that is.

Secondly, I need to look at other words that belong in that family. So whatever it is that's bothering me about the sequence, if I put that with other words where they have kinships, I'm more likely to be able to retrieve that word.

Thirdly, I have a spelling voice. I have a spelling voice, and I use my spelling voice. So I will say "s-cissors." I will say "Wed-nes-day." I will say "O-N-E, one."

My spelling voice varies depending on what I'm trying to remember. Sometimes I'll say the letter names, sometimes I'll over-pronounce everything. I'll make sure I don't use schwa, because that's not my spelling voice.

So those three things, spelling voice, structure, families, that helps good spellers remember also help struggling spellers remember.

Anna Geiger: What are some things that people should NOT do?

Lyn Stone: Well, I wrote a whole thing on that in a peer-reviewed journal about spelling activities from toxic to useful, with a big area in the middle called useless.

So if we go right down to toxic, basically I call them toxic because they'll make you a worse speller. They'll impede your progress while you are trying to build your lexicon. It's things like activities involving staring at the words. It's incredibly passive, a waste of your time, and it just doesn't work.

Mixing up the order of letters, that's insane! It's the sequence, you've got to remember the sequence. If you're focusing on something that's out of sequence, well, as Anita Archer says, "Practice makes permanent," not perfect, but permanent. So you better practice that sequence as it is, not as it's not. Those are things like jumble up the letters and focusing on the visual aspects of words. It's not your visual memory that's helping you retrieve those words from long-term memory. It's different structures there.

So we're really off the path sometimes when we do activities that involve staring at words, or drawing lines around them and around their shape. I call them "word coffins." Just again, focusing on the visual features. That's not how we remember words.

So today might be the day you don't do that, if you do that.

Anna Geiger: So you have some opinions on certain things that are maybe common practice in some programs. Maybe you could speak to your feelings about teaching blends. People call them sometimes consonant clusters, but it's groups of consonants that come together in words where each has its own sound. Can you speak to your feelings about that?

Lyn Stone: Well, what they are is lifeless zombies, because if you teach consonant clusters as one unit, you're neither teaching a grapheme nor a phoneme, nor a morpheme. You're not teaching any of these things that are actually the units of language.

If you're teaching these consonant clusters, and I don't want to even call them blends, because the act of blending is really, really useful for learning to read. The act of blending graphemes and phonemes together to form words is really useful. But a blend, like in the word "blend," that starts with a B and an L, and it ends with an N and a D, so it's plenty of bookends of blends.

If you teach those as units, firstly, you've got to then cover hundreds of linguistic units that children now have to somehow memorize.There's no hook to hang these things on there. There's no morphemes there. There are two phonemes, there are two graphemes. It's a lot to remember, and you will overwhelm a lot of children.

Secondly, if you teach blends and then you get children to (and I see this ALL the time) write a word like say the word "blend," and you're telling them to sound it out. A lot of children will write the B and they'll go "b-end," and they'll write "bend," because there's too much information in that tiny unit of time.

I see this all the time, missing persons, I call them. Disappearing consonants from these clusters, because they don't have sufficient knowledge and time to sound all that out properly. So linguistically, it doesn't make sense to do that.

What DOES make sense is that actually L and R are two of the letters that occupy that secondary position most, and that's because of their pronunciation. It's a good idea to tell children that, that's a great idea! And the letter S goes with lots of things, again, because when we say it, we can then move to lots of different consonant places. That's a little bit more, I think, linguistically accurate and interesting and usable, instead of teaching these zombies that are neither graphemes, phonemes, nor morphemes.

Anna Geiger: When I first heard people like you talk about not teaching blends, as they're often called, I misunderstood that, I think, at first, because you're not saying not to teach kids to read CCVCC words, you're just emphasizing that those two letters should not be taught as an individual unit. I think that might be confusing some people.

Do you have any specific suggestions for teaching kids to not make that mistake, as you were saying, of dropping the second letter of the blend?

Lyn Stone: Yeah, look, consonant clusters are difficult, so once you've mastered your CVC, you can start bringing in consonant clusters for sure.

I have an exercise that I do with kids in "Spelling for Life," that's called a consonant start card and a consonant end card. What they do is, over time, they will almost like an inquiry, dare I say it, an inquiry-based project where they get all the consonants, and they go, "Okay, what goes with what?" That analysis is really helpful as well, because they form the conclusion that it's L and R. They can both go with lots of things! That's an approach that's a lot more helpful than saying learn these pieces of code.

Anna Geiger: Okay.

Lyn Stone: Yeah, it just makes a lot more sense, I think, to turn them into linguists rather than just giving them more stuff to memorize with no rationale.

Anna Geiger: Sure.

Can you speak to your opinion about syllable types?

Lyn Stone: Yeah. Again, we're in zombie territory again. We're in zombie territory when we talk about syllable types. Most words in English are polysyllabic, right? And of those polysyllabic words, they will consist of a base and some affixes. That's really what makes the polysyllabic words into the polysyllabic words.

There are some exceptions, of course, but let's talk about the majority, because again, like we said at the beginning, when you need to acquire 30,000 to 70,000 words so that you can go on and have an academic career, you can go to university or whatever, then you can't teach it word by word. You've got to teach good examples.

The good examples are the polysyllabic words that consists of bases and affixes, because that's the majority of the words!

Syllable types are neither; they're not bases or affixes, they're just an overanalysis. They're lifeless zombies again, they don't connect to any meaning. They're very difficult to generalize, and they're mostly not true as well. They don't really form typical patterns. Even open and closed syllable only works about 60% of the time.

When you get into polysyllabic territory, you've got this thing that we do in English called stress. We're a stress-timed language. We have vowel reduction, so you're going to schwa lots of those syllables as well. It's better to have the stable morphemes understood and learned than the so-called syllable type that tells you nothing except maybe how to pronounce a word that may be fairly reliable.

This language is not about pronunciation. That's part of it, but to be able to make robust mental orthographic images of words so that you can retrieve them effortlessly, so that you can then be automatic in your writing, so that you can be strategic in your writing, you're going to have to understand the morphemes and be able to use them well.

Syllable types are not bad. Again, it's just inefficient.

Anna Geiger: I know the schwa intrudes a lot, which does make it very difficult when using syllable types to pronounce syllables.

I know you talked about how you have used your spelling voice to help kids spell words, so if they're spelling the word "cactus," their spelling voice would be "cac-tus." Do you have any other tips for teaching spelling with schwa? Because that does get so tricky.

Lyn Stone: Yeah, the first thing is to understand what schwa is as an educator. It's not something that you necessarily have to make children be able to do, to write that upside down e properly. That's a little bit too much overkill.

But as an educator, if you think about it, what we have is speech, and then we've got writing, and they're two different beasts.

Now in speech, what we do is we reduce vowels. We do that so that we don't sound robotic, right? English is a stress-timed language, so it tries to keep regular intervals between strong syllables in words. That's what makes English sound like English. To do that, we reduce the quality of the vowels in polysyllabic words. Even in our speech, like even the word "was," when you say it in isolation, it's "was" (pronounced slowly and fully), but in speech, a lot of the time it's just "was" (pronounced quickly and using a very quick schwa sound) right? You're reducing that battle.

That's what we do in a stress-timed language, so that makes it hard to spell. If the only tool in your toolbox is sound it out, it makes it hard to spell because as soon as schwa comes along, all hell breaks loose because there is no schwa vowel in spelling it's A, E, I, O, or U. So that's the problem, right?

The solution is spelling voice and understanding morphemes as well. Morphemes are spelled stably. They are stable, whether it's /r/-/��/ or /r/-/��/, like "respond," it's always spelled R-E.

They're really nice and stable, and they obey the rules as well. You have suffixing conventions and you have assimilated prefixes. Knowing that and teaching that, no matter how you say the words, will help you spell the words.

Anna Geiger: For teachers who might want to know more about that, because I've seen presentations you've given, like the one I saw in person, and then the ones I see online, and you talk about using the morphemes to help with the spelling.

So much of the time, I think, well, I don't know all those morphemes yet because I know it goes on forever and ever. For teachers who want to get started, and feel like their knowledge of morphemes is small, is there a particular reference or lesson plans or things that can help them get started there?

Lyn Stone: Well, luckily we are not under-resourced when it comes to morphological stuff. We're not under-resourced at all. I have a morphology masterclass for beginners. William Van Cleave does some starling work on this stuff.

You've also got these groups, structured word inquiry groups, on social media that meet and are incredibly generous with their time and understanding. There are lots and lots of places to go.

I think structured word inquiry is a really good starting point for lots and lots of people, because it helps you dip your toe in. Just start with a word, any word, and you start to become addicted to morphology at some point from that starting point. I would definitely point people in that direction.

There's also a book that I absolutely love, two of them. One's called "Backpocket Words" by Gail Venable. It's wonderful. That's all about conversations about ... She selected a bunch of words and said, "Have them in your back pocket," because that's going to help you to become more morphologically aware, and therefore more morphologically proficient so that you can teach that to students. So "Backpocket Words" is a brilliant book.

Then there's "Beneath the Surface of Words." I love that book by Sue Hegland. It teaches me so much. Those are both really good places to start.

Anna Geiger: I'm reading "Beneath the Surface of Words" right now, and the other one is next on my list, and it's really fun. I do love words, but there are so many things in there I've never considered! The one that struck me the most was the root CAV and then how that goes into "cavity." I just never connected "cavern" and "cavity" before. That was fascinating to me.

Lyn Stone: Right, and concave!

Anna Geiger: It's super interesting.

Lyn Stone: It just reveals so many things, and things that you have never thought about.

