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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.

All about Morphology – with Dr. Deb Glaser

TRT Podcast #150: All about Morphology with Dr. Deb Glaser

Dr. Deb Glaser is an author, educational consultant, and professional development provider with a special interest in morphology. In this episode she defines morphology and explains how to teach it, beginning in kindergarten and moving through the grades.

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Hello, this is Anna Geiger from The Measured Mom, and in this episode I had the privilege of interviewing Dr. Deb Glaser. She's the creator of The Reading Teacher's Top 10 Tools, which is an excellent training for teachers who want to learn about the science of reading. She's the author of multiple books and some curricula for teaching morphology, and we'll be talking about that in detail today.

I have admired Dr. Glaser's work for a long time, particularly her morphology work, and so I'd reached out to her several times through a contact form and didn't hear back, but I didn't give up. When I was in New York this October for The Reading League Conference, I was walking down the street with my friends looking for a restaurant, and there was Dr. Glaser walking all by herself!

I said, "Hello Deb Glaser!" because of course I recognized her.

She was very nice, and I gave her my business card and she noted that it was nice and thick, which I do on purpose so that people are less likely to throw it away, and told her I'd love to have her on the podcast.

When I got home I was able to find an email address for her and then we were able to schedule this interview! I thoroughly enjoyed it and I am sure that you will too!

Anna Geiger: Welcome Dr. Glaser!

Deb Glaser: Thank you, Anna. I am so excited to be here with you today.

Anna Geiger: I am so happy that I tracked you down because so many people have wanted to hear something about morphology on the podcast, and I knew that you were the one that I would love to talk to about it because of the wonderful work you've done in the curricula that you've published.

Could you first introduce us to yourself and maybe start by telling us how you got into education?

Deb Glaser: Oh, sure. Well, it's been a number of years, and I was very fortunate in the beginning of my career to work with a teacher who was involved in the early CBM (curriculum-based measurement) research, so right from the very beginning, science was a very strong contributor to the work I was doing.

Initially my work was teaching in resource rooms. It was the beginning of Public Law 94-142, and I knew that the schools would need teachers so I went into special education. I worked with children with reading difficulties right from the very beginning for a number of years. I taught second grade, fifth grade, and then I became the director of education at a private learning center for children and adults with dyslexia, the Lee Pesky Learning Center here in Boise, Idaho.

That then opened up my world even further into the science of reading and I was introduced to many of the researchers at the time when the National Reading Panel first published their findings in 1999. I was very fortunate to bring the Shaywitz's, Louisa Moats, and Reid Lyon to Idaho for a conference and became further immersed in the amazing things happening in helping us understand what it takes to teach reading.

Education has been my life since the very beginning when you think about how long I was in school and all the way to getting my doctorate in education.

I recognized really early in my work that teachers lacked the products, the programs, and the systematic explicit processes that would help them not only understand and identify what their children needed in order to be successful readers, but to be able to teach them what to teach their students so that they could learn to read. The greatest gift we can give a child is the gift of reading.

Anna Geiger: So it seems like you sidestepped instruction in balanced literacy. Was that never given to you in any of your higher education, your doctorate, or anything like that?

Deb Glaser: Oh, that's a really good question because at one point I remember sitting with a group of my friends, teacher friends, and we were having coffee one morning and we were so upset because our school district wasn't letting us teach whole language.

Anna Geiger: Oh!

Deb Glaser: I mean, it was just so easy to get sucked into whole language, and that's what everyone was doing - the heart assessment of what whole language would be and opening up this world of being child-focused.

We spent a really short time feeling that way because we very soon realized that whole language is not whole language. It was actually very partial language because it left out some pretty important elements in instruction. In order for a child to read, they must be taught to read, especially the children that we were working with.

Anna Geiger: So in all your years of working with teachers, have you been seeing that the balanced literacy idea of three-queuing and leveled books has gotten in the way of some of the work you're trying to do, or do you feel like it creates issues that the special education teacher wouldn't normally have to see?

Deb Glaser: Well, I think of early on when a small group of us worked very closely with Louisa Moats on the development of the initial LETRS trainings. We were so like a group of disciples, very religious in our devotion to getting the word out there, and there were many years initially when the audience was very skeptical. Teachers were very skeptical. They wanted what they were comfortable doing, they wanted it to continue, and it was hard for them to think that there was going to have to be a change and they were very resistant. That resistance lasted for many years. As you know, Anna, and your listeners know, in just the last few years, the tide has turned.

Anna Geiger: It must be exciting for you to watch.

Deb Glaser: Oh, it's so exciting! What's most exciting is those of us who have been in this for all of these years are now able to step back, and there are so many gifted and thoughtful and smart young educators out there who are taking the reins and want to continue this movement. It's all to the benefit of our world, our children's world, and our community world, our social world.

Anna Geiger: I agree, it is a very exciting time. We're so thankful that so many of you are still willing to put yourself out there, give us lots of information, and are still publishing books, which is very helpful for people who are looking to learn this and, as you said, spread the word.

We're going to get into some technical stuff now.

Before we pressed record, I said that when I first started learning about the science of reading, there were some words that were brand new to me, like phoneme, grapheme, and morphology was definitely one. It seemed a little strange, like something I probably didn't have to think too much about. Now I realize how integral that is to how spelling works.

Can we start off with, first of all, some definitions, like the difference between a phoneme and a morpheme?

Deb Glaser: Well, both phoneme and morpheme are terms related to language, and the way we know that is because each of them ends in E-M-E, which is Latin for little bit. A phoneme is a little bit of sound. It is the smallest sound unit in any spoken language.

The combination of phonemes is what gives us our words, which are morphemes. A morpheme maybe is an E-M-E, a little bit, of form or meaningful form. It's the smallest form within a word that has meaning.

For example, if we have the word "seen," it has three phonemes, /s/ /��/ /n/. I can use that word in a couple of different ways, meaning the morpheme, the meaning of the word, changes.

Have you "seen" my car keys? That is the S-E-E-N. So there we have a grapheme representation as well, which is an E-M-E, the smallest unit, of writing in a word. So we have S-E-E-N are the graphemes.

Or it was a beautiful "scene" at sunset last night. The word is the same, /s/ /��/ /n/, from the phoneme and sound perspective. In this particular word, there is a different grapheme representation, but also a different meaning. We know that, well, I could get into the graphemes, but I think we're going to talk about that a little bit later... But what we need to know is a phoneme is the speech sound, and the morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning.

