October 22, 2025 • 50 mins
Fresh from the Reading League Conference in Chicago, the Literacy Talks trio—Stacy Hurst, Donell Pons, and Lindsay Kemeny—share highlights, favorite sessions, and key insights that left a lasting impression. From impactful keynotes to deep dives into phonological awareness, explicit instruction, AI in education, and writing practices, this episode is packed with thoughtful takeaways. Join the conversation as they reflect on what inspired them, what challenged their thinking, and what they’re bringing back to their own work in literacy.
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Episode Transcript
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Narrator (00:03):
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
(00:27):
Academic Advisor for ReadingHorizons. Donell Pons, a
recognized expert and advocatein literacy, dyslexia and
special education, and LindsayKemeny, an elementary classroom
teacher, author and speaker. Nowlet's talk literacy.
Stacy Hurst (00:46):
Welcome to this episode of literacy talks. I'm
Stacy Hurst. I'm joined byDonell Pons and Lindsay Kemeny,
and we are excited for thisparticular episode because we're
coming off of the energy of thereading league conference held
in Chicago, Illinois, we justgot back days ago, literally one
(01:08):
two days ago. And so we alwayslook forward to these recaps. It
helps us synthesize what welearned, and Lindsay is going to
lead our conversation today.
Lindsay Kemeny (01:19):
Okay, I absolutely loved this
conference, you guys. I had thebest time. I just felt like
rejuvenated and refreshed andjust it's amazing to be in this
place with all these othereducators who are just as
passionate as you know we areabout literacy instruction, and
(01:42):
I mean, throughout theconference, I just felt so
energized. There were a lot ofpeople there. There was 2400
attendees. We were in Chicago atthe Hilton downtown, which had
just beautiful meeting spaces. Imean, I'm particularly thinking
of that Grand Ballroom withthese gorgeous chandeliers and
(02:04):
just, you know, this justbeautiful ambience, the lobbies,
all the central areas. Let'sdive into sessions. And let's
start with, let's go like, dayone, day two, day three. And
that is something a littledifferent this year than
previous years is that they hadan extra half a day. So whereas
(02:27):
before it was just a two dayconference, today, it was like,
I mean, this year, it was liketwo and a half and we had two
different breakout sessions onthe first day. I think it was
Wednesday. But even before theconference officially started,
Stacy, there was the higher edSummit. So do you want to, you
(02:47):
know, start us off by sharing alittle bit about that?
Stacy Hurst (02:51):
Yeah, it was a combined effort between the
reading League and stars inhigher ed. And we have had
summits before, but the feedbackthat we received on this one is
it was the best one yet. Andlike you mentioned, Lindsay, it
was half day, but the structurewas that we had Dr Reed Lyon
come and talk to us, and thetheme of the summit was learning
(03:15):
from the past and lookingtowards the future. And he gave
us really excellent insightsabout his career, what he would
have done differently, and thenalso the hope that he has for
future. In fact, hispresentation was titled hope,
and I would be remiss if Ididn't mention thank you to
Reading Horizons, because theywere a sponsor that allowed Dr
(03:38):
Lyons to come. So that wasreally great. And Lindsay, you
were part of that summit aswell. And the panel that we had
after Dr Lyons keynote includedsomebody from every, almost
every walk of the educationalworld. We yeah, we had Dr Lyons
and his wife, Diane, who is anadvocate and a parent of
(04:01):
somebody with dyslexia. And thenwe also had Dr Anita Archer, and
I just can't help but smile whenI say her name. She is always so
direct and just has so muchwisdom. She was a great member
of the panel. And then we alsohad Dr Elsa Cardenas Hagan, Dr
Mitchell Brookins was themoderator for the panel. He did
(04:23):
such a good job. And then we hadMargaret Goldberg and Jamie
Allardyce had I don't I feellike I practiced his name, and I
probably say it differentlyevery time, but I wish every
principal could hear him. Andthen none other but our own.
Lindsay Kemeny was on the panelas well, and then that. And then
(04:44):
we just, I'll give the out, I'llcontinue giving the outline
Lindsay, and then I'd like tohear your takeaways too. But
then after that, we had tworounds of what we called book
talks for professors in highered who are always looking for
for textbooks and resources touse in their course. Is we had
many authors there with theirbooks. I say many. We had 10, I
(05:05):
think, and we had theopportunity to interface with
them and hear from professorsthat use their books and how
giving ideas about how to dothat. So what we had, I think,
almost 100 attendees to thatLindsay,
Lindsay Kemeny (05:22):
I thought Reid lion did a great job. I had not
heard him speak before, and sothat was interesting. And then I
loved being on the panel. Ithought Mitchell Brookins did an
excellent job of moderating itfor us. And I liked bringing in
the teacher perspective. And youknow, one of the things they
were asking was a lot of thequestions, of course, were
(05:47):
geared towards, you know, howcan we help pre service
teachers? What do they need toknow when they go in their first
year? And one of the points thatI had made was that, you know,
in our in our universities, ourteacher prep programs, hopefully
we are sharing these evidencebased practices. But I think
(06:07):
it's also important for thesebrand new teachers to understand
what practices are not alignedwith research and why. Because
inevitably, when they go intoschools, they're going to come
across some ineffectivepractices, and you know, they
might be paired with a mentorteacher who is doing something
that's not aligned withresearch. And so, you know, it's
(06:29):
going to take courage, ofcourse, to like, kindly say
something, but it's also takesthe knowledge that they don't
know the mistake, you know, thatwe're moving away from. Then
they they might not realize it'sa mistake. So I thought that was
something important for them,and I loved it was an honor
being part of the book talks,and it was really fun to talk
(06:51):
to, you know, the differentpeople that came up to my table
about how they could use sevenmighty moves in their pre
service courses. And there werea few different professors,
actually, that came that wereusing and could share with the
others, you know, what they weredoing. And then I also talked
about rock your literacy blog,how you could pair that with it
(07:15):
to get a more like, how doesthis look? What does a day look
like? So it was fun. And therewere a lot of other authors
there with fantastic books. Andit was just really casual, you
know, just chatting with peopleas they came up. But I thought,
I thought it was a great Ithought you guys planned a good
event, Stacy, like, there was avariety of things. It was kind
(07:36):
of different. It was great. Solet, let's move into sessions,
because after the higher edSummit, then, you know, we
grabbed lunch, and then it wastime for the conference. So that
first day, Donell, Donell, let'sstart with you. What stood out
(07:56):
to you that first day? Anysessions, any takeaways, or kind
of a little summary of thesessions you went to.
Donell Pons (08:04):
So I thought it was nice because we started at
midday. Sometimes you'll have toget there that night before and
then quickly try to register ifthey have an evening
registration, so you don't haveto jump in line the next
morning. So this midday was aninteresting way to do things,
and I think it really workedwell. So as Lindsay said, you
had an opportunity. You're ableto get your lunch and then you
start. So it's around 130 thatyou start that first session.
(08:26):
You don't feel that crush andthat trying immediacy, to try to
get your registration done andthen race down to that first
session. But we didn't startwith a keynote. Instead, we went
into sessions. And so that wasthat was also different, and I
thought it was, I was a nice wayto begin as well. So we weren't
all crowded together in thebeginning, we went off to
sessions, and then they also hadon that program that Lindsay was
talking about, a little asteriskthat said whether this session
(08:48):
was going to be a presentationthat would appeal to attendees
with a more advanced knowledge.
And I thought that wasinteresting, that they had that
indicator. And that was thesession I attended, one of those
to begin with, and that wasShane piasta and Beth Phillips,
and it was project Opal. So it'ssome research that's going on
about practices aroundphonological awareness. They
didn't have the data yet, soit's going to be very exciting
(09:10):
when it's out. They gave us anoverview of the research that's
going on, the projected timesfor when they're going to have
the information. But then theyalso gave some really good
information about things we knowalready, and the research what
it really does say and theresearch doesn't say. And in
other words, there's a whole lotof practice that's occurring
without a lot of research eitherway. So that was a really
interesting thing. And Lindsay,you were in there without that
(09:32):
one with me.
Lindsay Kemeny (09:33):
So yeah, can I jump in before you go to your
next one? Because like that, Iwas so excited for that session.
Donell, if you remember when youwent to triple SR this summer
and you came back during thatpodcast episode, I was asking
about this research study byHudson and others about
(09:55):
phonological awareness andphonological sensitivity, where
they found in pre. School thatthe students were being trained
in both phonological sensitivityand phonemic awareness did
better than the ones who whoonly had one or the other. And
so if you remember, I was askingJake downs a little bit about
that. So for our listeners, ifyou want to go back and listen,
(10:18):
that study still has not comeout yet. I think it's still in
review, but Shane piasta is theone who had shared that on
LinkedIn, and so I so I was soexcited to come to her session,
because I really wanted to hearmore about this. You know, does
this phonological sensitivitycarry more into kindergarteners
(10:39):
this? You know, are thoseresults strictly for pre K, and
there's a cap, we have so manyquestions. So her session was
fascinating and frustrating allat the same time, because, like
Donell said, they introducedthis project Opal, and in it,
they're doing a study where theyare looking at students who are
(11:00):
beginning with phonologicalsensitivity and then moving to
phonemic awareness. That's oneof the groups. Another group is
going to be phonologicalsensitivity only, another group
is going to be the delayedphonemic awareness. And then a
fourth group is business asusual. They are studying, gosh,
I think it's, is it kindergartenin first grade, and it's going
(11:22):
to be a three year study. Sothey are only in the beginning.
So I was like, That's what Imean, I'm so excited about this,
but so frustrated because wereally have to wait three years
before we get the results. ButDonell, I thought it was
fascinating when, I mean, it wasShane piasta and Beth Phillips,
and they it went, they wentreally fast, but they were
(11:43):
talking about what we know aboutthe science of teaching
phonological awareness. Andsurprisingly, like, there is not
a lot of research for teachingphonological awareness. And they
were saying there's a lot on,you know, the importance of it,
but not teaching it. And one ofthe big takeaways that they
(12:06):
shared was there are a lot ofinconsistencies and so many
unanswered questions about it.
So I thought that was, I thoughtthat was interesting. Okay,
Donell Go ahead, go to your nextyour next one you wanted to
share?