I think also what it does, and this is a message I really want to get out to teachers if they're considering moving to more morphologically, etymologically, and orthographically-based approaches. Is that it's an absolute no-shame zone. You don't have to carry all of this information around in your head.\

However you start, and wherever you have a go, that's better than not doing it. You will be accepted into a really wide community of people who are nonjudgmental about all of this. I made a ton of mistakes with morphology in my time. It's something we all do, but I'm not ashamed. I am just glad I was there and did it.

I'd love to spread that message as well, because kids dig it, and they remember it, and the benefits of it are so far-reaching. Why wouldn't you? So the message is don't be afraid to do this.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, and like you said, once you start to learn it, you start to see how much spelling has to do with morphology in so many ways because the pronunciation changes, but we can see that morpheme is there.

I will be sure to share some resources in the show notes, including your Morphology Masterclass, which is the one I haven't taken yet, but that is on my list. Anything else you'd like to share? Resources that you have or projects you're working on that you'd like people to know about?

Lyn Stone: Well, 2024 is the Chinese year of the dragon, and I've always used dragons in my resources. I've always had little pictures of dragons, and you've got the decoding dragon that you can download on Teachers Pay Teachers.

I've sort of formalized the approach to word study that we use at Lifelong Literacy called the 4-Step Process. One of the things that I've done that we'll be releasing in 2024, is that all of the pictures to do with what you do at every step of the 4-Step Process to study words is a dragon! That's going to be formally released next year as a 4-Step Process kit, and we'll be updating the 4-Step Process resources. Yeah, so 2024 really is the year of word study via the 4-Step Process, and all the dragons. That's what's coming.

Anna Geiger: Okay, that sounds exciting. Great. I can't wait. I've seen that. I think you shared that 4-Step Process in that workshop that I saw in New York.

Well, thank you so much. I'm going to have fun finding things to share in the show notes, because there are so many resources you've shared online and all kinds of things. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to come talk to us.

Lyn Stone: Always a huge pleasure. Love your work!

Anna Geiger: Thank you.

Lyn Stone: Thank you so much for listening. You can find the show notes for today's episode at themeasuredmom.com/episode154. 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 and resources from Lyn Stone Spelling for Life Reading for Life Language for Life Lyn Stone’s blog Lyn Stone’s courses Recommended books mentioned in the podcast Beneath the Surface of Words , by Sue Scibetta Hegland Backpocket Words , by Gail Portnuff Venable

The post Navigating the complexities of English spelling – with Lyn Stone appeared first on The Measured Mom.

Spelling assessment, syllable types, & spelling intervention – with Dr. Shelley Blackwell

TRT Podcast #153: Spelling assessment, syllable types, & intervention – with Dr. Shelley Blackwell

Dr. Shelley Blackwell and I discuss all things spelling – from spelling assessment to spelling intervention. We also talk about whether it’s useful to teach spelling rules and syllable types.

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Hello! Anna Geiger here from The Measured Mom, and in today's episode, I was able to speak with the delightful Dr. Shelley Blackwell. She's an expert in many things and one of them is spelling, so today we got to talk all about spelling. We talked about how we can use our understanding of phonology, morphology, and orthography to figure out where the gaps are in a student's spelling. We talked about her view on syllable types and also some ideas for spelling intervention. Here we go!

Anna Geiger: Welcome, Dr. Blackwell!

Shelley Blackwell: Hi! Thanks for having me!

Anna Geiger: So you have quite a background and experience in so many things, but today we're going to focus just on spelling.

Can you introduce us to yourself? Tell us how you got into education and all the things that you're experienced in.

Shelley Blackwell: Sure, sure. So I'm actually a fourth-generation educator. I went into education and wasn't sure that's exactly what I wanted, and then I discovered the field of speech language pathology and thought that was the perfect blend of medical, like how the brain works, combined with teaching and education. So that's where I started my graduate work at the University of Kansas.

I spent some time working in a reading clinic and was trained in Lindamood-Bell, and that got me hooked on literacy, watching kids and adults learn how to read. I was hooked then, and then I was a school-based speech pathologist for 22 years and became really passionate about literacy instruction, remediation, and spreading the word about structured literacy even before our district did it. I had a principal who was very, very supportive of me going into classrooms and teaching some phonics and doing some things like that to help students. So that was really fun.

Then I finished my doctorate at the University of Kansas. I have given them a lot of my money, all three of my degrees are from KU.

Then I started this role that I'm currently in for our school district as an MTSS literacy support specialist. A team of us are supporting all 36 of our elementary schools, 10 middle schools, and 5 high schools, plus our alternative education centers. We're helping teachers learn about structured literacy, how to make that shift in their instruction from balanced literacy to structured literacy, and then implementing the MTSS process with not just their core instruction in Tier 1, but moving through the intensification of their instruction. We're helping them understand the different layers of that, Tier 2, targeting a certain skill, and Tier 3, intensifying, before we even talk about special education referrals.

We've done a lot of work with universal screening and interpreting data and just trying to help teachers become data users to drive their instruction. I think as district teachers we tend to collect data and let the district look at it and say, "Yes, you're on track," or, "No, you're not." But we're really helping teachers look at their class data and their students to see who needs what, and then figuring out what that what is and how to deliver it. It's an awesome job.

Anna Geiger: That's wonderful.

When we think about teachers making the move from balanced to structured literacy, a lot of questions I hear revolve around spelling, as in, "How is this supposed to look different than what I was doing?" or, "What does spelling instruction look like in a structured literacy classroom?"

As we think back to traditional spelling instruction, can you think of some practices or things we've done that maybe weren't aligned with the research?

Shelley Blackwell: Certainly. So in the past, we tended to do the Monday pre-test. You give a list of words, send them home, and have students do rainbow writing with their spelling words, or write them five times, practice with parents, and then come back Friday for the test. There may have been some implicit instruction throughout the week about a spelling word or spelling pattern, but it didn't tend to be explicit.

Now we know that the spelling brain is the reading brain. Spelling and reading are both parts of language, and we have to use lots of layers of that in order to spell.

In the past when we would send home word lists, study, and come back on Friday to take the test, they may do well on Friday. Maybe their words are great, but their sentences aren't. Then maybe next week when you reviewed those words on the next spelling test, they have forgotten them. That's because we didn't ever teach them; we didn't get into the word analysis.

I like to call spelling now word study, because it's not a memorization process. In fact, on my website, I say something like that. Spelling is a thinking process, not a memorization task.

In the past, like you said, in balanced literacy, we would just try to memorize our spelling words. Parents loved that because that was something they could do on the way to soccer practice or at the breakfast table, and they could just drill those.

But as we've seen in the droves of kids who have gone through the balanced literacy schooling, their spelling isn't the greatest. So as we move to structured literacy, we lean on the research to help us know what our instruction should look like.

We can get into that part, but I think, additionally, in the craziness of the school day, in the busyness, if something had to give in your instructional time, it was spelling. It was, "Okay, we've got an assembly and I don't have time to teach everything. I can't skip math. I can't skip reading. It's got to be spelling." Spelling was kind of the instructional casualty when time ran out because it wasn't explicit teaching.

Anna Geiger: Yeah. When I think back to maybe eras in the United States where there was more of a focus on phonics, I think there still was even then probably a focus on memorizing letters in order versus understanding why words are spelled a certain way.

I think another issue that we have sometimes too that I still see is spelling lists that aren't connected by phonics pattern. It's a vocabulary list, which then automatically lends itself to memorization, because what you learn for one word cannot be transferred to the next word. You're basically having to memorize 20 spellings instead of learning a pattern or something about language that would help you and that you could apply.

Shelley Blackwell: Exactly. Exactly.

Anna Geiger: Can you talk a little bit more about why spelling is a thinking process and not a memorization task?

Shelley Blackwell: Yeah. So when you really think about spelling, I go back to the reading brain because we know there are three parts especially that help us with decoding words. The phonological processor, being able to know the sounds in words, the orthographic processor which helps us associate the sounds and the letters, and then there's a meaning processor, too. All of those pieces work together to help us decode.

Well, similarly, spelling is that way too. An example I give in some of my talks is the word "kicked." If I say, "Anna, would you spell the word, kicked," you can just whip it out because you have it in your sight word vocabulary. However, your brain has done a lot of work to make that decision.

Initially, your brain triggers the phonological processor, "What are the sounds in 'kicked'?" So you think /k/ /��/ /k/ /t/. Hear are those sounds.

Well, now your orthographic processor has to think, "What are the spellings I could use? Well, if I think about /k/, I could spell it with a K, I could spell it with a C, I could spell it with a CK, or I could spell it with a CH. I've got lots of choices on how to spell /k/, but I have to think about the placement of that sound in the word. I'm not going to use CK at the beginning of a word to spell /k/, and in this word, I can't use a C to spell that sound because there's an I after it. When C is followed by an E, I, or Y, it makes the /s/ sound."

So your brain is having to do all of this thinking, not only about hearing the sounds in words, but then going through your orthographic Rolodex, so to speak, of what choices do I have, and then the rules of our language of where those sounds can be spelled in different places in words.

Then you're going to go into the fact of that last sound /t/. "Well, I could spell /t/ with a T or a D sometimes because ED spells /t/ in some words, you know?" Like in kicked, it's ED. Spoiler alert.

But you should also be thinking about the morphological components. So I think, "I kicked the ball, well, that's an action that's already happened. I took 'kick,' made it past tense, and I use regular past tense marker ED, which makes the sound /t/."