Anna Geiger: Yeah. What's interesting is that a word can be really long and have a single morpheme, or it can be short and have multiple morphemes. Maybe we can talk about a long word that has a single morpheme like "alligator." It's all one unit of meaning, which is different from a shorter word like "unhappy."

Deb Glaser: "Unhappy" is two morphemes, "un" meaning not, and "happy" of course has its meaning of feeling of joy. "Unhappy" would be three syllables and two morphemes.

Anna Geiger: So how is phonemic awareness different from morphological awareness?

Deb Glaser: Yeah, that's a really good question, Anna. I talk about that sometimes with teachers in helping them understand that phoneme awareness has been around a long time, and the importance of teaching the awareness of phonemes as it relates to decoding.

But we've given very little attention to morphological awareness, and that is the awareness of the meaningful forms that compose our words. Both phonemes and morphemes are part of spoken language prior to children coming to us to learn to read.

Our job is to create an awareness of those components of language that will make it easier for students to learn the written system of the language that they speak.

Children come to us with a knowledge that is implicit about language. There's an implicit knowledge where they know that there's a difference between the two words, "cat" and "cot." They aren't aware what that difference is because they're focused on meaning, but they know what a cat is and that a cot is a little bed.

It's an implicit knowledge that they have about the language, and the same with morphemes. When we listen to young children speak, their implicit knowledge of how words are composed from the morpheme perspective becomes apparent.

My brother, who is a medical doctor, called me yesterday morning because he knows my field and the work I've been doing. I've been talking with him about it. He called and said, "Oh, one of the young doctors came in the other morning and was so tickled that his four-year-old said in the kitchen that night before, 'My mom is a cooker and my dad is a cooker'."

That's a really good example of that morphological implicit knowledge. One who teaches is a teacher, one who farms is a farmer, one who cooks is a cooker. It just makes sense!

So then when we create awareness of the morphemes, we teach children that E-R means one who or that which, because a cooker could be a pot. We'll have a cooker on the stove here like this pot, or a stove is a cooker perhaps. I think that's not really common in our use of that word here in the States, but that's that which cooks and a person would be the one who cooks.

That knowledge is implicit and there's no reason to bring an awareness to the phonemes or the morphemes unless we are teaching reading, because that is critical to word recognition, especially as children get older and the number of multisyllabic, multi-morphemic words increases in the written language.

Anna Geiger: Yeah. I think my favorite story about that was when my youngest, he's in second grade now, but when he was about four, he came in and hung his swimsuit on the rack and he said, "I hanged my swimsuit on the rack!"

I said, "Oh, you hung it."

He said, "Yes, it's hunging!" So he knew the morphemes, he didn't know the base, but it was pretty funny.

I know that that's so fun for parents as their kids are starting to talk and all the funny ways that they change words into past tense or things like that and all the things that they kind of approximate.

Deb Glaser: I tell a story about my three-year-old grandson and his creativity with words. After eating crackers off of his soup, he said, "I uncrackered my soup," which is adding a prefix and making cracker past tense. I mean, it's pretty amazing.

A teacher reflected to me how we celebrate a young child's temporary or inventive spelling when they're learning the grapheme-phoneme relationships, but she wasn't aware that we ever celebrate or truly understand what's happening when a child is using that temporary language and experimenting with morphemes. Because what an amazing acquisition, I mean, that's just such a beautiful representation of that biological language brain we have, that in a world where we're spoken to and we're read to, we're building that implicit knowledge about the construction of words.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, very interesting to think about.

So as you said, they don't have to have morphological awareness to understand how to speak or to start applying it in different ways, but as they're reading and spelling, especially, we need to teach morphology.

Could you tell us why is it important for teachers to understand morphology?

Deb Glaser: Well, you have to understand something to teach it, that's the bottom line. Many teachers have shared with me that they don't feel comfortable in their own understanding of morphology based upon their ability to know the meanings of every prefix, every suffix, every root.

Let me just point out right here, none of us ever know the meanings of every prefix, suffix, and root, and awareness is on a continuum. You can be aware of prefixes and suffixes, and it helps you read words and it helps you understand their meanings. Then as we grow along this continuum of awareness, when we are teaching prefixes and suffixes and roots, we are learning the meanings of those right along with our students.

That's one of the reasons I've been dedicated to this development of materials for teachers is to help build their own confidence in their understanding of what morphological awareness truly means and developing their knowledge of the meanings of those morphemes as they teach them.

Anna Geiger: That is very good to hear because I think it becomes very overwhelming, especially when you watch a presentation with someone talking about morphology and they're breaking the word apart and you're like, "I didn't know any of those things. How can I teach my students?" It's good to know that you don't have to know it all to get started, you just have to be a step ahead. That's good.

Deb Glaser: That's right. Absolutely.

It's important for teachers to understand morphology so that they can teach it because there is so much research out there, and we keep getting more research too, that supports the need for teaching morphological awareness.

Even in kindergarten, the implicit knowledge that children have about words can be brought to their attention through the phoneme and the morpheme as we prepare them to learn to decode, and early morphological knowledge and awareness shares a relationship with future literacy, the ability to decode and comprehend.

Anna Geiger: Yeah. It all comes down to understanding that we have a morphophonemic language and not just phonemic.

I remember doing this when I was a kid and one of my teenagers likes to do this. He'll just take words and say, "Well, if it was pronounced the way it was supposed to," say the word tripped, "it would be /t/ /r/ /��/ /p/ /��/ /d/." But of course, it's not supposed to be pronounced that way because that's not how English works. It's not a one-to-one for phonemes, and the E-D has a purpose in there.

The point of this is to help our students realize that more goes into spelling than just one-to-one matching of sounds, phonemes and graphemes.

Maybe we can talk a little bit about why morphological awareness is so important for spelling.

Deb Glaser: Yeah, but let me just add one more point to what we were just talking about as well. Teaching morphological awareness is not new. Anna, you had shared early on that was something you weren't aware of in your early preparation for teaching.

When I did a lot of work for the National Council on Teacher Quality and reviewed texts that were being used for preparing teachers to learn to read, morphology was always there in those textbooks, but it was very surface and just lists of prefixes and suffixes to teach, without really helping teachers understand what the awareness of morphemes meant. We have always taught E-D as a past tense within our spelling lessons. Well, I wouldn't say ALL of us did, but it's always been there to teach.

A lot of the morphological awareness that we have is something we intuited ourselves. We weren't taught directly. In that way it's a lot like phoneme awareness, and before we taught explicitly phoneme awareness, there were some children who just intuited that these phonemes were sounds that we connected to letters without having been taught explicitly.