Donell Pons (12:23):
Well, the next one was Mitchell Brookins, unlocking
student potential, the writing,reading feedback cycle, and that
was really good, too. Did anexcellent job, walked us through
writing, yeah, and the reasonswhy explicit instruction in
writing isn't exactly what'shappening for a lot of students,
and then the importance ofmodeling as well. So we went
(12:44):
into the teaching aspects of
Lindsay Kemeny (12:45):
it. Yeah, I think Mitchell Brookins is just
a gifted speaker, and he's so hehas such deep knowledge. So I
loved it. One of the things hesaid, I went to that session
too. He said, How do you helpchildren show their brilliance
on paper. And I really lovedthat, and and I loved Donell,
(13:08):
how he was using the story ofblack beauty that was like the
text they're reading, and he wasshowing how he would have them
write in response to that. Andjust He did such a good job
showing how he's trying to pullout more information from the
students after reading thattext. And so he'd keep asking,
(13:30):
Why? Why? Why? To really kind ofprobe them to see what
information they know and andjust to activate their knowledge
so they could write.
Donell Pons (13:41):
So yeah, he went after a couple of things. I
thought was interesting. Iturned to Lindsay, and I said,
this is interrogating the thesisis and he's using it with his
young students, obviously on alevel that's useful and helpful
to them, but he's asking them togo after their own thesis,
asking those questions. So whywould that be the case? So what
do you think about that? Andthen the students have an
opportunity to respond. Andeither, by the way, they're able
(14:03):
to answer, they're able to tellthemselves, hmm, I don't think
that was really what I wastrying to say. Or that's right,
I didn't say a whole lot withthat. So that's that
interrogation part that Ithought was really interesting.
But he had a nice way ofhandling that with students. And
then the other was to look atvocabulary and see he was really
questioning. The student mayhave a denotation or dictionary
understanding of the word, butit's really the connotation, the
(14:26):
many layers of meaning that arereally important, particularly
in a text like black beauty,that you can get to those layers
of meaning. And that wasinteresting, as he took them
through the vocabulary too.
Yeah, that's really good.
Lindsay Kemeny (14:36):
And one of the ways he helped them improve
their thesis statement was doingsentence combining. So he did a
sentence combining activity tohelp, you know, really
strengthen their thesis and comeup with something that was
really strong. And I justthought that is like exactly the
way to build in sentence levelactivities. We don't only do
sentence level but we integrateit within the. Whole, you know,
(15:01):
the essay or the paragraph orwhatever. And that was one way
he did that. And I thought itwas fantastic, Stacy. What about
you? What sessions did you goto? Day one,
Stacy Hurst (15:10):
I went to Julie Washington, and her session was
titled The structure of areading revolution. It was one
of those sessions that had anasterisk next to it, and she
compared the phases ofscientific revolution, as
authored by Thomas Kuhn, towhere we are with the science of
reading. I thought she made alot of interesting parallels,
(15:31):
and something that I haven'tstopped thinking about yet, but
I haven't taken time to dive in.
I have a background insociology, so I want to compare
that theory to social changetheory and see how how they
match up. But she did a reallycompelling job of saying, This
is how change happens within thescientific community and gets
(15:54):
implemented. She also talked alittle bit about AI, and she
made a very solid point aboutlarge language models. And she
said the problem with thelanguage that's going into those
models is that it is created bya certain demographic, a
specific demographic, I shouldsay, and it is not doesn't
(16:17):
reflect dialectical differencesand so forth. And I think that
even that just little piece ofinformation that might have even
come up in a question and answerperiod, but I thought it was a
good point and something for meto think about as I work with
students who have who well, weall speak a dialog, but to be
(16:38):
aware of that when we're usingtechnology, I think that's
important. So she was great asalways, okay?
Lindsay Kemeny (16:50):
And let's go to day two. Day two is when we had
our opening keynote, and it wasHildebrand Peltzer, the third
who spoke, and he gave a reallypowerful keynote, sharing a lot
of stories about this connectionbetween illiteracy and the
prison system, and he asked usthree questions that I just want
(17:17):
to share with our listeners,just for you to think about
number one, what does readingfrustration look like at your
school? Number two, what is yourschool doing about it? And
number three, how are youcontributing to the school to
(17:41):
prison pipeline. What are youdoing or not doing? So I just
think those are some powerfulquestions that we can consider.
What stood out on day two foryou guys.
Donell Pons (17:58):
So that keynote was really powerful, and I do always
think it's interesting we talkabout the impact of reading
difficulties on a person's life,and we can pull out statistics,
and we might reach for reallydramatic circumstances, and for
a moment you see people evenhaving conversation after, you
(18:18):
might even see people leaningover and going, Oh my goodness.
And to me, where does that goafter? I really wanted to say,
let's even ask folks. A weekfrom now, will you be thinking
about this a week from now? Whatdoes this feel like? So if
you're shocked right now, andthese statistics feel really bad
to you and you don't think theyshould continue, what's it going
to look like a week from now?
Right? Because we're not goingto get change unless we all
(18:42):
decide we're really done andwe're not going to let up until
it changes. And so it was apowerful but I also wanted to
follow it up and say, Let's keepit going. Let's keep the power
going. So that was a thought Iwas having when he spoke, and
then those individuals that gotup and spoke after him, so there
were continued to be variousindividuals who got up to speak
after him, to contribute to theconversation. Again,
(19:04):
additionally. So it wasn't thatthey just left with that. So it
was, I mean, if they spent a lotof time with it, they gave us a
lot of information. Again, Iwanted to ask, what's it going
to look like a week from now?
Will we remember this? Weremember how outraged we felt or
the shock that we had? I washoping. Anyway, next session for
me I moved into was malt Yoshi,Emily Binks, Cantrell, Ramona,
(19:27):
Pittman and Taylor Seymour. Andit really was just malt Yoshi,
and he was talking aboutspelling. And Stacy, you were in
that one with me, and that washard to get into, wasn't it? I
mean, it was pretty crowded, anda lot of folks were in
attendance, and it was, spellingis the foundation of reading and
the greatest ornament ofwriting. And he was just talking
about the best ways to instructon spelling and the fact that we
(19:50):
don't again, some themes thatkept coming up, I kept hearing,
in terms of what we know aboutteaching and good teaching
practice was being very explicitin our instruction. Then also
modeling, and the fact thatmodeling is kind of seemed to
drop away. And everybody saidthat, no idea why, because it's
a fantastic teaching tool.
Modeling, we know it has greatresults. So he also brought that
(20:11):
up as well. I thought that wasinteresting.
Stacy Hurst (20:16):
Yeah, I thought that was a great session. And
really, oh, I don't know if wecall it a heritage session. He's
done so much to contribute tothe work, as well as his co
authors on that. And I was happyto see that it was so crowded,
because it really is. You coulda lot of the research that he
(20:38):
cited and went into detail abouthas been around for a while, and
you can see how that'sinfluenced what we're doing
today. I thought it was a reallygood, good session, too. Hey,
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(20:58):
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(21:22):
love it.
Donell Pons (21:23):
So Stacy, you and I got an opportunity to attend
another one that was AI. This isan individual who's working on
some AI. So he's not, you know,necessarily, from the education
world. However, he is doing workwith folks in the education
world, and he did teach for someyears in the classroom, but
reading really wasn't his forte,or not what he, you know, had
dedicated himself to doing, butreally it was in AI, and his
(21:46):
background in AI, and his desireto help facilitate, maybe some
of the learning around readingand reading instruction and AI.
So that was an interestingconversation. A lot of these
things are in the works. We'llsee how they turn out. He is
doing some work with you fly andproviding some back end
supports, but it was reallytalking about the potential
(22:08):
understanding exactly what is AIand the potential of AI. He
really had some interestingcomments that he made about the
hope that we don't lose thehuman element from teaching no
matter how supportive AI can be,and the pieces that AI might be
able to help equalize for folksin terms of reading instruction,
the human element, he keptemphasizing that how important
(22:29):
it is in reading.
Stacy Hurst (22:30):
And I thought that was fascinating, also because of
the order of sessions that Iattended. So I went to David
share right before that, and hewas talking about the
combinatorial model. But he wastalking a lot there. There's so
much to it. I loved it. I wantto take a deeper dive too, but
that he spent some time talkingabout the difference between
(22:52):
decoding and unitization, whichneeds to happen for proficient
reading to take place. And he hemade a great case to say, we you
need to start on this smallerlevel. You need to start with
the phonemes. You need to takeit apart. You need to and that
leads to unitization. And he wastalking about that. I learned a
(23:15):
new word in that session, whichI'm surprised. I haven't heard
it before, but it's lexeme. Wehave phoneme, we have grapheme
now, lexeme anyway, that's justan aside, but he was saying that
we need to start language startswith that. Then I went to VIV
session as well, and he said, hestated, the problem with AI
right now is that they're largelanguage models. They start with
(23:40):
whole units, and so it's notbuilt in a way that speech
progresses developmentally. AndI thought it was so insightful
that he called that out, and itwould only take somebody with a
reading background or influenceor resources to be able to say
that. And he said it makesdeveloping these things
(24:00):
effectively harder. So I thoughtthat was interesting. I think
we're going to see great thingsfrom him in the future.
Donell Pons (24:06):
Yes, I was really appreciative of his sensitivity.
The obviously he had done hisresearch and background, and he
was laying a foundation ofunderstanding, and it was very
sensitive approach. I reallyappreciated it too.
Lindsay Kemeny (24:21):
I went to some great sessions day two too.
First I spoke. So I got to speakand do a session on rock your
literacy block. So I talkedabout some effective practices
that we can use during, youknow, of course, anytime, but
especially focused on theliteracy block, and then I also
(24:42):
kind of talked about schedulingand walked through my day. And
it was great. I was speaking inthis beautiful ballroom, and it
was so surreal just to look outand see those gorgeous
chandeliers I mentioned at thebeginning. And so fun having
people come up to talk to mebefore. And after, like, I love
talking to other teachers,educators, coaches. You know,
(25:07):
they're they all have differentroles, but I just, I love
chatting with them. So I hadsuch a great time. And then I
went to so I told you I wasreally looking forward to Shane
piastres her session. The otherone I was really excited for was
Adrian, Adria truck and Miller'sand so I went to hers about
(25:29):
writing. Specifically. Thissession focused on sentences. If
you don't know who she is, sheis just a fantastic researcher.
And so she's been on my radarfor a while. So in fact, I had
to make sure, like, when I gotassigned, when I was speaking, I
just, I was like, I have to makesure I'm not speaking at the
same time as Adria, or I'mgonna, like, beg them to move
(25:51):
me, because I need to go to hersession. So she is just such a
brilliant person. She wasfantastic. She talked a lot
about the research behind, youknow, sentence instruction. Some
big takeaways that she mentionedwere integrating writing
(26:13):
instruction across levels oflanguage. In other words, you
don't do sentence only you areintegrating that you can work on
sentences within the text level.
