Bright Beginnings: Shaping the Next Generation of Literacy Champions

Episode Transcript
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Narrator (00:04):
Welcome to Literacy Talks, the podcast for literacy
leaders and championseverywhere, brought to you by
Reading Horizons. Literacy Talksis the place to discover new
ideas, trends, insights andpractical strategies for helping
all learners reach readingproficiency. Our hosts are Stacy
Hurst, a professor at SouthernUtah University and Chief
Academic Advisor for ReadingHorizons. Donell Pons, a

(00:26):
recognized expert and advocatein literacy, dyslexia and
special education, and LindsayKemeny, an elementary classroom
teacher, author and speaker. Nowlet's talk literacy.

Stacy Hurst (00:39):
Welcome to this episode of Literacy Talks. My
name is Stacy Hurst. I'm thehost, and today I am actually
joined by not two other cohosts, but four other co hosts,
and we are doing a conferencerecap, which we've done before
on literacy talks, but this onewill be a little bit different,

(01:00):
because this was for theconference titled The Bright
Beginnings pre service teacherconference held in November. And
I am lucky to have the planningcommittee with me here today. So
we're going to do a recap of thesessions that our pre service
teachers got to hear and the theexperts that shared their

(01:23):
knowledge and wisdom with us.
But before we do that, I'm justgoing to have each of my guests
introduce themselves. So if eachof you will just say your name,
where it is, you teach and justbriefly about your background in
education,

Lori Anderson (01:38):
let's start with Lori. Hi. My name is Lori
Anderson. I am currently anadjunct professor at university,
at Utah Valley University inOrem, Utah. I am teaching four
literacy courses this semester.
This is my 26th year ineducation. I taught for 10 for
13 years in third grade, mostlythen I became a literacy coach

(02:00):
for 10 years. I became anational letters facilitator two
and a half years ago, and Ispent the last two years working
for the State Board ofEducation, supporting the
literacy coaches in theuniversities. This is my second
year teaching for UVU, and I'vealso been a consultant for
Western Governors University,and they just asked me to be

(02:21):
their literacy specialist, so Iwould be doing some consulting
for them. So that's

great. Thank you.
Laurie Stephanie,

Stephanie Edgren (02:29):
hi. My name is Stephanie Edgren, and I am
currently an independentcontractor working with higher
education, and I also tutorstudents. I've been in education
for over 30 years, which makesme feel very old, I've taught
preschool, elementary, middleschool. I supported teachers as
an instructional coach, and thenI taught pre service teachers in

(02:52):
two local institutions here inIowa, and I primarily focused on
literacy courses. I am adyslexia specialist, and I serve
as the vice president of thesoon to be Iowa chapter of the
reading League.

Awesome. Thank you.
Dr. Vicki Piquette,

Vicki Piquette (03:13):
Hello, I'm Dr.
Vicki Piquette, and I am a anassistant professor at Colorado
State University in Pueblo,Colorado. A little bit about my
background. I taught mostly infirst and second grade, but I've
actually taught everything frompreschool through graduate
school, except for middleschool. Middle School kind of

(03:33):
scared me, but now that I've hadmy own kids go through middle
school, maybe it's not so scary,and my bachelor's degree is
actually in biology, which isinteresting, because once upon a
time when I was going through myprogram, there was a teacher
surplus, and they told us weneeded to get a bachelor's
degree in something that wecould fall back on in case we

(03:54):
couldn't find a teaching job,which is so weird, because now
it's the complete opposite. ButI have a master's degree in
early childhood and a master'sdegree in reading, and then I
just finished my doctoral degreein reading, language and
literacy. I've been at theUniversity now for 18 years, but
most of that time was spent asan adjunct. I just took a 10

(04:14):
year track position two and ahalf years ago. So

great. Well, thank you for joining us today. Papae,
hi

Papae Wymore (04:25):
everybody. I'm glad to be here today, and I
love hearing Dr Vicki Piquette,the doctor is amazing. Little
bit about myself. I am aprofessor here at Central
College in Pella, Iowa. This ismy first year at Central that I
have been in higher ed for nineyears now, goes fast.

(04:47):
Previously, I was a kindergartenteacher in public schools. I
also taught middle school atrisk exploratory for a couple
years, but I do have 16 years inpublic education. Education like
Stephanie Edgren, she is my Iowaco partner. We are working on
getting a reading league inIowa, and I am the president of

(05:11):
the pending Iowa reading league.
I also serve on the advisorycouncil for the Iowa reading
Research Center, and I'm justinterested in learning more
about anything literacy justreally excites me, not only
myself learning, but sharingthat learning with my pre
service teachers, great,

which is a fantastic segue about how this
conference got started, right?
And just for some backgroundinformation, the five of us know
each other, actually, with theexception of Lori, I feel like
we all met at conferences. So weattend the same conferences, and
we started thinking, You knowwhat, why don't we offer

(05:53):
something like this for our preservice teachers? We do take
back what we learn, and ofcourse, we're going to apply it
in our courses, but we thoughtit would be really great for our
pre service teachers to have thesame information from the same
experts that we get to hear fromwhen we attend conferences. So
we asked for volunteers, andthese four were so gracious to

(06:17):
say, Oh, I'll help. And westarted with a survey, and we
sent a survey out to everyonewho would answer. We did get. We
got quite a good response whenyou guys say, and we asked
questions, like to the preservice teachers. We asked, What
is something you want to knowmore about? What is something
you're most concerned about inyour pre service education, or

(06:38):
when you think about being ateacher. And we also sent the
similar survey to professors tosee if they would be interested
in such a conference. And ofcourse, almost without
exception, I feel like everybodysaid yes, we would be interested
in something like this. So weforged ahead and Stephanie
Edgar, and I know you know this,but how long were we planning?

