March 26, 2025 • 45 mins
In this episode of Literacy Talks, Donell, Stacy, and Lindsay dive into Linnea Ehri’s article from Perspectives on Language and Literacy, exploring how reading proficiency develops over time through explicit, systematic instruction. From early learners to older struggling readers, the hosts reflect on the power of Structured Literacy to support all students—unpacking the phases of reading development, the role of decoding and spelling, and why practice and integration are key. If you've ever wondered how reading really takes root, this episode offers valuable insights—and maybe even a few laughs—along the way.
Article link: https://www.flipsnack.com/B88EAE88B7A/perspectives-winter-2024/full-view.html?p=48
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Episode Transcript
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Unknown (00:03):
Steve, 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
Stacey Hurst, a professor atSouthern Utah University and
(00:26):
Chief Academic Advisor forReading Horizons. Donnell pons,
a recognized expert and advocatein literacy, dyslexia and
special education, and LindsayKemeny, an elementary classroom
teacher, author and speaker. Nowlet's talk literacy.
Welcome to this episode ofliteracy Talks. My name is Stacy
(00:49):
Hurst, and I'm joined by Donnellpons and Lindsay Kemeny. And as
you know, this season, we arefocusing on the idea perspective
75th anniversary edition. Andtoday, Donnell is going to lead
our conversation about one ofthe articles in that edition. So
Donnell, we'll just turn thetime right over to you.
(01:10):
Great. Thank you, Stacey. So itmust be the mid winter thing,
because I think we're all just alittle bit, just need a little
break, right? So this might be alittle zany this episode. We'll
see. I get the the pleasure, andit really is, of introducing
this particular article out ofthe perspectives publication.
(01:30):
And it's by Linnea airy, andit's page 45 if you have or 46
if you've got your issue infront of you, or you have it
available and you want to lookit up. That's page 46 and this
is really good. I really enjoyedit, so it'll be fun to have a
conversation about it. The titleis, it's part of the what, like
I said, and the title isdeveloping word reading and
(01:52):
spelling skills with astructured literacy approach. So
that's the title, but she reallygets into the nitty gritty of
the alphabetic principle, whichis fantastic. And this will be
following on from that overviewepisode where we discuss Barbara
Wilson's article, the structuredliteracy and integrated approach
to the science of reading. Andso now we're going to be
discussing this. So we've hadsome really good topics. I mean,
(02:14):
just thinking back about thingsthat we've been able to discuss
so far, it's been reallyinteresting. And page 47 I want
to note as well, has a part ofthe info what we're calling an
info map, and it's the portionthat is the what. And so if you
want to take a look at that aswell, help guide our
conversation here, that that'sthe portion of the info map that
(02:34):
we're talking about. And I justwanted to begin by saying that
one of her quotes, so she'sreally good. She's got some
really good quotes in here, shesays, attaining reading
proficiency is a complex processthat involves the learning and
integration of knowledge andskills that emerge and grow over
(02:56):
time. Just think about that fora second, because there's a lot
of things that are not veryclear about how you teach
reading. It feels like, oh, butthis is really clear. So let me
read that again. Attainingreading proficiency is a complex
process that involves thelearning and integration of
knowledge and skills that emergeand grow over time. So a lot of
(03:17):
things that she's saying there.
So how can our understanding ofthis process be complicated for
educators as they may only beinvolved in maybe one year of a
student's life, when it reallyis a complex process. What do
you guys think? Lindsay, howabout you? Because you have
those early learners. You've gotthem for a year.
Yeah, it is a complex process,and I think for many of us,
(03:42):
maybe we didn't think that atfirst, because we thought that
learning to read was natural.
You know, this is kind ofgrilled into us, at least me in
my training, so I just thoughtit just kind of happened, and I
just had to have students read alot, and I would read to them a
lot, and they would learn toread. And the thing is, is, you
(04:03):
know what? For a small portionof students, it's really true,
they can pick up on the codethemselves. It's not really that
simple as but because there'sthings happening, right, that
they can make those connections.
But for so many more. It's muchyou know, the process of
(04:23):
learning to read is much morecomplex and takes, you know, in
addition to having them read,and in addition to reading to
them, takes a lot of explicitinstruction, which is like the
critical piece. So, yeah, I justthink it's interesting to think
back in my early years ofteaching, that I really thought
it was much more simple, butalso it was really kind of a
(04:46):
mystery for me, like, I'm justgonna have them read these
levels, and when we're exhaustthe levels, oh, we're going up a
level, and I'm doing my runningrecords and all the things, and
now, yeah, it's, it's much more.
Uh, complex, but it's also muchmore clear. So in some ways,
it's not as complex as it wasbefore, because before it was a
mystery, and now I understandwhat to do to help a struggling
(05:08):
reader. Does that make sense?
No, it does. Yeah. And Stacy, Ifind it interesting. It'll be
interesting your perspective,because you're teaching the
teachers and trying to give themthis understanding many of them
haven't been in a classroombefore. Yeah,
I also come at this from theperspective, not only as a
classroom teacher, and I have mystudents for a year, but then as
(05:31):
a literacy coach, where suddenlyI was seeing the patterns over
time in a school for thesestudents. And as you read the
quote Donnell, it reminded me ofHollis Scarborough's reading
rope, of course. But I think itwas during the 20th anniversary.
She gave a speech, 20thanniversary of the reading rope,
(05:52):
and she said, I think she wasasked if she could change one
thing, what would she change?
And she said, I would put at thebottom of the rope that these
things happen over time, and wehave as in in education, the
education system, we havecreated the construct of a grade
level, but maybe for teachers,and I put this to my pre service
(06:12):
teachers like this, that we needto not necessarily think in just
black and white, grade leveldevelopment, but also over time,
more like and we're going to getinto this because it's linears
article, but phases of readingdevelopment, no matter the grade
the student is in, and thatmight help them reframe the way
(06:34):
they think about that kind ofprogress. We're talking about
literacy,yeah, and you know, the second
part to that was, how caneducators reframe how they see
their impact on a student'sreading acquisition? And you
kind of both touched on that abit too, and I was just thinking
about the work that I do witholder students, so I'm getting
them long after they've gonethrough all those sort of
(06:55):
developmental, what you mightthink developmental stages
within a school setting,however, developmentally, in
reading terms, they didn't getthe help they needed. And so
they are, in a sense, stuck, andthey're they're using
inefficient, ineffective habits,techniques, whatever you want to
call them, that they'vedeveloped over time, to try to
make the thing happen becausethey didn't have the skills that
(07:18):
they needed. So that's kind ofinteresting, too. So I kind of
get kind of get to see the endresult of over time, not getting
the help that you need, becauseanywhere along that way. Because
I've had students of many ages,middle school, high school,
college, it is a lot easier tointervene if I'm able to get to
them sooner, even a middleschooler versus a high schooler,
and a high schooler versussomeone who's in adulthood. And
I think even my students wouldsay the same thing, boy, if I'd
(07:40):
have had you like, you know, somany years ago. And I think they
say that many times, and that istrue. So that's kind of
interesting.
Okay, just add to that, becauseyou have just sparked a thought
in me, because I know thatmiddle school, high school
teachers, they don't knowoftentimes, which students are
(08:01):
struggling with reading or not,but maybe if we could reframe
that for them as well and letthem to know that they might be
assuming that they're coming tothem reading, but helping them
to understand that they're not,and then also what to do if they
aren't, I think that would behelpful. As you said, some
(08:21):
students are stuck and nobodynotices it for a long time,
or, like you say, doesn't know.
They don't know what to do aboutit because they weren't given
the tools, right? So yeah,that's a something to think
about. She goes on to describethe reading rope, or
Scarborough's rope, that hasbecome so familiar to reading
teachers, by reminding us thatstudents learn components
represented by strands of therope. As these are learned, they
(08:44):
become integrated with othercomponents, and skilled reading
emerges. So again, we're stillhitting on the same thing, but
giving us a little moreunderstanding. And she's
emphasizing that developmentalframework of reading. And it
takes time, as you said, Stacy,that time is so important, tasks
build as they are taught overthis developmental time frame.
How do you see thisunderstanding impacting tiered
(09:06):
supports with reading and Stacy?
I'll start with you. What do youthink? Well, as I read this part
of the article, I was thinkingabout that the overtime thing
and what exactly takes the time,right? We have explicit
teaching, which is essential,but then it's what happens the
(09:27):
thing that takes the time is theself teaching that the student
essentially has to do whenthey're applying the thing
right, when they're reading. AndI think it's on page 48 that she
she words it like this, teachermanaged structured reading and
writing instruction, and studentmanaged reading and writing
(09:51):
practice. And oftentimes it'sthe practice that we are cutting
short, and that is. Studentsintegrate all of this, that's
where it becomes subconscious orautomatic,
yeah. And that drove home forme, in the our tiered support
system, how important it is thatit's dynamic. It has to be
(10:14):
dynamic to be effective, right?
And this drives that home too.
Lindsay, how about you got anythoughts on this conversation
we're having? Yeah,I was just thinking, Well, okay,
let's look at your tier one.
It's important to remember, likeStacy was saying about that
arrow going under theScarborough's rope, where we're
working on all of these skills.
So I'm a first grade teacher.
(10:37):
I'm not only working on thoseword recognition strands, and
then going to wait until thoseare good before I start working
on the language comprehension.
Then my rope is going to be likehalf of it is still going to be
frayed, and the other half isgoing to be tightly wound. And,
you know, students are behind.