The same has been with morphological awareness. A lot of this is just intuitive about the language, but we can't take a chance that kids are going to figure it out themselves. They benefit a lot from morphological instruction.

One of the benefits is children become curious about words and they become excited about words, and they start asking questions and wondering, is that a root? What does it mean? Does this word have a prefix on it? Is that a prefix in this word? Those are the kinds of questions we want children to ask because the basic premise of building a long-term memory for something is spending time thinking about it. We remember what we think about. Giving opportunities to children to think about words along these lines builds a rich language classroom.

Anna Geiger: Well, and it's very fun as an adult to figure all this out too. I was reading "Beneath the Surface of Words" the other day, by Sue Scibetta Hegland, and she was talking about the root "cave" and how it's in words like "cavity." I never thought about that before! So I said to my teenagers who were sitting on the couch, "Have you ever thought about that? That cave is related to the word cavity? Why do you think that is?" We talked about it.

Then just at that very moment, my fourth grader was doing some homework and she had to write the word militia and she said, "I don't know how to spell it!"

I said, "Well, actually," and I wrote the word "military." I said, "It has to do with 'military.' Now can you figure it out?" And she could.

It's just so much fun. The more you learn about it as an adult, the more it opens up the conversations you can have with kids and the same is true for them. That little example I gave of course shows how important it is for spelling because so many words you might just guess and not know because there's a silent letter, but when you can connect it like "sign" and "signal," those silent letters are pronounced in other versions of the word.

Can you speak to us more about how it affects spelling?

Deb Glaser: Yeah. Well, Anna, you've already pointed out that the English orthography is morphophonemic, which means the spelling of the words is based on the morpheme and the phoneme. Both together are what can be used to explain the spellings of so many of our English words, which you just gave a beautiful example of "military" and "militia," and how nice you had that knowledge that you could share with your daughter.

The awareness helps us spell because, and I think it's best to explain this through examples, and "military/militia" was one of them, but at a simpler form too. Ken Oppel, who has given us a lot of our research on morphology, points out that the strongest research in terms of outcomes is when kids know the prefixes and suffixes. They really apply that knowledge.

If we have the word "irregular," for example, if I'm aware that "irregular" begins with a prefix I-N, which has to change its form to I-R, I will know I have to double the R in "irregular" because I have a prefix unit that must standalone, I-R, and I have my root, "regular," or actually it's R-E-G. Those two R's together, an R at the beginning of my root and an R at the end of my prefix, means I have to double it.

That is an example of bringing knowledge to the English orthography to help us explain the spellings. We don't have to memorize lots of spellings, but we have that basis in phonomorphemic knowledge and awareness to help us.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, and we can go back to a very, very basic example for kids learning to spell the word "jumped" and they spell it J-U-M-P-T. When we give them the understanding that even though it sounds like /t/, the E-D is the morphological piece.

Deb Glaser: That's right, yeah. Another really good example in the spelling is, and Doris Johnson, who was an early researcher, used these examples. She gave us several examples of how if we can recall the spelling of the root in another word form, it will help us spell other words within that family.

For example, if you have the word "medicine" and you hear that /s/ in there, "medicine," we know to spell that with a C because the root is "medic," which means health. Then we can work with students to develop other words that would fit within that family. We have "medic," we have "medicine," we have "medicinal," and those are all words that relate to health in some way, and also word forms.

Oh, and another point about morphology, and I've had teachers reflect this to me who have my program "Morpheme Magic," they say they've never realized that the part of speech was so important. When you add suffixes to words, you change the part of speech and how that word will fit within a sentence.

Syntax becomes another piece of the puzzle when you're teaching morphological awareness because what do these words sound like in sentences is dependent on how that part of speech will play out.

Anna Geiger: So teachers are hearing this and knowing that morphology is important, and they have maybe a base understanding, a little bit, but they're wondering, well, where do I get started?

I always tell people there's no research-based phonics scope and sequence; we just have a general idea of simple to complex. Is the same true for morphology? Do you have sort of a suggested sequence for teachers?

Deb Glaser: No, you hit the nail on the head, because you're right. There is no one true phonics scope and sequence that has shown and proven to give stronger results.

What does give the results is when the most common are taught first, so it's a common sense that we're applying. Holly Lane has recognized this and that there was no research that showed this is the set of prefixes or suffixes or roots that need to be taught first. So what she and her colleagues did was to go into the content areas and subject areas and study the most common prefixes, suffixes, and roots that occur within these different subject areas. They did this just to give teachers the basis from which to develop their morphological awareness instruction, starting with the most common and working through.

At the same time that we're teaching these prefixes, suffixes, and roots from the most common working to the less common, kids are reading and reading a lot, and they're coming across other affixes and roots. So if we have a language rich, morphologically rich classroom going, these kids are going to be learning these through their questioning because they have this awareness that we have helped to light a little fire under in their language reading brains.

That's another constraint about phonics and teaching the grapheme-phoneme elements is that there's an end to what they will learn in their application, but with morphology there isn't.

Anna Geiger: Right, yeah. I was thinking about that being a difference between phonemic awareness and morphological awareness too. With phonemic awareness, you kind of get it eventually, but with morphological awareness, like you said, it's on a continuum and it's constantly growing throughout your life.

I think some things you mentioned there too, it's important to do this explicit instruction in morphology, which your books will help teachers do, but also being ready to teach it when it comes up, like when my daughter had the question about "military/militia." The more a teacher knows about that, the more prepared they are.

There are also so many great online resources, like Etymonline, where if a student has a question, the teacher could say, "Let me check this really quick," and you can both expand your knowledge at once.

Deb Glaser: Exactly.

Anna Geiger: Your first book was "Morpheme Magic," and then I don't know how many years later it was that you did "Morphemes for Little Ones," but you started out by sharing it as a resource for grades 4-12, and then your second book was about teaching it in the primary grades.

Can you talk about the difference, maybe start with the primary and how you think it should begin and how it will change as you move into the middle grades?

Deb Glaser: At the early grades, we're focused on building language that will prepare students for the reading demands, and part of that is morphemes and morphology. When we look at the components of language, teaching morphology fits very, very nicely into our teaching of vocabulary, orthography, phonology, and syntax, what these words sound like within sentences.

So the K-3 program is very heavily focused on language. That's why the subtitle is "Bringing the Magic of Language into K-3 Classrooms." In kindergarten, the level one lessons are through oral and spoken language. We begin building attention and awareness to the phonemes in words that are going to help them read those words, start with plurals and past tense, what sound do you hear at the end of the word, this is how you spell it, this is how we use the word, and connecting it to classroom experiences.