And she was sharing, you know,research and things that support
that also not to forget thatthis starts oral. So even in
kindergarten, you can be workingon sentences within, you know, a
(26:36):
paragraph in the fact that youare speaking these right, and
you can teach them how to speakthese sentences, of course, you
know before they can write them.
She another takeaway. She talkedabout revising sentences in
their writing right? We don'tneed all this isolated sentence
(26:57):
work. We can do this. We canembed this in our writing
instruction, expanding oralsentences, she said. And she
said, do less, diagrammingsentences and parts of speech
and isolated sentence work. Sothose were like her three, do
less, do less, diagrammingsentences, do less parts of
(27:19):
speech, do less, isolatedsentence work. And one of the
things she explained was thatteaching the parts of speech
there there are no essa level,one or two studies conducted on
its effectiveness. And so shewas really talking about how we
need to think about the use, theuse before the label, right? And
it kind of reminds me of Big Skywhen we're talking about syntax
(27:43):
and how, like, the importantthing is, is the use and how
those phrases relate to oneanother, right? That's the
critical part. So I love sheshared some things that I still
like. Want to go back and thinkabout a little more. And then I
also went, went to young Sook,Kim, who is another brilliant
(28:07):
researcher. And I was expecting,I've heard her speak before, so
I was expecting her to be, asCurtis would say, very
researchy. I think Curtisdonell's husband is the first
one was like, yeah, it's kind ofresearchy, you know. And use
that. I was expecting her to bereally researchy, and she was,
(28:28):
but she was a fabulouspresenter. Like, I couldn't
believe, like, I started takingnotes for just how she was
presenting, because I wanted toremember that and even, and
like, do that the next time. SoI was thinking, okay, like I was
making all these notes, becauseI'm going to be presenting at
plain talk, and I was makingnotes like, Okay, do this, do
(28:50):
this, do this. And then eventhis week I have a webinar. And
after I watched young soo Kim, Iwas like, Okay, I liked this.
Put do this, do this, do this.
But she had a lot of good like,turn and talks. She had an
outline she followed. I justthought she did an excellent
job, but she was talking abouthow reading and writing are
built on these shared skills.
And so, of course, she sharedher interactive, dynamic
(29:13):
literacy model, which you guysmay have seen. It's a fantastic
model of reading and writing,and even though I heard her
speak about it before, it wasvery helpful this time as she
slowly went through it. Andsomething that really stood out
to me is that so she has, likethis base, like this house
(29:35):
analogy, right, of reading andwriting and the base, the very
foundation, is executivefunctioning, and part of that is
working memory. And one of thethings I just thought was really
interesting, and just maybe hitme in a new way, is that when
our students have differentstruggles, it usually all comes
down to that working memory. Andso she was saying, you know,
(29:59):
people were asking. So, youknow, is this why a lot of
students with dyslexia also havedysgraphia or dyscalculia? And
she was saying yes, because alot of those come back down to
the working memory. And it justto me, was this really nice
visual to see, like howeverything is built on that
foundation. But she wasfantastic. She talked about
(30:20):
ideas for writing for reading.
She talked about ideas forreading for writing. And then
she also mentioned that you alsoneed specific writing
instruction, and reading,specific reading instruction,
right? And so I, I I liked, youknow, a lot of times we're
(30:41):
always saying, oh, writing andreading should be connected. And
so she clearly showed that, butalso said, hey, you need reading
specific activities to like yourdecodable text and your fluency,
right? And and same withwriting, you need specific
writing instruction where youare explaining the writing
process and idea generation andrevision, and so I just thought
it was excellent.
Stacy Hurst (31:04):
She is brilliant.
That's a word I would use todescribe her over and over.
Donell, I remember aconversation you and I had this
summer all about that model.
It's one of my favorite models,if not my most favorite of
reading and how it develops. AndI have certainly appreciated the
iterations over time. She is anamazing individual. Lindsay, I'm
(31:26):
curious, what kind of things didyou notice in what she did to
present specifically, like turnand talk. What else?
Lindsay Kemeny (31:33):
Yeah, those turn and talk. She was very clear in
and you know what you see? Yousee presenters do this where
they kind of share their littleoutline at the beginning, but
she was really good at thisclear outline and then going
going back to it. So I that wasvery helpful, because I knew
where we were in thepresentation, and she just had
really good questions and placeswhere she stopped to have us
(31:57):
discuss and then come backtogether. Let's see if I put any
other notes. I think even at theend, she told us name one thing
you want to do next week.
Informed by our time togethertoday, she asked things like,
What are potential challengesand solutions for implementing
this? And so it was just reallywell done with those, those
(32:19):
little, those little tweaks, youknow. Okay, so let's go to day
three, our final day. Anystandout sessions for you guys?
Donell Pons (32:32):
Yeah, I came in late. I had another one that I
had popped into, but I came intoAmanda van der Hayden. She was
doing, following the Science ofInstruction, and that was really
good. She's also an associate ofMatt burns, and I'm hoping I'm
(32:53):
getting that correct, becauseshe was also math. And I thought
it listed math in there, but,yeah, I think that's right. And
she was talking about just theScience of Instruction period,
whether you're teaching readingor teaching math, and she has
some really underpinningguidance there. And we talked
about it before you've mentionedit. You've mentioned it in the
last presentation you had theexplicit instruction. So that's
(33:16):
a resonating theme. We know thatfrom structured literacy as
well. So that's the principle ofexplicit instruction, and then
enough modeling students seeingyou do it right, and that's the
Gradual Release ofResponsibility. It's in that as
well. So just talking aboutthese principles that we know
are really good, and thenwanting to see them more often
(33:37):
used across the board, whetherwe're teaching reading, we're
teaching math, and then also theidea of students who have
working memory. Difficultieswith working memory, there is no
better way to provideinstruction than to have it be
very explicit, to have itmodeled, to have an opportunity
to see someone else do it. Sojust again reiterating that fact
(33:59):
that if we know these thingsabout the students that are in
our classrooms, then it makeseven more sense to organize our
teaching around this. So she wasreally interesting. She talked
about sequencing of skills beingvery important. Of course, we
know that in talking about it'scumulative, it's systematic
within reading, but she alsoapplied that to math. So again,
we're seeing some some ways inwhich the two things speak to
(34:23):
each other. She was also talkingabout dosing and making sure
that the students are gettingenough time with the
instruction. And that wassomething else that Matt burns
also went into, is making surethat the instructional time is
appropriate, so that studentsget enough time with the
instructor and you're giving thenew instruction before you move
students on to doing theactivities. And he has seen a
(34:45):
disconnect. And she was alsospeaking to that too, between
those two things, and oftentimeswe're moving them before they're
ready, they haven't indicatedthat they're anywhere near
having mastered to a level theycan take that on their own. She
also mentioned something veryinteresting, particularly about
math, that. I've heard manystudents complain about and that
is, she said, there is a thingthat we see happening where we
give instruction and then thatfirst problem is quite different
(35:08):
from the instruction we'vegiven. And people like to call
that, she said, and I'm going touse it, and it's not a good word
in teaching productive struggle.
And she said, That's not, not avery good teaching principle,
but you'll hear people use it alot. She said the only thing
about struggle is struggle, it'snot productive. That's really
interesting. So she was prettyclear on that. And then Matt
burns came in and just wrappedit up. But within the audience
was Anita Archer. So AnitaArcher was sitting there. And of
(35:31):
course, as Amanda is giving herpresentation, she's too far to
the front to see that it's AnitaArcher. And Anita had has had
her arm up wanting to ask aquestion, and as Amanda finally
gets to Anita, who's had her armup and down and up and down
several times, as she getscloser, she's it's Anita, oh my
goodness, oh my goodness,unknown. Oh, answer the mic. And
then says, oh my goodness, Iapologize. My apologies. Of
(35:54):
course, Anita is unflustered.
She just goes ahead and sayswhat she's going to say. But
again, Anita being the queen ofexplicit instruction, right? Who
better to speak to that and justgiving her Yes, yes, yes,
definitely, explicitinstruction. And that the also
giving her two cents worth aboutthe productive struggle
(36:15):
business. Yep, don't know whatthat's about. We're just
struggling. So it was reallyinteresting. And then she hung
out for Matt burns as well whenhe came in and followed up again
with what Amanda was talkingabout. It was very good. It was
a really good
Lindsay Kemeny (36:27):
morning. It's interesting. The term like, so
I've seen on X everyone, like,all you know, talking about
math, pretty much about thisproductive struggle. And I use
like, they're all, you know,everyone's very passionate about
that. I actually use that termin, I think, a different way,
because I think that then theyare in math, yeah, they're just
(36:49):
struggling. It's nothingpredictive productive about it.
If they're actually struggling,I use the term in reading
productive struggle in the factthat I want them to decode the
words, and I'm like, I'm rightthere helping them, like, so if
they come to a word that'sirregular, I don't just tell
them the whole word. I tell themthe part they need, and then I
have them say the sounds toblend right, like in the word
(37:12):
house, if they haven't learnedoh you yet, I tell them, oh you
is Ow. And then to me, theproductive struggle is them
going Ouse and having to blendit house. Do you know what I
mean? And so it's justinteresting. I've used that a
lot. I'm like, That's theproductive struggle I want,
right? And it's just kind oflike the terms are being used
(37:32):
differently.
Donell Pons (37:34):
And I wonder if we're to stage Lindsay to make
it clear that that's productivepractice, because your students
are right because you're rightthere, you're right there,
making sure they're able to dothe thing. So maybe we start
being intentional about saying,Hey, we used to call this
productive struggle, but maybewe need
Lindsay Kemeny (37:50):
to distinguish I like that. I like that that
Donell Pons (37:53):
makes productive practice, and
Stacy Hurst (37:55):
I think it's related, actually, to
engagement, because we have, Ifeel like in our society today,
our students don't engagecognitively in the same way they
used to, because we're used toquick, you know, shiny things on
technology or whatever, and youreally do need to exert
cognitive effort to be able tolearn something and get it in
(38:19):
long term memory. Everybody hasto do that doesn't just slip
into long term memory. And so Isee that term productive
struggle and productivepractice. They're both the means
to an end, but we need to makesure they're productive, right,
that we are using those thescience of implementation and
instruction in a way that doesget the information into their
(38:42):
long term memory, and maybewe're talking about that term in
ways we haven't in the past. Ijust think it's interesting.