So I am thinking about all ofthose things right now as a
first grade teacher, but then Irealize that some students are
(11:02):
going to need more support insome of these strands. So maybe
you could look at it that way,where as, okay, you know, this
student has great vocabulary andbackground knowledge, as I'm,
you know, doing our read alouds,and this is like, let's say,
beginning of the year, firstgrade. I'm doing lots of read
alouds where they have greatoral language skills. They can
converse with others, but wow,their phonological awareness,
(11:26):
you know, is really weak, andthat decoding and so I'm going
to need to provide anintervention for them on those
they're going to need to getsome more practice and
instruction in those areas ofthe rope, but I'm not neglecting
the other areas. We're stillworking on those, but they're
getting a double A dose ofthose. So perhaps that's just
one way to think of it. Somestudents will need more support
(11:48):
than others in some of theseareas.
I love that, Lindsay, that'sthat dynamic piece. You've
spoken to it beautifully. That'sexactly it, and I hope that's
got people thinking about thatintegrated as well? You're very
good to point that out. You'renot just attending to one
portion that's that integratedpiece. And do you think we
(12:08):
acknowledge the developmentaltime requirements needed for
students to acquire the variousskills and integrate it as well?
Do you think we acknowledge thatStacy? What do you think
I think I think probably it'snot second nature, right, like
we I was thinking about this inthe MTSS context, because we do
(12:29):
short change sometimes what astudent needs, like Lindsay was
saying, maybe we don't addressthe oral language strands if
they need that, or evenacknowledging that they need
more time, more instruction.
We're maybe over concerned withschedules, which I understand.
I've been teacher, you know howhow tough it is to fill a day
with really meaningfulinstruction and practice. So,
(12:54):
yeah, I think that system ofsupport is essential, and
sometimes there are parts of thesystem that aren't really
online, andwe can think about integration
in several different ways. Andas a first grade teacher, like
at the beginning of the year,these strands really are, like,
I have separate times a daywhere I'm focusing on on
(13:16):
different things. So like myphonics lessons, I'm more
focused on, you know, those theword recognition strands.
Doesn't mean I ignore the otherones. Like, I'm still going to
pull in vocabulary. If we needbackground knowledge to help us
with, like the Decodable text,I'm going to pull that in, but
it is still my main focus. Andthen later in the day, when I do
(13:37):
my close reading lessons, youknow, my focus there is on the
language comprehension. That'swhy, at the beginning of the
year, it's a lot of read aloudsin the lower grades, because
they can't decode yet. And Iwant to work on those. And then
as the year goes by, you know, Ican be introducing them into,
you know, more authentic texts,where we're going to start
(13:59):
integrating the skills ofdecoding and thinking about what
we're learning. And, you know,all all this, you know, the
critical thinking, that verbalreasoning, all that comes in,
but, and especially, I think, asas they get older. So I don't
know, I just, I was thinkingabout that word integrate,
because at first I'm like, Well,yes, but I still have main
(14:21):
focuses, and as students getmore proficient in reading, then
all those strands can comecloser together. Just kind of
like how the rope isI like how you've said that,
because that's making me thinkwe need to integrate, obviously,
our instruction, but also thestudent needs opportunities to
integrate it in practice, likeyou're talking about the
opportunities you give themLindsay, and
(14:44):
I'm thinking about it in thatolder space, the adult space,
and how oftentimes I'm pullingthe strands apart to see what
parts are less strong than otherparts so I can make them
stronger to bring them backtogether again. But it's
interesting to think about that,because I think I, too, am also
concerned. Learned all the timeabout integration. Eventually,
I'm bringing it all backtogether to make sure. Okay, so
(15:04):
now, how does it come together?
Is it working really well forthe student? Altogether? That's
really interesting looking at itfrom both ends and hard
for those secondary teachers,because, you know, most of them
are not as familiar withlearning to read, and so they're
looking at it with just thattight rope, and they're just
like, they can't read. And it'susually like, oh, they they
(15:26):
don't have good readingcomprehension, but they've
really got to break thosestrands apart to say, let's see
which area is it vocabulary?
Fine, you know, do they do theyhave an understanding of the
syntax and semantics? Fine. Youknow, it's usually the decoding
piece, right? So, I mean, itcould be a variety of things,
but just kind of interesting.
(15:47):
You can see the problem,especially with secondary. We
really need them to learn someof these basics, things that go
into reading. It's tough.
Yeah, I thought about that too.
It's like, oh, wow, what a toughjob. So she continues by
discussing phonemes andgraphemes. And this is all page
48 still. And of course, we'regoing to start there with the
phonemes and graphemes. We had aconversation in one of our past
(16:09):
podcasts too that dives intothis. So that's a good one to
listen to as well. But shecontinues by discussing them,
and I love her explanation. Shesays, when young children first
read their names or recognizewords in environmental print,
such as the word stop on a stopsign. They do this by
remembering salient visual cues,rather than letter sound cues to
(16:31):
move students to an alphabeticphase of reading using letter
sound cues, direct andsystematic instruction is
necessary. This approachrequires teaching students
letter, shapes, names and soundsand phonemic awareness. Boy, is
she clear. That's what I lovedabout the quote. It's so clear.
Okay, so right here. This may bevery, very different way of
(16:54):
thinking about how childrenlearn to read, from many
educators who were never taughtthat learning to read requires
explicit instruction in thevarious skills needed. What do
you think about how directly shegives this sort of piece of
background knowledge andunderstanding and in your own
personal experiences? Do youmeet people who have this
(17:15):
understanding, or are you stilltrying to find common ground
with people about where theunderstanding is. What do you
think Lindsay,it's, it seems so obvious, you
know, like it's almostembarrassing that you know it
has to be stated. Because Ithink sometimes, if you ask
people outside of education, youknow about the whole reading
(17:38):
wars or anything. They're like,Well, yeah, it's like, teach
them the code, you know, like,that seems, of course, but you
know, I don't know, and I thinkyou know, for some of us, where
we don't remember being taughtthe code, and maybe we cracked
the code ourselves. A lot of usin education are, you know, like
to read, and so it came easilyfor us. So maybe that's another
(18:02):
reason why. But, you know, Italked earlier about my early
years of teaching, and it whatlearning to read was kind of a
mystery, and I just thought ithappened, and I just was really
more reactive. What did theymiss in that, in that passage
they read and that? But what wasit? What was hard there? Okay, I
guess I'll teach that, you know,and, and so I love, you know. I
(18:24):
love the clarity here.
How about you, Stacy, I wasthinking the first time I
learned the phrase environmentalprint was in my balance literacy
and whole language instruction.
And, of course, what Dr Erie isdescribing. Here is the pre
alphabetic phase, right? Butit's not something we want to
(18:44):
spend our time on. And I was ledto believe we did want to spend
time on this. And so I hadstudents bring you know, cut out
like the name of your favoritecereal and and bring you know,
something that you recognize, asymbol or whatever, and I wasted
a lot of instructional time.
(19:05):
What she describes here is sucha clear process of moving them
out of that phase, which I wouldargue comes naturally, right?
Like we all start to learn torecognize things by their
salient features, but as weteach the code and letter
formation and phonemicawareness, then we're moving and
we're building parts of thebrain that need to be able to
(19:27):
map those graphemes to thephonemes and the phonemes to the
graphemes, right when we'rereading and spelling. So like
Lindsay said, It's so obvious,but, man, I really embraced and
leaned into, let's, let's spenda lot of time on environmental
print. Yeah.
You know, it's interestinglistening to the two of you
talk. It's really made somethings clear for me about my
(19:47):
students and working with olderstudents, and many of them this
environmental print piece,because they didn't move along
and they didn't take the nextstep progress. Uh, environmental
print, signs and signals, thatis still a real struggle. So I
(20:07):
cannot tell you how many timessome of my students with
dyslexia will say, boy, if theychange what they want us to do,
when you go to a certain officeand they put some I'm lost
during COVID, how many timesthey were yelled at because they
weren't following, they didn'tknow, they weren't reading, they
didn't look at because you, youlearn to, as many of them say,
you for you learn to ignore itbecause you is, I'm never gonna
(20:29):
be able to get through that. Iwon't be able to understand it.
And it's really interesting justthough how important that
progression is really made methink about as you two were
talking. So that's interesting.
Now, I love the way shecontinues to explain how words
are read by sight. So here's herquote, a powerful mnemonic
system is needed that glueswritten words into memory. The
glue that bonds them consists ofthe grapheme phoneme writing
(20:53):
system. Graphemes, or letters,are combinations of letters that
represent phonemes, the smallestsegmented parts of spoken words.
So how has this understandingimpacted your practice? How
about you? Lindsay, well, nowI know I need to teach that
right? Instead of just saying,here we're gonna gonna give you
(21:15):
this book you're gonna learn howto read. You know, before I give
them the book, well, we're goingto skip all those books where
they just read and look at thepictures and memorize the
patterns, right? We're going toskip all those and I'm going to
teach them those phonemegraphing correspondences and
then give them a book that hasthose phoneme graphing
correspondences that I've given.
(21:36):
So it's much different thanbefore.
Yeah, and Stacy, how about you?
And in teaching pre serviceteachers, because now you get to
give them this good news, right?
Yeah, well,and it really has refined my
practice, and I've mentionedmany times on this podcast,
thankfully, thank you. NationalReading Panel, I was able to
teach phonics at a time whenmost people were teaching
balanced literacy. I taught verysystematic and explicit method,
(22:00):
and so I saw that, but honestly,I was teaching it. I didn't
understand it on the level thatI do now. I think your knowledge
just becomes more and morerefined, but I feel lucky that
my pre service teachers get tolearn even something as simple
to us as there are about 44phonemes and over 250 spellings
(22:22):
for those, even that piece ofinformation by itself, I think,
really helps frame the way theyapproach their reading
instruction.