(07:01):
How long did it take for us toplan this? Well, over

a year. I think we started August of 20
was it 2022? I think, yeah, it'sbeen a long time. It's been a
long time we meet fairly we metfairly regularly. We would
divide and conquer and just getthings done, but also having

(07:26):
really good conversation aboutwhat we want the conference to
look like, and how would it bestmeet the needs of not only pre
service teachers, but theirprofessors.

Yeah, thank you.
And we did what we met weekly atone point at 730 in the morning
for Lori and Vicky and I, it was730 on Friday morning. So the
very day after the conference,which was on a Thursday, we all
got to sleep in. And I think weall rejoiced in that a little
bit. One thing I want to askeach of you about the survey

(07:56):
results, I know we we went overthose results together, and
that's how we selected thetopics, and therefore the
speakers that we were going toreach out to. So what were some
of those questions that orresponses that stand out to you
as we looked over that data?

Yeah, so there was a lot about some different
trepidations that the studentshad that they would like more
information about. Some of thethings that I saw were that
students were concerned thatthey had to know all of these
phonics rules orgeneralizations, and a lot of
them hadn't been taught thosethemselves, and so it felt very

(08:42):
overwhelming for them, and theydidn't know even where to start.
I also noticed students reallywanting to know, like, what does
this look like in practice? Whatdoes it look like? What should I
be doing in the classroom tomake sure that all of this comes
to fruition?

I'm just going to piggyback off of what Vicky
said, you know, what I noticedoverall, too Vicky was that
students wanted to know, how canI ensure that my future students
are going to be proficientreaders at the end of the year?
I saw that over and over on oursurvey that we did. So not only
just about those, you know,phonics rules, but like overall,

(09:19):
how will I know that ourstudents will be proficient
readers, yeah,

and I would emphasize, that's what I noticed
Tupa pay with, like all of mystudents, right? Every student
in my classroom, not justgenerally my students. That was
a concern. How will I know ifthey're struggling? What do I
do? I feel like

having been in education for as long as I was
before I knew what to do forthose kids, that was my, that is
what feeds me as my why. I justwant all future teachers to not
have to struggle to figure itout like, like I. Had to. I know

(10:00):
some of you had to run trainingthan I did, but it was a big
struggle. And I'm like, itshouldn't be a struggle, like we
know what what we need to teachour teachers and how this works.
We know how the reading brainworks, and we know what is
needed to help our kids. I'm amom of a dyslexic son, and it
was a huge struggle to help himget to know how to read. And I

(10:24):
was like, this shouldn't behappening, like we should know
better. And that's like, my bigwhy is to make sure that our
future teachers have thoseskills and knowledge so that
they can, they can hit theground running and feel
empowered. I feel like we'relosing a lot of teachers because
they're so frustrated, they'relike, I don't know how to teach
reading, and that's been a trendfor several years. And I feel

(10:46):
like now that, now that we'vegot the science of reading, and
we've got all of these amazingspeakers and just better
knowledge on how to help our preservice teachers to be better
prepared, it's just exciting,

yeah, which again, brings us to our why for the
conference. So the format of theconference, we absolutely asked
speakers that could answer thosebig questions. We chose five
questions. So this is how therest of the podcast will go.
Each of us got the opportunityto introduce this session, so I
we were just going to stick withthat pattern, and we're going to

(11:23):
talk about the speaker and thesession, the question it was
answering from the survey, givea little synopsis, and we also
got the opportunity to havefeedback from our pre service
teachers. And so we'll read somequotes about each session. So
I'll begin because I got tointroduce Dr Mitchell Brookins,

(11:45):
and he gave the keynote, whichwas titled teacher as
practitioner. And I have to justadd a little quick side note
when I noticed in theregistration, and by the way, we
had over 1500 people registerfor this conference, so we knew
there was interest. I don'tthink we knew there was that

(12:06):
much interest. That was sogreat. But one of the things
that I noticed in theregistration there was a drop
down question of, what is yourrole? And the options were, pre
service. Teacher, in serviceteacher, I don't remember the
other ones, but a lot of our preservice teachers would select

(12:26):
other and then when we asked,what is your role, they'd say
student. So even the terminologythey weren't familiar with,
right? Like I had to Oh, a preservice teacher is you. You're
somebody who isn't yet inservice. So the the term
practitioner that Dr MitchellBrookins really introduced to
our students as well, I thoughtwas very useful. But he talked

(12:49):
about this is what, how hedefined a practitioner, an
individual who actively engages.
He emphasized that in theirprofession, especially one who
is skilled in the application oftheir knowledge. And he really
shared his journey as a teacher,which I thought was very
inspiring, because hedemonstrated being a learner and
applying it. He really wastalking about action research in

(13:13):
the classroom, and the questionthat his session helped answer
we had a lot of students ask inthe survey, what if I'm at a
school that is requiring me toteach in a way that is not
aligned with what I've learnedin my university about the
science of reading, which comesup frequently, I think so. His

(13:33):
response to that was, sometimesyou have to stand up and get in
the way. And he reallyemphasized that literacy is
liberty and that we have to getin the way of our current
literacy rates. And he Anotherthing he said is to the pre

(13:54):
service teachers, was, it's yourtime. It's your time, and we're
not, you know, we're it doesn'thave to those low literacy rates
don't have to stay that way. SoI thought that was really
inspiring. One thing that reallyexcited me as a professor, he
made reference to things likeresearch, like the four part
processing model of wordrecognition, Aries phases,

(14:15):
things that my students couldrecognize and resonate with so
that was really helpful, Ithought, too, and we did get to
hear him sing. He sang a littlebit in that session. So I should
also mention, before I read aquote from the feedback, which I
thought was equally inspiring.

