March 19, 2025 • 39 mins
In this episode of Literacy Talks, we continue our deep dive into the Structured Literacy Infomap, shifting our focus from word recognition, handwriting, and spelling to comprehension and composition. Hosts Stacy Hurst, Donell Pons, and Lindsay Kemeny explore how vocabulary development, sentence structure, grammar, text organization, and critical thinking all play a role in effective literacy instruction. They discuss the importance of integrating reading and writing, fostering deep engagement with text, and building a strong foundation for comprehension and expression.
This episode is a must-listen for educators looking to refine their instruction and support students in becoming confident, skilled readers and writers.
Note: If you're viewing the online version of the Perspectives issue, the article referenced in this episode starts on page 32.
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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
Stacey Hurst, a professor atSouthern Utah University and
(00:26):
Chief Academic Advisor forReading Horizons. 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 (00:48):
Welcome to this episode of literacy Talks. My
name is Stacy Hurst, and I'mjoined by Donell Pons and
Lindsay Kemeny. And if you'vebeen listening this season, you
know that we are focusing on theperspectives on language and
literacy, 75th anniversary issuetitled structured literacy,
grounded in the science ofreading. In our last episode, we
(01:12):
introduced the fact that we arediscussing pages 30 through 45
of that issue titled structuredliteracy and integrated approach
to the science of reading. Andas Barbara Wilson, who is the
author of those pages, statedthat this really is a tour of
the info map, so we're usingthat as our guide. And last
(01:34):
time, we covered the a littlebit of the why, and we dove into
the what, and we are going to betalking today about the content
that we didn't get to we talkedin the last episode about word
recognition, handwriting andspelling and what goes into that
type of instruction. So if youneed to catch up, feel free to
(01:55):
listen to that episode. Andtoday we're going to be talking
about comprehension andcomposition. Now again,
adjacently on the the what partof the info map we have word
recognition, includinghandwriting and spelling, and we
kind of just went through all ofthat highlighting the words. I
think all of us have said thesewords in this conversation,
(02:16):
integrated and simultaneous, weare doing we are teaching
reading and we're writing at thesame time, both are going to be
included. Now we're alsosimultaneously going to be
addressing comprehension andcomposition as well. So in the
article, there is a quote that Ijust made note of in the
(02:37):
structured literacy approachteachers bolster student
comprehension and compositionthrough strategies that
integrate there's that wordagain, reading, writing and oral
language activities structuredliteracy classrooms include the
following instruction,vocabulary and background
knowledge, sentence structureand grammar, text structure and
(03:00):
critical thinking. So that iswhat we're going to talk about
next. Let's start withvocabulary and background
knowledge. And she does statethat some of these can even be
fostered before formal readinginstruction begins in this and
let's just talk about that. Howwould you bolster or foster
(03:23):
these before formal readinginstruction begins? Lindsay,
what do you share with parents?
Lindsay Kemeny (03:28):
Oh, read aloud to them. You know, from the time
they're young, from the timethey're babies, Donnell shared
how your son was reading to hisbrand new baby, your first
grandchild, right? Of course,engaging them in a lot of
conversation is important, butit's also important to read to
them, because the language inwritten text is much more
(03:52):
different, is much differentthan speaking, right? And
they're going to get, you know,more exposed to that academic
language. It's really important.
And of course, you're buildingbackground knowledge as you're
reading about all thesedifferent topics. So you're
reading both fiction and nonfiction to them.
Stacy Hurst (04:09):
Great. Donna, would you add anything to that? Gosh,
Donell Pons (04:12):
all of that yes, then a hearty Yes, yes. And
also, it's kind of interestingthe word relationships too, from
reading a text to a young one.
They may not know the meaning ofthat first word, but if they
hang in there to the nextsentence and the next and so on,
meaning becomes available tothem right as the words have
relationship. And so then, oh, Ididn't understand that in the
first sentence, but now thatwe've added some additional
(04:33):
layers with the other sentences,oh, I now understand that word
that's interesting. And studentswho have been read to and have
those opportunities with textsthat are still struggling to
read themselves. But you cantell that difference when I have
students come to me that I knowhave had opportunities for
hearing orally, having it readto them, because they do sit
with that and wait for that nextsentence and the next but
(04:55):
students who haven't inevitablyright when they're in the sense,
well, I don't know. What thatmeans. I don't even know what
that means. But if a student,even if they've had decoding
challenges, and they can't readreally well for themselves yet,
if they've been read too, I findthat really interesting. That's
one of the things that they haveis Oh, it'll come. It'll come,
you know, the next sentence ortwo, and I'll be able to know
what that means. It's really,it's really, really interesting
to watch that sometimes happen,but it's important too, because
(05:17):
we also are cadence changes, allof these. We have these
different kinds of things in ouroral, spoken language that occur
when we are reading, when it's atext and it's not just
conversation. Conversation isfantastic too, don't get me
wrong, but we need all of them,as Lindsay was saying, because
they provide different things,and even the patterns are
different.