Yeah, and for older learners,this oftentimes being this clear
and explicit about what didn'thappen is like an aha, as to why
they're I'm still guessing ateverything. All right, why this
(22:44):
is so difficult. So I thinkthat's interesting as well,
offering you know, anexplanation. So on page 50, Ari
continues to explain thisfoundational alphabetic
principle and how it impactsspelling. So she says, in the
structured literacy approach,right from the beginning, it is
important to teach studentsgrapheme phoneme relations, how
to segment spoken words intophonemes, and how to select the
(23:07):
graphemes corresponding to thephonemes they detect in spoken
words. So let's talk about howdifferent this approach to
spelling is compared to how weprobably all learned to spell,
right?
Yeah. And what I did early in myteaching was, you know,
basically I did not teachspelling. I assigned spelling.
(23:27):
Yep, we did that pre test. Isend those words home, and I
didn't do anything with themuntil they came back on Friday
and tested like, how pathetic isthat? Why are we putting the
bulk of this on parents, youknow, or kids themselves to
teach them. So now I'm going to,I'm going to, I'm not even going
(23:48):
to give them a list, you know.
I'm going to teach the spellingcorrespondence, and then I'm
going to assess on Fridayswhether they can apply that or
not, not with like, I'm notgoing to give them a list of
words. I might say, Oh, we'repracticing O, W and O, U, ow,
this week, you know, you know,but it's on me. Now. The heavy
(24:08):
lifting is on me. Theresponsibility is on me. If they
don't do well on that on Friday,if they don't do well, then I've
got to re teach it.
And Lindsay, I love you, tookthe responsibility for that.
Sounds like it's heavy, but atthe same time, Lindsay, it gives
you it gives you the thing to dowhen things aren't going well
for a student, right? It alsogives you answers. Stacy, how
(24:30):
about you? You giggle too,because we both learn to spell
the same way, right?
I know I was thinking back togrowing up, and I do remember
lists of words that I memorized.
I don't know that they had anypattern associated with them. I
don't really know how I learnedto spell, but I was a spelling
bee champion, by the way, justPS, so somehow I was able to
(24:50):
hold that in my memory. But I'mthinking about I'm thinking
about the way I. Taught spellingwhen I taught first grade, I did
have we had a spelling testevery week on high frequency
words that went on the wordwall, and I missed an
opportunity because I wasteaching decoding and phonics in
(25:11):
a way I didn't know how tohighlight spelling. In that
sense, I wasn't sending homespelling words that match the
patterns that we were learningin phonics is very separate from
what I was doing in phonicsinstruction. We know it should
be connected. So, yeah,definitely that's changed over
time.
(25:35):
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(26:17):
You know what one of the coolestthings I think we could do for
students who struggle is to givethem a theme based spelling
list, where we do these spellinglists, like on, oh, it's, you
know, it's December. We're gonnado December words. We're gonna
do spring words. Oh, this isfun. We're gonna do all these
words from our text aboutastronomy. No, that is the worst
(26:40):
thing for them, it is cruel.
There's no rhyme or reason. Youhaven't taught the reason those
things are all spelled. Thosewords are all spelled. You know,
that is just, I mean, that'sjust setting kids up to fail.
You're bringing a very specificmemory to my mind. I worked with
this student as a readingspecialist who is in fourth
grade, and she was making greatprogress with our intervention.
(27:03):
However, in her classroom, shewas being given lists. They were
reading black beauty, and shecould not get the word beauty
correct, you know, for all ofher effort. And I remember at
the time feeling like andlearning since then that
research supports us. Weshouldn't be asking students to
spell words that they can'tread. Why would we do that, if
(27:27):
we haven't explicitly taughtthem? So you're right. It is
crueland and she goes on, so this is
really good, because we'vetalked a little bit about
spelling, and she goes on toreally take apart that decoding
piece in the structured literacyapproach, teachers help students
learn how to decode a wordsynthetically. And if that term
is new for some what that meansis that it's not naturally
(27:48):
occurring, so it's a contrivedway of having students attend to
the sounds and lettercorrespondences. That's what's
meant by that term, bytransforming each grapheme into
its corresponding phoneme andthen blending the phonemes to
pronounce the whole word andfind its meaning. Blending is
made easier if children arefirst taught to decode with
continuant consonants. So she'sgiving us a little bit of
(28:10):
pedagogy here. It might beeasier if you do this in the
initial position. These areconsonants that can be spoken
without schwa and can bestretched and held. It's like
she does this as in sip. Oncethe decoding process is learned
with continuance, otherconsonants can be introduced. So
she gives just a little minilesson, right there. So right
here, we can see why structuredliteracy is imperative for
(28:32):
students who may struggle tolearn to read, and why it can
also improve learning for allstudents, which is interesting.
I think this little exampletells you why all students could
benefit, not just those who mayhave dyslexia or another reading
difficulty, right?
She gives us a good scaffold,right there, in there. So if you
have a student that struggles toblend, what did she just say?
(28:55):
She says it's easier to betaught first with continuing
consonants. So you have thestudent that is struggling to
blend. Go back to words thatstart with continuous sounds.
Those are those sounds you couldstretch out so m, s, f, V, do
those first. And then, you knowwhen, once they've got the hang
(29:17):
of it and you've helped themwith blending, then go to stop
sounds.
I think that simple piece ofknowledge, it's teacher
knowledge, right? That will makethe difference here. It's one
little thing that will make avery big difference for a
student who's struggling toblend those sounds together. And
of course, a teacher is going tobe able to help many students
(29:38):
just with that piece ofinformation. You
know, I was talking with anolder learner who does not have
a reading difficulty. In fact,loves reading. However,
remembered having what to thatstudent their recollection, they
called a little challenge, andthat's how they termed it in
second grade, second going intothird grade. And it was
blending, and they rememberedthat pretty vividly. And. And
(30:00):
that they were moved into aclassroom with a teacher who had
received some training, and itwas training and how to break
things down, synthetic phonicsand getting that explicit,
direct help took off third,fourth grade just fine. So
that's that example of manystudents may benefit, right?
Because that particular studentobviously had a lot of other
skills, but Right? There was abit of a hiccup on getting to
(30:22):
the blend, right? It could haveturned into a big deal, but
instead, because a teacher whohad the practice, it didn't turn
into a big deal, right?
Which, going back to ourconversation about being
integrated, it's important,because it does have an impact
on comprehension, and we'retalking about an isolated skill,
but it ends up being integratedinto reading comprehension in
(30:43):
general.
Yeah, so it's interesting onpage 51 so I encourage listeners
to read page 51 because Ari doesa masterful job, I think, of
succinctly describing howteachers facilitate this
grapheme phoneme correspondencefor students. She also places
decodable books in their properplace. So the quote is, reading
(31:04):
words in decodable booksprovides decoding practice and
builds students cite vocabulary.
Children need to read text aloudrather than silently, so that
words are decoded rather thanskipped over, and spellings
become connected topronunciations and stores in
memory, and then she adds thesecomponents. These components are
explicitly taught in systematicphonics programs. So let's chat
(31:28):
about this for a moment.
Decodable books and theirappropriate use in reading
instruction. We have thoughts.
Stacey, why don't you start us?
Well, I'm going to start bysaying that one of the textbooks
I use in my classes isChristopher, such as teaching
primary reading, I think is whatit's called. And he makes the
(31:49):
case for calling it controlledtext, because in theory,
decodable text is anything youcan read, right? But if we're
controlling text, I think thateven that shift in the way we
refer to it might help teachersunderstand the use of it, right?
We're controlling for what we'vetaught as a scaffold. And of
(32:11):
course, authentic text is thegoal, but also the most
beneficial for learning. So wewant to get students there as
soon as we can. So I think thatis that, I think that's a good
call out that he makes.
And some call it connected toStacy, connected to what you
taught, right? Yeah.
I mean, decodables just made ahuge change in my classroom. I
(32:32):
mean, I was teachingkindergarten the first time I
switched, um, from thoseterrible, predictable,
repetitive texts to decodables.
And, um, what a difference,because that's exactly what I
want them to do. I want them topractice what I just taught
them, and that's what decodablesare going to do. We need to be
very careful. And we've talkedabout this before, and I'm
(32:52):
still, I still like really worrythat we are over correcting, and
it doesn't mean now that we onlygive students to COVID because
they only need them for a shortamount of time, and the goal is
to transition away from them.
So, you know, even just thisweek, I saw, you know, on social
(33:12):
media, a teacher saying, Oh, I'mfourth grade, and we're using
the you fly passages for arepeated reading practice. And
I'm like, fourth grade, those,those are decodable texts. Maybe
a few of your students wouldneed them, but not everyone, and
that shouldn't be your go tothey should be in regular texts.
So it's tricky, because noteveryone is ready to transition
(33:35):
at the same time, but if they'regetting good phonics instruction
in kindergarten and first grade,then a lot of them will start
transitioning the mid to endfirst grade. Now they still
might find a use for decodable,a harder decodable, especially
if you've just taught, like IGHor something, and then you want
(33:56):
to give them a word or a bookwith lots of IGH words,
wonderful, but you also need tobe scaffolding them into grade
level texts, regular, authentictexts,
yeah? Lindsay, I just want toclarify. How do you feel about
level text that wasn't reallyclear you did use in the magic
(34:16):
tips, I think you mean predict,predictable. Yeah? Predictable?