(14:37):
The every presenter, withoutexception, that we reached out
to, responded emphatically thatthey would like to participate,
and so very grateful for that.
And Dr Brookins was no exceptionto that, and he really got the
conference off to a great start.
So here is I'm going to read aquote from a student in their

(14:59):
feedback. Back, and she wastalking about his session, she
said, and he also made referenceto literacy is more than
phonemes and graphemes. It isliberty. So she says, in this
way, literacy is not is not justa skill, but a gateway to
freedom, equality and socialmobility. Ultimately, literacy

(15:20):
is Liberty is about ensuringthat every person has the
opportunity to shape their ownlife and contribute to a more
just and informed society,recognizing that teachers are
empowering their students, whichhe said, frequently allows
teachers to see their role asmore than educators. This is the
part I love. They becomefacilitators of freedom,

(15:43):
providing students with thetools to navigate the world,
advocate for themselves andbuild a better future. And that
was all in response to her, whatshe experienced as she listened
to Dr Brookins speak. So Ithought that was really
encouraging anybody else have atakeaway from Dr Birken session

(16:07):
that you'd like to share,

I do want to share one of my students. So the
amazing thing about this preservice teacher conference is
that we provided a reflectionform for our professor friends
to assign to their students. Andof course, all of us assigned it
to our students. And you know, Iam no exception, and one of my
students wrote in herreflection, I love how Dr

(16:31):
Brookins talked about one timehe used Lucy Calkins and Fontes
and Pinel material. It showsthat he has made mistakes, but
he has overcome this, and he hasbecome such an inspiring teacher
of teachers, it inspires me tobecome the best teacher I can
be. I'm just wow, how powerful,Dr Brookins, that you were able

(16:51):
to influence our pre serviceteachers like that. So thank
you. Great

example of a lifelong learner, right? And
then after Dr Brookins, we gotto hear from Dr Holly lane and
Lori. You got to introduce her.

Yeah, she is incredible. She wears so many
hats, but I feel like her mostknown hat is that she is an
associate professor of specialeducation at the University of
Florida. So Dr Holly lane, she'samazing, but she was able to
present to us on effectiveinstruction in phonemic

(17:27):
awareness and phonics. Hersession was chosen because the
majority of our studentsresponded with that fear or
anxiety over, you know, beingable to what even do these words
mean, and how do we teach theselike, what does this look like?
And I feel like she did abeautiful job of just explaining
every part of it, like she tookseven weeks of instruction for

(17:48):
me and just simply, like,simplified it and explained it
in such a beautiful way. So shebegan her presentation by just
really going over the fivepillars of literacy from the
National Reading Panel and andhow, like, there's an
illustration that shows thatthey're five separate pillars,
and just helping us tounderstand that's not what
literacy instruction looks like,really. So then she went into

(18:09):
the simple view of reading andScarborough's robe and told how
it's interleaved and intertwinedand and you have to teach them
to gather and and for and do allthe parts, right? So as a
professor, I every week, wasconstantly helping my kids, or
my teacher, preseason preservice teachers, to really go

(18:29):
like, I use the scarboroughsRope as a checklist. That's what
we went by every week we covereda different rope. So it was
beautiful how she illustratedthat and explained it and and
helped our students to rememberthose important parts. She then
went into talking about whateffective instruction is. It's
got to be both explicit andsystematic, with lots and lots

(18:51):
of opportunities to practice andrespond. She talked about
feedback and how critical thatis, and I love that while she
was explaining it, she actuallymodeled what explicit
instruction would look like witha U fly lesson. So she explained
the difference between blockedand interleaved practice,
helping our candidates tounderstand really how to get to
mastery with that practice andhow to get long term retention

(19:15):
from our feedback. We saw thatone big takeaway was really
understanding and comprehendingwhat effective instruction looks
like. What are the differentpieces? It's got to be explicit,
systematic, lots ofopportunities to respond. So
that was fun to see, like thoselittle nuggets in our feedback,
that they really did take thataway. I loved hearing about her

(19:35):
explain that practice makespermanent. I think that's an
eight need a Archer, maybe not,but that's that's where I heard
it from. She also discussed justhow critical that feedback is,
that it's got to be behaviorspecific corrective to actually
get realignment with thepractice of whatever it is

(19:56):
they're doing. I loved I feltthroughout the comp. And so
Anita arturisms were interwoventhroughout the session, but she
then dove into explicitinstruction and what that was.
And so it was fun to see hertake on that. She talked about
explicit instruction, tier one,tier two, tier three, all of the
tiers like, what doesintervention look like? We

(20:19):
don't. She talked about how wedon't teach students who
struggle differently. We givethem the same exact lessons, we
just give them more practice. Ifelt like as a coach for 10
years, that was a huge, hugething to help the teachers
understand we're not going to dosomething totally different.
We're just going to do the samething and just give them more
practice. She described Ariesphases and went through each

(20:41):
phase. And the big takeaway forme with that was just our
instructions should be, how dowe move them up to the next
phase? She talked about the roadto fluent reading and how it She
just broke it down step by step.
Here's how we get our fluentreaders. She talked about
alphabetic knowledge, phonemicawareness, use of sound walls,
orthographic mapping. What thatwas, what body coda Blending is,

(21:04):
how important it is, used inElkonin boxes and then ending up
with connected text. So just itwas a beautiful symphony of
incorporating all of the bottomstrands of Scarborough's rope.
And how do we do this to helpour students become fluent
readers? So those are my bigtakeaways. What did you ladies
think?