All of that thinking goes into play when you're deciding to spell a word, therefore it is a thinking process. You have to think your way through hearing the sounds in words, figuring out what representations work with it, and then throw in an unfair or irregular word and you have a whole new ball game. All those pieces have to go into it.

You can memorize some words, and memory does play a role in learning how to spell, but I was reading a research article and they said something about how adults can spell 10,000-20,000 words, but we've only actually been taught about 3,800. That really speaks to a few things, the process that we need to be aware of as we're spelling an unfamiliar word, but it also speaks to the different ways that our brain learns how to spell.

And so, there are a couple routes that we can talk about like the lexical route and the non-lexical route. We already have that word, "kicked," locked in our sight word vocabulary; it's a lexical route word for us. We just tap into it and write it down.

But if it's a word we didn't know how to spell, now we're going into the non-lexical route. We're deciding, "What are the sounds? What are my options?" We're doing that metacognitive process that it's becoming upfront, surfacing, so I have to sound those words out.

Spelling, as we used to think of it, was just memorize these words and go. If you memorize and then go, you might do well in isolation on that Friday test, but they aren't yours. You don't own them, for most kids, especially kids with dyslexia or other language-based literacy problems. That's not how they learn them.

We really have to teach kids how to do the word analysis, to look at the structure of those words, and, as you alluded to earlier, teach words in patterns for our spelling list instead of words that go with our story or words that go with our theme for vocabulary instead.

One thing we've done in our district is to really try to reframe our language from spelling to word study, from pre-test to introduction, because we're introducing a pattern to students and we're going to study that pattern. Then instead of your post test, it's now an application measure. Can you apply what we've learned? Can you apply what we've talked about?

Anna Geiger: Sometimes we talk about people being natural spellers and not so natural spellers. I have called myself that before, a natural speller, like if I saw the words, I knew them, and I never studied for a spelling test ever. Except I remember I always missed a couple words on the IE/EI list because I didn't know all those and I didn't study them. But with my mom, she and I think she's dyslexic, but that was never diagnosed, but she still really struggles with spelling.

The difference we might be able to say would be that some people, if you teach them in this kind of memorization way, they kind of pick up those patterns without a lot of direct instruction. But other people really need you to break down why we spell things certain ways before they can start to map those spellings.

It's an interesting way to think about it, how some people-

Shelley Blackwell: Yeah.

Anna Geiger: Like in the same way we learn about reading, how some people kind of pick it up rather quickly no matter how they're taught, and other people, like a large percentage, really need that explicit instruction. We can think about that with our spelling too.

Shelley Blackwell: I think those are the same kids who are successful in a balanced literacy classroom because they saw something and they could implicitly teach themselves, and then apply that to things that they'd seen before. But we know that's not the majority of kids.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, and we also know that that explicit instruction in how words work can benefit everyone, including the spelling too. Also, it's true that with many kids, they are good at reading, but their spelling is lagging behind because they didn't get that explicit spelling instruction.

You did such a nice job of explaining how phonology, orthography, and morphology all kind of connect together when it comes to spelling. I know that some people have used their knowledge of those areas when assessing spelling. They'll see a word and they'll be able to say, "Well, this is a phonological error or so on." Can you talk about that a little bit and maybe give us some examples of how a child's spelling can tell us what they know about words?

Shelley Blackwell: Oh my gosh. This is one of my favorite things to talk about. I like to take a student's connected writing sample, so maybe a journal entry, an essay, something where they are just writing because when you look at a student's writing, I say it's the window to their literacy world because you can see so many components of our structured literacy pillars in there and their spelling.

I can look at a word and say, "They left out some sounds in that word, so that must mean that there's something phonological happening. If they're leaving out blends, if they're switching sounds around, then something in their brain isn't perceiving those sounds in the right order." Now maybe in isolation they can do it, but it's a red flag to me if I see it in connected writing that I need to look into that a little deeper and kind of do a diagnostic on that.

I'm going to go back a second. The reason why a connected writing sample is so powerful is because your cognitive load is so heavy when you're writing a story, a reflection. Not only are you trying to figure out your ideas, but you're also thinking about letter formation and handwriting and spacing and punctuation, and do my sentences make sense, do I need a new paragraph, how do I connect this? All those things are happening on top of how do I spell the word? It's really a good measure of how are you applying this and how are you generalizing everything you've been taught?

So I can look at phonology. For orthography, I can look at words and say, "Well, they spelled it phonetically, but they didn't spell it the way the dictionary would spell it."

For instance, I had a fifth grader write about when she got her first cellphone. She spelled cellphone, S-E-L-L-F-O-N-E. My first thought was, "She heard all the sounds in the words, her phonological processor is alive and well. It's working on those." But orthographically, she wasn't thinking about the PH for the F, and meaning-wise, she wasn't able to make that distinction between, "sell," like I'm going to sell you something so you can buy it, versus "cell" as in cellular. There's a meaning component too. I can look at all of those pieces just from how she spelled that.

I can also look at morphology to see are they putting the right endings? She spelled the word, "highest," like the highest building, H-I-Y-I-S-T, and so that told me she didn't have that superlative comparative piece of it using EST. She didn't realize that we added this superlative onto the word, high, H-I-G-H. How she spells let me into how she's processing all of the layers of language.

That is one thing I did for all of my language evaluations, even if it wasn't literacy-based, if it was language, because I wanted to see how they were doing with all this. I can look at syntax as well, and semantics. I can look at all those pieces, but we're just focusing on spelling.

I do a POM analysis, LETRS has a POSM, there are lots of different terms for it, but I look just at phonology, orthography, and morphology.

Out of their sample, I write down the words that they misspelled, the correct spelling, and then I look through it and say, "What kind of error was this? Was this phonology? Orthography? Morphology?" Then I can look for my trends.

I'm working on a matrix where we can think about what type of error they're having, is it phonological, orthographic, morphological, and then what phase of spelling are they in? If I have a fifth grader who can't spell CVCE words, but they're working on multisyllable words in class, am I really going to work on multisyllable spelling with them? Nope.

Anna Geiger: Right.

Shelley Blackwell: Because developmentally, they're not there yet. I want to make it connect so you can click on the skill and then go to an intervention or something.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, that would be awesome.

Shelley Blackwell: That's my little brain child that I'm, in all my free time, working on.

Anna Geiger: Yeah. That would be exciting, very exciting, because I think once you just figure out the difference between those three things, phonology, orthography, and morphology, and being able to analyze words, then the hard part is "Well, now what? What exactly do I do?"

Shelley Blackwell: Exactly.

Anna Geiger: Within the science of reading community, there are different approaches, of course, to teaching spelling and phonics. There are disagreements about the importance of spelling rules and too many rules, what's too many, what's too few.

What's your perspective on spelling rules and what needs to be taught? Also, what would you say in terms of, should kids be able to actually say the rule or is it enough for you to teach it and have them apply it? How do you see that?

Shelley Blackwell: I don't teach spelling rules. I teach spelling patterns because there seems to be exceptions to rules. Most rules you can find something where it doesn't work, but the pattern typically is the majority, so I do think it's important to teach those patterns explicitly.

Part of that is just the qualitative experiences of we've taught it implicitly and it hasn't really worked. My kids, my own children, are not great spellers because they went through the implicit spelling instruction. I do think it's important to teach those patterns.

However, I do disagree with teaching so many at a huge depth. I think sometimes we may go overboard. I think in Tier 1, it's a lot more important to say those and to pull that in during the phonics lesson, but in your Tier 2, in the speech language pathologist's room, the resource room, my view was, "I get you for this amount of time. I don't have time to teach every single thing in the English language, so I'm going to teach you the highest impact, highest leverage patterns: DGE and GE, CE and K, vowel teams. Just the main vowel teams, not all of them." We definitely need to explicitly teach them patterns, but I think we can get so caught up in the weeds of trying to teach all the patterns that we lose the purpose of it.

Anna Geiger: Yeah. Do you think it's important for kids to be able to say the pattern, like, in a single syllable word after a short vowel, spell "K" with CK? Do you think that's important, or is it enough for the teacher to teach it?

Shelley Blackwell: My experience mostly is from intervention and remediation in the special education setting, and so I know that those students were probably the true dyslexics. They need as many different modalities as possible to learn, and so I found great success with that if they could articulate it. It didn't have to be my words, but they could say, "I use CK when it's a one-letter vowel, and K the rest of the time." If they could articulate it so that I knew they understood the concept, that was acceptable to me.

Anna Geiger: Sure.

Shelley Blackwell: But I think there probably are some kids out there that need that repetitive verbiage over and over and over in order for it to click in and move to their long-term memory. So I'm definitely a case-by-case kind of person, but I do think it's important in Tier 1 that teachers are saying the same thing with the same verbiage to their students to build that base because that's going to be enough for most kids.

Anna Geiger: And that leads to the importance of a shared high quality curriculum so that you have the same verbiage.

Shelley Blackwell: Right.

Anna Geiger: And also for teachers to have that knowledge too. There are a lot of books that are shared in social media groups like "The ABC's and All Their Tricks" and "Uncovering the Logic of English." Do you have any other books that you recommend for helping teachers improve their spelling knowledge?

Shelley Blackwell: "Uncovering the Logic of English" is probably my favorite. I haven't found a ton that I've... I have some and I've looked through them and I feel, "Meh, this is okay. This is kind of helpful," but I haven't found a lot that would be great for somebody who's just starting in their quest of it.

Anna Geiger: Okay.

Shelley Blackwell: Which makes me feel like maybe I should write one. Maybe I should write something because-

Anna Geiger: Yeah. That sounds good!

Shelley Blackwell: Lyn Stone has "Spelling for Life," and her work is really good, but there's definitely not the same selection for spelling as there is for decoding and reading.