Stacy Hurst (05:37):
Yeah, and you know, you mentioned this, she led into
my next question, because sheBarbara Wilson mentions
developing students wordawareness mindset in my classes,
we use the teaching readingsource book, and they call it
word consciousness in there. Butshe says to do this by asking
(06:00):
students to consider wordmeaning and structure. What do
you think Donald? What does shemean by word structure?
Donell Pons (06:08):
Yeah, what's the word structure? What's the words
meaning? And she actually sayson page 37 if someone's
interested in looking at itthemselves, teachers help
students learn multiple meaningsof words and word relationships
in semantic clusters. So it's alittle bit about what I was
talking about, words and wordphrases, such as happy content,
joyous and over the moon whenstudents successfully decode or
(06:30):
spell a word, it should alwaysbe linked to its meaning. I'm
going to put a plug right here.
I'm just going to say it. So becareful about using nonsense
words out of a very specificperson purpose, because I've
seen them used and so righthere, just take a note footnote.
If, oh gosh, I'm having kidstrying to come up with
definitions for nonsense words,maybe that's not a great idea.
Yeah, so as we're talking aboutright here. So do go back,
(06:52):
reread this kind of sit with itfor a minute, see if it makes
sense to you. So they shouldalways be linked to their
meaning. That's why it'simportant to have words have
meaning. This development ofword consciousness is another
example of that integratednature. Again, so again, it's
those it's the play of wordstogether, how they're used in a
sentence. That's how we get tomeaning. That's why I was
talking about those students whohave had the opportunity to do
(07:13):
that, even if they can't decodethe words for themselves. But
they've been getting a goodopportunity to hear words in
sentences, hear text, then theyare developing that skill set to
say, Oh yes, the next sentence,they may have some other words
that then give me additionalmeaning for this. It's all of
that interplay. Yeah,
Stacy Hurst (07:31):
great point. And just, I like how you emphasized,
let's not teach nonsense words.
Let's not practice a ton ofnonsense words that not we use
nonsense words for a veryspecific reason, and that is to
recognize whether or notstudents have the ability to at
Site recognize words thatthey've never read, words
(07:52):
they've never seen before. Youalso stated, you quoted from the
article, when studentssuccessfully decode or spell a
word, it should always be linkedto its meaning. Now we have a
lot of words that we areaddressing in a day's
instruction. So Lindsay, how doyou do this? Say during phonics,
when you're having yourstudents, if you're doing
(08:12):
dictation and you're dictatingwords, how do you do this
without taking up a ton ofinstructional time? What do you
do
Lindsay Kemeny (08:21):
during dictation? Isn't too hard,
because every word that Idictate, I'm going to give a
sentence with it to give it somecontext and some meaning. When
you have, you know, whenstudents are reading a text,
it's a little more connected,right? And you can, you can, you
know, so they should beattending to meaning, and you
can strategically choose somewords from that text that you
(08:45):
need to teach the meaning of.
Now also in our phonics lesson,we're going to have like, we're
going to choral read maybe 10words together, and I have the
little word list that they readin partners, that they read, and
those are isolated words. It'sjust not possible to stop and
define every single one. It'snot or you're not going to get
through your lesson. But you canbe strategic and choose some
(09:07):
that you think students don'tknow. Even if you have a lot of
English learners, they need thislanguage. But again, you're
going to have to be strategicand choose the ones that you
think, okay, yes, here are someyou know, words that they will
see quite often that are reallyimportant. And I don't think
that they that they know. Butwhen you're you know, when I'm
(09:30):
going through a whole list of 12words with my whole class, I
can't stop and define everyone Iwon't get through all parts of
my lesson.