Yes, yeah. People are callingthem leveled. Get rid of your
level texts. I do not agree withthat, because any texts can be
leveled. Any text can be leveledfrog and toad. It's like a level
k or something well, and it canbe leveled in different ways.
(34:39):
And doesn't mean to get rid ofthem. The ones I'm saying to get
rid of are those predictable,repetitive ones that are like,
usually, A, B, C and D. Yes,that's where my mind
those are the ones I have verystrong feelings
about. And I think this is anarea like Lindsay, you just gave
the example that we candefinitely. Overboard on and we
(35:01):
need to be really careful aboutit. And Donnell, I know you and
I are on this specific listservwhere this has come up recently,
and somebody reminded us ofsomething that Louisa moat said,
because somebody was callingout, there's not enough research
to support the use of decodabletext. But specifically about
this, Louisa moat said absenceof evidence is not evidence of
(35:23):
absence. And then I did go downa small rabbit hole. And to be
fair, I don't know if I shouldbe mentioning it, because I
haven't read the article yet orthe research study, but I found
a research study out of the UK.
It's a meta analysis, and it'stitled, The use of decodable
texts in the teaching of readingin children without reading
disabilities, a meta analysiswith so I'm really excited to
(35:47):
dive into that, but I haven'tread it yet, so sorry for
mentioning it. I can't give youthe the highlights, yeah.
And then, just to to includeolder students here, this is,
this is a real challenge,because of you've heard me
lament, and many people talkabout when you're trying to help
an older learner go back andpick up those skills, they need
(36:09):
an opportunity to practice. Andthere isn't a whole lot of text
that doesn't feel like it justisn't appropriate text. And I
think my husband has talked manytimes with his own journey, his
own reading journey, gettingsome help and then trying to
have the opportunities to read.
So he'd take each of our youngerchildren and use their text, and
then each one would graduate,and he'd stay and continue to
practice. But he called thatinvaluable. It was just
invaluable. And then in talkingto my older son, who has
(36:31):
dyslexia, and you've probablyheard a little bit about his
journey, a fantastic readertoday, and I just enjoy
listening to him read, but heacknowledged we even had this
conversation just the othernight. He acknowledged how very
difficult it was to get to thatlevel, and he said that
represents so many hours ofreading and reading different
(36:54):
kinds of text that he said, Idon't even know how I would
quantify that for somebody. Ifsomebody if somebody asked me
how many that took, I don't evenknow how I would begin to do
that, he said it was countless.
And I know that because we werethere, we were there. So I think
that's really interesting. It'sit's important to acknowledge,
yeah, and so understanding theuse of text is really important.
(37:15):
So we're going to continue onjust a little bit. We're almost
to the to the end of thisarticle. It's been so good, and
I'm hoping you guys will have anopportunity to be able to pour
over it and read a little bit toyourselves. She also includes
syllable and morphemediscussion, which is great. She
says readers at the consolidatedphase. Remember, as Stacy said,
we're going along the phaseshere, she's talking about them.
(37:35):
Here we're at the consolidatedreaders at the consolidated
phase use multi letter units,that is spellings of syllables,
morphemes, prefixes, suffixesand root words to store sight
words in memory. Instruction instructured literacy classrooms
includes teaching students tobreak spoken word into syllables
or morpheme elements and to hearand see these bigger chunks
(37:58):
linking each spoken part to itscorresponding letters in
spelling. And I think we oftenpass over this phase. I do. I
think we do, but it's important,and it's every bit as important
as the partial and fullalphabetic phases. And I'm not
sure why we don't hear moreabout this phase, actually,
which is interesting. What doyou guys think, Stacy?
Do you know I think a little bitdifferently about this phase,
(38:20):
because this phase, more thanany other, I feel like, is kind
of an outcome. It's a result ofspending so much time with those
phoneme graphemecorrespondences, and the brain
just naturally startsrecognizing those chunks faster
and faster, right? But I wouldalso say, and I think this is
(38:41):
different Donnell with olderlearners, but with younger
learners, sometimes we skip tothat phase prematurely in our
instruction. I taught with wordfamilies, which were chunks, and
we know now that you shouldn'tbe teaching with that approach
until students have a solidunderstanding of phoneme
grapheme correspondences, right?
So sometimes we rush to thatphase and teach things
(39:03):
prematurely, I would say aswell, but you're right. People
aren't really talking about thatphase a lot
because a lot of my students arestuck here, which is
interesting. So yeah, Lindsay,you go ahead.
Well, I was thinking the samething that Stacy was just
saying, where it is backwards,because you'll see a lot of
people, you know, early phonics,doing those word chunks, word
(39:26):
families, and that's whatthey're focused on too soon.
Yeah, exactly. And, and I wonderif it's because, you know, it's
we're so focused it seems like,on the lower grades when we're
talking about beginning to read,and maybe that's why we don't
talk more about this, becausethis is, you know, this is your
(39:48):
which I think it's now getting alittle more attention. Is that,
you know, I know, right?
Because there's a lot of,there's a lot to talk about
here, right? And that's that wecan see in students, and might
inform us about what's going.
With a student that's kind ofinteresting when she was talking
about it,and it would be the time to
highlight things in instruction,of course, that we've been
addressing all along, but tohighlight morphemes. For
example, yeah, like she mentionsin syllables, yeah. And so
(40:14):
we're going to finish up on page52. Of those. Has been a
fantastic conversation. I hateto see it ending, but it has
been really fun. She'sdiscussing orthographic
conventions, and she reminds thereader, contrary to the belief
that only irregular or highfrequency words are read by
sight, all words listen heremany times, repeat after me. All
(40:35):
words become sight. Words readfrom memory once readers
practice reading them, makingtext reading much easier. Okay,
so again, she makes that point,and I'll become very important
to us. And yet I still hearplenty of people only
referencing high frequency wordsin this context.
Every word wants to be a sightword when it grows up. Right,
(40:57):
right? Jan was wehave a whole episode on that,
don't we? Lindsay? We do? Yeah,this is one thing that you
better not ever hear one of mystudents say. And I have
promised them, if I am in theirclassrooms at a future day and
time and I hear them refer tosight words and meaning high
frequency words, I will be onthe news and not in a good way.
There's a small list of reasonsthat will put me on the news,
(41:21):
and that is, that is one ofthem. And I think I again, I
feel lucky here that we have theopportunity to correct this with
pre service teachers, so theycan enter the field, not having
to rethink the way that they'relooking at those words, and that
no matter the spelling, we needto teach the correspondences,
especially the ones that are,that are consistent, because it
(41:43):
will help us to know all thewords at site. Right? We use
the, I often use the analogy oflearning to play the piano, and
I'm, I don't know if we were toput learning to play the piano
in something like Aries phases,I'd definitely be stuck in in
the not even the full I'm in theParsha, but I know people who
you can just put sheet music infront of them, and they just
(42:08):
play it like they've played it amillion times over again. And
that's reading by sight, right?
That's reading at sight, weshould say. But
I think that, you know, most ofus adults read by sight now, not
because we've memorized them,but because, you know that glue
that area is talking about hashappened that orthographic
(42:29):
mapping process where we'vematched the sound of the letter
and the meaning, and perhapsthat is why some of these
incorrect theories of readingexist. Because we just read the
words, it seems like we're notdecoding them, right. And so
then we're making students stopand decode and sound out every
word. And this is probably, youknow, part of the whole balance
(42:51):
literacy, whole language things,because we we wanted them to
just sound like readers rightaway. But in order for all these
words, all of the words Donnellto become sight words, we have
to slow down and go through thatprocess of bonding them in our
memory. So students need to bedecoding. They need to be
(43:12):
sounding out at the beginning.
We can't skip that step becauseit's a critical one,
and that's that for those olderlearners. And I'm going to put
my stamp in seal Onyx is thelast thing we're talking about.
But from this article, is howoften my students tell me that
they're so grateful that finallythey're able to read a text and
(43:35):
not have to think aboutabsolutely everything they're
doing and say, Is this theexperience everybody else is
having? I can't believe it. Ican't believe everybody else is
believe everybody else isexperiencing this. This is what
you do. This is what it's like.
Well, I think I'd really enjoyreading if it were like this for
me. And so it's good to hearthat statement over again,
because then they have anexpectation of what it should be
like, right? And they know whatit could be like. Yeah. Thanks.
Thanks for having theconversation. You're right.
(43:58):
Donnell, this has been a greatconversation, and it's made me
think Lindsay, as you weretalking about how our own
automaticity can somehow get,sometimes get in the way of our
own instruction that we readwithout even thinking about it,
speaking of the consolidatedphase, and what a gift it is
that we can give to ourstudents, literally, that will
(44:19):
last their lifetime If we canget them to that phase right
where they're readingautomatically, it's unlike maybe
a science or history test whereyou cram for the information and
then forget it. This isdefinitely a gift that lasts a
lifetime. So thank you for doingthe great work you do, and thank
you all for joining us for thisepisode, our next episode, we
(44:42):
will be able to visit with KateKane, and she is the author of
the article titled Making andconveying meaning, how
structured literacy integratescomprehension and composition.
That's on page 60 of the issue.
If you're reading along, you mayalso want to. Prepare by
reading, structured literacy andhandwriting, explicit
(45:02):
instruction of an essentialskill by Steve Graham that's on
page 56 and integrated languagereading and writing instruction
supporting automaticity, fluencyand proficient reading, by
Jessica Hammond on page 69 andthat will finish out the what
section of this issue. So we arelooking forward to more
conversations and lookingforward to having you join us on
(45:25):
the next episode of literacytalks.