Anna Geiger: Agreed.

Shelley Blackwell: The pool is a lot smaller.

Anna Geiger: Agreed.

Let's talk about a divisive topic in the science of reading community, and that is syllable types. Some people don't believe that syllable types are important to teach and others do. I had a linguist comment on one of my Facebook posts recently that the only two types of syllables are open and closed. What is your perspective on syllable types, if they should be taught, and how and why?

Shelley Blackwell: I like syllable types. I do think they are helpful to be taught. For the students who are naturals anyway, I think they find it interesting, so it doesn't do them harm to learn them. But again, from the lens of my students through my remediation, it gave them a structure for words that they could look at.

So instead of seeing a word with a string of letters going, "Where do I even start?" they had some strategies of, "Okay. Let me find my vowels. Let me look at the syllable types. Okay. This one could be closed or open, which means it could be a short vowel or a long vowel." They had a place to go as a roadmap. I think for decoding, it's very helpful.

I think for spelling it's very helpful too. Especially vowel-R, because you can start to think about, "Okay. I hear that /ER/ sound, but is it in the context of the vowel sound in that, so do I need a vowel plus an R? Or is it in a blend or something where it's a consonant?"

I do also think we can get a little in the weeds of SO stuck on, "You have to identify that syllable type," that we forget to generalize words and use uncontrolled text.

My path when I'm teaching kids about reading or spelling is, "Okay. We've got to teach syllables. Now let's put it in an uncontrolled text and see what you do. When you're writing, we're going to go back and find the words that you aren't sure about. Which ones do you think you may have misspelled? Underline those." Then we go back and I'll say, "What is the word? What are the syllables? What types? Does that match what you have?"

So again, it just gives me some talking points and a roadmap to help them think their way through that. And then we can go syllable by syllable if we need to.

Anna Geiger: Yeah. That's a good point that we need to be thinking about what the end goal is here. Syllable-type work can be very time-consuming, like syllable division and syllable types. I think we just have to be careful. It can be tricky when you have a program that you're required to use, but always remember that the point of it is to help them with decoding and spelling, not to do an isolated activity.

Shelley Blackwell: Right. I think we kind of sometimes get into arguments, or not arguments, but good discussions. I'll have teachers text me and say, "How do you split this word up?"

For instance, if it's a "TION" word, a T-I-O-N, do you put the T on the I-O-N, or do you put it on the syllable before? It really then taps into your morphology. Does the T belong to the syllable before because it's part of that morpheme?

Anna Geiger: Yeah.

Shelley Blackwell: I-O-N is really the morpheme, but then again we also think of T-I-O-N as a syllable, like a "TION." We use T-I-O-N. When you spell it, when you read it, does it really matter where the T went? Probably not.

Anna Geiger: Right. It's the weeds again.

Shelley Blackwell: Yep, yep. Yep.

Anna Geiger: For sure.

So you mentioned before that previously there was the problem with the pre-test and then the post test on Friday. Is there a place for a weekly spelling test if they're receiving that explicit instruction all week versus, "Here's a list of words to memorize?" What's your perspective on that?

Shelley Blackwell: Absolutely there's a place for it, and in my opinion, the pre-test is more important than the post test because your pre-test is your formative assessment. The pre-test is the one that says, "How many of my students already know this pattern? How many of these students don't know this pattern? Is it a phonological error? Is it an orthographic error? Where are we in that process?" So then that helps me design my instruction for that week. It helps me know which of those students I need to pull in a little small group for five minutes and do an extra explicit differentiated small group on that pattern.

For me, it's not so much of what's my student's grade in spelling, but what's my instruction? How's my instruction doing? Are they learning what I'm teaching? That's my measure.

But spelling also is twofold because there's the isolation words, the list, and do they have the knowledge of the pattern? Then if sentence dictation is fine, I would also like to take, like I said, a writing sample. If I had a classroom, that's what I would be doing because that shows me the application of it.

For instance, if we worked on AI/AY, I want to see are they able to use that, apply that, and generalize that in their writing, not just in the list?

Anna Geiger: What would you say are some of the good ways to practice spelling? I know you mentioned rainbow writing, and that's basically just writing all the letters in order without really thinking about what the letters are for. So what would you say are good ways to practice spelling words, either in school or at home?

Shelley Blackwell: There are a few different things that we've shared with parents, but also in small group or in my therapy room, definitely including sound-spelling mapping. For our parent connection, we've given them a bank of 20 to 30 words that follow that pattern. In that bank are the introduction words and the application words so that they are seeing those as well some others to fill that in so parents can practice sound-spelling mapping at home with their student. Again, with lots of supports for them, cheat sheets and things like that, until they learn. That's a great way to do it.

Additionally word sorts with patterns are really good. DGE and GE. AI, AY, A consonant E. Doing word sorts is supported in the research as well because your brain is starting to look at those patterns and the placement of those patterns. That's tapping into that orthographic processor of, for instance, CK. You can't use that at the beginning, so it's going here at the end. So word sorts are another way.

Word analogies are great ways to practice too, which kind of ties in with word families. So if you think of a word with long vowel silent E and long A, cake, can you think of another word with long vowel silent E? So you're starting to find other words with that pattern. Those would be some easy-ish ways.

We have to build up some automaticity with those as well. That's how we move it to our sight word vocabulary, meaning that bank of words that we know automatically.

There are some visual parts that go with it. You can also do some saying, "Okay, our pattern is long E with EE together in a word. Let's spell some words." And we do it like the old days where we would say on the way to church, "Spell the word this. Spell the word this. Sound stretch it. Spell it." All of those things work.

The difference between doing that practice then in our old days and now is that they've been explicitly taught the pattern, how to sound out the word, and we're also attuned to the fact of if they are hearing the sounds in words. Because if you can't hear the sounds in words, then you're not going to spell the sounds in words. I like to have kids finger stretch first and then spell it.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, and that brings me to thinking about high frequency words too like it's not that flash cards are always bad, but if we're starting with that as a memorization tool, that's a problem. But if you've explicitly taught them and you're building toward automaticity that makes more sense.

This will be our last question. What tips do you have for choosing and designing spelling interventions? If that's an area of weakness for a child, what specifically do you like to do?

Shelley Blackwell: Oh goodness, this is a hard question. It's a hard place also because of a lot of things, I think. Like we said earlier, we've spent so much focus on helping kids in learning how to decode and read. In spelling and writing, these things are starting to come along, but I know have teachers who have said to me, "They can decode. They can pass all of the phonics screener, but their spelling's atrocious. What do I do?"

That's partly why I want to write some interventions where I can say just click here and take it and go.

In your Tier 2, instead of decoding, you're working on spelling. Some of those things could include word sorts with patterns. It could include... I do an activity speech to spelling mapping where it's very intentional of asking what are the sounds and how do you spell that sound. Then I had always had students spell it the way they thought, and then I teach that phonics pattern.

Anna Geiger: Okay.

Shelley Blackwell: So if it's long vowel silent E, and they write "plane" like P-L-A-N, then I point to the A and say, "What sound are you thinking of for this?"

And they say, "/��/."

I say, "Do you have any other ways you could spell /��/ besides the one A by itself?" We talk through it.

If they don't, I tell them, "This one is A consonant E. Let's try to write it in that word," and then we practice a few more of those. That's kind of the teaching point.

I've done some word chains with those different patterns.

Jamey Peavler talks a lot about blocked practice and interleaving practice. I love that because when we're teaching the acquisition of that skill, we need to teach it in blocked practice: same, same, same, same.

As they start to get that pattern, then I'm going to do some interleaving practice. For instance, if I'm doing DGE, I'm going to throw some GE's in there as well, so they have to make that decision, "Okay, it's a short vowel with /j/ at the end. I know I have to use GE, but I also have to use DGE here. Wait, this vowel has two letters. I just use GE." They are having to do that force forgetfulness to think about what they're doing.

Word chains are great for that interleaving practice.

Then I always, always, always include some connected writing even if it's just sentence dictation, because I want to see if they can apply the pattern we just talked about.

Those are some things that I include in my interventions with students when we're working on a pattern.

Anna Geiger: So basically the best practices that you're already using with the rest of your class, but broken down into more practice and more examples?

Shelley Blackwell: It's more targeted.

Anna Geiger: Which is a lot we know about reading as well.

Shelley Blackwell: Yeah.

Anna Geiger: Well, thank you for sharing all of this. We covered so many things today!

Shelley Blackwell: Good!

Anna Geiger: Where can people learn more about you and the resources that you have?

Shelley Blackwell: I have a website that I house the things that I write. It's all open-source. I don't know if we can link that in the notes, it's called Literacy Through Language. It's not fancy, it's a free Google website, but I put things that I write for orthography and morphology, and then I place resources for if you want to learn some more. My email and my Twitter are on there. I'm on Twitter at @sblackwellslpd. I'd love to connect that way.

Anna Geiger: Wonderful. Well, thank you so much!

Shelley Blackwell: Thank you so much for having me. This is fun to talk shop.

Anna Geiger: You can find the show notes for today's episode at themeasuredmom.com/episode153. We'll talk more about spelling next week!

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 mentioned in this episodeDr. Blackwell’s website, Literacy Through Language The ABC’s and All Their Tricks , by Margaret M. Bishop Uncovering the Logic of English , by Denise Eide Spelling for Life , by Lyn Stone

The post Spelling assessment, syllable types, & spelling intervention – with Dr. Shelley Blackwell appeared first on The Measured Mom.