I just thought I did. Think it was amazing how
there is a through linethroughout every session. And I
really appreciated about Dr LaneLane session that students did
get to see what it looks like inapplication as well. So I think
that was very powerful. Yeah,

I just loved that she reinforced everything we've
been doing in class, likehelping my students to really
understand all of the elements,how to put them together,
summarizing, you know, sevenweeks of instruction. It was
just a great review for my finaltest for me, but like, that's
not what we want. We want ourkids to be able to actually know

(22:07):
how to do this and actually beable to take this into the
classrooms. But I just The BodyCode of blending was really good
to deepen my understanding too,and I'm a huge component of
Alcona boxes. So anytime I seesomebody else like sharing the
love, that was the biggest thingwhen I was working with my son,
helping him to read, that helpedhim to make progress. So I'm a

(22:29):
huge component or component ofthat.

Yeah, that's great.

Sorry. I just wanted to throw out too that
Holly Lane mentioned it duringthe Q and A instead of having
our pre service teacherscreating new lessons. And I
think Anita Archer also joinedin on this. Let's have them
spend their time looking at howto annotate those lessons, what
routines, what what feedbackmight I give I mean? And takes

(22:57):
that burden of I have to createall of these new lessons, and
then the lessons aren'tsystematic. They're not
following a scope and sequence.
Yeah, it was a really good

portrayal of from beginning to end, what a scope
and sequence should look like aswell. Yeah, I have some more
comments. I'll save them forwhen we talk about the Q and A,

okay, then that and Dr Lane really emphasized,
like Lori said, how that looksin each tier of instruction. And
I think our pre service teachersin the survey, they were, they
were concerned about all thetiers of instruction. And so Dr
Kearns was really expert ataddressing that. So Pepe, do you

(23:39):
want to talk to us about thatsession I would love to so I was
honored to introduce Dr DevonKearns, and he presented six
reasons students struggled toread, from dyslexia to
ineffective instruction. And itseemed to be seamless that he
followed Dr Holly lane and evenshared, oh, we covered some of

(24:00):
this. Let's move on. So he wenta little bit deeper into some of
the slides that he shared fromwhat I was thinking. But for our
listeners who don't know who DrKearns is, His research focuses
on literacy, intervention,special education. If you do not
know, he is on X, I am a fan ofhis on X, go visit and see his

(24:20):
stuff. He freely shares thingson his own website, Google
Scholar, research, gate and, ofcourse, on x. His areas of
expertise are the science ofreading, early literacy, reading
instruction, readingdisabilities and difficulties,
intervention systems and so muchmore. But our team specifically

(24:40):
chose Dr Kearns to presentbecause we noticed on the survey
that we sent to our pre serviceteachers that they were unsure.
How do I really know I'm goingto make sure that my students
are proficient readers at theend of the year? I do know that
a couple of my colleagues wereable to. See Dr Kerns before,

(25:02):
and knew that his presentationwas amazing. This was the first
time that I saw Dr Kerns inaction, so it was amazing. And
what he shared, I can't wait toshare with you. So first his
slides, he showed great visualsof the reading brain and the
parts that are engaged duringreading, so the four part press
processor, he clearly showedwhat was activated when students

(25:25):
are processing sounds, when theyare decoding and when they were
recognizing words automatically.
His slides, I'm going toencourage everybody to go see Dr
Kerns present. He just made itvery attainable for our pre
service teachers. Next, he alsogave a simple, clear definition
for dyslexia. He said thatdyslexia means difficulty with

(25:49):
word recognition. And then healso went on to say that
dyslexia is not and he said thisseveral times, dyslexia is not a
visual processing problem. It isa sound processing problem, and
that was so important, I think,for our pre service teachers to
hear and solidify in theirlearning. So his whole

(26:09):
presentation was the six causesof breeding difficulty, and I'm
going to summarize them reallyquickly. Number one, he said the
student has a phonologicaldeficit. Number two, student has
a phonological and otherconcerns such as a deficit and
processing speed or verbalmemory in addition to a
phonological deficit, thirdreason was the student may have

(26:33):
a low achievement or cognitiveprocessing, and this looks like
difficulties across all academicareas, including reading. His
number four was, student hasattention emotional or behavior
challenges. This is a difficultyfrom lack of exposure caused by
distractions. His fourth reasonwas, student has had

(26:54):
insufficient exposure inlanguage and reading experience.
And his sixth thing that he wassharing was, student has
received poor instructionfocused on essential,
foundational reading skills. Andhe really did highlight that.
What I loved about Dr Kerns ishe is no nonsense. And I'm going
to share some quotes that hedirectly said. He clearly stated

(27:18):
that color overlays, overlays donot work. And he said it several
times. There is no evidence toshow that color overlays work.
He also said, don't use Erlanlenses, colored glasses. There
is no data that shows that thisis beneficial. Also, he said

(27:39):
there is no data out there thatproves vision focusing therapy
works. And then the last thingto the visual part he shared
was, don't buy special fonts.
All you might want to do is addmore space between words, or
more space between the letters,so that students can easily read

(28:00):
them. He was sharing that somepeople or teachers are buying
these special fonts that maycost upwards to $70 and we don't
need to do that. Okay? The nextthings he shared, I'm just gonna
say it, because it was amazing.
He said it in a way that nobodyelse could. He says three things
you should not do. And he saidit a couple times, do not do

(28:20):
this, right? Number one, lipsthe fish. He said, It is a bad
strategy. If you see it outthere, stop it now. So lips the
fish, if you remember, was theBeanie Baby strategies from
probably the late 90s and early1000s. And guess what? I'm
guilty too. I used it too. Ifeel so sad for those students