Thanks for joining us today.
Literacy talks comes to you fromReading Horizons, where literacy
momentum begins. Visit Readinghorizons.com/literacy talks to
access episodes and resources tosupport your journey in the
(45:48):
science of reading. You.
Steve, 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
Stacey Hurst, a professor atSouthern Utah University and
(00:26):
Chief Academic Advisor forReading Horizons. Donnell pons,
a recognized expert and advocatein literacy, dyslexia and
special education, and LindsayKemeny, an elementary classroom
teacher, author and speaker. Nowlet's talk literacy.
Welcome to this episode ofliteracy Talks. My name is Stacy
(00:49):
Hurst, and I'm joined by Donnellpons and Lindsay Kemeny. And as
you know, this season, we arefocusing on the idea perspective
75th anniversary edition. Andtoday, Donnell is going to lead
our conversation about one ofthe articles in that edition. So
Donnell, we'll just turn thetime right over to you.
(01:10):
Great. Thank you, Stacey. So itmust be the mid winter thing,
because I think we're all just alittle bit, just need a little
break, right? So this might be alittle zany this episode. We'll
see. I get the the pleasure, andit really is, of introducing
this particular article out ofthe perspectives publication.
(01:30):
And it's by Linnea airy, andit's page 45 if you have or 46
if you've got your issue infront of you, or you have it
available and you want to lookit up. That's page 46 and this
is really good. I really enjoyedit, so it'll be fun to have a
conversation about it. The titleis, it's part of the what, like
I said, and the title isdeveloping word reading and
(01:52):
spelling skills with astructured literacy approach. So
that's the title, but she reallygets into the nitty gritty of
the alphabetic principle, whichis fantastic. And this will be
following on from that overviewepisode where we discuss Barbara
Wilson's article, the structuredliteracy and integrated approach
to the science of reading. Andso now we're going to be
discussing this. So we've hadsome really good topics. I mean,
(02:14):
just thinking back about thingsthat we've been able to discuss
so far, it's been reallyinteresting. And page 47 I want
to note as well, has a part ofthe info what we're calling an
info map, and it's the portionthat is the what. And so if you
want to take a look at that aswell, help guide our
conversation here, that that'sthe portion of the info map that
(02:34):
we're talking about. And I justwanted to begin by saying that
one of her quotes, so she'sreally good. She's got some
really good quotes in here, shesays, attaining reading
proficiency is a complex processthat involves the learning and
integration of knowledge andskills that emerge and grow over
(02:56):
time. Just think about that fora second, because there's a lot
of things that are not veryclear about how you teach
reading. It feels like, oh, butthis is really clear. So let me
read that again. Attainingreading proficiency is a complex
process that involves thelearning and integration of
knowledge and skills that emergeand grow over time. So a lot of
(03:17):
things that she's saying there.
So how can our understanding ofthis process be complicated for
educators as they may only beinvolved in maybe one year of a
student's life, when it reallyis a complex process. What do
you guys think? Lindsay, howabout you? Because you have
those early learners. You've gotthem for a year.
Yeah, it is a complex process,and I think for many of us,
(03:42):
maybe we didn't think that atfirst, because we thought that
learning to read was natural.
You know, this is kind ofgrilled into us, at least me in
my training, so I just thoughtit just kind of happened, and I
just had to have students read alot, and I would read to them a
lot, and they would learn toread. And the thing is, is, you
(04:03):
know what? For a small portionof students, it's really true,
they can pick up on the codethemselves. It's not really that
simple as but because there'sthings happening, right, that
they can make those connections.
But for so many more. It's muchyou know, the process of
(04:23):
learning to read is much morecomplex and takes, you know, in
addition to having them read,and in addition to reading to
them, takes a lot of explicitinstruction, which is like the
critical piece. So, yeah, I justthink it's interesting to think
back in my early years ofteaching, that I really thought
it was much more simple, butalso it was really kind of a
(04:46):
mystery for me, like, I'm justgonna have them read these
levels, and when we're exhaustthe levels, oh, we're going up a
level, and I'm doing my runningrecords and all the things, and
now, yeah, it's, it's much more.
Uh, complex, but it's also muchmore clear. So in some ways,
it's not as complex as it wasbefore, because before it was a
mystery, and now I understandwhat to do to help a struggling
(05:08):
reader. Does that make sense?
No, it does. Yeah. And Stacy, Ifind it interesting. It'll be
interesting your perspective,because you're teaching the
teachers and trying to give themthis understanding many of them
haven't been in a classroombefore. Yeah,
I also come at this from theperspective, not only as a
classroom teacher, and I have mystudents for a year, but then as
(05:31):
a literacy coach, where suddenlyI was seeing the patterns over
time in a school for thesestudents. And as you read the
quote Donnell, it reminded me ofHollis Scarborough's reading
rope, of course. But I think itwas during the 20th anniversary.
She gave a speech, 20thanniversary of the reading rope,
(05:52):
and she said, I think she wasasked if she could change one
thing, what would she change?
And she said, I would put at thebottom of the rope that these
things happen over time, and wehave as in in education, the
education system, we havecreated the construct of a grade
level, but maybe for teachers,and I put this to my pre service
(06:12):
teachers like this, that we needto not necessarily think in just
black and white, grade leveldevelopment, but also over time,
more like and we're going to getinto this because it's linears
article, but phases of readingdevelopment, no matter the grade
the student is in, and thatmight help them reframe the way
(06:34):
they think about that kind ofprogress. We're talking about
literacy,yeah, and you know, the second
part to that was, how caneducators reframe how they see
their impact on a student'sreading acquisition? And you
kind of both touched on that abit too, and I was just thinking
about the work that I do witholder students, so I'm getting
them long after they've gonethrough all those sort of
(06:55):
developmental, what you mightthink developmental stages
within a school setting,however, developmentally, in
reading terms, they didn't getthe help they needed. And so
they are, in a sense, stuck, andthey're they're using
inefficient, ineffective habits,techniques, whatever you want to
call them, that they'vedeveloped over time, to try to
make the thing happen becausethey didn't have the skills that
(07:18):
they needed. So that's kind ofinteresting, too. So I kind of
get kind of get to see the endresult of over time, not getting
the help that you need, becauseanywhere along that way. Because
I've had students of many ages,middle school, high school,
college, it is a lot easier tointervene if I'm able to get to
them sooner, even a middleschooler versus a high schooler,
and a high schooler versussomeone who's in adulthood. And
I think even my students wouldsay the same thing, boy, if I'd
(07:40):
have had you like, you know, somany years ago. And I think they
say that many times, and that istrue. So that's kind of
interesting.
Okay, just add to that, becauseyou have just sparked a thought
in me, because I know thatmiddle school, high school
teachers, they don't knowoftentimes, which students are
(08:01):
struggling with reading or not,but maybe if we could reframe
that for them as well and letthem to know that they might be
assuming that they're coming tothem reading, but helping them
to understand that they're not,and then also what to do if they
aren't, I think that would behelpful. As you said, some
(08:21):
students are stuck and nobodynotices it for a long time,
or, like you say, doesn't know.
They don't know what to do aboutit because they weren't given
the tools, right? So yeah,that's a something to think
about. She goes on to describethe reading rope, or
Scarborough's rope, that hasbecome so familiar to reading
teachers, by reminding us thatstudents learn components
represented by strands of therope. As these are learned, they
(08:44):
become integrated with othercomponents, and skilled reading
emerges. So again, we're stillhitting on the same thing, but
giving us a little moreunderstanding. And she's
emphasizing that developmentalframework of reading. And it
takes time, as you said, Stacy,that time is so important, tasks
build as they are taught overthis developmental time frame.
How do you see thisunderstanding impacting tiered
(09:06):
supports with reading and Stacy?
I'll start with you. What do youthink? Well, as I read this part
of the article, I was thinkingabout that the overtime thing
and what exactly takes the time,right? We have explicit
teaching, which is essential,but then it's what happens the
(09:27):
thing that takes the time is theself teaching that the student
essentially has to do whenthey're applying the thing
right, when they're reading. AndI think it's on page 48 that she
she words it like this, teachermanaged structured reading and
writing instruction, and studentmanaged reading and writing
(09:51):
practice. And oftentimes it'sthe practice that we are cutting
short, and that is. Studentsintegrate all of this, that's
where it becomes subconscious orautomatic,
yeah. And that drove home forme, in the our tiered support
system, how important it is thatit's dynamic. It has to be
(10:14):
dynamic to be effective, right?
And this drives that home too.
Lindsay, how about you got anythoughts on this conversation
we're having? Yeah,I was just thinking, Well, okay,
let's look at your tier one.
It's important to remember, likeStacy was saying about that
arrow going under theScarborough's rope, where we're
working on all of these skills.
So I'm a first grade teacher.
(10:37):
I'm not only working on thoseword recognition strands, and
then going to wait until thoseare good before I start working
on the language comprehension.
Then my rope is going to be likehalf of it is still going to be
frayed, and the other half isgoing to be tightly wound. And,
you know, students are behind.