The phases of spelling development – with Dr. Richard Gentry

TRT Podcast #152: The phases of spelling development – with Dr. Richard Gentry

Dr. Richard Gentry, spelling expert, describes the phases of spelling development, lists do’s and don’ts for spelling instruction, and explains what to do for children who struggle with spelling.

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Hello, Anna Geiger here from The Measured Mom, and today I'm interviewing Dr. Richard Gentry in part two of our spelling series.

In his 40-plus year career, he's written spelling curricula, he's written 18 books, and all of this with dyslexia. We won't talk a lot about dyslexia in this episode, but he gave a wonderful interview on Melissa and Lori Love Literacy about dyslexia, which I'll be sure to link to in the show notes so that you can learn how he was able to overcome that and accomplish these many great things and do so many things for teachers and students.

In this interview, we start by talking about the stages of spelling development. We also talk about things to avoid and things to do when teaching spelling. Then we conclude by talking about what to do for kids who are struggling with their spelling words. Here we go!

Anna Geiger: Welcome, Dr. Gentry!

Richard Gentry: Hello! I'm delighted to be here.

Anna Geiger: Well, thank you so much. You've written SO much about spelling, and I know you have a lot to share, but before we get into that, could you tell us a little bit about what brought you to education and all the things that you've done in your long career?

Richard Gentry: Oh, sure. It's interesting, my mother was my first grade teacher and she is the person who taught me to read. She's the one who really inspired me to go into reading education. I think it's one of the best gifts anyone can give a child, the gift of literacy.

My journey began at the University of North Carolina as an elementary education major. Then I went to the University of Virginia and did a PhD in reading education. For 16 years, I directed the Reading Center at Western Carolina University in North Carolina. I ended up with two full-time jobs, one as a university professor, but then I was doing consulting work and doing publication.

And so I took a big risk. I gave up the university position and became self-employed as a researcher, writer, and educational consultant. It's been real exciting. I've traveled all over, been to every state except Alaska, and internationally. And all to share literacy, which I think is one of the best gifts that a parent or a teacher or an educator can give a child.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, well, agreed, 100%. And did you say you've been to every state except Alaska? Is that what you said?

Richard Gentry: That's right.

Anna Geiger: We took a trip there with our kids this summer actually, because that is one of the three or four states that I have not been to yet, and it was wonderful. So if you haven't been there yet, you'll definitely have to make a plan.

Richard Gentry: Oh, it's on my list for sure.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, it's incredible. Let's get back to spelling. I know you can talk to us about what research says about spelling development.

Richard Gentry: Yeah, it's really amazing now. All of a sudden, we have learned so much in the last three decades from the latest research in cognitive psychology and in an explosion of research in neuroscience. What we've learned about reading is that neuroscience says that spelling is at the very core of the reading brain circuitry. That's true both for the early phases of beginning readers and writers, but also for kids who are in grade two and beyond and even adults.

It's really interesting. We have something called brain words according to neuroscience in the left hemisphere of the brain, where for most people the reading circuitry is organized.

It is these brain words, these visual images of the spelling, that actually connect to the words that are already in your spoken language. So you use this alphabetic code. When you see the words on the page, it maps to or connects to that same word in your spoken vocabulary where you already have the word's meaning and its pronunciation.

So with spelling, it's just so important, and interestingly, and we'll get into that, it's not been recognized in teacher education how very important it is. We've gotten away from teaching spelling. As we move into our discussion, I'm sure we'll talk about that, how things are changing about that.

Anna Geiger: It sounds like you're talking about orthographic mapping just now, right?

Richard Gentry: Yes. Yeah, orthographic mapping is exactly it, and what that means, orthography, that's spelling. You map to the spelling, to the sounds. For example, a word like cat has three sounds, /k/ /��/ /t/. Beginners have to learn to orthographically map the letters that they see in the code to the sound, and then they recognize that that word, C-A-T, is the word that they have in their spoken vocabulary. It's a wonderful process.

Anna Geiger: Like you said, it starts with the vision, starts with seeing the letters, but then this combining all these pieces together in our brain is not a memorization process exactly, but it's a connection of all the pieces that go together, right, that's stored?

Richard Gentry: That's exactly right, and it's interesting that you say it's not a memorization process because some of the things that we have been doing, in the classroom or when we teach, have been treating words as if you just had to memorize the spelling.

But that's not how it works. You really literally have to explicitly teach kids how to do that orthographic mapping using the alphabet code and their knowledge of the alphabet to connect to the words in their brains, which we call brain words.

Anna Geiger: Right, and of course at the end we can certainly talk more about that book, which is excellent and explains that in more detail.

When I think about Linnea Ehri's phases of word recognition, I also think about the spelling stages, which I think I read in a book of yours years ago, lots of years ago in a different book.

Richard Gentry: I've been around a long time.

Anna Geiger: So have I. So yeah, that was a long time ago, and it was interesting to me at a recent presentation I went to about orthographic mapping, how they explain that Linnea's phases and then the phases of spelling development, they all kind of line up.

Maybe you could walk us through a little bit about how you would describe the phases of spelling development?

Richard Gentry: Okay, they almost perfectly line up. It's interesting.

Linnea Ehri and myself and other colleagues at the University of Virginia and elsewhere who were working with developmental phases of spelling started two lines of research. This research even precedes us. It's research that began in the early '70s, and by the '90s, we see that we came to the same conclusion. That is that both automatic word reading and use of invented spelling unfold or develop in five phases. It was amazing, two different lines of research and they connected with the same phases.

Let me just describe briefly each phase. The first phase is phase zero. It's called non-alphabetic spelling, and it's zero because really, there's no spelling there. It's what one would expect with a non-reader in preschool. It's simply scribbling. It's called non-alphabetic because there are no alphabetic letters. Phase zero, non-alphabetic spelling, is expected no later than the end of preschool or beginning of kindergarten.

Kids then move into, or hopefully are expected to move into, phase one, which is called pre-alphabetic spelling. Pre meaning before, before they know how to use an alphabetic system. Of course all alphabetic systems work by matching, or the English alphabet system works by matching, the letters to sounds and words.

So in this pre-alphabetic stage, kids might draw a picture and maybe a grocery list, and they might tell you what they're trying to write, maybe eggs, fish, milk, but the letters aren't going to correspond to sounds. If you see them writing this way in phase one, it's going to look like random letters. That's expected no later than the first half of kindergarten.

By the end of kindergarten though, kids are being taught how to match the letters to sounds, and so you're going to begin to see in their spelling part of the letters representing sounds. For example, a word like eggs might be spelled with an E. We call it partial alphabetic spelling because part of the sounds are represented.

It's a really fun process to watch. Literally, Anna, the invented spelling is a window into the brain because it can show how kids are developing into, eventually by the end of first grade, independent readers and writers.

Now the next phase is a giant cognitive leap. They go from partial representation of sounds to what's called phase three, full alphabetic. Full alphabetic means they are spelling all of the sounds and words, but the spellings aren't based on the English orthographic or spelling system. It's easy for you to read it, but it doesn't look like English spelling. For example, eagle might be spelled E-G-L. It has all the sounds, but you don't have the vowels in every syllable.

It's what enables the teacher or parent to recognize what needs to be taught. Especially in that first half of first grade, we do a lot of direct instruction and phonics with things like the CVC short vowel patterns, the long vowel patterns like the E marker pattern, another long vowel pattern called an open syllable like a vowel by itself at the end of the syllable in words like no.

There is major instruction in the first half of first grade teaching these English patterns, so that by the second half of first grade they're beginning to use these patterns that they've been taught.

We call that next phase, phase four, consolidated automatic, because what happens is that the kids have enough of these words that they have learned how to spell automatically. By the end of first grade, there should be about 300 words and syllable patterns that they've learned to spell automatically. That's when the independent reading and writing clicks in, and we're hoping that's going to happen as kids move into second grade.

Really it's just a wonderful process to watch, and you can see it in their invented spelling.

You can also connect it with the automatic word reading as children are going through these same phases. By the end of first grade they are moving into automatic word reading where they have as many as 300 plus words that they can recognize automatically. Once that happens, they can begin to be independent readers.

Anna Geiger: I find this so fascinating because, for example, the Simple View of Reading and Scarborough's Reading Rope are very well aligned, but they were developed independently, based on research. It sounds like what you're saying to me too is that Ehri's phases and the spelling phases were developed independently based on research, but came up with pretty much the same thing. Would that be accurate?

Richard Gentry: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Anna Geiger: So looking back at how we've taught spelling in the past, I know when I taught spelling, it was very traditional. It was the, "Here's your list, practice them with your parents." I did do some word study, but it was still very implicit. There wasn't a lot of explicit teaching of the pattern. Maybe you could talk about, from your perspective, some things that maybe we've gotten wrong with teaching spelling? And what we need to do to move forward?

Richard Gentry: One of the major things that we got wrong is that we weren't teaching it, we were assigning it, or expecting the parents to teach it, so I'm glad you recognize that that's just one of the mistakes that we made in the past.

For three decades, we were not paying attention to the science, and the real reason for that was something called whole language/balanced literacy. That theory of reading, unlike the Reading Rope theory, suggested that learning to spell was as easy as learning to speak. Teachers were told, "Well, you don't really need to teach spelling." So the first big mistake that we made, in my view, is that we stopped teaching spelling explicitly.

Then the second big problem is that we didn't give teachers the resources they need to teach spelling. Spelling is very complex. English spelling is very complex. I just mentioned briefly some of the very specific kinds of things that we have to teach in first grade, the six syllable patterns. There's a lot to it, and you can't just wing it if you're a teacher. You really need resources.