Then in level three, there's a lot more explicit instruction in the orthography of the prefixes and suffixes. That program prepares students for the richer or deeper morphological lessons in "Morpheme Magic."

It's very language-rich, and teachers don't need another program in K-3. They're just beginning to learn how to teach decoding and phonics, so I make a very strong point that "Morphemes for Little Ones" is to help you incorporate this in the instruction that you're already providing in your phonics and decoding lessons. Which of the words in your decoding words this week are verbs that you can add I-N-G to and teach the doubling rule? It's a way to enrich the lessons in the programs our teachers are using through the lessons in the program.

Anna Geiger: Do you have a general idea in your mind about when you think it's an optimal time to start explicitly teaching roots, like Greek and Latin roots, to kids?

Deb Glaser: Well, I think it begins with teaching the Anglo-Saxon. Those are the most common words in a child's spoken language and also the first words children learn to decode. Teaching that that is a base, that is a stem, we could use the term stem if we want, upon which we can add prefixes and suffixes to build new words.

Then those early Latin roots like "act" or "sign," as you put it, those actually are roots, but they have become free in our spoken language as well. It can stand alone, so that's a very good beginning.

Words that have C-T in them are Latin. Those are based in Latin and there are several words we use like "act," which we can make "react" or "action" or "active." We can build a wonderful family around that simple word that children can decode early on.

But the introduction of the common Latin roots like "fer," for example, which means to bear, those are going to be introduced once children are consolidated readers, when they're beginning to recognize chunks within words to help them read unfamiliar words. They know that when they see the word "react," for example, that E-A in there is not a vowel team. We don't say /r/ /��/ /k/ /t/, but they recognize that "act" is a base, so that means this "re," which I know from "review" and "refer" and other words that start with "re" is a separate unit.

It helps knowing your students' phase of word recognition according to Linnea Ehri's phases of word recognition. Once our children are consolidated or moving into that consolidated phase, they're coming across all of a sudden thousands of words that they have not seen in print before. That morphological awareness helps them with the recognition of that word and they're also then ready to begin learning.

In fact, it's fourth grade pretty much, in the research you'll see this, fourth grade children are ready to start learning those Latin roots. In "Morphemes for Little Ones," in the third grade text I do begin to introduce Latin roots.

Anna Geiger: Okay.

So if a teacher is interested in checking out one of your books, and you can also separately buy a set of cards that go with each book that you can post and use as a teaching tool, but what might they expect in the primary? In "Morphemes for Little Ones," you talked about how the kindergarten level is more focused on oral language. As it moves through, if a teacher were going to use one of the lessons, how does it lay out?

Deb Glaser: There is a target morpheme, so there's a scope and sequence. At the beginning of the lesson, we introduce a keyword that is representative of the target morpheme through the phoneme. We say the word and ask what are the phonemes. Then if the children are decoding, we present the orthographic component of the word to read it, and then use the word in sentences orally. Then we teach the decoding of several words that contain that target morpheme, and not only decode them, but use them in oral sentences, and then we write. We're always decoding, followed by encoding, so that there's always a spelling component that is included in the decoding.

Then throughout the week, we create a morpheme lexicon or a vocabulary book that we're creating where we gather the morphemes as we learn them, word items that are representative of that morpheme, and writing sentences. This is not just writing a sentence using this word, but it's giving the students the word, talking about how that word could be used to reflect on a character in a book we're reading, or the guest speaker we had come in yesterday, or in social studies, or our community circle, or what we talked about this morning. Always connecting this to a conversation about what we are learning is really key to the work that we do in this morphological awareness arena, and lots of review is needed.

Anna Geiger: Just like when you're teaching new vocabulary words, you don't want to just teach it and forget about it. You want to weave it in as much as you can, put it in front of yourself so you remember to address it, and bring it up during the school week.

Deb Glaser: Right. That's one reason why I developed the visuals too. The cards in "Morphemes for Little Ones" are to build the oral language. They're a very stimulating picture, and the teacher presents a sentence reflecting the picture and engages children in deeper conversation about the picture, using words that have the target morpheme. Those then can be posted on a wall, and there are examples of what a morpheme wall might look like in my book and also on the Facebook group page. It's to give teachers an idea of, first of all, the purpose, and it keeps it in the teacher's frame of mind to bring up and refer to, and it gives the children something to refer to and also to remind them. It's the same with "Morpheme Magic."

Anna Geiger: So does "Morpheme Magic" follow a pretty similar lesson sequence as the one for the lower grades?

Deb Glaser: Yes, it does, only in "Morpheme Magic," I created connected passages. There is context, stories that I wrote, that are contextual where students use the focus words to fill in and complete the story. It's really important when using those that teachers talk through the story and the meanings of the words within each sentence the first time through to really build a substantial understanding of how this word can be used.

Anna Geiger: So I was recently at The Wisconsin Reading League event and someone, is it Michelle Elia? Is that correct? She's from your team, I think?

Deb Glaser: Yes.

Anna Geiger: She gave a wonderful, very funny, if morphology can be funny, she gave a funny presentation. She talked about the sentences in your book, and I have the books, but I did not notice initially that with these little passages you have with the underlines, the idea is not to use it as a quiz. You have the words in order and you want kids, when the blank comes, to fill in the next word. It's a teaching tool; it's not a testing tool. I thought that was really interesting.

Deb Glaser: Yeah, it's not a guessing game. No guessing, please!

Anna Geiger: Yeah, but that's great because giving them that, you're showing them how to use the words in context and not just in a sentence, but in a paragraph.

Deb Glaser: Yeah.

Anna Geiger: Thank you so much for sharing so much about morphology. I know people are going to want to learn a lot more, and I'll definitely link to all of your resources, but I know you've done so many other things. Can you talk to us a little bit about some other projects that you've done or are working on?

Deb Glaser: Yeah, especially for "Morpheme Magic" and the intermediate grades, middle school, and being used in secondary intervention, teachers clamored and just begged me for assessments. If I wasn't going to give them to them, they were going to make up their own assessments.

I know you've got to give the kids a grade, but I just was very resistant. But I began to recognize that assessments could be very beneficial and could be a teaching tool, not just for the students, but for the teachers as well. So I committed to creating these assessments, and I'm apologizing to everyone who's listening who waited and waited and waited. I finally got them done, and yes, they're published.

I based the assessments on everything I could find about assessing vocabulary and morphology. There is a proximal level of meaning that is assessed and also a distal. The distal form of assessment consists of questions you ask that take children into a whole different context to determine whether or not they understand the meaning of that word.