So I am thinking about all ofthose things right now as a
first grade teacher, but then Irealize that some students are
(11:02):
going to need more support insome of these strands. So maybe
you could look at it that way,where as, okay, you know, this
student has great vocabulary andbackground knowledge, as I'm,
you know, doing our read alouds,and this is like, let's say,
beginning of the year, firstgrade. I'm doing lots of read
alouds where they have greatoral language skills. They can
converse with others, but wow,their phonological awareness,
(11:26):
you know, is really weak, andthat decoding and so I'm going
to need to provide anintervention for them on those
they're going to need to getsome more practice and
instruction in those areas ofthe rope, but I'm not neglecting
the other areas. We're stillworking on those, but they're
getting a double A dose ofthose. So perhaps that's just
one way to think of it. Somestudents will need more support
(11:48):
than others in some of theseareas.
I love that, Lindsay, that'sthat dynamic piece. You've
spoken to it beautifully. That'sexactly it, and I hope that's
got people thinking about thatintegrated as well? You're very
good to point that out. You'renot just attending to one
portion that's that integratedpiece. And do you think we
(12:08):
acknowledge the developmentaltime requirements needed for
students to acquire the variousskills and integrate it as well?
Do you think we acknowledge thatStacy? What do you think
I think I think probably it'snot second nature, right, like
we I was thinking about this inthe MTSS context, because we do
(12:29):
short change sometimes what astudent needs, like Lindsay was
saying, maybe we don't addressthe oral language strands if
they need that, or evenacknowledging that they need
more time, more instruction.
We're maybe over concerned withschedules, which I understand.
I've been teacher, you know howhow tough it is to fill a day
with really meaningfulinstruction and practice. So,
(12:54):
yeah, I think that system ofsupport is essential, and
sometimes there are parts of thesystem that aren't really
online, andwe can think about integration
in several different ways. Andas a first grade teacher, like
at the beginning of the year,these strands really are, like,
I have separate times a daywhere I'm focusing on on
(13:16):
different things. So like myphonics lessons, I'm more
focused on, you know, those theword recognition strands.
Doesn't mean I ignore the otherones. Like, I'm still going to
pull in vocabulary. If we needbackground knowledge to help us
with, like the Decodable text,I'm going to pull that in, but
it is still my main focus. Andthen later in the day, when I do
(13:37):
my close reading lessons, youknow, my focus there is on the
language comprehension. That'swhy, at the beginning of the
year, it's a lot of read aloudsin the lower grades, because
they can't decode yet. And Iwant to work on those. And then
as the year goes by, you know, Ican be introducing them into,
you know, more authentic texts,where we're going to start
(13:59):
integrating the skills ofdecoding and thinking about what
we're learning. And, you know,all all this, you know, the
critical thinking, that verbalreasoning, all that comes in,
but, and especially, I think, asas they get older. So I don't
know, I just, I was thinkingabout that word integrate,
because at first I'm like, Well,yes, but I still have main
(14:21):
focuses, and as students getmore proficient in reading, then
all those strands can comecloser together. Just kind of
like how the rope isI like how you've said that,
because that's making me thinkwe need to integrate, obviously,
our instruction, but also thestudent needs opportunities to
integrate it in practice, likeyou're talking about the
opportunities you give themLindsay, and
(14:44):
I'm thinking about it in thatolder space, the adult space,
and how oftentimes I'm pullingthe strands apart to see what
parts are less strong than otherparts so I can make them
stronger to bring them backtogether again. But it's
interesting to think about that,because I think I, too, am also
concerned. Learned all the timeabout integration. Eventually,
I'm bringing it all backtogether to make sure. Okay, so
(15:04):
now, how does it come together?
Is it working really well forthe student? Altogether? That's
really interesting looking at itfrom both ends and hard
for those secondary teachers,because, you know, most of them
are not as familiar withlearning to read, and so they're
looking at it with just thattight rope, and they're just
like, they can't read. And it'susually like, oh, they they
(15:26):
don't have good readingcomprehension, but they've
really got to break thosestrands apart to say, let's see
which area is it vocabulary?
Fine, you know, do they do theyhave an understanding of the
syntax and semantics? Fine. Youknow, it's usually the decoding
piece, right? So, I mean, itcould be a variety of things,
but just kind of interesting.
(15:47):
You can see the problem,especially with secondary. We
really need them to learn someof these basics, things that go
into reading. It's tough.
Yeah, I thought about that too.
It's like, oh, wow, what a toughjob. So she continues by
discussing phonemes andgraphemes. And this is all page
48 still. And of course, we'regoing to start there with the
phonemes and graphemes. We had aconversation in one of our past
(16:09):
podcasts too that dives intothis. So that's a good one to
listen to as well. But shecontinues by discussing them,
and I love her explanation. Shesays, when young children first
read their names or recognizewords in environmental print,
such as the word stop on a stopsign. They do this by
remembering salient visual cues,rather than letter sound cues to
(16:31):
move students to an alphabeticphase of reading using letter
sound cues, direct andsystematic instruction is
necessary. This approachrequires teaching students
letter, shapes, names and soundsand phonemic awareness. Boy, is
she clear. That's what I lovedabout the quote. It's so clear.
Okay, so right here. This may bevery, very different way of
(16:54):
thinking about how childrenlearn to read, from many
educators who were never taughtthat learning to read requires
explicit instruction in thevarious skills needed. What do
you think about how directly shegives this sort of piece of
background knowledge andunderstanding and in your own
personal experiences? Do youmeet people who have this
(17:15):
understanding, or are you stilltrying to find common ground
with people about where theunderstanding is. What do you
think Lindsay,it's, it seems so obvious, you
know, like it's almostembarrassing that you know it
has to be stated. Because Ithink sometimes, if you ask
people outside of education, youknow about the whole reading
(17:38):
wars or anything. They're like,Well, yeah, it's like, teach
them the code, you know, like,that seems, of course, but you
know, I don't know, and I thinkyou know, for some of us, where
we don't remember being taughtthe code, and maybe we cracked
the code ourselves. A lot of usin education are, you know, like
to read, and so it came easilyfor us. So maybe that's another
(18:02):
reason why. But, you know, Italked earlier about my early
years of teaching, and it whatlearning to read was kind of a
mystery, and I just thought ithappened, and I just was really
more reactive. What did theymiss in that, in that passage
they read and that? But what wasit? What was hard there? Okay, I
guess I'll teach that, you know,and, and so I love, you know. I
(18:24):
love the clarity here.
How about you, Stacy, I wasthinking the first time I
learned the phrase environmentalprint was in my balance literacy
and whole language instruction.
And, of course, what Dr Erie isdescribing. Here is the pre
alphabetic phase, right? Butit's not something we want to
(18:44):
spend our time on. And I was ledto believe we did want to spend
time on this. And so I hadstudents bring you know, cut out
like the name of your favoritecereal and and bring you know,
something that you recognize, asymbol or whatever, and I wasted
a lot of instructional time.
(19:05):
What she describes here is sucha clear process of moving them
out of that phase, which I wouldargue comes naturally, right?
Like we all start to learn torecognize things by their
salient features, but as weteach the code and letter
formation and phonemicawareness, then we're moving and
we're building parts of thebrain that need to be able to
(19:27):
map those graphemes to thephonemes and the phonemes to the
graphemes, right when we'rereading and spelling. So like
Lindsay said, It's so obvious,but, man, I really embraced and
leaned into, let's, let's spenda lot of time on environmental
print. Yeah.
You know, it's interestinglistening to the two of you
talk. It's really made somethings clear for me about my
(19:47):
students and working with olderstudents, and many of them this
environmental print piece,because they didn't move along
and they didn't take the nextstep progress. Uh, environmental
print, signs and signals, thatis still a real struggle. So I
(20:07):
cannot tell you how many timessome of my students with
dyslexia will say, boy, if theychange what they want us to do,
when you go to a certain officeand they put some I'm lost
during COVID, how many timesthey were yelled at because they
weren't following, they didn'tknow, they weren't reading, they
didn't look at because you, youlearn to, as many of them say,
you for you learn to ignore itbecause you is, I'm never gonna
(20:29):
be able to get through that. Iwon't be able to understand it.
And it's really interesting justthough how important that
progression is really made methink about as you two were
talking. So that's interesting.
Now, I love the way shecontinues to explain how words
are read by sight. So here's herquote, a powerful mnemonic
system is needed that glueswritten words into memory. The
glue that bonds them consists ofthe grapheme phoneme writing
(20:53):
system. Graphemes, or letters,are combinations of letters that
represent phonemes, the smallestsegmented parts of spoken words.
So how has this understandingimpacted your practice? How
about you? Lindsay, well, nowI know I need to teach that
right? Instead of just saying,here we're gonna gonna give you
(21:15):
this book you're gonna learn howto read. You know, before I give
them the book, well, we're goingto skip all those books where
they just read and look at thepictures and memorize the
patterns, right? We're going toskip all those and I'm going to
teach them those phonemegraphing correspondences and
then give them a book that hasthose phoneme graphing
correspondences that I've given.
(21:36):
So it's much different thanbefore.
Yeah, and Stacy, how about you?
And in teaching pre serviceteachers, because now you get to
give them this good news, right?
Yeah, well,and it really has refined my
practice, and I've mentionedmany times on this podcast,
thankfully, thank you. NationalReading Panel, I was able to
teach phonics at a time whenmost people were teaching
balanced literacy. I taught verysystematic and explicit method,
(22:00):
and so I saw that, but honestly,I was teaching it. I didn't
understand it on the level thatI do now. I think your knowledge
just becomes more and morerefined, but I feel lucky that
my pre service teachers get tolearn even something as simple
to us as there are about 44phonemes and over 250 spellings
(22:22):
for those, even that piece ofinformation by itself, I think,
really helps frame the way theyapproach their reading
instruction.