(28:41):
that I impacted negatively. Butlips the fish is, get your mouth
ready. It is inadequate, becauseyou need to look at all the
letters and sounds in the word,not just at the beginning of the
word. His second thing he saidto stop doing right away is
Skippy the frog. Skippy the frogis skip the word and go back to
check later. That's not a goodpractice. And the third thing,

(29:04):
Lori's shaking her head. Thethird thing was Eagle Eye, or
looking at pictures and nottext. He emphasized and I have
quotes. Tear down those postersright now. Dr Kerns, yes,
everybody should tear down thoseposters right now. He also
stated, We need students totrust the letters, because they

(29:27):
have all the answers. That's myfavorite quote from him. If you
don't trust the letters, wewon't be able to prevent reading
difficulties. Then he had hislast slide, he kind of went over
quickly, but he did say, here'swhat you do to address
difficulties in reading. Youpractice phonological awareness,

(29:47):
right? You practice decodingusing sound spelling. You are
reading having students readwords with phonograms. You're
learning strategies for readingpolysyllabic. Words, your
learning strategies for readingpolymorphic words. I just want
to end by sharing a comment on areflection form. I hope I have
it here. Astute. I loved that weassigned this in our classes and

(30:11):
my students at Central College.
Abby Goering, she said this wasgreat information about dyslexia
and understanding more about it.
I love how he speaks abouttrusting the letters. Such an
amazing message. I want to knowfrom you all, what was your
favorite quote from Dr Kearns,or your favorite takeaway from

(30:33):
Dr Kerns? I

learned so much from Dr Kerns. It was so fun.
And he was one of the, he wasthe, I think the only one who
chose the live option. So he didthis all live. I think it was
mind blowing to a lot of ourstudents and professors that
were on the Zoom call with thecolor overlays. They asked a lot

(30:58):
of questions surrounding that,and he addressed that again in
the Q and A and I just think itwas really, I mean, it was just
really, really good information.
It was high impactfulinformation for our students.
And I know my students reallytook a lot away from him. They
were still talking about him aweek or two after his

(31:20):
presentation, just about howmuch information they learned
about the brain and how readingworks and what doesn't work and
why it doesn't work. And I'm soglad that he addressed the
Beanie Baby strategies, becausewe still see that and those
posters in classrooms and Skippyfrog is my absolute worst. I

(31:45):
hate Skippy frog, so I'm so gladthat he addressed that. That

is great. Thank you so much for sharing about that.
Pepe and Vicki, your insightsare in line with what my
students were talking about,too. For his presentation,

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Next we have, of course, this is the goat, right?
Greatest of All Time. And wereally couldn't have a
conference like this withoutinviting Dr Anita Archer. And
again, she was so eager andwilling. I loved it. She was
great. So Stephanie, you got tointroduce her. Tell us about her

(32:59):
session. Okay,

well, just in case, I'll go back and say I
can't imagine that anyone wouldnot know who Anita Archer is, if
you don't google her forSeriously, she is the goat. Just
a little bit of background.
She's an educational consultant.
She's presented in 50 states.
She's presented in Australia andCanada, she's written numerous

(33:20):
curricular materials. Rewards isone of them. Phonics for reading
is another. And kind of the end,all be all book for anybody
who's everybody who's anybody ineducation, everybody, everybody
in education, is explicitinstruction, effective and
efficient teaching. Anita Archeris just like a beloved teacher

(33:43):
of teachers. She's just an icon,I guess is what I would say, an
icon. And her session was onengaging and motivating
learners, which I think wasinteresting, because that was
something that when we looked atcommon themes from the surveys
for pre service teachers andprofessors motivating as

(34:04):
professors motivating theirstudents and as pre service
student students. You know, whatare best practices for
motivating students? What arebest practices? How do I engage
struggling readers? And I thinktheir questions really showed
I'm kind of going back to whenyou asked, like, what stood out
to you on that survey? I wouldsay, from the questions, from

(34:26):
their interest levels, fromtheir concerns. I think the pre
service teachers, they exhibitedthis desire to be the best they
can be. Like you could feel thecommitment in them. So anyway,
that is why this. We asked DrAnita Archer, and she was, like

(34:47):
a hands down, yes, she was justso thrilled that we were hosting
a conference for pre serviceteachers. And interestingly, she
attended all sessions. Sessions.
Not only did she present andattended the Q and A live, but
she attended all the sessionsand actively participated in the

(35:10):
Q and A so obviously thissession focused on how to engage
and motivate learners, and shekind of started off by doing
something that is totally AnitaArcher, right? She practices
what she preaches. She doesn'tjust talk about engaging and
motivating students. Sheactually presents effectively.

(35:32):
She presents like she wantsteachers to teach. And so she
started off by saying that goodinstruction always involves
participation. And then she wenton to explain how the
participants should beparticipating in her session
using choral choral responses,close reading, note taking. She
used hand signals, you know, allthe things she incorporates when

(35:53):
she teaches. She then went on tojust define motivation as the
general desire or willingness todo something. And what I really
loved, because I was able totake this back into the ed psych
course I was teaching in thefall, or this fall semester, was
the expectancy value theory,which suggests that students are

(36:13):
more likely to engage when theybelieve they can succeed and
when they see value in the task.
So she put out a simpleequation, success plus value
equals motivation. And Shestressed that it's strong
teaching, not gimmicks, notcutesy worksheets and activities
is what sets students up forsuccess, high quality teaching.

(36:36):
And another comment for studentsand Lori, you mentioned it in
Holly's archerisms, Anitaarcherisms, and the students
loved them. They found them verymemorable. One of them she
shared was teach the stuff andcut the fluff. So again, strong
teaching, not cutesy activities.