Stacy Hurst (09:39):
Yeah, I like, that's my Yes. That's good,
intentional and strategic. Butalso, like Donnell mentioned
earlier, when we were talkingabout fostering these things,
even before formal readinginstruction begins, the more
that they're exposed to thecontext of a sentence, using the
word in the context of asentence, or even hearing the
words that's going to behelpful. Wonderful,
Lindsay Kemeny (10:00):
yeah, and I was gonna say in this phonics lesson
is not when I'm gonna go throughthe whole Vocabulary Routine
like I might do with words likebefore our close reading lesson.
It's gonna be a quick littledrop in, a quick explanation, if
you were really on top of itbefore school and you got some
pictures put together, awesome.
And if not, just do a quickexplanation. Oh, a cot is a
(10:22):
little bed like that you'd layon when you're camping. Okay,
cot. Let's keep going, you know,great,
Stacy Hurst (10:30):
yeah, and it give them that exposure, yeah, don't
know.
Donell Pons (10:33):
And you know, with older students Stacy, we can
start doing this really ratheryoung too. I don't want to imply
that it's just for olderstudents, but connotation,
denotation to within wordmeaning. So a lot of us have a
connotation of a word, what itmight mean to us, how we hear
the word, how we use the word inour community or with our
friends. And then a denotation,which is that dictionary
(10:54):
standard definition. Do theydiffer? I mean, pointing that
out to kids oftentimes, isreally interesting too, to say,
what did we think it meant? Whatdoes the dictionary say that it
mean? Oh, that's kind ofinteresting. So again, you can
turn this into some veryinteresting opportunities for
talk and and that kind of athing, but it helps us
understand how we do personalizea lot of our vocabulary right
experience,
Stacy Hurst (11:14):
and to just become aware of that. I think there,
that's where there's nuance inmeaningful ways, too, for
students. So the next thing thatwe're going to talk about the
next part of the what issentence structure and grammar.
This is on page 37 BarbaraWilson says direct instruction
in the nature of language occursat the word sentence and text
(11:38):
levels. Instruction involvesexamining sentence construction
and learning to expand sentencesand combine short, choppy
sentences into longer,grammatically correct ones.
Additionally, from early on,students learn conventions of
written language such ascapitalization and punctuation.
(12:00):
There is a lot there. And myfirst question is for Lindsay,
because I can tell you that inmy experience, I was least
prepared to teach this aspect,even on a first grade level in
some cases. So my the way I'veapproached this type of
instruction has changeddramatically over the years. And
(12:21):
Lindsay, I know you and I wereboth pre service teachers back
in the balanced literacy days.
So how has your instruction inthis area changed over time?
Lindsay Kemeny (12:30):
Okay, well, I don't think I taught anything
explicitly early on in mycareer, and grammar and syntax
are no different. So what I'lltell you, what I used to do. I
used to give my kids this dailyoral language their little these
little half sheets, and I passthem out, and I had an answer
(12:51):
key. And first I would just givethem time to, like, correct the
sentences, and then we would goover the answers and then check
done. My grammar was finishedfor the day. And then, you know,
a few years ago, you know, andthere's research that shows like
(13:12):
there's the isolated grammaractivities like that do not help
students with their writing, andthey don't, you know, they don't
transfer that knowledge. Then Igot a little better a few years
ago, and I, I came across thesyntax project, which I would
recommend, and I started workingon, you know, kind of sentence,
(13:33):
different crafting sentences.
We'd start out orally. I startedthis in kindergarten, and they
have, the syntax project has allthese slides with pictures, and
it was really great, becausewe'd say, what's the who and the
do, and then we put it to asentence, and then we'd add in a
win, you know, and then after,you know, a week or two, we'd
add a where, and we practicethese different sentences. And
that was really great. Nowthough, I have taken it even up
(13:56):
a notch, because now I've tiedit in to what we're reading and
writing about. So the syntaxproject was really great because
it kind of taught me what Ishould be doing, you know, as I
was doing it, and how to createthese sentences and teach my
students to do that. But now Iconnect it with what we're
(14:18):
learning about.
Stacy Hurst (14:21):
I love it, and it correct me. If I'm wrong, the
syntax project is from literacyhow? I
Lindsay Kemeny (14:27):
don't think so.
I think it's a group out ofAustralia. Maybe I can't
remember, Oh, if you just Googlesyntax project, it will come
out. It will come up. If youjust Google syntax project, it
cut it's like the first one, andit has all these, it's for each
grade level. So that's reallynice, but I would just say, try
(14:49):
to connect it with your content.