What I became very aware of in my work when I shared it with a famous vocabulary researcher, Margaret McKeown, was that she was quite perplexed with the way I was developing these assessments, and she said it's the base of the word that carries the most meaning. The assessment I had shared with her was one based on a prefix.

So I also then took that to heart and built into the assessments to make sure the children know and can recognize what is the base and what is the prefix and suffix, because the base carries the critical meaning and then is modified by the prefixes or suffixes that are added to it.

For example, if the word is "transparent," "trans" meaning across, "parent," meaning to see a light coming across, then a question to determine a deeper level meaning might be why would it be unwise to have a transparent backpack?

I know you're thinking right now, but these are the kinds of questions I want teachers to learn to ask in any vocabulary assessment. Not even an assessment that you're taking a grade on, but just the teaching assessment we do. Who really gets this word? I'm going to ask this question.

I tell teachers to look at the assessment that you're going to give at the end of the week, read through what we're asking students to know and to show us they know, and think to yourselves, how can you incorporate the content of that assessment during your teaching this week? The assessments are giving teachers another teaching tool.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, that is brilliant.

Deb Glaser: I hope teachers see them that way.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, that's wonderful. Like you said, your book does that for teachers that are coming in not knowing much about morphology, they learn it as they teach it, and to know that the assessment can also be useful. Are the assessments sold separately somewhere? Where would teachers find those?

Deb Glaser: Well, yes, they're in the second edition of "Morpheme Magic." If you've never bought "Morpheme Magic" before-

Anna Geiger: Oh, there's a second edition, okay.

Deb Glaser: It's in the second edition. That's the only change I made to the book, but there are thousands out there that have the first edition book, but not the assessments, so the assessments are also sold separately.

Anna Geiger: Okay, wonderful. I'll link to those for sure. Tell me a little bit really quickly about the book that you just coauthored.

Deb Glaser: Oh, yes, "Next STEPS in Literacy Instruction: Connecting Assessments to Effective Interventions." It's our second edition and we've updated it. It's based on the outcome-driven model, so that goes way back to Good and Kaminski's work with DIBELS years and years ago.

The outcome-driven model that we follow is a very common model, but one that many schools have never implemented. When we have a good benchmark assessment that helps us identify the children at risk, the next step is to diagnose what the issue is. Once we have that, then we meet collaboratively with other teachers.

We determine small groups from those needs and focus attention and instruction to identify diagnostic needs those students have. We start them in their small groups, monitor their progress to determine how well students are responding to the instruction, and make any changes that need to be made. We continue in the cycle of instruction and monitoring the progress, making changes as we need to and as we see in group composition, in instructional focus, or continuing as we're doing because students are making gains, until the next benchmark period when we identify again those who continue to be at risk and further diagnose.

This book is built upon that outcome-driven model with lots of ideas and structure for the small group instruction.

Anna Geiger: Well that is wonderful because teachers really are looking for that. I know not every school, but some schools are starting to do those screeners more, but the teachers aren't sure what to do with it afterwards and so that's wonderful.

Deb Glaser: Yeah, they're just learning. There's a welcoming environment out there now and a desperate need for this information.

What's so beautiful too is that the leaders in the schools, not only the teachers, teachers are leaders as well, but those administrative positions that are making the decisions now are looking for the products and the tools that are backed by research. They can bring that in and provide for their teachers knowing that this is effective stuff, and now let's support you in your application of this.

Anna Geiger: So are there any other projects in the works that you're willing to talk about?

Deb Glaser: No, I don't have any projects right now. I told my husband after this last book I was going to take a break. However, I do have some children's books kind of percolating in my mind.

Anna Geiger: Oh, really? How wonderful.

Deb Glaser: I do. I know a couple of beautiful, wonderful illustrators, so I'm kind of thinking about doing something a little bit different, but at the same time those books would be building vocabulary for their listeners.

Anna Geiger: Something for your grandkids.

Deb Glaser: Yeah.

Anna Geiger: That would be exciting.

Well, thank you so much. I could talk to you all day, but thank you so much for your long career of helping teachers and that you continue to do that. Your work is appreciated by so many people.

Deb Glaser: Thank you, Anna, it was a pleasure. I just wish all of you out there listening the best in the world of morphological awareness and I would love to hear from you anytime you have questions or would like to talk about morphology.

Anna Geiger: Oh, I'm sure they would. We'll put your contact information in the show notes. You'll probably get people take you up on that.

Deb Glaser: Thank you, Anna!

Anna Geiger: You can find the show notes for today's episode at themeasuredmom.com/episode150. 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. Deb Glaser Morpheme Magic curriculum Morphemes for Little Ones curriculum Next STEPS in Literacy Instruction: Connecting Assessments to Effective Interventions , with Dr. Susan Smartt Reading Fluency , with Dr. Jan Hasbrouck Morphology courses for teachers

Email Dr. Glaser: reading (a) drdebglaser (dot) com

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The post All about Morphology – with Dr. Deb Glaser appeared first on The Measured Mom.

How to use assessment data to inform instruction

TRT Podcast #149: How to use assessment data to inform instruction – with Rachel Beiswanger

In today’s episode, special education coach Rachel Beiswanger explains how she uses assessment data when deciding what to teach her students. We list screening measures and list specific things you can do if students are scoring below benchmark. I list all the details in the show notes, so be sure to check them out!

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Hello, it's Anna Geiger from The Measured Mom, and today I have an interview with Rachel Beiswanger, a special education literacy coach. In this episode we talk about how you can use the results of Acadience Reading, which is a universal screener, to inform instruction.

Before we get into the episode, I would like to briefly explain Acadience's measures, just in case you're new to it, so this episode makes sense. You might be using a different screener like FastBridge or DIBELS, or maybe you're not using one at all.

If you're using one of those others, you can probably compare those measures to what we're talking about in today's episode. If you're not using a screener at all, this will show you how a screener is very useful for informing instruction.

A few weeks ago, I explained the four different types of assessment, and one of those is a screener. Acadience is a universal screener, that means that its job is to show you which students are on track to be adequate readers and which are not, which are at risk, in other words. If students score below benchmark, which is the lowest score they need to be on track to be okay at reading, we have to do something about that. We need to provide intervention.

So in this episode we talk through the different Acadience measures and specific things you can do if a student is scoring low in a particular area.

I just want to talk through those measures really quickly so you don't get lost if this is new to you.

First, there's First Sound Fluency (FSF) that's given in kindergarten where students have to say the first sound in a given word. If you say "sun," they have to say /s/.