That's why I've spent my career developing research-based spelling books. It's a curriculum of the words and patterns that kids would need at a particular grade level or particular time in their literacy development.

So it really gets down to that we've shoved spelling onto the back burner and what we really need to do is make sure we bring it back.

Anna Geiger: I think that comes back to a lack of knowledge for teachers and it's not their fault exactly, but for one thing, a lot of us don't understand the complexity of the English language because we did not learn that. Also not understanding how spelling works; that it's not just, like you said, it's not a visual memorization of all the letters in order. We need to understand why things are spelled a certain way. Without the teachers understanding that, it's hard to know what to do.

We know that a big mistake we've made is not teaching spelling explicitly, expecting kids to just learn the words. So what does it look like to teach spelling explicitly?

Richard Gentry: Well, first of all, you need three things. You need a curriculum, what words and syllable patterns to teach at each grade level, and that's why, again, I've spent decades developing research-based spelling books.

Another thing that you need is time in the language arts block. What the research is saying today is that in a two-hour language arts block, what we would need is at least 20 minutes each day of explicit spelling instruction.

Then you need the research-based strategies that engage kids.

Anna, let's talk about some of the things that don't work. One of the things, and you brought it up at the very beginning of our session today, one of the things that doesn't work is sending lists home to parents to teach or for the kids to memorize on Thursday night before the test. That's not teaching spelling, that's assigning spelling.

Writing the words 20 times is another one. You've seen kids do that. It becomes a mechanical thing. They're not making the connection of the letters to the sounds or the spelling or the syllable patterns, that doesn't work.

Another is thinking that if kids read, then they will magically pick up spelling by osmosis. This is part of that whole language/balanced literacy theory, that spelling was as easy as learning to speak, and if we just give them great children's literature and put them in a comfortable environment with books all around, they're just going to pick up English spelling. We now know from neuroscience and cognitive psychology that it doesn't work that way.

Another is using boring worksheets from the internet. The problem with that is that there's no consistency; it's just haphazard, hit or miss. It's not a good way for teachers who are struggling to find resources to get them.

Then using word sorting alone. Over the last three decades there has been something called Words Their Way, and that program grew out of whole language. Words Their Way, meaning if they just played games and did word sorting alone then they would discover on their own how spelling works. The problem with that is that it's minimal guidance, as opposed to explicit instruction.

Then another thing that didn't work was replacing spelling instruction with test prep. Now this one gets me because when I travel I talk with teachers, and almost invariably in some districts, especially struggling districts, the teachers will say, "Well, my administrators say we don't need to teach spelling. You can't do a Friday spelling post-test. They've replaced it with test preparation."

The problem with that is if you can't spell, you're not going to be a very good reader. If you can spell the word, you can read it. It's really one of those things that doesn't work that we need to worry about.

So what DOES work? Structured literacy instruction. Not minimal guidance or discovery learning, but rather explicit instruction.

What does work? You need a well-designed curriculum. In first grade, Anna, that means it's generally explicitly teaching 300+ words, and that includes those syllable patterns. Once you learn cat, you are able to, by the end of first grade, spell mat, cat, fat, and sat, so that it grows to about 300 words.

In grade two and beyond, it might be an evidence-based spelling book as part of the well-designed curriculum.

A third thing you need is active engagement of the child, such as when she invents a spelling in her own mind, or engagement by taking a pre-test and then having the child, not you, correct it. Having the child self-correct engages the child mentally with looking at the spelling.

But then the fourth thing you need is feedback from the teacher, so when that child self-corrects, then the teacher's going to be there to give feedback and actively be a part of that self-correcting analysis.

Then, finally, something that is very important is called interleaved practice and mixing together various multisensory activities of working with the week's words. You don't do the same thing day after day after day after day, but mix up a lot of different kinds of multisensory activities.

One practice activity is something called the look, say, see, write, check technique that kids can use where they're using different senses to map the letters to the syllables or the sounds in the word.

Anna Geiger: Wonderful. I'm going to try to summarize what you just said, and you can see what I forget.

When you talked about things to avoid, one would be just assigning the words for the week and that's it. Then just letting go because we're too busy to teach it or we think that we are.

Another one would be collecting random worksheets. There's not a problem necessarily with a worksheet, but when you're just randomly choosing worksheets here and there that don't go together, and they're not building on each other, that can be kind of a waste of time.

Then also using word sorts in a way that relies on kids figuring out the pattern themselves instead of explicitly teaching the pattern before they begin.

Then ways to do spelling properly would be to have a scope and sequence, which may come with a good curriculum that gives you words to work on each week.

Also explicitly teaching those phonics patterns.

Then I like what you said about the pre-test. In the past, sometimes I've seen it be used where the kids just take the pre-test, the teacher takes it and grades it, and then if they got the words right, they don't have to take the Friday test. That's just how it works instead of providing feedback and all the words right after the test and explaining why words are spelled in a particular way, so this is useful for the students in the moment.

Richard Gentry: Absolutely. And having the child self-correct, that self-correction of the pre-test is very important.

Anna Geiger: So let's say the teacher understands a structured approach, they're teaching those phonics patterns explicitly, they're giving practice, they're having students break the words apart into sounds and spell each sound, but they have kids who are struggling. Are there specific things they can do to help those kids kind of get closer to catching up or to retain those spellings?

Richard Gentry: There are two major things. The first thing is that teachers have to meet the kid where they are developmentally. For example, there are a lot of kids who are fourth graders who are designated as dyslexic, who are spelling on a first grade level.

Well you can't just give them fewer fourth grade words and expect it to work. You've got to go back and do individualized or small group instruction with the basic words, phonics patterns, and syllable patterns that one would have been expected to learn in first grade. I think it's very important that we recognize that.

I think it's also very important that we recognize that what we're doing with dyslexia in schools today varies according to the district, and we really need to work on a better way of diagnosing dyslexia. It depends on what district you're in whether your child might have access to someone who's properly trained to set up the individual program or diagnose for dyslexia.

I have so many parents who contact me, and they are very frustrated because their kid has been in a particular program at school, getting help for one or two or three years. They show me what they're doing, and they're really not focusing on what the child needs in terms of explicit instruction in handwriting and spelling.

Anna Geiger: So we need to back up to where they are and make sure that instruction is explicit. Often that just means lots more repetitions, lots more breaking it down, and just moving at what feels like a slower pace to master those spellings.

Richard Gentry: Right, and sometimes fewer words. But again, being sure that they are fewer words at that child's developmental level.

Anna Geiger: Wonderful.

Before we close out, can you maybe talk to us a little about some of the work you've done? Any books that you have in the works? Or other things that are new that you can share with our listeners?

Richard Gentry: Oh, I'd be delighted! Well I have 18 books over my 40-plus year career, and I'm very, very excited about my most recent book which is called "Brain Words." It is a cutting-edge book for the science of reading movement. A wonderful thing about it is it's not 400 pages written for scientists, but we specifically translate the very complex neuroscience and science into layman's language. The book was written for teachers and parents.

The other big project that I have that's recent is a new spelling series, 1st-6th grade spelling books with Zaner-Bloser. It's called "Spelling Connections: A Word Study Approach."

Thank you for allowing me to mention these books that I'm really excited about. I think they're both cutting-edge and very important for helping kids move forward.

Anna Geiger: Thanks for all that you've done and continue to do in your career. I'll be sure to link to all those things in the show notes. Thanks again for talking today!

Richard Gentry: Oh, I'm privileged to be here! And thank you! Thank you for amplifying the voices of teachers and parents. You're doing a great job out there making a difference.

Anna Geiger: Thank you.

Thank you so much for listening. You can find the show notes at themeasuredmom.com/episode152. 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 and resources from Dr. Richard Gentry Brain Words (with Gene Ouellette) GO READ! Building Brain Words for Beginners More books by Richard Gentry Spelling Connections curriculum Podcast interview on dyslexia with Melissa and Lori Love Literacy

The post The phases of spelling development – with Dr. Richard Gentry appeared first on The Measured Mom.

All about teaching English spelling – with Dr. Louisa Moats

TRT Podcast #151: All about Teaching English Spelling – with Dr. Louisa Moats

What an honor to speak with Dr. Louisa Moats about the English language! She explains why it’s so important to teach spelling, why English isn’t as irregular as some think, the usefulness and limitation of syllable types, and how to help students who struggle with spelling. This episode is a treasure!

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Hello, Anna Geiger here from The Measured Mom. This episode kicks off a series all about teaching spelling, and what a joy and privilege it was to get to speak with Dr. Louisa Moats to kick off the series.

Anyone familiar with the science of reading knows her name. Dr. Moats is one of the creators of LETRS. She's written the book, "Speech to Print," another book about teaching those with dyslexia, other resources, many articles, and even a spelling program. We have received so much from Dr. Moats during her career, and now we have this wonderful privilege of hearing her talk about spelling.

We talk about many things in today's episode, including why it's important to teach spelling, why the English language is not as irregular as once thought, the usefulness and limitations of syllable types, and a lot more. I know you're going to get a lot out of this. Enjoy it, and then be sure to check out the show notes where you'll find links to Dr. Moats' resources, including many of her most popular articles. Here we go!

Anna Geiger: Welcome, Dr. Moats!

Louisa Moats: Hi, Anna. It's great to be with you!

Anna Geiger: Well thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. Of course I've read your books and read your work and studied so many of the articles that you've written. and I also had the privilege of hearing you speak at The Reading League conference in October.

I'm really happy that you're here to talk to us about spelling, but before we do that, could you introduce yourself and give us an overview of your exciting career?