Lindsay Kemeny (38:48):
Yeah, I went to Ryan Lee James. She is fantastic
speech language pathologist, andshe had a lot of slides. And so
she joked about that she wastalking very fast and going
through the slides reallyquickly. There was a lot of
(39:08):
great information in there,though. And one of the things I
enjoyed when she was talkingabout a assessing or surveying
language surveys, like assessinglanguage so specifically oral
language, and she had a list ofthings to look for like things
(39:29):
like use of non specific words,like if they use the word stuff
or thing a lot, an excessive useof filler words,
circumlocations. Cains, I thinkit was where she's like, where
they're talking round and roundand not getting to, you know,
disorganized sentences, heirsand pronouns usage. She had
(39:52):
several other things, and I justwanted to share that. She said
there is a free survey on Coxcampus. It's called survey.
Saying language, so I made anote to check that out. And then
I also went to Matt Burns'ssession, and his session was
packed. I think Donell andStacy, you were both in there.
(40:12):
And I just have to say, like, Ijust love Dr Matt burns, and I
had seen him earlier in theweek, and got to chat with him
for a little bit, and he isjust, I just think he's like one
of the most friendly kindpeople. He's a researcher, but
he makes himself accessible toteachers, and he's out there.
(40:34):
He's out there on social mediatrying to help inform all of us
you know about the research. Hecan speak to teachers, I think,
in a in a great way. And so Ijust really appreciate him. And
he was talking about how,instead of always asking if
something is aligned with thescience of reading, we need to
(40:54):
change that and say, how strongis the evidence? How strong is
the evidence? And he talkedabout where a lot of people have
this misconception that thescience of reading is phonics.
So when they say, How does thisalign to science of reading, he
realized that what they meantwas, how does this align to
phonics? And so we've got, youknow, a bit of a knowledge gap
(41:15):
there. And he did. He sharedfive things that every positive
intervention had like when theylooked at this through studies,
five things that every good,strong intervention had. And
these are the five. Number one,appropriate challenge. Number
(41:35):
two, correctly targeted. Numberthree, opportunities to respond
so dr Anita, Archer fans, weknow that. Number four, explicit
instruction. Number five,immediate feedback. Any final
like, maybe favorite moment forthe conference, or anything you
didn't get to say that you want
Stacy Hurst (41:56):
to, well, just weighing in on Dr Byrne's
session. And those of you who'vebeen listening to our podcast
for a while know Anita Archerwas our first guest. Matt Burns
was our second. For a reason, wehave been followers. I've have
his for a long time. I certainlyhave. I like his ease of
research. He thinks like ascientist, but he applies it
(42:18):
like a teacher, and he cancommunicate that really well,
one thing that he just kind ofoffhandedly said during his
session was there is not a rightway to do the wrong thing, and
so I thought that was a goodthing to keep in mind if we're
trying to fit science into whatwe're doing, rather than looking
for the evidence first, it canfeel like we're we're
(42:40):
struggling, or our students willstruggle, right? Donell, what
stood out to you in thatsession? There was so much, huh?
Donell Pons (42:47):
Gosh, there was so much in that session. And I just
kept writing, jotting down, andyou've all mentioned some really
good things, but he keptbringing up memory, because, as
you say, it's the underpinning,right, and the working memory of
students. And he used that termseven plus or minus two for
students, of how muchinformation they can hang on to.
So they're not all the same.
Each one has a different number.
So that's that having to knowyour student. And he said,
(43:08):
they'll tell you what their rateof acquisition is. They show you
by their behavior. That's reallyinteresting. You don't need to
be guessing or wondering, butthe minute you hit it, you'll
know. They'll show you. And ifwe're not looking and we're not
in tune, realizing we're gonnamiss it, right? But they're
showing us all the time itdoesn't have to be difficult. In
other words, he's saying youdon't have to run a bunch of
mathematical equations, but youcan see it. They'll show you in
(43:29):
their behavior, time off taskwhen you exceed their rate of
acquisition. They're gonna showyou it's good.
Lindsay Kemeny (43:35):
Um, what? And that session was packed too.
Wow. There's people. He had abig room, and there's still
people on the floor. So I justwant to share my favorite moment
from the conference. I was sograteful. Reading Horizons
sponsored a book signing for me,and that was on day two at the
Reading Horizons booth, and theygenerously purchased about 60
(44:00):
books, copies of rock yourliteracy block to give to the to
the, you know, first 60 peoplein line. And, you know, I had, I
had finished speaking, I wasanswering questions. I came and
joined you guys for lunch forabout 10 minutes, and then I
headed over to the book signing,and there was just this enormous
(44:20):
line. And when I arrived, it waslike, they all started cheering.
And it was like, such a specialmoment. I was just like, oh my
gosh, I love all of you. Thankyou for the support. I've talked
before on the podcast. How youknow, it's like, it's nerve
wracking all these things andbeing out there, and when I feel
(44:43):
such like positivity and warmthand support from people, it just
makes it all, you know, it just,it makes me feel so good and
like it's worth it, and then I'mhelping others, which is what
keeps me going. So it was suchan amazing book signing. Was so.
Fun. I was just sad that theline was so long that took
people so long to get throughit, because, you know, and I
(45:06):
wish I had more time to talkwith every person. I had to go
kind of quick, but that was myfavorite moment of the
conference. So and big shout outto Reading Horizons for
sponsoring it and purchasingthose books. They even because
some people were in line waitingthe whole time and didn't get
their book, and so they're goingto send them, they're going to
mail them one, which I thoughtthat was really nice, so I'm
(45:28):
sorry we went over. We havetalked so much. It was such an
amazing conference, but I wantto give Donell just a little bit
of time, because the week beforethis, she went to the plane talk
about dyslexia conference. SoDonell, do you want to share
anything? Was this the firsttime they've done that
conference or the second? It's
Donell Pons (45:48):
either the second or the third. Okay, obviously,
it was my first time attending,and it was held in Baton Rouge,
and it was October 2 and third.
And it was a very goodconference. In fact, they had a
whole really nice handout manualto go with it there. We did have
swag bags that went witheverything. It was a traditional
conference set up with yourkeynote at the beginning, and
then you went off to yourdifferent classes. And obviously
this one was clearly set up totalk about dyslexia, so that was
(46:11):
the topic of conversation. Andthe keynote, Elsa car Dennis
Hagen, took us through whatwould be the proposed new
definition for dyslexia thatwill be voted on at this
conference this month, will beat the end of the month. And so
that was brought up, and shediscussed that, and then also
did some breakout session. Andthey had some really good
speakers. Julie Washington wasthere as well, discussing and
(46:32):
talking. And Christopher wooden,who does math at Landmark
Academy and has a math program,he's really good. So there were
some really good speakersinvolved in the conference. And
I was also able to see Mattburns. He was there at that
conference. And again, he hit itout of the park. He did a
fantastic job talking again,about working memory, best
interventions when yourintervention has stalled out.
(46:53):
And so practical. Again, notonly is he researched, but he's
also very practical, and I lovethat. He said, If I don't have a
point lowest, I'll go is a pointfour in terms of effect size,
but it's got to be higher. Andhe's so right, because you have
such limited time with students,and they working so hard. Eric
treatise, who's been part of Idafor a long time, he was at that
conference. He's a pediatrician.
(47:15):
He's written the pearl. D NancyMather was there talking about
the Todd. So really goodpresenters, very quality
conference with presenters, andthen they had a keynote speaker
on the second day. And I tellyou, he was phenomenal, Tommy
Mabry. Dr Tommy Mabry. Rememberthat name? He was on the
(47:36):
Jennifer Hudson show, soapparently there is some video
footage of him on that show, butI can't tell you. I mean, I've
heard a lot of keynotes, andsome very good keynotes. I'm not
saying that there aren't reallygreat keynotes, but there was
something about this man. Hestepped out and made sure that
he walked almost the entireauditorium, and we filled a
pretty big room. Obviously, itwasn't a huge conference. It
wasn't the 2500 that we had atthe reading League. It was more
(47:58):
like 300 and maybe four. And hemade sure to walk as He gave his
talk. And he's a tall, imposingindividual. He played sports
that was helpful, but as hewalked, he talked about his own
personal experience with readingand writing and shared some very
harrowing stories of growing up.
And it was that prison to theschool to prison pipeline that
he was headed on. And he's veryopen to talk about that, and
(48:20):
then how he was able to pullpull himself out of that, and
what it took in order to dothat, and then the work that he
does as an educator, and it waspowerful. I tell you, when he
was done, everybody just leaptto their feet and you were
applauding. It just really put afire in you. It was fantastic.
Really good conference and plaintalk, does it? I tell you again,
yeah,
Lindsay Kemeny (48:42):
I'm excited for plain talk, for literacy
conference, not until March, Ihave to wait, but I'm excited
for that. And Donell and Stacy,like you guys are going to Ida
conference next week, so Oh mygosh. And Donell for you, this
is your third conference in amonth, so I You're like, your
brain is going to be like, majoroverload, right?
Stacy Hurst (49:04):
Fourth, if you count the Wasatch reading summit
that Donell presented at. So, ohyeah, the Wasatch reading
Summit, yeah, that's great. Itsounds like it was a really good
conference, and it's always inBaton Rouge.
Donell Pons (49:15):
Donell, yes, so I think so, I think this one is
always in Baton Rouge, and itwas, it was a real I was
impressed. It was very good
Stacy Hurst (49:22):
conference. Good, exciting. Well, thank you,
Lindsay, for leading ourdiscussion today and sharing all
about your experiences of bothof you at the reading league
conference. And we should say,these are just three
perspectives. There were so manyother great speakers, I it was
hard to decide sometimes, and Ido have to say that they put
(49:46):
together a really great program,and I saw the science of reading
reflected in the sessions, thescience of implementation, which
is more systemic, and theScience of Instruction, so. Lee,
the reading league does it sowell, they address all of those
aspects of our literacylandscape and support in very
(50:09):
meaningful ways. So thank you tothe reading League, and thank
you too for this conversation.
As Lindsay mentioned, Donell andI will be attending Ida, so look
for a recap of that soon aswell. And thank you all for
listening, and we'll see younext time on the next episode of
literacy talks.
Narrator (50:32):
Thanks for joining us today. Literacy talks comes to
you from Reading Horizons, whereliteracy momentum begins. Visit
reading horizons.com/literacy.