You know, yeah, that's
Stacy Hurst (14:55):
critical. And I think literacy how has some
great resources for syntax as.
Well, Donnell, you are thedifferent one in this case,
because Lindsay and I have thissimilar trajectory with this
aspect of Donnell
Lindsay Kemeny (15:13):
was doing sentence work with her kids,
right? Used to notes all overthe window. I remember Donnell,
yeah, my
Stacy Hurst (15:20):
dad, my neighbors were saying, What are you doing?
Yes. I mean, of all the thingsmy parents, that was just not
one of them. Yeah. So Donnell,what advice would you give to
someone who is overwhelmed by orwho wants to improve their
teaching on this component?
Because I think that that wouldbe a lot of us, honestly,
Donell Pons (15:44):
yeah, and, you know, it's kind of interesting,
because I've said before that myfirst career was journalism,
right? So it was writing, andit's interesting to find out how
many people are veryuncomfortable with writing, and
that's the reason why they don'twant to teach it much. It's not
that they don't think it'simportant, that they don't think
they ought to be in their doing.
They're just uncomfortable, andwe have to acknowledge that and
(16:07):
say, Hey, I'm uncomfortable. Howcan I become more comfortable?
So I think that's first step.
Number one is to say it's okayto say I'm uncomfortable, right?
But to tell folks it's allright, you don't have to pretend
that you love it or it isn'tuncomfortable, because a lot of
folks didn't get the integratedteaching that we're talking
about, where writing wasincorporated into all of it, and
so it was just great because youlearned, you got picked up some
(16:30):
skills, but instead, a lot offolks have the same experience
where it wasn't really taughtvery well, it didn't feel very
comfortable. And I'm still not,and now I'm expected to teach it
that can be very uncomfortable.
So recommend reading at the baseof that page, 37 and then little
by little, take your baby stepsinto it, and you start with for
yourself. That's what I loveabout being able to teach a lot
of things, is you can break downfor yourself. Well, let's begin
(16:51):
at the sentence level, once wegot the words down and we've got
our spelling, and then let'sbegin at the sentence level.
Okay, then let's talk about theaspects of what's occurring in
this sentence. What are theparts of speech? What are the
words doing in the sentence? Howdo they interact? And just use a
sentence. Start there, and thenwe connect sentences. Then we
can start connecting sentences,and maybe we get to a paragraph.
And then eventually we'refeeling comfortable. We get
longer than that. Now we'recomposing, right? It's
(17:13):
composition. So a lot of thebase skills are put in there.
But I also want to have funalong the way, and I oftentimes
do this with my students, is forthe grammar part of it and for
punctuation is that we changethings up a little bit and we
say, well, what would it looklike if I didn't put any
punctuation in here? Let's dothree sentences. You write
yours. I'll write mine. It's onthis certain topic, and I'm
going to hand it to you. You seeif you could read it. Oh, they
(17:34):
love that. Because I'mimmediately like, I have a clue
what you're trying to say. It'slike, wow, it is hard, isn't it,
because I know what I was tryingto say. I had it in my head, but
if I don't put it on there,you're not gonna be able to tell
right? That's really fun. It'skind of a fun activity. It's
just three sentences. You leaveall the punctuation out, and
then they realize, Oh, that isreally important. Nowhere to put
that period, otherwise you'regonna string it all together.
But that's the piece where, if Iget comfortable, I can start
(17:56):
having a little bit of fun withit, and then my students can
have fun with it. When I'mhaving fun with it,
Stacy Hurst (18:03):
I love that. I'm going to do that with some of my
students. And remember, mine arepre service teachers, so they I
think they will love it. So thenext aspect of instruction is
text structure, and this issimply awareness of types of
text and the organizationrelated to them. And the
(18:28):
research says that awareness oftext structure supports both
comprehension and writing insimple terms. Narrative
structure involves charactersetting, problem, solution. I
think we've heard that before,events in the story, some rising
action, a climax and fallingaction, right? Expository or
(18:49):
informational text structureincludes description, sequence,
chronology, compare, contrast,problem solution and cause and
effect. Lindsay, how do you fitthis type of instruction in to
your teaching day? I
Lindsay Kemeny (19:05):
connect text structure both with during close
reading and our close readinglesson and our writing lesson.
And so, you know, I will teach,for example, a narrative. We're
going to kind of map the story.