Yeah, and for older learners,this oftentimes being this clear
and explicit about what didn'thappen is like an aha, as to why
they're I'm still guessing ateverything. All right, why this
(22:44):
is so difficult. So I thinkthat's interesting as well,
offering you know, anexplanation. So on page 50, Ari
continues to explain thisfoundational alphabetic
principle and how it impactsspelling. So she says, in the
structured literacy approach,right from the beginning, it is
important to teach studentsgrapheme phoneme relations, how
to segment spoken words intophonemes, and how to select the
(23:07):
graphemes corresponding to thephonemes they detect in spoken
words. So let's talk about howdifferent this approach to
spelling is compared to how weprobably all learned to spell,
right?
Yeah. And what I did early in myteaching was, you know,
basically I did not teachspelling. I assigned spelling.
(23:27):
Yep, we did that pre test. Isend those words home, and I
didn't do anything with themuntil they came back on Friday
and tested like, how pathetic isthat? Why are we putting the
bulk of this on parents, youknow, or kids themselves to
teach them. So now I'm going to,I'm going to, I'm not even going
(23:48):
to give them a list, you know.
I'm going to teach the spellingcorrespondence, and then I'm
going to assess on Fridayswhether they can apply that or
not, not with like, I'm notgoing to give them a list of
words. I might say, Oh, we'repracticing O, W and O, U, ow,
this week, you know, you know,but it's on me. Now. The heavy
(24:08):
lifting is on me. Theresponsibility is on me. If they
don't do well on that on Friday,if they don't do well, then I've
got to re teach it.
And Lindsay, I love you, tookthe responsibility for that.
Sounds like it's heavy, but atthe same time, Lindsay, it gives
you it gives you the thing to dowhen things aren't going well
for a student, right? It alsogives you answers. Stacy, how
(24:30):
about you? You giggle too,because we both learn to spell
the same way, right?
I know I was thinking back togrowing up, and I do remember
lists of words that I memorized.
I don't know that they had anypattern associated with them. I
don't really know how I learnedto spell, but I was a spelling
bee champion, by the way, justPS, so somehow I was able to
(24:50):
hold that in my memory. But I'mthinking about I'm thinking
about the way I. Taught spellingwhen I taught first grade, I did
have we had a spelling testevery week on high frequency
words that went on the wordwall, and I missed an
opportunity because I wasteaching decoding and phonics in
(25:11):
a way I didn't know how tohighlight spelling. In that
sense, I wasn't sending homespelling words that match the
patterns that we were learningin phonics is very separate from
what I was doing in phonicsinstruction. We know it should
be connected. So, yeah,definitely that's changed over
time.
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(26:17):
You know what one of the coolestthings I think we could do for
students who struggle is to givethem a theme based spelling
list, where we do these spellinglists, like on, oh, it's, you
know, it's December. We're gonnado December words. We're gonna
do spring words. Oh, this isfun. We're gonna do all these
words from our text aboutastronomy. No, that is the worst
(26:40):
thing for them, it is cruel.
There's no rhyme or reason. Youhaven't taught the reason those
things are all spelled. Thosewords are all spelled. You know,
that is just, I mean, that'sjust setting kids up to fail.
You're bringing a very specificmemory to my mind. I worked with
this student as a readingspecialist who is in fourth
grade, and she was making greatprogress with our intervention.
(27:03):
However, in her classroom, shewas being given lists. They were
reading black beauty, and shecould not get the word beauty
correct, you know, for all ofher effort. And I remember at
the time feeling like andlearning since then that
research supports us. Weshouldn't be asking students to
spell words that they can'tread. Why would we do that, if
(27:27):
we haven't explicitly taughtthem? So you're right. It is
crueland and she goes on, so this is
really good, because we'vetalked a little bit about
spelling, and she goes on toreally take apart that decoding
piece in the structured literacyapproach, teachers help students
learn how to decode a wordsynthetically. And if that term
is new for some what that meansis that it's not naturally
(27:48):
occurring, so it's a contrivedway of having students attend to
the sounds and lettercorrespondences. That's what's
meant by that term, bytransforming each grapheme into
its corresponding phoneme andthen blending the phonemes to
pronounce the whole word andfind its meaning. Blending is
made easier if children arefirst taught to decode with
continuant consonants. So she'sgiving us a little bit of
(28:10):
pedagogy here. It might beeasier if you do this in the
initial position. These areconsonants that can be spoken
without schwa and can bestretched and held. It's like
she does this as in sip. Oncethe decoding process is learned
with continuance, otherconsonants can be introduced. So
she gives just a little minilesson, right there. So right
here, we can see why structuredliteracy is imperative for
(28:32):
students who may struggle tolearn to read, and why it can
also improve learning for allstudents, which is interesting.
I think this little exampletells you why all students could
benefit, not just those who mayhave dyslexia or another reading
difficulty, right?
She gives us a good scaffold,right there, in there. So if you
have a student that struggles toblend, what did she just say?
(28:55):
She says it's easier to betaught first with continuing
consonants. So you have thestudent that is struggling to
blend. Go back to words thatstart with continuous sounds.
Those are those sounds you couldstretch out so m, s, f, V, do
those first. And then, you knowwhen, once they've got the hang
(29:17):
of it and you've helped themwith blending, then go to stop
sounds.
I think that simple piece ofknowledge, it's teacher
knowledge, right? That will makethe difference here. It's one
little thing that will make avery big difference for a
student who's struggling toblend those sounds together. And
of course, a teacher is going tobe able to help many students
(29:38):
just with that piece ofinformation. You
know, I was talking with anolder learner who does not have
a reading difficulty. In fact,loves reading. However,
remembered having what to thatstudent their recollection, they
called a little challenge, andthat's how they termed it in
second grade, second going intothird grade. And it was
blending, and they rememberedthat pretty vividly. And. And
(30:00):
that they were moved into aclassroom with a teacher who had
received some training, and itwas training and how to break
things down, synthetic phonicsand getting that explicit,
direct help took off third,fourth grade just fine. So
that's that example of manystudents may benefit, right?
Because that particular studentobviously had a lot of other
skills, but Right? There was abit of a hiccup on getting to
(30:22):
the blend, right? It could haveturned into a big deal, but
instead, because a teacher whohad the practice, it didn't turn
into a big deal, right?
Which, going back to ourconversation about being
integrated, it's important,because it does have an impact
on comprehension, and we'retalking about an isolated skill,
but it ends up being integratedinto reading comprehension in
(30:43):
general.
Yeah, so it's interesting onpage 51 so I encourage listeners
to read page 51 because Ari doesa masterful job, I think, of
succinctly describing howteachers facilitate this
grapheme phoneme correspondencefor students. She also places
decodable books in their properplace. So the quote is, reading
(31:04):
words in decodable booksprovides decoding practice and
builds students cite vocabulary.
Children need to read text aloudrather than silently, so that
words are decoded rather thanskipped over, and spellings
become connected topronunciations and stores in
memory, and then she adds thesecomponents. These components are
explicitly taught in systematicphonics programs. So let's chat
(31:28):
about this for a moment.
Decodable books and theirappropriate use in reading
instruction. We have thoughts.
Stacey, why don't you start us?
Well, I'm going to start bysaying that one of the textbooks
I use in my classes isChristopher, such as teaching
primary reading, I think is whatit's called. And he makes the
(31:49):
case for calling it controlledtext, because in theory,
decodable text is anything youcan read, right? But if we're
controlling text, I think thateven that shift in the way we
refer to it might help teachersunderstand the use of it, right?
We're controlling for what we'vetaught as a scaffold. And of
(32:11):
course, authentic text is thegoal, but also the most
beneficial for learning. So wewant to get students there as
soon as we can. So I think thatis that, I think that's a good
call out that he makes.
And some call it connected toStacy, connected to what you
taught, right? Yeah.
I mean, decodables just made ahuge change in my classroom. I
(32:32):
mean, I was teachingkindergarten the first time I
switched, um, from thoseterrible, predictable,
repetitive texts to decodables.
And, um, what a difference,because that's exactly what I
want them to do. I want them topractice what I just taught
them, and that's what decodablesare going to do. We need to be
very careful. And we've talkedabout this before, and I'm
(32:52):
still, I still like really worrythat we are over correcting, and
it doesn't mean now that we onlygive students to COVID because
they only need them for a shortamount of time, and the goal is
to transition away from them.
So, you know, even just thisweek, I saw, you know, on social
(33:12):
media, a teacher saying, Oh, I'mfourth grade, and we're using
the you fly passages for arepeated reading practice. And
I'm like, fourth grade, those,those are decodable texts. Maybe
a few of your students wouldneed them, but not everyone, and
that shouldn't be your go tothey should be in regular texts.
So it's tricky, because noteveryone is ready to transition
(33:35):
at the same time, but if they'regetting good phonics instruction
in kindergarten and first grade,then a lot of them will start
transitioning the mid to endfirst grade. Now they still
might find a use for decodable,a harder decodable, especially
if you've just taught, like IGHor something, and then you want
(33:56):
to give them a word or a bookwith lots of IGH words,
wonderful, but you also need tobe scaffolding them into grade
level texts, regular, authentictexts,
yeah? Lindsay, I just want toclarify. How do you feel about
level text that wasn't reallyclear you did use in the magic
(34:16):
tips, I think you mean predict,predictable. Yeah? Predictable?
Yes, yeah. People are callingthem leveled. Get rid of your
level texts. I do not agree withthat, because any texts can be
leveled. Any text can be leveledfrog and toad. It's like a level
k or something well, and it canbe leveled in different ways.