Talks to access episodes andresources to support your
journey in the science ofreading.
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
(00:27):
Academic Advisor for ReadingHorizons. Donell Pons, a
recognized expert and advocatein literacy, dyslexia and
special education, and LindsayKemeny, an elementary classroom
teacher, author and speaker. Nowlet's talk literacy.
Stacy Hurst (00:46):
Welcome to this episode of literacy talks. I'm
Stacy Hurst. I'm joined byDonell Pons and Lindsay Kemeny,
and we are excited for thisparticular episode because we're
coming off of the energy of thereading league conference held
in Chicago, Illinois, we justgot back days ago, literally one
(01:08):
two days ago. And so we alwayslook forward to these recaps. It
helps us synthesize what welearned, and Lindsay is going to
lead our conversation today.
Lindsay Kemeny (01:19):
Okay, I absolutely loved this
conference, you guys. I had thebest time. I just felt like
rejuvenated and refreshed andjust it's amazing to be in this
place with all these othereducators who are just as
passionate as you know we areabout literacy instruction, and
(01:42):
I mean, throughout theconference, I just felt so
energized. There were a lot ofpeople there. There was 2400
attendees. We were in Chicago atthe Hilton downtown, which had
just beautiful meeting spaces. Imean, I'm particularly thinking
of that Grand Ballroom withthese gorgeous chandeliers and
(02:04):
just, you know, this justbeautiful ambience, the lobbies,
all the central areas. Let'sdive into sessions. And let's
start with, let's go like, dayone, day two, day three. And
that is something a littledifferent this year than
previous years is that they hadan extra half a day. So whereas
(02:27):
before it was just a two dayconference, today, it was like,
I mean, this year, it was liketwo and a half and we had two
different breakout sessions onthe first day. I think it was
Wednesday. But even before theconference officially started,
Stacy, there was the higher edSummit. So do you want to, you
(02:47):
know, start us off by sharing alittle bit about that?
Stacy Hurst (02:51):
Yeah, it was a combined effort between the
reading League and stars inhigher ed. And we have had
summits before, but the feedbackthat we received on this one is
it was the best one yet. Andlike you mentioned, Lindsay, it
was half day, but the structurewas that we had Dr Reed Lyon
come and talk to us, and thetheme of the summit was learning
(03:15):
from the past and lookingtowards the future. And he gave
us really excellent insightsabout his career, what he would
have done differently, and thenalso the hope that he has for
future. In fact, hispresentation was titled hope,
and I would be remiss if Ididn't mention thank you to
Reading Horizons, because theywere a sponsor that allowed Dr
(03:38):
Lyons to come. So that wasreally great. And Lindsay, you
were part of that summit aswell. And the panel that we had
after Dr Lyons keynote includedsomebody from every, almost
every walk of the educationalworld. We yeah, we had Dr Lyons
and his wife, Diane, who is anadvocate and a parent of
(04:01):
somebody with dyslexia. And thenwe also had Dr Anita Archer, and
I just can't help but smile whenI say her name. She is always so
direct and just has so muchwisdom. She was a great member
of the panel. And then we alsohad Dr Elsa Cardenas Hagan, Dr
Mitchell Brookins was themoderator for the panel. He did
(04:23):
such a good job. And then we hadMargaret Goldberg and Jamie
Allardyce had I don't I feellike I practiced his name, and I
probably say it differentlyevery time, but I wish every
principal could hear him. Andthen none other but our own.
Lindsay Kemeny was on the panelas well, and then that. And then
(04:44):
we just, I'll give the out, I'llcontinue giving the outline
Lindsay, and then I'd like tohear your takeaways too. But
then after that, we had tworounds of what we called book
talks for professors in highered who are always looking for
for textbooks and resources touse in their course. Is we had
many authors there with theirbooks. I say many. We had 10, I
(05:05):
think, and we had theopportunity to interface with
them and hear from professorsthat use their books and how
giving ideas about how to dothat. So what we had, I think,
almost 100 attendees to thatLindsay,
Lindsay Kemeny (05:22):
I thought Reid lion did a great job. I had not
heard him speak before, and sothat was interesting. And then I
loved being on the panel. Ithought Mitchell Brookins did an
excellent job of moderating itfor us. And I liked bringing in
the teacher perspective. And youknow, one of the things they
were asking was a lot of thequestions, of course, were
(05:47):
geared towards, you know, howcan we help pre service
teachers? What do they need toknow when they go in their first
year? And one of the points thatI had made was that, you know,
in our in our universities, ourteacher prep programs, hopefully
we are sharing these evidencebased practices. But I think
(06:07):
it's also important for thesebrand new teachers to understand
what practices are not alignedwith research and why. Because
inevitably, when they go intoschools, they're going to come
across some ineffectivepractices, and you know, they
might be paired with a mentorteacher who is doing something
that's not aligned withresearch. And so, you know, it's
(06:29):
going to take courage, ofcourse, to like, kindly say
something, but it's also takesthe knowledge that they don't
know the mistake, you know, thatwe're moving away from. Then
they they might not realize it'sa mistake. So I thought that was
something important for them,and I loved it was an honor
being part of the book talks,and it was really fun to talk
(06:51):
to, you know, the differentpeople that came up to my table
about how they could use sevenmighty moves in their pre
service courses. And there werea few different professors,
actually, that came that wereusing and could share with the
others, you know, what they weredoing. And then I also talked
about rock your literacy blog,how you could pair that with it
(07:15):
to get a more like, how doesthis look? What does a day look
like? So it was fun. And therewere a lot of other authors
there with fantastic books. Andit was just really casual, you
know, just chatting with peopleas they came up. But I thought,
I thought it was a great Ithought you guys planned a good
event, Stacy, like, there was avariety of things. It was kind
(07:36):
of different. It was great. Solet, let's move into sessions,
because after the higher edSummit, then, you know, we
grabbed lunch, and then it wastime for the conference. So that
first day, Donell, Donell, let'sstart with you. What stood out
(07:56):
to you that first day? Anysessions, any takeaways, or kind
of a little summary of thesessions you went to.
Donell Pons (08:04):
So I thought it was nice because we started at
midday. Sometimes you'll have toget there that night before and
then quickly try to register ifthey have an evening
registration, so you don't haveto jump in line the next
morning. So this midday was aninteresting way to do things,
and I think it really workedwell. So as Lindsay said, you
had an opportunity. You're ableto get your lunch and then you
start. So it's around 130 thatyou start that first session.
(08:26):
You don't feel that crush andthat trying immediacy, to try to
get your registration done andthen race down to that first
session. But we didn't startwith a keynote. Instead, we went
into sessions. And so that wasthat was also different, and I
thought it was, I was a nice wayto begin as well. So we weren't
all crowded together in thebeginning, we went off to
sessions, and then they also hadon that program that Lindsay was
talking about, a little asteriskthat said whether this session
(08:48):
was going to be a presentationthat would appeal to attendees
with a more advanced knowledge.
And I thought that wasinteresting, that they had that
indicator. And that was thesession I attended, one of those
to begin with, and that wasShane piasta and Beth Phillips,
and it was project Opal. So it'ssome research that's going on
about practices aroundphonological awareness. They
didn't have the data yet, soit's going to be very exciting
(09:10):
when it's out. They gave us anoverview of the research that's
going on, the projected timesfor when they're going to have
the information. But then theyalso gave some really good
information about things we knowalready, and the research what
it really does say and theresearch doesn't say. And in
other words, there's a whole lotof practice that's occurring
without a lot of research eitherway. So that was a really
interesting thing. And Lindsay,you were in there without that
(09:32):
one with me.
Lindsay Kemeny (09:33):
So yeah, can I jump in before you go to your
next one? Because like that, Iwas so excited for that session.
Donell, if you remember when youwent to triple SR this summer
and you came back during thatpodcast episode, I was asking
about this research study byHudson and others about
(09:55):
phonological awareness andphonological sensitivity, where
they found in pre. School thatthe students were being trained
in both phonological sensitivityand phonemic awareness did
better than the ones who whoonly had one or the other. And
so if you remember, I was askingJake downs a little bit about
that. So for our listeners, ifyou want to go back and listen,
(10:18):
that study still has not comeout yet. I think it's still in
review, but Shane piasta is theone who had shared that on
LinkedIn, and so I so I was soexcited to come to her session,
because I really wanted to hearmore about this. You know, does
this phonological sensitivitycarry more into kindergarteners
(10:39):
this? You know, are thoseresults strictly for pre K, and
there's a cap, we have so manyquestions. So her session was
fascinating and frustrating allat the same time, because, like
Donell said, they introducedthis project Opal, and in it,
they're doing a study where theyare looking at students who are
(11:00):
beginning with phonologicalsensitivity and then moving to
phonemic awareness. That's oneof the groups. Another group is
going to be phonologicalsensitivity only, another group
is going to be the delayedphonemic awareness. And then a
fourth group is business asusual. They are studying, gosh,
I think it's, is it kindergartenin first grade, and it's going
(11:22):
to be a three year study. Sothey are only in the beginning.
So I was like, That's what Imean, I'm so excited about this,
but so frustrated because wereally have to wait three years
before we get the results. ButDonell, I thought it was
fascinating when, I mean, it wasShane piasta and Beth Phillips,
and they it went, they wentreally fast, but they were
(11:43):
talking about what we know aboutthe science of teaching
phonological awareness. Andsurprisingly, like, there is not
a lot of research for teachingphonological awareness. And they
were saying there's a lot on,you know, the importance of it,
but not teaching it. And one ofthe big takeaways that they
(12:06):
shared was there are a lot ofinconsistencies and so many
unanswered questions about it.
So I thought that was, I thoughtthat was interesting. Okay,
Donell Go ahead, go to your nextyour next one you wanted to
share?
Donell Pons (12:23):
Well, the next one was Mitchell Brookins, unlocking
student potential, the writing,reading feedback cycle, and that
was really good, too. Did anexcellent job, walked us through
writing, yeah, and the reasonswhy explicit instruction in
writing isn't exactly what'shappening for a lot of students,
and then the importance ofmodeling as well. So we went
(12:44):
into the teaching aspects of
Lindsay Kemeny (12:45):
it. Yeah, I think Mitchell Brookins is just
a gifted speaker, and he's so hehas such deep knowledge. So I
loved it. One of the things hesaid, I went to that session
too. He said, How do you helpchildren show their brilliance
on paper. And I really lovedthat, and and I loved Donell,
(13:08):
how he was using the story ofblack beauty that was like the
text they're reading, and he wasshowing how he would have them
write in response to that. Andjust He did such a good job
showing how he's trying to pullout more information from the
students after reading thattext. And so he'd keep asking,
(13:30):
Why? Why? Why? To really kind ofprobe them to see what
information they know and andjust to activate their knowledge
so they could write.