(37:00):
She talked about active teachingmethods are the key to
engagement and motivation, andthat passivity dampens
motivation. So we want highquality teaching because it
directly impacts studentsoutcomes. And again, how well we
teach is how well they learnanother Anita archerism, one of

(37:22):
the comments from students. Thisis a quote Dr Anita Archer
shared wonderful informationabout motivation in the
classroom, explaining thatmotivation looks like effort,
engagement, saying or speaking,writing, doing, providing
accurate responses, beingpresent, staying on task, and

(37:45):
learning. I think that reallysums up that first part of her
presentation really well. Andthen she goes on. The rest of
her presentation focuses ondescribing the seven elements of
effective, explicit instruction.
And so as Pepe did, I'm going toquickly summarize those seven.
Number one is focus on the mostimportant content, and then

(38:07):
break number two, break thatcontent down into obtainable
pieces, and that it's soimportant that we do that
because we need to avoidcognitive overload when we talk
and talk and talk and talk,right? And we provide lots and
lots of information, and I cantell you, I was guilty of that
as a teacher, you know, I wantedto get all the things in. So

(38:28):
sometimes we just go on and onand but really we need to figure
out what is most important. Andthen how can we break that down?
And so when we talk about,instead of having pre service
teachers creating lessons, let'shave them annotate high quality
curriculum. And this is where Ithink teachers can apply that.

(38:48):
Let's look at what does thishigh quality curriculum say I
need to do, but then annotate.
How are you going to break thatdown into manageable components?
Are there things in that lessonthat maybe aren't as critical,
that we might leave out or thatwe might not spend as much time

(39:09):
on? What do my students need?
The third element of effectiveinstruction, or explicit
instruction, was providinginstruction that is systematic,
and she talked about how shecoined the I do we do you do, or
the I do we do you do togetherand you do alone, practice and
or framework. And one of thestudents that really impacted

(39:29):
her, it was one of her bigtakeaways. And that student said
that her explain her explanationof the I do, we do you do?
Approach was insightful andpractical for structuring
explicit instruction. The FifthElement was active learning. And
another archism, everyone doeseverything, and I love this one,

(39:53):
and I really use this in myteacher prep. Courses, learning
is not a spectator sport. Ithink that's again, something
that as professors, we can takeaway again, not lecturing. But
how can we make sure that ourstudents, our pre service
teachers, are engaged andactively participating as well

(40:16):
as our pre service teachers? Howare you going to ensure that
your students, when you aredoing field experiences, when
you're in your student teachingand when you are a teacher? How
are you going to ensure thateveryone does everything? She
talked about some research inthis this area, as far as active

(40:36):
learning. She shared thatresearch on opportunities
respond, that research onopportunities to respond reveal
that when students have lots ofopportunities to respond, that
increases time on task, that, inturn, increases learning, which
leads to a decrease indisruptive behavior. And then

(41:00):
she also said, when we applythat to interventions, that also
enables us to intensify thoseinterventions, right? We don't
have to teach somethingdifferent. They need more
intensity, more time, moreinstruction, more practice. And
then she also shared, and thiswas like one of my big
takeaways, that research statesif all students used core or,

(41:22):
excuse me, if all teachers usedchoral responsive responses
instead of having students raisetheir hands, we we utilize core
responses that we'd havesignificantly higher outcomes
for students. I'm kind of letthat sink in. If all teachers
used choral responses instead ofhaving students raise their

(41:47):
hand, that would significantlyincrease the outcomes for
students. Her sixth element ofexplicit instruction is that we
need to monitor responses andthen Biggie, and adjust our
teaching so as we're teaching,monitoring what students are
doing, and then be able to takethat instruction and make it

(42:12):
meet the needs of our students.
Of our students are strugglingwith something, oh, we're going
to go backward and go back tothat I do. We're going to go
back to that we do. Componentnumber seven was providing
affirmative and correctivefeedback. I think we all know
that's really important forlearning. And then lastly, oh, I

(42:32):
have an eight here, so I wroteseven, but I have eight listed,
so we'll go give the eighth wasto incorporate deliberate
practice, retrieval practice andspace, or can be called
distributed practice, and that'sreally important as well.
And then a really big takeawayis that these elements should

(42:55):
happen every day, in everyclass, in every lesson, it's
kind of how she ended herpresentation. And then, as a
comment from a student that Ithink really summarizes this
component of her presentation,she said my key takeaway was the

(43:17):
importance of explicit andsystematic instruction to keep
students actively engaged.
Student involvement is key. Ifwe let students passively pursue
learning, we fail them. Howinsightful? Yeah,

that is powerful.
Thank you. Stephanie and DrArcher is a national treasure,
not only does she have all ofthis knowledge and and wisdom,
but she shares it so freely, andI don't even think we can begin
to measure the impact that sheis going to have on teaching as
a profession. So thank you forsharing that. Yeah, Vicky, you

(43:55):
got to introduce Mrs. Beckypalone, and she kind of showed
our students how it looks inaction. Tell us about that
session. Yeah,

that's exactly right. I love that we ended the
conference with her before wewent into the Q and A session.
Because, you know, we have allof these brilliant minds and all
of the wonderful tidbits thatthey have added throughout the
entire conference, and then shewas really able to say, and then

(44:33):
this is what it looks like in akindergarten classroom. So,
yeah, so Becky Pallone is acurrently teaching kindergarten,
although most of her career shespent teaching first grade and
kindergarten. She has 20 yearsof experience, and she is
currently in the classroom. Andwe found her, I think Stacy, you

(44:54):
had seen her on x, and she postsa lot of videos. Yeah,

I used in. With my students, actually, so they knew
who she was. Oh, fantastic.