(34:39):
And doesn't mean to get rid ofthem. The ones I'm saying to get
rid of are those predictable,repetitive ones that are like,
usually, A, B, C and D. Yes,that's where my mind
those are the ones I have verystrong feelings
about. And I think this is anarea like Lindsay, you just gave
the example that we candefinitely. Overboard on and we
(35:01):
need to be really careful aboutit. And Donnell, I know you and
I are on this specific listservwhere this has come up recently,
and somebody reminded us ofsomething that Louisa moat said,
because somebody was callingout, there's not enough research
to support the use of decodabletext. But specifically about
this, Louisa moat said absenceof evidence is not evidence of
(35:23):
absence. And then I did go downa small rabbit hole. And to be
fair, I don't know if I shouldbe mentioning it, because I
haven't read the article yet orthe research study, but I found
a research study out of the UK.
It's a meta analysis, and it'stitled, The use of decodable
texts in the teaching of readingin children without reading
disabilities, a meta analysiswith so I'm really excited to
(35:47):
dive into that, but I haven'tread it yet, so sorry for
mentioning it. I can't give youthe the highlights, yeah.
And then, just to to includeolder students here, this is,
this is a real challenge,because of you've heard me
lament, and many people talkabout when you're trying to help
an older learner go back andpick up those skills, they need
(36:09):
an opportunity to practice. Andthere isn't a whole lot of text
that doesn't feel like it justisn't appropriate text. And I
think my husband has talked manytimes with his own journey, his
own reading journey, gettingsome help and then trying to
have the opportunities to read.
So he'd take each of our youngerchildren and use their text, and
then each one would graduate,and he'd stay and continue to
practice. But he called thatinvaluable. It was just
invaluable. And then in talkingto my older son, who has
(36:31):
dyslexia, and you've probablyheard a little bit about his
journey, a fantastic readertoday, and I just enjoy
listening to him read, but heacknowledged we even had this
conversation just the othernight. He acknowledged how very
difficult it was to get to thatlevel, and he said that
represents so many hours ofreading and reading different
(36:54):
kinds of text that he said, Idon't even know how I would
quantify that for somebody. Ifsomebody if somebody asked me
how many that took, I don't evenknow how I would begin to do
that, he said it was countless.
And I know that because we werethere, we were there. So I think
that's really interesting. It'sit's important to acknowledge,
yeah, and so understanding theuse of text is really important.
(37:15):
So we're going to continue onjust a little bit. We're almost
to the to the end of thisarticle. It's been so good, and
I'm hoping you guys will have anopportunity to be able to pour
over it and read a little bit toyourselves. She also includes
syllable and morphemediscussion, which is great. She
says readers at the consolidatedphase. Remember, as Stacy said,
we're going along the phaseshere, she's talking about them.
(37:35):
Here we're at the consolidatedreaders at the consolidated
phase use multi letter units,that is spellings of syllables,
morphemes, prefixes, suffixesand root words to store sight
words in memory. Instruction instructured literacy classrooms
includes teaching students tobreak spoken word into syllables
or morpheme elements and to hearand see these bigger chunks
(37:58):
linking each spoken part to itscorresponding letters in
spelling. And I think we oftenpass over this phase. I do. I
think we do, but it's important,and it's every bit as important
as the partial and fullalphabetic phases. And I'm not
sure why we don't hear moreabout this phase, actually,
which is interesting. What doyou guys think, Stacy?
Do you know I think a little bitdifferently about this phase,
(38:20):
because this phase, more thanany other, I feel like, is kind
of an outcome. It's a result ofspending so much time with those
phoneme graphemecorrespondences, and the brain
just naturally startsrecognizing those chunks faster
and faster, right? But I wouldalso say, and I think this is
(38:41):
different Donnell with olderlearners, but with younger
learners, sometimes we skip tothat phase prematurely in our
instruction. I taught with wordfamilies, which were chunks, and
we know now that you shouldn'tbe teaching with that approach
until students have a solidunderstanding of phoneme
grapheme correspondences, right?
So sometimes we rush to thatphase and teach things
(39:03):
prematurely, I would say aswell, but you're right. People
aren't really talking about thatphase a lot
because a lot of my students arestuck here, which is
interesting. So yeah, Lindsay,you go ahead.
Well, I was thinking the samething that Stacy was just
saying, where it is backwards,because you'll see a lot of
people, you know, early phonics,doing those word chunks, word
(39:26):
families, and that's whatthey're focused on too soon.
Yeah, exactly. And, and I wonderif it's because, you know, it's
we're so focused it seems like,on the lower grades when we're
talking about beginning to read,and maybe that's why we don't
talk more about this, becausethis is, you know, this is your
(39:48):
which I think it's now getting alittle more attention. Is that,
you know, I know, right?
Because there's a lot of,there's a lot to talk about
here, right? And that's that wecan see in students, and might
inform us about what's going.
With a student that's kind ofinteresting when she was talking
about it,and it would be the time to
highlight things in instruction,of course, that we've been
addressing all along, but tohighlight morphemes. For
example, yeah, like she mentionsin syllables, yeah. And so
(40:14):
we're going to finish up on page52. Of those. Has been a
fantastic conversation. I hateto see it ending, but it has
been really fun. She'sdiscussing orthographic
conventions, and she reminds thereader, contrary to the belief
that only irregular or highfrequency words are read by
sight, all words listen heremany times, repeat after me. All
(40:35):
words become sight. Words readfrom memory once readers
practice reading them, makingtext reading much easier. Okay,
so again, she makes that point,and I'll become very important
to us. And yet I still hearplenty of people only
referencing high frequency wordsin this context.
Every word wants to be a sightword when it grows up. Right,
(40:57):
right? Jan was wehave a whole episode on that,
don't we? Lindsay? We do? Yeah,this is one thing that you
better not ever hear one of mystudents say. And I have
promised them, if I am in theirclassrooms at a future day and
time and I hear them refer tosight words and meaning high
frequency words, I will be onthe news and not in a good way.
There's a small list of reasonsthat will put me on the news,
(41:21):
and that is, that is one ofthem. And I think I again, I
feel lucky here that we have theopportunity to correct this with
pre service teachers, so theycan enter the field, not having
to rethink the way that they'relooking at those words, and that
no matter the spelling, we needto teach the correspondences,
especially the ones that are,that are consistent, because it
(41:43):
will help us to know all thewords at site. Right? We use
the, I often use the analogy oflearning to play the piano, and
I'm, I don't know if we were toput learning to play the piano
in something like Aries phases,I'd definitely be stuck in in
the not even the full I'm in theParsha, but I know people who
you can just put sheet music infront of them, and they just
(42:08):
play it like they've played it amillion times over again. And
that's reading by sight, right?
That's reading at sight, weshould say. But
I think that, you know, most ofus adults read by sight now, not
because we've memorized them,but because, you know that glue
that area is talking about hashappened that orthographic
(42:29):
mapping process where we'vematched the sound of the letter
and the meaning, and perhapsthat is why some of these
incorrect theories of readingexist. Because we just read the
words, it seems like we're notdecoding them, right. And so
then we're making students stopand decode and sound out every
word. And this is probably, youknow, part of the whole balance
(42:51):
literacy, whole language things,because we we wanted them to
just sound like readers rightaway. But in order for all these
words, all of the words Donnellto become sight words, we have
to slow down and go through thatprocess of bonding them in our
memory. So students need to bedecoding. They need to be
(43:12):
sounding out at the beginning.
We can't skip that step becauseit's a critical one,
and that's that for those olderlearners. And I'm going to put
my stamp in seal Onyx is thelast thing we're talking about.
But from this article, is howoften my students tell me that
they're so grateful that finallythey're able to read a text and
(43:35):
not have to think aboutabsolutely everything they're
doing and say, Is this theexperience everybody else is
having? I can't believe it. Ican't believe everybody else is
believe everybody else isexperiencing this. This is what
you do. This is what it's like.
Well, I think I'd really enjoyreading if it were like this for
me. And so it's good to hearthat statement over again,
because then they have anexpectation of what it should be
like, right? And they know whatit could be like. Yeah. Thanks.
Thanks for having theconversation. You're right.
(43:58):
Donnell, this has been a greatconversation, and it's made me
think Lindsay, as you weretalking about how our own
automaticity can somehow get,sometimes get in the way of our
own instruction that we readwithout even thinking about it,
speaking of the consolidatedphase, and what a gift it is
that we can give to ourstudents, literally, that will
(44:19):
last their lifetime If we canget them to that phase right
where they're readingautomatically, it's unlike maybe
a science or history test whereyou cram for the information and
then forget it. This isdefinitely a gift that lasts a
lifetime. So thank you for doingthe great work you do, and thank
you all for joining us for thisepisode, our next episode, we
(44:42):
will be able to visit with KateKane, and she is the author of
the article titled Making andconveying meaning, how
structured literacy integratescomprehension and composition.
That's on page 60 of the issue.
If you're reading along, you mayalso want to. Prepare by
reading, structured literacy andhandwriting, explicit
(45:02):
instruction of an essentialskill by Steve Graham that's on
page 56 and integrated languagereading and writing instruction
supporting automaticity, fluencyand proficient reading, by
Jessica Hammond on page 69 andthat will finish out the what
section of this issue. So we arelooking forward to more
conversations and lookingforward to having you join us on
(45:25):
the next episode of literacytalks.
Thanks for joining us today.
Literacy talks comes to you fromReading Horizons, where literacy
momentum begins. Visit Readinghorizons.com/literacy talks to
access episodes and resources tosupport your journey in the
(45:48):
science of reading. You.
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