Donell Pons (13:41):
So yeah, he went after a couple of things. I
thought was interesting. Iturned to Lindsay, and I said,
this is interrogating the thesisis and he's using it with his
young students, obviously on alevel that's useful and helpful
to them, but he's asking them togo after their own thesis,
asking those questions. So whywould that be the case? So what
do you think about that? Andthen the students have an
opportunity to respond. Andeither, by the way, they're able
(14:03):
to answer, they're able to tellthemselves, hmm, I don't think
that was really what I wastrying to say. Or that's right,
I didn't say a whole lot withthat. So that's that
interrogation part that Ithought was really interesting.
But he had a nice way ofhandling that with students. And
then the other was to look atvocabulary and see he was really
questioning. The student mayhave a denotation or dictionary
understanding of the word, butit's really the connotation, the
(14:26):
many layers of meaning that arereally important, particularly
in a text like black beauty,that you can get to those layers
of meaning. And that wasinteresting, as he took them
through the vocabulary too.
Yeah, that's really good.
Lindsay Kemeny (14:36):
And one of the ways he helped them improve
their thesis statement was doingsentence combining. So he did a
sentence combining activity tohelp, you know, really
strengthen their thesis and comeup with something that was
really strong. And I justthought that is like exactly the
way to build in sentence levelactivities. We don't only do
sentence level but we integrateit within the. Whole, you know,
(15:01):
the essay or the paragraph orwhatever. And that was one way
he did that. And I thought itwas fantastic, Stacy. What about
you? What sessions did you goto? Day one,
Stacy Hurst (15:10):
I went to Julie Washington, and her session was
titled The structure of areading revolution. It was one
of those sessions that had anasterisk next to it, and she
compared the phases ofscientific revolution, as
authored by Thomas Kuhn, towhere we are with the science of
reading. I thought she made alot of interesting parallels,
(15:31):
and something that I haven'tstopped thinking about yet, but
I haven't taken time to dive in.
I have a background insociology, so I want to compare
that theory to social changetheory and see how how they
match up. But she did a reallycompelling job of saying, This
is how change happens within thescientific community and gets
(15:54):
implemented. She also talked alittle bit about AI, and she
made a very solid point aboutlarge language models. And she
said the problem with thelanguage that's going into those
models is that it is created bya certain demographic, a
specific demographic, I shouldsay, and it is not doesn't
(16:17):
reflect dialectical differencesand so forth. And I think that
even that just little piece ofinformation that might have even
come up in a question and answerperiod, but I thought it was a
good point and something for meto think about as I work with
students who have who well, weall speak a dialog, but to be
(16:38):
aware of that when we're usingtechnology, I think that's
important. So she was great asalways, okay?
Lindsay Kemeny (16:50):
And let's go to day two. Day two is when we had
our opening keynote, and it wasHildebrand Peltzer, the third
who spoke, and he gave a reallypowerful keynote, sharing a lot
of stories about this connectionbetween illiteracy and the
prison system, and he asked usthree questions that I just want
(17:17):
to share with our listeners,just for you to think about
number one, what does readingfrustration look like at your
school? Number two, what is yourschool doing about it? And
number three, how are youcontributing to the school to
(17:41):
prison pipeline. What are youdoing or not doing? So I just
think those are some powerfulquestions that we can consider.
What stood out on day two foryou guys.
Donell Pons (17:58):
So that keynote was really powerful, and I do always
think it's interesting we talkabout the impact of reading
difficulties on a person's life,and we can pull out statistics,
and we might reach for reallydramatic circumstances, and for
a moment you see people evenhaving conversation after, you
(18:18):
might even see people leaningover and going, Oh my goodness.
And to me, where does that goafter? I really wanted to say,
let's even ask folks. A weekfrom now, will you be thinking
about this a week from now? Whatdoes this feel like? So if
you're shocked right now, andthese statistics feel really bad
to you and you don't think theyshould continue, what's it going
to look like a week from now?
Right? Because we're not goingto get change unless we all
(18:42):
decide we're really done andwe're not going to let up until
it changes. And so it was apowerful but I also wanted to
follow it up and say, Let's keepit going. Let's keep the power
going. So that was a thought Iwas having when he spoke, and
then those individuals that gotup and spoke after him, so there
were continued to be variousindividuals who got up to speak
after him, to contribute to theconversation. Again,
(19:04):
additionally. So it wasn't thatthey just left with that. So it
was, I mean, if they spent a lotof time with it, they gave us a
lot of information. Again, Iwanted to ask, what's it going
to look like a week from now?
Will we remember this? Weremember how outraged we felt or
the shock that we had? I washoping. Anyway, next session for
me I moved into was malt Yoshi,Emily Binks, Cantrell, Ramona,
(19:27):
Pittman and Taylor Seymour. Andit really was just malt Yoshi,
and he was talking aboutspelling. And Stacy, you were in
that one with me, and that washard to get into, wasn't it? I
mean, it was pretty crowded, anda lot of folks were in
attendance, and it was, spellingis the foundation of reading and
the greatest ornament ofwriting. And he was just talking
about the best ways to instructon spelling and the fact that we
(19:50):
don't again, some themes thatkept coming up, I kept hearing,
in terms of what we know aboutteaching and good teaching
practice was being very explicitin our instruction. Then also
modeling, and the fact thatmodeling is kind of seemed to
drop away. And everybody saidthat, no idea why, because it's
a fantastic teaching tool.
Modeling, we know it has greatresults. So he also brought that
(20:11):
up as well. I thought that wasinteresting.
Stacy Hurst (20:16):
Yeah, I thought that was a great session. And
really, oh, I don't know if wecall it a heritage session. He's
done so much to contribute tothe work, as well as his co
authors on that. And I was happyto see that it was so crowded,
because it really is. You coulda lot of the research that he
(20:38):
cited and went into detail abouthas been around for a while, and
you can see how that'sinfluenced what we're doing
today. I thought it was a reallygood, good session, too. Hey,
friends, if you've ever wishedfor something that just makes
sense when it comes to teachingreading, this is it. You can get
(20:58):
free access to Reading HorizonsDiscovery for the entire school
year. It's structured literacythat actually supports how
learners develop reading skillsand how teachers want to teach.
No student setup, no extrastress, just solid evidence
based tools you can usetomorrow. Go to reading
horizons.com/free, and check itout. I think you're really gonna
(21:22):
love it.
Donell Pons (21:23):
So Stacy, you and I got an opportunity to attend
another one that was AI. This isan individual who's working on
some AI. So he's not, you know,necessarily, from the education
world. However, he is doing workwith folks in the education
world, and he did teach for someyears in the classroom, but
reading really wasn't his forte,or not what he, you know, had
dedicated himself to doing, butreally it was in AI, and his
(21:46):
background in AI, and his desireto help facilitate, maybe some
of the learning around readingand reading instruction and AI.
So that was an interestingconversation. A lot of these
things are in the works. We'llsee how they turn out. He is
doing some work with you fly andproviding some back end
supports, but it was reallytalking about the potential
(22:08):
understanding exactly what is AIand the potential of AI. He
really had some interestingcomments that he made about the
hope that we don't lose thehuman element from teaching no
matter how supportive AI can be,and the pieces that AI might be
able to help equalize for folksin terms of reading instruction,
the human element, he keptemphasizing that how important
(22:29):
it is in reading.
Stacy Hurst (22:30):
And I thought that was fascinating, also because of
the order of sessions that Iattended. So I went to David
share right before that, and hewas talking about the
combinatorial model. But he wastalking a lot there. There's so
much to it. I loved it. I wantto take a deeper dive too, but
that he spent some time talkingabout the difference between
(22:52):
decoding and unitization, whichneeds to happen for proficient
reading to take place. And he hemade a great case to say, we you
need to start on this smallerlevel. You need to start with
the phonemes. You need to takeit apart. You need to and that
leads to unitization. And he wastalking about that. I learned a
(23:15):
new word in that session, whichI'm surprised. I haven't heard
it before, but it's lexeme. Wehave phoneme, we have grapheme
now, lexeme anyway, that's justan aside, but he was saying that
we need to start language startswith that. Then I went to VIV
session as well, and he said, hestated, the problem with AI
right now is that they're largelanguage models. They start with
(23:40):
whole units, and so it's notbuilt in a way that speech
progresses developmentally. AndI thought it was so insightful
that he called that out, and itwould only take somebody with a
reading background or influenceor resources to be able to say
that. And he said it makesdeveloping these things
(24:00):
effectively harder. So I thoughtthat was interesting. I think
we're going to see great thingsfrom him in the future.
Donell Pons (24:06):
Yes, I was really appreciative of his sensitivity.
The obviously he had done hisresearch and background, and he
was laying a foundation ofunderstanding, and it was very
sensitive approach. I reallyappreciated it too.
Lindsay Kemeny (24:21):
I went to some great sessions day two too.
First I spoke. So I got to speakand do a session on rock your
literacy block. So I talkedabout some effective practices
that we can use during, youknow, of course, anytime, but
especially focused on theliteracy block, and then I also
(24:42):
kind of talked about schedulingand walked through my day. And
it was great. I was speaking inthis beautiful ballroom, and it
was so surreal just to look outand see those gorgeous
chandeliers I mentioned at thebeginning. And so fun having
people come up to talk to mebefore. And after, like, I love
talking to other teachers,educators, coaches. You know,
(25:07):
they're they all have differentroles, but I just, I love
chatting with them. So I hadsuch a great time. And then I
went to so I told you I wasreally looking forward to Shane
piastres her session. The otherone I was really excited for was
Adrian, Adria truck and Miller'sand so I went to hers about
(25:29):
writing. Specifically. Thissession focused on sentences. If
you don't know who she is, sheis just a fantastic researcher.
And so she's been on my radarfor a while. So in fact, I had
to make sure, like, when I gotassigned, when I was speaking, I
just, I was like, I have to makesure I'm not speaking at the
same time as Adria, or I'mgonna, like, beg them to move
(25:51):
me, because I need to go to hersession. So she is just such a
brilliant person. She wasfantastic. She talked a lot
about the research behind, youknow, sentence instruction. Some
big takeaways that she mentionedwere integrating writing
(26:13):
instruction across levels oflanguage. In other words, you
don't do sentence only you areintegrating that you can work on
sentences within the text level.