We can map the story to, like,teaching them the story
elements, story grammar. So weuse a mnemonic called C, space,
(19:26):
character, setting, problem orpurpose, action, conclusion,
ending, emotion. And so we canwhen we read a story, we can
afterwards. I can ask somequestions. Who are the
characters we write it, youknow, and we can fill that out.
And then when we're writing, wecan use the exact same acronym
that we've been learning to plana story. So, you know, the same
(19:47):
with informational but we have adifferent mnemonic there.
Stacy Hurst (19:52):
So great. I know that I taught that text
structure, hopefully Iemphasize. It all throughout the
day, but I did teach it duringwriting explicitly, just so that
I could fit it in my day.
Actually, Donnell with olderlearners there, I think in their
day to day interactions, they'reprobably exposed to more non
(20:14):
fiction text or informationaltext. But how do you teach? Do
you teach one text structuremore than the other? And how
have you seen your studentscomprehension improve once you
point these things out to them?
Teach them.
Donell Pons (20:32):
Yeah, it's really interesting. Because more than
text structure, I lean intostorytelling, because that's the
natural piece to all of this,whether it was oral before we
could read and write, or whethernow it's a written it's we're
imparting information, and it'sin a storytelling fashion. You
(20:52):
come racing in to tell somebodyabout something, you have a
lead, the most exciting part,and then you build that thing,
and then you gotta close it outsomehow. So we do it all the
time orally. And I remindstudents, hey, you've done this.
You've done this a lot. Some ofyou are better at it. You're
great storyteller. Some of ustakes your while to get there.
Somebody's telling you, hurryup. What are you doing? Right?
So you kind of you orient themto the fact that you do this all
the time. We're just now goingto be more formal about how we
(21:15):
do it with writing it here, andwe're going to think about the
different audiences that wemight have, and we might think
about the different topics thatwe might have to convey
information about. So I take itmore that way, because we tend
to get kind of caught up inwhether it's this type of
writing or that type of writing.
And then there's somebody Ithink is phenomenal because he
has dyslexia. That's why I thinkthis guy is phenomenal about
(21:36):
teaching writing. And his bookis called Invisible Ink. It's
invisible ink building storiesfrom the inside out. He's a
screenplay writer, among otherthings. So he's very talented,
not only thing he does, but healso has dyslexia, and I think
that's why the book is so good,is because he straightforward,
puts down the writing process.
(21:58):
And all writing is three acts,the beginning the first act,
second and third, and you wrapup by the third, and every good
story falls down on having avery poor first act. Well, what
does that sound a lot likehaving a really good thesis
statement. So it can be appliedto all kinds of or types that
you say of writing a good thesisstatement, the whole thing will
fall down if my thesis statementisn't good. So I think he's
(22:19):
that's a really good one, butit's helping people understand
you do this all the time.
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Lindsay Kemeny (23:06):
Another thing about tech structure that I
learned, it was kind of like, Iguess, a little aha for me, that
I learned from Dr K wichikumar,where you know, you have problem
solution and you have cause andeffect. So if you're trying to
help your students learn, like,was this a problem solution,
structure or cause and effect?
Well, you can ask them, youknow, was there a problem in the
story, and then was the problemsolved? If the problem was
(23:28):
solved, it's a problem solution.
If the problem was not solved,it's cause and effect, right?
And that's just like a littlesimple thing. But I thought, oh,
yeah, that makes sense. And thatwas so easy to explain to
students when you're helpingthem with that.