That's amazing, yes. And so I didn't, I didn't
realize that. So I had to goback and find some of those. I
had heard her on previouspodcasts, on other podcasts,
she's just, she's just amazing,because she really does, has
taken all of the research andall of this information and then
put it into practice. She is agoyim literacy fellow in 2022 is

(45:28):
when she completed that. Shedoes have her reading specialist
and literacy coachcertification, but she has
chosen to stay in thekindergarten classroom, and so
her presentation was all abouttaking the viewers through a
typical year, what she does atthe beginning of a year in
kindergarten, and then what shedoes in the middle of the year,

(45:51):
and then how she ends rounds outher kindergarten year. And what
I loved about her presentationwas she showed videos of herself
teaching in the classroom. Shealso, she recorded herself in
her own classroom. She modeled alot. She had her own whiteboard

(46:12):
out there, and she was modelingexactly how she instructs her
kindergarteners on on some ofthese foundational skills. And I
didn't really pull out a quote.
Well, I had a quote, but I alsolooked through the students
responses, and they pulled outthe same one that I did. I saw

(46:32):
this, this same quote, over andover and over again, and that
was specific, structuredroutines build great skills, and
that's exactly what she modeled.
So she started out with that,and then she showed like, these
routines are the same routinesthat I use throughout the year.

(46:52):
They change a little bit basedon like, as the students get
master some skills and learnsome skills, then we go a little
bit harder, a little bit moredifficult throughout the year,
but this the structure and theexplicit, systematic, intensive
routines stay the same. So yeah,one of the quotes that I took

(47:16):
from the students reflectionswas, I would love to go watch
her teach in the classroom,because she sounds like an
amazing teacher and has so muchknowledge to offer. I want to be
a kindergarten teacher. Sohearing from her was really
cool. I enjoyed learning andhearing that multi sensory
learning is so important forstudents, as well as working and
developing their fine motorskills. And she really did show

(47:38):
the integration of writing andreading as well and so and

I saw a lot of comments from pre service
teachers saying how gratefulthey were to see it in action.
And that was fantastic. Um, theone thing I failed to mention is
that we will put in the shownotes links to all of these
sessions. So even though we'redoing an abbreviated Recap, you

(48:03):
will have access to go watchthem and learn for yourself for
how fantastic these presentersare. Our final session was a
live Q and A with all of thepresenters, and they were so
gracious to come back and joinus for that and Andrea setmeier

(48:24):
was the moderator. She did suchan expert job. So we definitely
want to thank Andrea andactually the reading league in
general, because they alsoparticipated in this conference
in a way that set ourexpectation of kind of kind of
building this community aroundthe profession, and they invited

(48:46):
our pre service teachers withopen arms into the reading
League and gave them informationand resources. So we cannot
thank the reading league enough.
Thank you so much for yoursupport and for your
participation, and I should saytoo that they are probably the
reason that we had 1500 peopleregister, because they shared
the conference on their socialmedia. And I know a lot of

(49:08):
people registered because ofthat, so thanks so much to them.
So for the Q and A, what Ithought I would do is just ask
each of you if you had atakeaway from that session. I
actually learned a lot from it.
I thought was really great. Iguess

one take I had, I have two. One of my
takeaways was just, and I thinkit's pulls all of the sessions
together, was Doctor Dr Lanereiterated during the Q and A
session that efficient andeffective routines do way more
to increase engagement andreduce disruptive behavior than

(49:48):
gimmicks that we often see, thatwe that that are added to,
quote, unquote, jazz up lessons.
Um, what do you guys think about

that? Yeah, she did reiterate, cut the fluff. Uh,
and teach this stuff, I willtell you, my students have had
the most conversation, probablyabout that archerism than
anything else. And I've had toclarify that that doesn't mean
that learning is not fun. It isvery fun, but we want to be
intentional. Yeah.

And I think Anita shared her poster that
students can get her poster andand I agree in in pre service
training, I tried to encouragemy students not to use the word
fun, but to use engaged right tohave students. We're not trying
to create fun activities andlessons. We're trying to to

(50:37):
teach engaging lessons and thenkind of sidebar. My other
comment for the Q and A, ortakeaway from the Q and A, was
two, what I saw as two shiftsthat Anita and Holly and I think
the others would support this aswell, two shifts that are needed
and teacher prep programs. Onewas I mentioned it earlier, to

(51:01):
have pre service teachers moveaway from having to create
lessons, but instead using highquality, evidence based
materials going in andannotating how you are going to
make those lessons engaging.
What do you need to adjust? Areyou how are you going to have
students respond? Is it going tobe a core response? Is it going
to be a whiteboard hold up, butmaking that shift in a teacher

(51:25):
prep and then also, not onlyteaching pre service teachers
how to move away from juststanding up and lecturing, but
how are they going to getstudents actively engaged? But I
think that also applies to us asinstructors, instead of us
providing lectures, how are weutilizing explicit instruction?