Louisa Moats: Thank you. Our topic today is going to be about spelling, and I want your listeners to know that this is a topic that has fascinated me from the beginning of my career when I started out doing clinical work in the Department of Neuropsychology at the New England Medical Center. At that point, that was way before my doctoral work and even before my master's degree, where I didn't learn anything of value, but in the doctoral program I did.

For years, I would look at the kids' spelling, we always gave them a spelling test, and I always felt intuitively that there was much more information to be garnered from the spelling and writing samples than a lot of the other things we were doing with them. At the time we didn't have the theoretical frameworks, or the understanding of the psychological mechanisms for learning how to spell, or the research on what goes into becoming a good speller.

I did my dissertation in this area and spelling errors in dyslexic kids. Then over the years through my clinical work, through my research years, and now through all the stuff that I've done in teacher education, I continue to be an advocate for more attention to be paid to this so I was glad to get your invitation to talk today.

Anna Geiger: Let's start by talking about, obviously, why it's so important for children to learn to spell because there would be people who would say, "That's an old skill that we don't need anymore with all the technology that we have."

Louisa Moats: Yeah. Well it's never been shown convincingly to me that technology can compensate for poor spelling very well. I suppose with AI these days, a person can feed into a computer or an AI system the general ideas that they want to express and have a computer bark something back at them with words that are correctly spelled.

But in the real world, that's very limiting. It's also very limiting because people naturally restrict their own vocabularies if they don't know how to spell a word. They can't tell if they're not a good critic of the written material that's coming back at them. They're stuck with something that sounds artificial and it sounds like boilerplate, and maybe that will be a coping mechanism for some people that is helpful.

To be able to spell well signifies other things. It signifies that a person has better command of language, and a lot of people think of spelling as a visual memory exercise, which it is not. It's a language production exercise that is facilitated by knowing about language structure and how it's represented in print.

If a person just doesn't know how to think about that, they tend to be much more limited in the vocabulary that they have, in their rate of learning new vocabulary, and in their recognition of words in print for reading. Of course, there is this inherent limitation on writing if one's vocabulary is limited.

When we don't teach spelling well, we're missing an important avenue for teaching kids about language, the structures of language, and the relationship between speech and print, which ultimately has to be understood if one is going to be both a good reader and a good writer.

Anna Geiger: I was just listening to something the other day where teachers were saying, "When we ran out of time, we would drop spelling," versus realizing how important spelling is when it comes to reading.

Louisa Moats: If we don't teach kids how to spell, they are likely to be less aware of what the print is representing. That has a subtle but significant effect on reading fluency and vocabulary development. All this goes hand in hand.

One illustration of how it goes hand in hand actually is if anyone has ever watched the National Spelling Bee when it comes up at the beginning of June or whenever that is. Watch what the kids do who are really, really good at spelling. What they do is approach a word through linguistic analysis, and they're allowed to ask, "What language did this word come from? How do you pronounce it? Is there any other pronunciation? What part of speech is it and what does it mean?" Those are all aspects of language.

Nobody says anything about the sequence of letters. Of course, they're not allowed to ask that, but that's not how those kids make an educated guess at what some obscure word looks like in print. They use all that information about language to make often an accurate guess, because the words at the more advanced level are sometimes words they haven't even seen before, but they can use all their knowledge of language to figure out what a correct spelling is likely to be. That's what the best kids do.

Anna Geiger: Before I started learning about etymology and morphology, I thought those were just stalling questions, like they would just need extra time. Yeah, that's so interesting.

One of my kids just yesterday was asking me why a word started with C-H, I don't remember what word it was, but we talked about how it came from the Greek.

Louisa Moats: Yeah, if the C-H is pronounced /k/, it's likely to come from Greek.

Anna Geiger: Why is spelling actually more regular than many people think?

Louisa Moats: Well, that question was addressed in 1966 by the US federal government. They employed some really good linguists and psychologists to answer the question pertaining to the relative regularity of the English writing system. Hanna, Hanna, Hodges and Rudolph were the authors, and I still refer to that analysis because I have the computer printout that they generated when they did their first analysis.

Remember that in those days nobody used computers for anything much. Computer science was relatively new, but these researchers created an algorithm from studying all the sound-symbol correspondences, the phoneme-grapheme correspondences, in English. They analyzed 20,000 of the most common words in English, developed an algorithm for all these phoneme-grapheme correspondences, and then took these words and ran them back through the computer to see how well the algorithm could spell the words just based on that information, that level of language organization.

They found, and this is why it's interesting, that you could say that the glass is half full or you could say the glass is half empty, because 50% of the words were spelled accurately just on the basis of phoneme-grapheme correspondences, or what most people refer to as phonics. It was just through knowing the letters that you use to represent the sounds and knowing also the positions in the word in which certain letters are used.

That's important. There are a lot of patterns and constraints about letters and where you can use them for certain sounds in words in English. Taking that into account and leaving aside anything having to do with the words' meaning, the language of origin, or the morphology, 50% were spelled accurately.

Then they looked at what else would be helpful. They were able to show that another 34% of the words were spelled correctly except for one correspondence in the word, and usually that was the vowel. We know that our vowel spellings are the least regular and predictable.

Then, if you add into it the information about words, what they mean, what their morphological structure is, and something about the language of origin, it turns out that only about 4% of the language is truly odd or irregular.

Many, many of the words that teachers in the primary grades treat as irregular are not irregular at all. They just have a less common pattern, or they have a reason why they're spelled the way they are. Only 4% are truly irregular words, like "Wednesday," that's clearly irregular in that our current pronunciation in modern American English does not match the way it is written. But apparently, I would have to look this up, but there are reasons in Roman or Greek mythology why our names for the days of the week and the months of the year are the way they are.

I think that there is so much to be explained that is regular and that is pattern-based, that we have a lot to go on in teaching kids how the print system works. The trick is to use a multilinguistic approach. How else would you call it? It's a combination of the sounds, the spelling patterns in the word, and the meaning of the word, and it's morphology, and its origin that will explain MOST words.

So there you go!

Anna Geiger: It really starts with the teacher understanding that...

Louisa Moats: It starts with the teacher.

Anna Geiger: ...which is why we can talk about LETRS at the end.

But yes, for sure, because if you do think English language is irregular and crazy, that will influence how you address any questions that students have.

Louisa Moats: That's right. You're going to treat it as a visual memory exercise where you use flashcards. You put up a word wall that has a first letter. I was in a classroom last week, and there's the word wall. Under the letter T is the word they, and I want to go, "What? Why?" This came with guided reading. It was all over guided reading.

Anna Geiger: Well you've talked about this a little already, but maybe you could talk a little bit more about why teachers and then their students should understand a little bit about word origins when spelling.

Louisa Moats: Okay. Well, the more I get into this, the more power I think that source of information has in explaining the way words are in modern English.

Our base language of Anglo-Saxon is the origin of most of our most common words and our one-syllable spelling patterns, things like the F, L, S doubling rule on words like shell, and stuff, and miss. Those words are Anglo-Saxon. That rule applies mainly to Anglo-Saxon words.

There are other characteristics of that layer of language. What comes to mind especially is the fact that we have compound words in English and compounding is an Anglo-Saxon based word formation process. When you see a word like coattail, it's going to be of Anglo-Saxon origin, and also those Anglo-Saxon based words tend to be the ones with the vowel team spellings and digraphs.

It is helpful to know as a teacher that when we graduate beyond Anglo-Saxon based words, we're going to have to do a lot more with the Latin layer of language, which is 60% of our content words after the end of third grade.

60% of our content words are Latin based, and they have structures that are different from the Anglo-Saxon layer. For example, Anglo-Saxon based words are built through compounding, and Latin based words are built through using a root and attaching prefixes and suffixes to change and alter the meaning of the root.

That's a different word formation process. It requires that kids know the meanings of those basic morphemes that exist in all these different combinations, but that often have consistent spellings. In a way, spelling Latin is easier than spelling Anglo-Saxon.

It's helpful to tell kids that spelling information. Once you know about in-, -form, and -ation, and how they are spelled, it's going to be easier than spelling a word like done, D-O-N-E, unless you explain that done is related to do and does. D-O is in all those words, and they all have to do with different tenses of the verb do.

I have never seen an instructional program that explains that. All I see is that kids get a flashcard to take home, and they're supposed to rote memorize and not pay attention to the meaning, the origin of the word, or the idea.

I'm starting to try to explain this to our 6-year-old, that when you get into the Anglo-Saxon layer of language, which is the base layer, it's Germanic. The Saxons were a German tribe who settled in Britain after the fall of the Roman Empire. That's why we have this base layer.

I like to explain that to kids because these words are so old that their pronunciation has changed a whole lot over time. If you listen to someone speaking old English or middle English, it doesn't sound like modern English.

Perhaps, and I'm making this up so my apologies to anyone who really knows, but maybe at one point that D-O was pronounced /d/ /��/, or /d/ /��/, or /d/ /��/, or something else. Maybe it was dona and maybe it was doeth, and doeth got changed to does. You can give kids a reason. I'm probably all wrong about the pronunciation.

We can have more comfort with the fact that do, does, and done don't look like the way they're said now if we realize that many centuries ago there was a link in pronunciation, and those endings, N-E and E-S, are modern alterations of suffixes that were added to that base vowel, D-O, way back.

At least there's a reason for it; it's not crazy. It's historically interesting and explainable.

Anna Geiger: Moving on, let's talk a little bit about syllable types. Those are, I find, controversial in the science of reading world. People have different opinions about if we should teach them. Can you explain your view on those?