Stacy Hurst (23:44):
I love that. And Tim Shannon just recently
released a podcast episode, andtoday is January 27 that I think
it's new today about this textstructure. His main point his
podcast episodes are reallyshort, but his main point was
not to over emphasize thestructure of a text, so that
(24:07):
you're not getting meaning fromit, right? That you're over
analyzing the structure. You'renot focusing on the meaning of
text. I thought that, along withwhat you just shared, Lindsay is
a good thing to remember whenyou're teaching these things to
students, Okay, the next thingis something that I love is
listed on here, and it iscritical thinking, teaching
(24:30):
students to think deeply aboutwhat they're reading. And I'm I
added emphasis to this takessignificant instructional time
and determination. And thenBarbara Wilson continues to say,
and this is on page 38 thiseffort must be intentional and
(24:50):
prioritized, especially in thisage of digital reading, where
students often skim rather thanread deeply. Okay, it is really
it was interesting to me thatshe called out explicitly the
time and determination it takesto teach students to think
deeply about what they'rereading. Does this resonate with
(25:13):
either of you as teachers? I'mgoing
Donell Pons (25:16):
to dive in just because I work with older
students, absolutely. So I thinkoftentimes people have the
misconception that if I've beentaught the things, and again,
this is with us, thinking aboutthem in separate pieces, rather
than integrated, right? Then ifI've taught the things, then,
oh, okay, now that I'm a littlebit better at a lot of these
things, then I'm all good. Butthere's so much more to it to
(25:39):
really become that reader whodesires to pick up a text and
stay with it, and even if it'schallenging, hang in there and
come back to it, ponder on it,connect it to other things. I
mean, that's deep reading,right? That's deep reading, and
that takes a lot, and it's andit's a, it's a learned thing,
too, and over time of havingsuccess, right? With different
(26:01):
kinds of texts that kind ofbuilds that ability to get to
the to the next level, so tospeak, of text. So again, it's
not happen overnight. And what'sinteresting is, I've noticed
that I've taken an approach withmy older students, that once
we're we are cooking along,right? We're cooking along
because we got a lot of thingswe're getting done that I always
want to pull out some time andopportunity to stay with a text.
(26:24):
So I may have a running textthat's a side, you know, running
alongside other activities thatwe're doing to build different
skills, but it's a text where wehave to keep characters in mind.
We have to keep the story inmind. And because that's a
skill, it's a skill to be ableto pick that back up and stay
engaged with it. And I'venoticed I've had more success
(26:46):
with students, and we've talkedlater about, okay, what was the
most powerful thing? And thatcomes back to that, hey, it's
when we did that text. Rememberwhen we had to keep coming back,
and it wasn't easy, and I had toYeah, because that's what is
critical thinking. It's puttingall the pieces together.
Stacy Hurst (27:03):
And she also states, what does this entail?
What do we do when we'reteaching critical thinking? It
involves comprehension,monitoring, prediction,
inference, making readingstamina, as you pointed out, as
well Donnell and developing acomprehensive mental model of
what they are reading. So as Ithink of all those skills, I'm
(27:25):
thinking this could beespecially challenging for
younger learners, becausethey're very concrete thinkers.
So Lindsay, because you'reworking with first graders, what
are some ways that you fosterdeep thinking with them?
Lindsay Kemeny (27:38):
You know, one thing we can do is model this by
thinking aloud. So as we'rereading aloud a text with
students, we can, kind of, youknow, try to peel back the
curtain on your own, thinkinglike, oh, this. Just said this,
but I was thinking this. Iwonder what you know and and
(27:59):
kind of, you know, share yourthoughts out loud, then keep
reading and then say, Oh, thatmakes sense now, because and
sharing these thoughts would behelpful with them also. You
know, sometimes I have a studentwho she is such a deep thinker.
I love it because she will raiseher hand and she interrupts. But
(28:21):
I love it, because she alwayshas these really good questions
where she is thinking deeply andI'm trying to think, because
we've been reading books aboutastronomy and space, and I can't
remember what it was. There wassomething about the moon, you
know, that she had learned fromanother text that she kind of
said, but I thought that, and itwas, I wish I could remember. It
was just so good and so butsomething I can do is point that
(28:44):
out. Look how, you know, what agood question you are really
thinking carefully about whatwe're reading, you know, to get
the other students to go, oh,you know, that's good. These
questions are good. And I alsothink, you know, students can't
think critically about somethingthey don't have knowledge about.
So we are building knowledge aswe're helping them read texts.
(29:08):
And of course, in our contentareas like science and social
studies, and we can have to helpbuild their knowledge on a
topic. We can use text sets. Soyou know, especially if I know,
like, oh, in my curriculum,we're going to be reading this
really hard text coming up.
Well, I can prep them with a feweasier texts on the same topic
to help prepare them for thatharder one. And that's just
(29:31):
going to, you know, it's just,it's creating an environment
where more critical thinking canhappen.
Stacy Hurst (29:38):
Yeah, I love that.
And I think we haveopportunities in our read alouds
too. I'm a big fan of dialogicreading. You're really
intentional about those promptsthat can help facilitate that
kind of deeper thinking. Iremember when I taught first
grade, two things come to mind.
I was reading the unabridgedversion of Les Mis in my
personal life, but I rememberhow. Having those conversations
(30:01):
with my students and evenpresenting dilemmas to them,
right? Like, what would you do?