And she was sharing, you know,research and things that support
that also not to forget thatthis starts oral. So even in
kindergarten, you can be workingon sentences within, you know, a
(26:36):
paragraph in the fact that youare speaking these right, and
you can teach them how to speakthese sentences, of course, you
know before they can write them.
She another takeaway. She talkedabout revising sentences in
their writing right? We don'tneed all this isolated sentence
(26:57):
work. We can do this. We canembed this in our writing
instruction, expanding oralsentences, she said. And she
said, do less, diagrammingsentences and parts of speech
and isolated sentence work. Sothose were like her three, do
less, do less, diagrammingsentences, do less parts of
(27:19):
speech, do less, isolatedsentence work. And one of the
things she explained was thatteaching the parts of speech
there there are no essa level,one or two studies conducted on
its effectiveness. And so shewas really talking about how we
need to think about the use, theuse before the label, right? And
it kind of reminds me of Big Skywhen we're talking about syntax
(27:43):
and how, like, the importantthing is, is the use and how
those phrases relate to oneanother, right? That's the
critical part. So I love sheshared some things that I still
like. Want to go back and thinkabout a little more. And then I
also went, went to young Sook,Kim, who is another brilliant
(28:07):
researcher. And I was expecting,I've heard her speak before, so
I was expecting her to be, asCurtis would say, very
researchy. I think Curtisdonell's husband is the first
one was like, yeah, it's kind ofresearchy, you know. And use
that. I was expecting her to bereally researchy, and she was,
(28:28):
but she was a fabulouspresenter. Like, I couldn't
believe, like, I started takingnotes for just how she was
presenting, because I wanted toremember that and even, and
like, do that the next time. SoI was thinking, okay, like I was
making all these notes, becauseI'm going to be presenting at
plain talk, and I was makingnotes like, Okay, do this, do
(28:50):
this, do this. And then eventhis week I have a webinar. And
after I watched young soo Kim, Iwas like, Okay, I liked this.
Put do this, do this, do this.
But she had a lot of good like,turn and talks. She had an
outline she followed. I justthought she did an excellent
job, but she was talking abouthow reading and writing are
built on these shared skills.
And so, of course, she sharedher interactive, dynamic
(29:13):
literacy model, which you guysmay have seen. It's a fantastic
model of reading and writing,and even though I heard her
speak about it before, it wasvery helpful this time as she
slowly went through it. Andsomething that really stood out
to me is that so she has, likethis base, like this house
(29:35):
analogy, right, of reading andwriting and the base, the very
foundation, is executivefunctioning, and part of that is
working memory. And one of thethings I just thought was really
interesting, and just maybe hitme in a new way, is that when
our students have differentstruggles, it usually all comes
down to that working memory. Andso she was saying, you know,
(29:59):
people were asking. So, youknow, is this why a lot of
students with dyslexia also havedysgraphia or dyscalculia? And
she was saying yes, because alot of those come back down to
the working memory. And it justto me, was this really nice
visual to see, like howeverything is built on that
foundation. But she wasfantastic. She talked about
(30:20):
ideas for writing for reading.
She talked about ideas forreading for writing. And then
she also mentioned that you alsoneed specific writing
instruction, and reading,specific reading instruction,
right? And so I, I I liked, youknow, a lot of times we're
(30:41):
always saying, oh, writing andreading should be connected. And
so she clearly showed that, butalso said, hey, you need reading
specific activities to like yourdecodable text and your fluency,
right? And and same withwriting, you need specific
writing instruction where youare explaining the writing
process and idea generation andrevision, and so I just thought
it was excellent.
Stacy Hurst (31:04):
She is brilliant.
That's a word I would use todescribe her over and over.
Donell, I remember aconversation you and I had this
summer all about that model.
It's one of my favorite models,if not my most favorite of
reading and how it develops. AndI have certainly appreciated the
iterations over time. She is anamazing individual. Lindsay, I'm
(31:26):
curious, what kind of things didyou notice in what she did to
present specifically, like turnand talk. What else?
Lindsay Kemeny (31:33):
Yeah, those turn and talk. She was very clear in
and you know what you see? Yousee presenters do this where
they kind of share their littleoutline at the beginning, but
she was really good at thisclear outline and then going
going back to it. So I that wasvery helpful, because I knew
where we were in thepresentation, and she just had
really good questions and placeswhere she stopped to have us
(31:57):
discuss and then come backtogether. Let's see if I put any
other notes. I think even at theend, she told us name one thing
you want to do next week.
Informed by our time togethertoday, she asked things like,
What are potential challengesand solutions for implementing
this? And so it was just reallywell done with those, those
(32:19):
little, those little tweaks, youknow. Okay, so let's go to day
three, our final day. Anystandout sessions for you guys?
Donell Pons (32:32):
Yeah, I came in late. I had another one that I
had popped into, but I came intoAmanda van der Hayden. She was
doing, following the Science ofInstruction, and that was really
good. She's also an associate ofMatt burns, and I'm hoping I'm
(32:53):
getting that correct, becauseshe was also math. And I thought
it listed math in there, but,yeah, I think that's right. And
she was talking about just theScience of Instruction period,
whether you're teaching readingor teaching math, and she has
some really underpinningguidance there. And we talked
about it before you've mentionedit. You've mentioned it in the
last presentation you had theexplicit instruction. So that's
(33:16):
a resonating theme. We know thatfrom structured literacy as
well. So that's the principle ofexplicit instruction, and then
enough modeling students seeingyou do it right, and that's the
Gradual Release ofResponsibility. It's in that as
well. So just talking aboutthese principles that we know
are really good, and thenwanting to see them more often
(33:37):
used across the board, whetherwe're teaching reading, we're
teaching math, and then also theidea of students who have
working memory. Difficultieswith working memory, there is no
better way to provideinstruction than to have it be
very explicit, to have itmodeled, to have an opportunity
to see someone else do it. Sojust again reiterating that fact
(33:59):
that if we know these thingsabout the students that are in
our classrooms, then it makeseven more sense to organize our
teaching around this. So she wasreally interesting. She talked
about sequencing of skills beingvery important. Of course, we
know that in talking about it'scumulative, it's systematic
within reading, but she alsoapplied that to math. So again,
we're seeing some some ways inwhich the two things speak to
(34:23):
each other. She was also talkingabout dosing and making sure
that the students are gettingenough time with the
instruction. And that wassomething else that Matt burns
also went into, is making surethat the instructional time is
appropriate, so that studentsget enough time with the
instructor and you're giving thenew instruction before you move
students on to doing theactivities. And he has seen a
(34:45):
disconnect. And she was alsospeaking to that too, between
those two things, and oftentimeswe're moving them before they're
ready, they haven't indicatedthat they're anywhere near
having mastered to a level theycan take that on their own. She
also mentioned something veryinteresting, particularly about
math, that. I've heard manystudents complain about and that
is, she said, there is a thingthat we see happening where we
give instruction and then thatfirst problem is quite different
(35:08):
from the instruction we'vegiven. And people like to call
that, she said, and I'm going touse it, and it's not a good word
in teaching productive struggle.
And she said, That's not, not avery good teaching principle,
but you'll hear people use it alot. She said the only thing
about struggle is struggle, it'snot productive. That's really
interesting. So she was prettyclear on that. And then Matt
burns came in and just wrappedit up. But within the audience
was Anita Archer. So AnitaArcher was sitting there. And of
(35:31):
course, as Amanda is giving herpresentation, she's too far to
the front to see that it's AnitaArcher. And Anita had has had
her arm up wanting to ask aquestion, and as Amanda finally
gets to Anita, who's had her armup and down and up and down
several times, as she getscloser, she's it's Anita, oh my
goodness, oh my goodness,unknown. Oh, answer the mic. And
then says, oh my goodness, Iapologize. My apologies. Of
(35:54):
course, Anita is unflustered.
She just goes ahead and sayswhat she's going to say. But
again, Anita being the queen ofexplicit instruction, right? Who
better to speak to that and justgiving her Yes, yes, yes,
definitely, explicitinstruction. And that the also
giving her two cents worth aboutthe productive struggle
(36:15):
business. Yep, don't know whatthat's about. We're just
struggling. So it was reallyinteresting. And then she hung
out for Matt burns as well whenhe came in and followed up again
with what Amanda was talkingabout. It was very good. It was
a really good
Lindsay Kemeny (36:27):
morning. It's interesting. The term like, so
I've seen on X everyone, like,all you know, talking about
math, pretty much about thisproductive struggle. And I use
like, they're all, you know,everyone's very passionate about
that. I actually use that termin, I think, a different way,
because I think that then theyare in math, yeah, they're just
(36:49):
struggling. It's nothingpredictive productive about it.
If they're actually struggling,I use the term in reading
productive struggle in the factthat I want them to decode the
words, and I'm like, I'm rightthere helping them, like, so if
they come to a word that'sirregular, I don't just tell
them the whole word. I tell themthe part they need, and then I
have them say the sounds toblend right, like in the word
(37:12):
house, if they haven't learnedoh you yet, I tell them, oh you
is Ow. And then to me, theproductive struggle is them
going Ouse and having to blendit house. Do you know what I
mean? And so it's justinteresting. I've used that a
lot. I'm like, That's theproductive struggle I want,
right? And it's just kind oflike the terms are being used
(37:32):
differently.
Donell Pons (37:34):
And I wonder if we're to stage Lindsay to make
it clear that that's productivepractice, because your students
are right because you're rightthere, you're right there,
making sure they're able to dothe thing. So maybe we start
being intentional about saying,Hey, we used to call this
productive struggle, but maybewe need
Lindsay Kemeny (37:50):
to distinguish I like that. I like that that
Donell Pons (37:53):
makes productive practice, and
Stacy Hurst (37:55):
I think it's related, actually, to
engagement, because we have, Ifeel like in our society today,
our students don't engagecognitively in the same way they
used to, because we're used toquick, you know, shiny things on
technology or whatever, and youreally do need to exert
cognitive effort to be able tolearn something and get it in
(38:19):
long term memory. Everybody hasto do that doesn't just slip
into long term memory. And so Isee that term productive
struggle and productivepractice. They're both the means
to an end, but we need to makesure they're productive, right,
that we are using those thescience of implementation and
instruction in a way that doesget the information into their
(38:42):
long term memory, and maybewe're talking about that term in
ways we haven't in the past. Ijust think it's interesting.