Phoneme Segmentation Fluency (PSF) is when students have to break a word apart into all its phonemes. You would say the word "hall" and they should say /h/ /��/ /l/. That's given the middle of kindergarten through the end of first, whereas First Sound Fluency is just given in kindergarten.

Nonsense Word Fluency (NWF) is when students read nonsense CVC words. I didn't mention this, but in this and all the other measures, they have one minute to complete it. They read as many nonsense CVC words as they can in a single minute, and you measure their correct letter sounds as well as the number of whole words read. Whole words read means they read the word instantly without needing to sound it out. So if they saw the nonsense word "mip," and they read it as /m/ /��/ /p/, they would get three for correct letter sounds, but zero for whole words read because they had to sound it out. If they saw "tup," and they said "tup," they would get three for correct letter sounds because they got all the sounds correct and one for whole words read because they read it instantly without having to sound it out. Nonsense Word Fluency is given in the middle of kindergarten through the beginning of second grade.

Oral reading fluency (ORF) is when students read aloud a grade level passage for one minute and you measure their words correct per minute as well as their accuracy. They also have one minute to do a retell of what they've read, and that's given starting in the middle of first grade through sixth grade.

If you're a regular classroom teacher, you would give the appropriate measures for your grade level three times a year: beginning, middle, and end. If a student scored below benchmark, you might give a diagnostic assessment to dive in deeper to figure out exactly what their needs are.

Rachel's situation is a little different because she teaches in a special education school, so she does something called Acadience Reading Survey which can be done any time you have students who are maybe a little bit older and struggling to figure out exactly where their point of need is.

What you're doing is you're testing students gradually in lower levels of materials until you find their instructional and progress monitoring level. In other words, you figure out exactly what you need to teach them and how you can measure their progress. So with Acadience Reading Survey, you would possibly start way up there at ORF, and then if a child doesn't do well at that, you would back up and you would test them on NWF, Nonsense Word Fluency. If they don't do well on that, you would back up and assess them on PSF, Phoneme Segmentation Fluency. If they don't do well on that, you might back up and do First Sound Fluency. Basically, you're trying to find the skill where they're successful so that you know that the next step is to move past that into the next skill in your instruction.

I hope that makes sense. We're going to move into the episode now, and in the show notes you'll find a kind of summary of the things we talk about, so you'll want to be sure to head over there after you listen.

Anna Geiger: Welcome, Rachel!

Rachel Beiswanger: Thank you! Thank you for having me!

Anna Geiger: Could you introduce yourself to us a little bit and explain how you got to where you are today?

Rachel Beiswanger: Sure! So my name is Rachel Beiswanger, and I am a K-12 reading specialist. I work at an all special education school in upstate New York. I kind of work partially as a literacy coach pushing into classrooms, and then the rest of my time I spend working one-on-one doing interventions with students. Then in my spare time, I am kind of in the Instagram world sharing resources and tips for implementing the science of reading in your classroom.

Anna Geiger: That's where I learned about you because you have a wonderful Instagram account with lots of really good information at _readingrachel_, right?

Rachel Beiswanger: It's _readingrachel_, yeah.

Anna Geiger: Okay, got it. You have a really good way of talking about using assessments to inform instruction, so we're going to talk about that today. Maybe you could start with explaining how you give Acadience assessments to your students, and then what you decide to do with that screening data.

Rachel Beiswanger: Sure. So we use Acadience Reading Survey, and a Survey level assessment helps you to pinpoint a student's lowest skill deficit. Typically you use this with upper elementary students who you sense are significantly behind in reading, so that's why we use the Survey assessment.

You start with their chronological grade level, and each grade level has specific measures in Acadience. If you have a first through a sixth grader, the measure is oral reading fluency, so typically you're going to give an oral reading fluency measure at that student's grade level to begin.

If you find from that measure that the students are below benchmark for their grade level, then you would drop down and give either the next grade level below, or if it was kind of really hard for them to access that passage and you know that they're much lower than you thought they were, you could drop down to Nonsense Word Fluency, NWF, which is the measure below first grade oral reading fluency.

Let's say, for example, I had a grade three student, and I gave them the oral reading fluency passage for grade three. They were below the benchmark, and I decided to drop down, as I just said, to Nonsense Word Fluency because they were struggling to even kind of get through that first sentence. They were sounding out every word, for example.

For the Nonsense Word Fluency measure, the students are timed for a minute and they read as many CVC nonsense words as they can in a minute. What this measure tells you is a lot about students' knowledge of the alphabetic principle and letter sound knowledge.

So as they're reading a nonsense word, let's say the nonsense word is something like "taf," and they say "/t/ /��/ /f/, taf," then what you know from that is that the student is saying each letter sound correctly. That tells me one, that their letter sound knowledge is good and they're blending correctly, but they're not able to just look at taf and say taf. That's what we want them to be able to do. We want them to have that sight recognition and be able to read that word.

If that was a pattern on their assessment, I'm talking if they did that on several of the words, not just one, then that would be an indicator that in my instruction with that student, I really need to focus on moving them from sound by sound blending to reading words automatically. I would do blending strategies, things like successive or continuous blending.

I should also say that if when I gave that Nonsense Word Fluency, they were still below the benchmark in that measure, I would also drop below Nonsense Word Fluency to Phoneme Segmentation Fluency. That's the measure below Nonsense Word Fluency on Acadience, and that assesses the students' phonemic awareness.

I would want to check that also because when you're surveying a student, when you're kind of dropping back and dropping back, you want to find that point where they ARE at benchmark, where they are successful, because then you know that the next step up is where your instructional need is. That's where they need to work, if that makes sense.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, and for some teachers it feels a little overwhelming because they have students with deficits in many different areas. So you're saying to take the lowest skill that they're not successful at, according to Acadience Survey, and start with that. Then do you recommend working on multiple things at once or just working on that one thing?

Rachel Beiswanger: Yeah, that's a really good question. So in this example that I just gave, if that student needed work on blending to get to the whole word, I would still likely open my lesson with that student with a segmenting and blending warmup.

Even though they were great at phonemic awareness, I would still kind of prime them for the lesson by giving them that blending and segmenting warmup. I wouldn't just isolate the Nonsense Word Fluency skills, however that would be my primary focus, if that makes sense.

Anna Geiger: Yeah. So in Acadience, there's FSF where they have to give you the first sound in a word that you say, and then there's the PSF where they break a word apart into its phonemes.

Let's say they're struggling all the way down at FSF. What do you do to remediate that?