(51:50):
How are we utilizing the I dowe? Do you do framework? How are
we utilizing activeparticipation to make our
students or to help our studentslearn the material, but see we
need to model it. And I'm goingto have to give a shout out to
Professor Weimar here Pepe thatthat's something that she does

(52:10):
seamlessly. She teaches hercollege courses as she expects
her teachers, her pre serviceteachers, to go out and teach.
She models all of those elementsof explicit instruction. So
those are my big takeaways fromthe Q A Well,

Stephanie, I just have to say thank you for that
shout out. But that was mynumber one key takeaway from the
question and question and answersession is that, you know, we as
professors need to be modelingand showing the thing. So I
encourage all professors who areteaching anything and teacher

(52:48):
prep, make sure that if weexpect our students to do it, we
also do it first. So if we wantthem to do a lesson plan or
model something specific, weneed to show them. Anita Archer,
I do it. We do it. You do it.
Number one takeaway,

yeah, that's great.
Lori, what was your takeawayfrom the Q? I was

just so grateful for Dr Kerns, like I just he
just kept reiterating and was sopatient. And I just think
sometimes, when we're ineducation for a long time and
we've been doing the same thingfor a long time. It's really
hard to change and to like, belike, Oh, I was wrong. I need to
do this differently. I didn'tunderstand what dyslexia was. I

(53:31):
need to, I need to change howI'm teaching these kids. And he
was just super patient and justsuper knowledgeable. And I felt
like he did that with his Q andA. He did that with the everyone
Q and A, and just was superpatient with even professors
that were like, Well, what aboutthis? Well, what about this? And
just helping them to understandthat's not what dyslexia is.

(53:52):
This is what dyslexia is. And soI just feel like that is my wish
for all teachers out there is tohave those skills and knowledge
to know exactly what dyslexiais, what other reading struggles
are, so that they can really,truly make literacy attainable
for all kids, right? That'sThat's what our purpose in this

(54:13):
was, to help all teachers, alleducators, all professors, to
know like, what is needed tohelp every kid out there. So
that was my big takeaway. Thank

you, Vicky. What about you? So

my main takeaway was not so much. What was said?
Well, it was more how thecommunity, I mean, the science
of reading community, what Ihave found is so supportive and
really embraces everyone and isthere to help along the way.

(54:47):
It's not like a I don't feellike a whole lot of people are
in it to compete or to be thebest. And so it was just amazing
to me. I want to be, I want tobe Anita Archer. And I grew up
how incredibly, like she wasjust singing Mrs. Polons praises
during the Q and A session andsaying she is an excellent

(55:10):
teacher. How amazing would thatthat compliment be from Anita
Archer?

Yeah, there's no higher praise, I know,

right? And then in turn, everyone was like, you
have the goat here, right? Thisis Anita Archer, and I did see
that explicit instruction weaveits way through all of our
sessions, and also through the Qand A. And everyone was just on
the same page, but also justvery, very supportive one

(55:42):
another. And I just feel soincredibly blessed that we were
able to give that to our preservice teachers too, so that
they could experience like thisis these are amazing people.
These are big names in thescience of reading, and they're
not here to compete. They'rehere to support you and teach
you and help you along the way.
And so that, for me, that waswhat was so amazing. Yeah,

I loved that. And you know, Dr Archer also said,
when she was talking aboutlessons, lesson plans, she did
say that pre service teachersshould teach from a script. And
I think that's a scaffold thatis very essential. I've seen
that no matter the curriculumyou give them, they we remember
this as teachers finding thewords right, like the right way.

(56:25):
And so I think that is a perfecttime to use that script as a
scaffold. And then just to sumup to I think the whole thing,
because, like you said, Vicky,we want our pre service teachers
to have access to the science,we always want them to refine
their practice. And Dr Kearns,for the win again, on this one,

(56:48):
gave some really good advice.
And he said, trust the peoplewho are real, reading
scientists, not just thoughtleaders. And I think today in
our culture of influencers andthought leader is even a term
right? Like we can easily getswayed by people who may not
actually know the science andmaybe what they're doing is kind

(57:08):
of fluff or attractive in thatway, but it's not the stuff that
we need to be teaching, right?
So I think that was that wasdefinitely an objective that was
met by the conference is thatour pre service teachers had a
lot of access to these experts,but then we also left them with
a lot of resources. And thosewill also be linked for anyone

(57:30):
listening to this podcast, incase you want to access those as
well. I just wanted

to share one other thing, and I think going
back to Mitchell's keynote, he'sso passionate. And he said
practitioners skilled in theapplication of the knowledge,
the knowledge of the research.
And I think that just sums upeverything that we want, people.
We want teachers skilled in theapplication, and as instructors,

(57:58):
we provide the knowledge, but wealso provide the application. We
show them how to do that. Andall of our presenters
incorporated that into theirpresentations. And I think the
pre service teachers andinstructors, I mean, the passion
of all the presenters was justamazing. It really came through,
and whether their presentationwas recorded or live and in the

(58:23):
Q and A and I think the that wasvery appreciated by all the pre
service teachers and professors,yeah,

and a big thank you. I know we we could talk
about what we want for ourstudents forever, and maybe
we'll do that in anotherepisode. We were running a
little bit long, but this hasall been great content. So I do
want to just close by sayingthank you to each of you,
because it was an idea, and youguys supported it, and we were a

(58:57):
small but mighty committee,right, like I think that we can
be proud of what we offered, butit wasn't really us. It really
was the presenters that broughtit home, the support from the
reading League and just all ofthe the resources for our
students, our pre serviceteachers as students. And I tell

(59:18):
my students this all the time,but, but even after they take my
very first literacy course, Isay you're already more prepared
to teach reading than I was whenI graduated with a literacy
endorsement, right? So I'm soexcited for our students to see
how they apply this knowledgeand become the best teachers

(59:38):
like you've all said, they'reall very passionate and want to
do that. So thank you all forjoining us today. Thank you
listeners for joining us forthis special episode of literacy
talks, and we hope you'll joinus in the future for other
episodes of literacy talks, andwe'll see you next time.

Narrator (59:58):
Thanks for joining us today. You. Literacy talks comes
to you from Reading Horizons,where reading momentum begins.
Visit Readinghorizons.com/literacy. Talks to
access episodes and resources tosupport your journey in the
science of reading you.

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