Lindsay Kemeny (38:48):
Yeah, I went to Ryan Lee James. She is fantastic
speech language pathologist, andshe had a lot of slides. And so
she joked about that she wastalking very fast and going
through the slides reallyquickly. There was a lot of
(39:08):
great information in there,though. And one of the things I
enjoyed when she was talkingabout a assessing or surveying
language surveys, like assessinglanguage so specifically oral
language, and she had a list ofthings to look for like things
(39:29):
like use of non specific words,like if they use the word stuff
or thing a lot, an excessive useof filler words,
circumlocations. Cains, I thinkit was where she's like, where
they're talking round and roundand not getting to, you know,
disorganized sentences, heirsand pronouns usage. She had
(39:52):
several other things, and I justwanted to share that. She said
there is a free survey on Coxcampus. It's called survey.
Saying language, so I made anote to check that out. And then
I also went to Matt Burns'ssession, and his session was
packed. I think Donell andStacy, you were both in there.
(40:12):
And I just have to say, like, Ijust love Dr Matt burns, and I
had seen him earlier in theweek, and got to chat with him
for a little bit, and he isjust, I just think he's like one
of the most friendly kindpeople. He's a researcher, but
he makes himself accessible toteachers, and he's out there.
(40:34):
He's out there on social mediatrying to help inform all of us
you know about the research. Hecan speak to teachers, I think,
in a in a great way. And so Ijust really appreciate him. And
he was talking about how,instead of always asking if
something is aligned with thescience of reading, we need to
(40:54):
change that and say, how strongis the evidence? How strong is
the evidence? And he talkedabout where a lot of people have
this misconception that thescience of reading is phonics.
So when they say, How does thisalign to science of reading, he
realized that what they meantwas, how does this align to
phonics? And so we've got, youknow, a bit of a knowledge gap
(41:15):
there. And he did. He sharedfive things that every positive
intervention had like when theylooked at this through studies,
five things that every good,strong intervention had. And
these are the five. Number one,appropriate challenge. Number
(41:35):
two, correctly targeted. Numberthree, opportunities to respond
so dr Anita, Archer fans, weknow that. Number four, explicit
instruction. Number five,immediate feedback. Any final
like, maybe favorite moment forthe conference, or anything you
didn't get to say that you want
Stacy Hurst (41:56):
to, well, just weighing in on Dr Byrne's
session. And those of you who'vebeen listening to our podcast
for a while know Anita Archerwas our first guest. Matt Burns
was our second. For a reason, wehave been followers. I've have
his for a long time. I certainlyhave. I like his ease of
research. He thinks like ascientist, but he applies it
(42:18):
like a teacher, and he cancommunicate that really well,
one thing that he just kind ofoffhandedly said during his
session was there is not a rightway to do the wrong thing, and
so I thought that was a goodthing to keep in mind if we're
trying to fit science into whatwe're doing, rather than looking
for the evidence first, it canfeel like we're we're
(42:40):
struggling, or our students willstruggle, right? Donell, what
stood out to you in thatsession? There was so much, huh?
Donell Pons (42:47):
Gosh, there was so much in that session. And I just
kept writing, jotting down, andyou've all mentioned some really
good things, but he keptbringing up memory, because, as
you say, it's the underpinning,right, and the working memory of
students. And he used that termseven plus or minus two for
students, of how muchinformation they can hang on to.
So they're not all the same.
Each one has a different number.
So that's that having to knowyour student. And he said,
(43:08):
they'll tell you what their rateof acquisition is. They show you
by their behavior. That's reallyinteresting. You don't need to
be guessing or wondering, butthe minute you hit it, you'll
know. They'll show you. And ifwe're not looking and we're not
in tune, realizing we're gonnamiss it, right? But they're
showing us all the time itdoesn't have to be difficult. In
other words, he's saying youdon't have to run a bunch of
mathematical equations, but youcan see it. They'll show you in
(43:29):
their behavior, time off taskwhen you exceed their rate of
acquisition. They're gonna showyou it's good.
Lindsay Kemeny (43:35):
Um, what? And that session was packed too.
Wow. There's people. He had abig room, and there's still
people on the floor. So I justwant to share my favorite moment
from the conference. I was sograteful. Reading Horizons
sponsored a book signing for me,and that was on day two at the
Reading Horizons booth, and theygenerously purchased about 60
(44:00):
books, copies of rock yourliteracy block to give to the to
the, you know, first 60 peoplein line. And, you know, I had, I
had finished speaking, I wasanswering questions. I came and
joined you guys for lunch forabout 10 minutes, and then I
headed over to the book signing,and there was just this enormous
(44:20):
line. And when I arrived, it waslike, they all started cheering.
And it was like, such a specialmoment. I was just like, oh my
gosh, I love all of you. Thankyou for the support. I've talked
before on the podcast. How youknow, it's like, it's nerve
wracking all these things andbeing out there, and when I feel
(44:43):
such like positivity and warmthand support from people, it just
makes it all, you know, it just,it makes me feel so good and
like it's worth it, and then I'mhelping others, which is what
keeps me going. So it was suchan amazing book signing. Was so.
Fun. I was just sad that theline was so long that took
people so long to get throughit, because, you know, and I
(45:06):
wish I had more time to talkwith every person. I had to go
kind of quick, but that was myfavorite moment of the
conference. So and big shout outto Reading Horizons for
sponsoring it and purchasingthose books. They even because
some people were in line waitingthe whole time and didn't get
their book, and so they're goingto send them, they're going to
mail them one, which I thoughtthat was really nice, so I'm
(45:28):
sorry we went over. We havetalked so much. It was such an
amazing conference, but I wantto give Donell just a little bit
of time, because the week beforethis, she went to the plane talk
about dyslexia conference. SoDonell, do you want to share
anything? Was this the firsttime they've done that
conference or the second? It's
Donell Pons (45:48):
either the second or the third. Okay, obviously,
it was my first time attending,and it was held in Baton Rouge,
and it was October 2 and third.
And it was a very goodconference. In fact, they had a
whole really nice handout manualto go with it there. We did have
swag bags that went witheverything. It was a traditional
conference set up with yourkeynote at the beginning, and
then you went off to yourdifferent classes. And obviously
this one was clearly set up totalk about dyslexia, so that was
(46:11):
the topic of conversation. Andthe keynote, Elsa car Dennis
Hagen, took us through whatwould be the proposed new
definition for dyslexia thatwill be voted on at this
conference this month, will beat the end of the month. And so
that was brought up, and shediscussed that, and then also
did some breakout session. Andthey had some really good
speakers. Julie Washington wasthere as well, discussing and
(46:32):
talking. And Christopher wooden,who does math at Landmark
Academy and has a math program,he's really good. So there were
some really good speakersinvolved in the conference. And
I was also able to see Mattburns. He was there at that
conference. And again, he hit itout of the park. He did a
fantastic job talking again,about working memory, best
interventions when yourintervention has stalled out.
(46:53):
And so practical. Again, notonly is he researched, but he's
also very practical, and I lovethat. He said, If I don't have a
point lowest, I'll go is a pointfour in terms of effect size,
but it's got to be higher. Andhe's so right, because you have
such limited time with students,and they working so hard. Eric
treatise, who's been part of Idafor a long time, he was at that
conference. He's a pediatrician.
(47:15):
He's written the pearl. D NancyMather was there talking about
the Todd. So really goodpresenters, very quality
conference with presenters, andthen they had a keynote speaker
on the second day. And I tellyou, he was phenomenal, Tommy
Mabry. Dr Tommy Mabry. Rememberthat name? He was on the
(47:36):
Jennifer Hudson show, soapparently there is some video
footage of him on that show, butI can't tell you. I mean, I've
heard a lot of keynotes, andsome very good keynotes. I'm not
saying that there aren't reallygreat keynotes, but there was
something about this man. Hestepped out and made sure that
he walked almost the entireauditorium, and we filled a
pretty big room. Obviously, itwasn't a huge conference. It
wasn't the 2500 that we had atthe reading League. It was more
(47:58):
like 300 and maybe four. And hemade sure to walk as He gave his
talk. And he's a tall, imposingindividual. He played sports
that was helpful, but as hewalked, he talked about his own
personal experience with readingand writing and shared some very
harrowing stories of growing up.
And it was that prison to theschool to prison pipeline that
he was headed on. And he's veryopen to talk about that, and
(48:20):
then how he was able to pullpull himself out of that, and
what it took in order to dothat, and then the work that he
does as an educator, and it waspowerful. I tell you, when he
was done, everybody just leaptto their feet and you were
applauding. It just really put afire in you. It was fantastic.
Really good conference and plaintalk, does it? I tell you again,
yeah,
Lindsay Kemeny (48:42):
I'm excited for plain talk, for literacy
conference, not until March, Ihave to wait, but I'm excited
for that. And Donell and Stacy,like you guys are going to Ida
conference next week, so Oh mygosh. And Donell for you, this
is your third conference in amonth, so I You're like, your
brain is going to be like, majoroverload, right?
Stacy Hurst (49:04):
Fourth, if you count the Wasatch reading summit
that Donell presented at. So, ohyeah, the Wasatch reading
Summit, yeah, that's great. Itsounds like it was a really good
conference, and it's always inBaton Rouge.
Donell Pons (49:15):
Donell, yes, so I think so, I think this one is
always in Baton Rouge, and itwas, it was a real I was
impressed. It was very good
Stacy Hurst (49:22):
conference. Good, exciting. Well, thank you,
Lindsay, for leading ourdiscussion today and sharing all
about your experiences of bothof you at the reading league
conference. And we should say,these are just three
perspectives. There were so manyother great speakers, I it was
hard to decide sometimes, and Ido have to say that they put
(49:46):
together a really great program,and I saw the science of reading
reflected in the sessions, thescience of implementation, which
is more systemic, and theScience of Instruction, so. Lee,
the reading league does it sowell, they address all of those
aspects of our literacylandscape and support in very
(50:09):
meaningful ways. So thank you tothe reading League, and thank
you too for this conversation.
As Lindsay mentioned, Donell andI will be attending Ida, so look
for a recap of that soon aswell. And thank you all for
listening, and we'll see younext time on the next episode of
literacy talks.
Narrator (50:32):
Thanks for joining us today. Literacy talks comes to
you from Reading Horizons, whereliteracy momentum begins. Visit
reading horizons.com/literacy.
Talks to access episodes andresources to support your
journey in the science ofreading.
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