Louisa Moats: Yes, I think they have a limited role. I think their role in instruction should be more limited than it has been in Orton-Gillingham based programs. The reason is that what I see, and again, I've not had this verified by someone like Devin Kearns. He's one of the people who is really cautioning about teaching syllable types. I think he has gone too far in warning people away from teaching syllable types.

The reason is that there has to be a way of explaining, and there is a way of explaining, why there are two T's in little and one T in title. You have three different syllable types there. You have the consonant L-E on the ends of those words, which is the stable final syllable. You have an open syllable in ti in title, and you have a closed syllable in lit in little.

When you add a closed syllable to a consonant L-E, you come up with two consonants in the middle of the word that signify that the first syllable has to have a short vowel. It's the same thing with the long vowel and ti, an open syllable. That's very useful. Open syllables, closed syllables, and consonant L-E.

Vowel teams are really not a category. There are lots of vowel teams that don't correspond to any particular vowel sound. They can correspond to a short vowel, long vowel, or a diphthong, so you can just call them vowel team syllables, but they lose their instructional power, I guess, because when you see E-A, what do you have?

Then as far as r-controlled, yes, kids need to know that's not a short vowel in star, but that's very teachable. A lot of teachers don't know that so they still call it a closed syllable or short or whatever.

Then what did we miss?

Anna Geiger: Did you say CVCE? Did you say that one yet?

Louisa Moats: Oh, yeah, I haven't said that one yet. Yeah, it works, except that, of course, when you get into the Latin layer of language, it doesn't work. Where I see it being most useful is when we're still teaching the Anglo-Saxon layer primarily.

Then we get to words like catnip, and comcast, and concave, and-

Anna Geiger: Reptile.

Louisa Moats: Reptile, very good. It's a closed syllable and then a VCE. We can combine the syllables, with two syllables especially.

However, once you get into Latin, and especially derivational suffixes, I-V-E, A-T-E, and so on, they're often reduced to schwa and there's no point in calling them a vowel consonant E. You have to teach them as a morpheme that has this form and this sound.

The reason that we don't end words in V, as in have or captive, is that no word in English ends in V. That's again explained historically, by printing press printers who were afraid that the written U looked too much like V, and they adopted a convention of following V with E to signify that that letter was V and not a U. I am not sure when that happened, but it wasn't all that long ago, two or three centuries, something like that.

My take on it is teachers need to know the syllable types. They have the most usefulness when you're making the transition from single syllables to multi-syllabic words, especially that are of Anglo-Saxon origin.

Trying to extend syllable analysis to the Latin layer of language is not particularly productive. Although, I don't know. I work with my colleague Bruce Rosow on our Spellography program, and he was trained in Orton-Gillingham, and he's more of an advocate for including more syllabic analysis to explain why things are pronounced the way they are.

I would just say that if using syllable types to explain why the word is spelled the way it is adding something to the explanation, go for it.

But don't belabor syllable analysis, and marking all the syllables, and trying to categorize T-I-O-N. No, just realize it's place and its limitations.

Anna Geiger: Thank you. That really helps.

I'd like to move into spelling rules, and I know there are a lot of patterns and generalizations that are useful for kids to know, but maybe you could address some of the ones you think are most important and also how you'd recommend teaching them. Do you recommend that kids are able to say the rules back to you? How does all that work?

Louisa Moats: It's the hardest thing for a poor speller to learn those three rules, the doubling rule, the drop silent E rule, and the change Y to I rule, and the other pieces of that. With the really dyslexic kids, I watched them for years at the Greenwood School, and they practiced and practiced and practiced, and they never did get it.

Anna Geiger: Okay.

Louisa Moats: The only trick I know is frequent distributed practice over a long time. You don't megadose kids. You do it a little bit for a long time and hope that it sinks in. It will sink in for kids who are not really dyslexic, I think, over time.

You do it by going back and forth between recognition and production. They need to be able to look at a word like slimy, and understand that the Y suffix was added to the word slime and that silent E was dropped. Or in the words studying and playing, they need to know why you don't change a Y in those words and why you do change a Y in babies. Analysis and production back and forth, that's the only trick I know.

Don't teach them all at once. I see that sometimes, too. Okay, let's just knock this off in one list. Good luck.

Usually, we start with the doubling rule. Then kids need to be able to classify suffixes, of course, as either starting with a vowel or starting with a consonant to know for dropping E and consonant doubling when you use the rule for what kind of suffix. That requires a somewhat expanded vocabulary.

I think the way it usually goes is kids learn a few words by rote, so they learn that a word like spinning maybe has two Ns in it. They don't really know why. Then the generalization comes with an increase in vocabulary and more experience with more different kinds of suffixes, but it's just a long slog for kids who are poor spellers.

We, in writing our program have put in practice over and over.

Anna Geiger: Maybe you can tell us a little bit about your spelling program, Spellography, and then also of course a little bit about LETRS, that we know so many teachers are enjoying right now.

Louisa Moats: Yeah. Well it's from Bruce Rosow and I, he was a teacher at the Greenwood School for a long time. He started taking courses with me; he got his doctorate. He then took over my courses and he's written a speech-to-print text workbook with me. Together 20 years ago, we wrote the original Spellography that was published by Sopris.

With a lot of time passing here, we have been working on revising it, first with Mary Dahlgren and Tools 4 Reading, and now Tools 4 Reading has been bought out by 95 Percent Group so they are publishing. The first two books are out. The third one is going to press very soon, and there will be a fourth one that's more advanced for fifth and sixth graders.

It's aimed at fourth and fifth graders. There are some humor and references and things that I think maybe you could use at the end of third grade. But in general, we're aiming right smack at intermediate level kids.

Anna Geiger: Okay, awesome. I think there's a hole in that area, so that's great that it's aimed there.

Louisa Moats: There is.

Anna Geiger: Maybe you can tell us a little bit about... I've not been able to take LETRS because I am not working with a district. I've asked many times, but they always tell me no, but I know so many people are doing it and love it. Can you talk a little bit about it?

Louisa Moats: The original courses that have now become LETRS I developed around 1990. This is a 30-year endeavor, all through the Reading First years and so on. We started out with Voyager Sopris first hiring me to write professional development. We supplied it to states for Reading First. We went through a second edition, and it slowly expanded.

The interesting thing about it is that when I started doing these courses it was to teach teachers what I felt was never taught to me, that I learned only in my doctoral program. I felt teachers were being cheated in their licensing programs by not being taught these essential concepts about language structure that are prerequisite for being a good teacher of reading, spelling, vocabulary, or anything else having to do with literacy.

I always thought we'd find a very small audience, that only people who were really interested in learning something would stick with it, because it's a fair amount of rigor and high expectation for some difficult concepts like allophonic variation.

My colleagues teased me about that. But it helps! You can't understand a spelling error pattern unless you understand that. It's the changes in phonemes that come with co-articulation with the pronunciation of words.

Okay, leaving that aside, LETRS addresses all of these aspects of language and what explicit instruction is for foundational skills, but also half of it is all about teaching reading comprehension and what that means, and teaching vocabulary, and language structure, and syntax, and helping kids build a mental model of what is in a text. The second half of it's all about that, and it is being used really widely right now. Several hundred thousand teachers are currently enrolled in LETRS across the country.

Anna Geiger: Amazing.

Louisa Moats: I am much more in the background, in the wings now, so I don't even know exactly where LETRS is being taught, but we have some state implementations where all the teachers are taking it, like North Carolina. We did this with Mississippi a few years ago, Alabama, and a few others, so it's pretty widespread.

Anna Geiger: I've talked to leaders like a state leader in Mississippi, Kristen Wynn, and I talked to a district leader in Georgia who are doing this. I think a real powerful thing is that it gives all the teachers the same vocabulary. If they're all doing this, they can talk about the same things and understand versus coming from all these different colleges who had a hit or miss approach to teaching about language.

Are there any other projects you're working on that you'd be willing to talk about?

Louisa Moats: No, I'm trying to be retired.

Anna Geiger: That's what I keep hearing from different people!

Louisa Moats: I am not doing any more conference talks. That was my last hurrah at The Reading League last summer.

Anna Geiger: I got to hear it! That's so exciting for me!

Louisa Moats: I have my hand in a few federal projects like The Path Forward, consulting with states on the changes they're making in higher ed, working with Doug Carnine and a large group of people with The Reading League on really documenting for the field where the best resources are that can be trusted and counted on. I have a hand in that, along with other really wonderful people. I'm very active in my local community here with several nonprofits, and I've been helping this state with its dyslexia initiative, finally.

Anna Geiger: Well good! I've talked to so many people like you who have contributed so much over so many years and say they're busier now than when they were not retired.

Louisa Moats: That can happen. You have to be careful.

Anna Geiger: Yeah. Well thank you so much for joining me today. I can't wait to share this with everybody!

Louisa Moats: It's my pleasure, and I really applaud what you're doing. I think it's terrific, and I think you're helping a lot of people get access to better information, and that's what we need to keep doing.

Anna Geiger: Thank you so much.

Louisa Moats: You're welcome!

Anna Geiger: Thank you so much for listening. Please check out the show notes at themeasuredmom.com/episode151. 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 and articles by Dr. Louisa Moats Speech to Print Basic Facts about Dyslexia (with Karen E. Dakin) Expert Perspectives on Interventions for Reading (co-editor) Spellography (spelling program for older spellers) Teaching Reading is Rocket Science (article) How Spelling Supports Reading (article) When Older Students Can’t Read (article) Whole-Language High Jinks: How to Tell When “Scientifically-Based Reading Instruction” Isn’t (article)

The post All about teaching English spelling – with Dr. Louisa Moats appeared first on The Measured Mom.