Rachel Beiswanger: Yeah, so if they aren't able to isolate the first sound in a word, then that is what you're teaching toward, and sometimes you can just teach that. You can say, okay, the student doesn't have that skill, and that skill is really the stepping stone to being able to segment and blend.

You would start with words that begin with continuous sounds and you would model for students how to say that word. For instance: "Say sun."

"Sun."

"Okay, let's stretch out sun," and then they'd say it slowly. Then you'd ask them, "What's the first sound you hear in ssssssun."

If they couldn't do it, then that's where you step in and you scaffold and you say, "Okay, listen to me. Ready, I'm going to show you that the first sound and sun is /s/. Did you hear me say /s/? Okay, now let's say sun together," and you just break it down like that.

Sometimes that can be even still too abstract for some students, and so from there you would scaffold back and you would move to larger chunks like onset and rhyme. You would see if students could isolate the onset in the word.

Then you would go back even further if they couldn't do that, and you might see if they can isolate the first word in a compound word or the first syllable in a two syllable word.

Anna Geiger: Perfect. Okay.

Now let's say the issue that they have is that they are struggling with PSF, so they can't break a word apart into its phonemes or they break it apart into some phonemes, but not all the phonemes, maybe they can't split a blend up, for example. What are the things that you do to work on that?

Rachel Beiswanger: If the student is struggling with consonant blends, I really like to do word chaining with that student because I feel like that is one way where they can really deeply see the details in the word. I always think of Louisa Moats when I say that because she has always said students need to know the intricacies of the sounds in the words, right?

Anna Geiger: Mm-hmm.

Rachel Beiswanger: So when you're word chaining, you're giving students a word, and you're asking them to change out one sound. This is great because it's phonemic awareness, but it's also using letters, and so students are changing out one letter at a time, and that's what we know research supports with phonemic awareness practice. So teaching them how to do word chains is one thing.

Just in general, if they're having trouble segmenting three and four sound words, then you always want to scaffold back to two sound words and see if they can segment a word with two sounds. And again, the words with continuous sounds to start like, "so," "me," or "hi," those words are going to be easier to segment.

I will say too that working not just on those two-sound words, but three-sound words that students are familiar with, I've noticed, seems to click for some kids and help them figure that out when you bring in words that are already in their vocabulary. If they know the word "sun," but they don't really have the word "so" in their vocabulary, then "sun" might be easier for them to segment.

Anna Geiger: Have you found that using manipulatives helps a lot with this?

Rachel Beiswanger: Yes. Yeah, for sure. I just stick to traditional Elkonin boxes where I'm sliding chips or kids are sliding chips into boxes. That seems to work really well for kids. Then I defer to phoneme-grapheme mapping which is really beneficial because you're segmenting, sometimes with manipulatives, and then you're matching the letters right up to the sounds.

Anna Geiger: Yeah. So just for people who are listening who maybe are new to that, the idea is that you have a set of boxes for a word, and then you put a tile in for each box for each sound.

So if you say, "The word is swim. Repeat."

"Swim."

"Let's say the sounds of swim," and maybe they put a chip in each box for /s/ /w/ /��/ /m/, and then you isolate each sound and help them spell it.

We know, we talked about this before in the podcast, that research shows that phonemic awareness instruction with letters is most effective, so we're combining phonemic awareness and phonics, and that can actually help kids learn phonemic awareness better than if it's just isolated oral activities.

So we've talked about Phoneme Segmentation Fluency, which is PSF, and then we've got the upper level after that is Nonsense Word Fluency, NWF.

Some people wonder about the use of nonsense words, and the point of that is so that we really know if they know their phonics knowledge because they could have memorized a word, if it's a real CVC word, but the Nonsense Word Fluency tells you a lot in terms of... For instance, I've given these assessments and the word might be "mip," so if they know their phonics knowledge, they would say "mip." but I've heard kids say "mipe," right?

Rachel Beiswanger: Right.

Anna Geiger: That really could not be a word because of what we know about phonics patterns and spelling patterns.

There are really multiple issues that could be at play if they're struggling with Nonsense Word Fluency. One that you mentioned was that they can sound it out, but they HAVE to sound it out. They haven't mapped it; they can't read it instantly. I hear this a lot from people like, "What do I do to get my kids to stop sounding out letter by letter? How do we get them to cross over?"

What are some things that you would suggest for that?

Rachel Beiswanger: Sure. So I suggest a few different things. Sometimes I think the issue is that students are just so used to sounding words out that they literally just need somebody to tell them to say the sounds in their mind and practice doing it that way. They can practice not saying the sounds out loud and just get in the habit of saying the sounds in their minds. That's one trick to try.

The other trick to try is successive blending, which I really like this strategy. With successive blending, let's say you have the CVC word "mat." You would model for the students how to touch and say /m/, and then you would say /��/, the second sound. Then you would demonstrate what those two sounds sound like when they're blended together, so you would say, "mmmaaaa." Then you would add on the last sound and you would say "mmmaaaa-t." So you're going, "mmm, mmmmaaaa, mmmaaat," and then you would practice that with them, and then they would do that.

Sometimes I think kids get stuck with a single sound, single sound, single sound, and sometimes just connecting those first two is a great way to do it.

Then let's say you've done that with a list of five words. Once you've had them practice that blending strategy, then have them go back and read those five words again because then you're building their sight word recognition, and that's when those words become orthographically mapped and they no longer have to sound them out.

Sometimes it really is about fluency and more exposures to those words, so don't be afraid to practice reading the same words every single day. I think sometimes that happens too, where we feel like we have to teach so many different words every day, which is important because we want to expose our kids to the words that they're going to need to be able to spell and that they're going to be seeing in text. But sometimes, for some kids, they just need to see those words again and again before they stick.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, and I also believe that sometimes seeing those same word families at the end of words is helpful because they can start to map chunks. Those nonsense words aren't real words, so they haven't, I guess, technically mapped that word as it appears. But as they become more efficient readers, they know that I-F is "if," and they know that O-T is "ot" and so on.

So then we move up to ORF, which is oral reading fluency. Now most of the assessments I've given have been in the primary grades, so in third grade, does Acadience include any other assessments or is it just ORF?

Rachel Beiswanger: You can do another assessment. Acadience has another comprehension measure called Maze, which I'm not as familiar with, but I know that it's basically a passage that students read, and then they are supposed to fill in the correct word in certain blanks based on the meaning of the sentence.

Anna Geiger: And that one they do independently, you're not marking things down, you're just checking it.

Rachel Beiswanger: Yeah.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, I've seen that before where they have the sentences and then multiple words to choose from that would fit in the blank.

So ORF, oral reading fluency, is when usually you have them read three passages. You have them read for one minute, and there's also, in Acadience, a retelling measure where you just keep track of how many words they say. It sounds hard, but it's not because they talk kind of slow and you just mark the meaningful words they said. If they say, "I don't remember," you don't mark those words. If they repeat themselves, you don't mark those words.

Then down below there's a subjective measure where you say that they gave the main idea or they gave details in order or so on. So it's subjective, but I do find it's very useful.

ORF starts in middle of first grade, I believe, right?

Rachel Beiswanger: Yes, yes.

Anna Geiger: So let's say that their words per minute, their number of correct words because they also maybe have low accuracy, is below benchmark. Then what do you do first?

Rachel Beiswanger: Right. So ORF has the three scores, as you said: the retell score, the words correct per minute score, and the accuracy score. When you look at their results, you want to look at all three of those scores because each individual score gives you information on a specific skill, which is, in my opinion, the best part of Acadience. It's very informative in that way.

Let's say I have a student who did well on the retell, but they were, as you said, below benchmark on words correct per minute, and they were below benchmark on accuracy. Is that what you said?

Anna Geiger: Mm-hmm.

Rachel Beiswanger: Then I would give them a decoding diagnostic, because if their accuracy score is low, it's an indicator that there is a decoding issue. We're talking about how many words did they read correctly, and if they're reading words incorrectly, then they're decoding incorrectly, right?

Anna Geiger: Mm-hmm.

Rachel Beiswanger: So that would be the next step there. But if that student had a good accuracy score, so they were reading words correctly and their words correct per minute score was still low, it wasn't where it should be, it was below benchmark, then that indicates to me that that student needs work on fluency. Then I would work on fluency in my instruction.

Then the last example would be if that student's accuracy score was great, their words correct per minute score was great, but their retell was kind of a struggle and below the benchmark, then that would indicate that I should work on reading comprehension. We would work on comprehension strategies, building knowledge, teaching vocabulary, and this kind of thing.

Anna Geiger: Okay, so let's go back to the accuracy one. You talked about a diagnostic, and when this podcast goes live, it'll be following some other episodes about that sort of thing, so people can refer back to that one. There will be an episode about different kinds of assessment.

Right now we're basically talking about a screener to figure out if children are on benchmark, which means are they meeting the minimum standard to be on track to be a good reader, but if they're below benchmark, then we need to figure out the problem and remediate that, so we have to dive in more deeply. The screener gives us basic information, but doesn't give us the details.

When you mentioned the diagnostic, that would be a specific phonics assessment that shows you exactly where the breakdown is. Maybe they're good with CVC words, CCVC words, and CVCE, but then they're struggling with vowel teams, or whatever. That would show that you need to work on those specific vowel teams. I think that's an easy one in terms of what's next. We talk a lot about in this podcast and on my website about teaching phonics.

Let's go to the fluency one. Do you see that less often? I'm just curious to know.

Rachel Beiswanger: Yes.

Anna Geiger: So it's more often a word reading problem with decoding, but sometimes, maybe not as often, they can read the words, but they're reading very slowly. What are things you do for that?

Rachel Beiswanger: Yeah, so repeated reads are the gold standard that are recommended by the National Reading Panel and confirmed over time through research to be an effective practice for building fluency.

With my intervention students, the way that we do that is that when they read a new decodable text on, let's say it's Monday, then the next day, the next lesson, I'm having them read the same decodable text to open that lesson. Then I'm collecting their decodable passages in a decodable folder, and they're practicing reading those with a partner at centers. Ideally, I have a teaching assistant or whomever giving corrective feedback because that's a really big part of it. I ask them to give corrective feedback if students are making errors.

Part of fluency too is modeling how to read like you're talking, how to read like you're having a conversation, modeling that for kids, and then having them repeat it back to you. Some echo reading is really beneficial for fluency as well.

Anna Geiger: That moves us on to kids who... And I'm wondering if this at your school, I don't know, if this would be at a higher level than what most people would see. Do you find that there are a lot of kids who can read the words, are reading at a good rate, but can't explain what they read? Do you see a lot of that?

Rachel Beiswanger: I do, actually. I do. I think that those are the two camps for me in my experience. It's the students who really, really struggle with decoding, and so that's where we start, or the students who can decode anything and then when you ask them what they read about, they might relate it to something that happened in their lives, or they're kind of tangentially related to the passage. I do notice that a lot. I think it's really hard for students, especially ones with specific learning disabilities, to hold information in their working memory and to be able to retell it back to you. I do see that a lot.

Anna Geiger: It seems to me like that would be a harder thing to take care of because, as we know, comprehension is so complex. We don't have a nice easy scope and sequence like we do for phonics. So what are some things that you've found that have helped?

Rachel Beiswanger: It's definitely harder to remediate because it's not linear, and there are multiple things that go into reading comprehension so there are multiple things to try.

I'll say this first, Acadience does have a Comprehension, Fluency, & Oral Language diagnostic. It's called CFOL, and it's a comprehension diagnostic. That is one way you can kind of get to answering some questions like, is the students struggling with figurative language? Is it this, or that, or whatever?

But one of the things I think that works really well for students is teaching them how to pull the main idea from a paragraph. Modeling that is really helpful for kids, teaching them how to pull out who the paragraph is about, find the most important information from that paragraph, doing that throughout a passage, and then eventually combining that into a summary.

Then the other thing that I've noticed that I typically go right to as a starting point for me, just because it's common with a lot of the students that I work with, is checking their sentence level comprehension. Because if you think about it, if a student doesn't really know what's going on in a sentence, they're not going to know how to string a bunch of sentences together when they're reading. They're not going to be able to keep those ideas connecting as they're reading and connect ideas across sentences, let alone across paragraphs to get the whole gist of the passage.

So I like to just give them a sentence and say, "Okay, who's the person in the sentence? What are they doing? Why they doing it? How are they doing it?" Having them answer those basic function level questions is helpful.

Anna Geiger: Wonderful. Well, you've just given us a lot of stuff. I might just have to type this up in the show notes as a kind of an outline for people so they can see the specific things.

Where can people find you?

Rachel Beiswanger: I am most active on Instagram, and my Instagram name is _readingrachel_. Then I also have a blog, and that's readingrachel.com.

Anna Geiger: Wonderful! Well, thank you so much for taking time to share your wisdom with us today.

Rachel Beiswanger: Thanks for having me, Anna!

Anna Geiger: Thank you so much for listening. You can find the show notes at themeasuredmom.com/episode149. 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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