And those kind of things. Onebook I did read aloud to one
first grade class is called asingle shard. It was a great
book, and I remember beinghesitant about reading aloud,
like, can they really get thisit? It took to Barbara Wilson's
point a lot of time anddetermination on my part to help
(30:22):
call out the parts that theyneeded to be remembering, like
you were saying, Donnell, andthe connections that they needed
to make. But it was verypowerful. I won't forget that,
because it had an impact on ourwhole class because of that
deeper thinking that we wereable to do so. Thank you for
that. Okay, the really coolthing about the what I think, is
(30:44):
that bar at the bottom of theinfo map that says this, this is
important integrated language.
This includes integratedlanguage, reading and writing
instruction, supportingautomaticity, fluency and
reading proficiency while youare teaching all of the things
(31:05):
that we just went throughsection by section, and
emphasizing the need for in thispart, she also emphasizes the
need for reading from theBeginning with appropriate, aka
scaffolded text thatcomprehension and written
expression should be integrated,like we pointed out, and engage
(31:27):
corresponding strategies likereading and writing narrative
text. And then she also says onpage 39 reading comprehension
improves when writing processes,including sentence construction,
are explicitly taught writingabout topics also improves
fluency and comprehension, andshe didn't list it. But of
(31:51):
course, we build backgroundknowledge and a million other
things too, right? So we'vetalked about a lot today, and I
know that there's so much morethat we could cover before we
succinctly summarize the how andthe who, I do want to maybe
we'll end the episode. So I'llask the question now and give
(32:12):
you a minute to think about it.
But what which aspects of thismodel have you most recently
focused on or want to focus on,to solidify your knowledge or
refine your practice. So thinkabout that for a minute while I
summarize the how I'm reallyjust going to say these are
terms we have heard before,explicit, systematic,
(32:32):
sequential. I think there's areally interesting point to be
made in the fact that Ida choseto use the word multi modal
instead of multi sensory, andBarbara Wilson clarifies the
difference in this part of thearticle. So I'm not going to
spoil it for you, other than tosay it's a teaser. Go read it.
Go read it. And then also justhow it is mastery oriented from
(32:58):
the beginning, that's somethingimportant to focus on, of
course, the who would involvethe students and the teachers,
as well as the system supportthat we need right and that we
all need to be involved inpromoting literacy for our
(33:20):
students. So that's what we needto be thinking about again. I'm
just gonna say to those of youwho are listening, we won't have
time to cover it in thisepisode. Go back, read the rest
of the article and share with usthings that stand out to you. I
would love to know that. I thinkwe would all be interested in
hearing that. Okay, so back tothe question, which aspects of
(33:41):
this model have you mostrecently focused on or want to,
to solidify your knowledge andor refine your practice?
Lindsay Kemeny (33:54):
I've been taking a deep dive into sentence
structure and grammar, and soit's been really fun to pull out
all my books I have, I was justrereading Margie Gillis and
Nancy Eberhard book on syntaxalso, you know, I can't think of
the title, but it's Haines andJennings book, and then pulling
out like speech to print and thebig multi sensory teaching of
(34:18):
basic language skills and allthose, because everything has a
chapter on this, and so it'sbeen fun to kind of take a deep
dive and figure out how toimprove things in my classroom.
Unknown (34:28):
Great, Darnell, you know,
Donell Pons (34:31):
it's interesting.
I've been spending more time onthat. I'm guessing critical
thinking is more where I've beenhanging out with my older
students and thinking about howI can really help build that
ability to make connectionsbetween text and really get into
a text, and to feel like youit's yours right to take it on,
and then also their own profileof how they approach a text. So
(34:53):
understanding what do I need inorder to really get into a text?
So comfort of. The material thatI'm looking at do, I need to do,
because even they've separatedthemselves from this experience
so much. And so I think this hasallowed me to really focus in
on, you know, going back throughand looking through these
aspects and saying, Gosh, Ithink I'm that's, that's a piece
(35:13):
that's super important to me.
And then it's reallyinteresting, because I've been,
I've been able to have someconversations with my son, who
I, you know, I've talked aboutbefore, he's really struggled
with reading his dyslexia,dysgraphia, dyscalculia, but he
his insight into story isamazing. And I've asked him a
few times, do you think it wasbecause of the dyslexia that
(35:35):
this the story, just in order tobe able to get into it, had to
come alive for you? And he goes,Ah, we're never able to figure
that out. But he does have areal affinity for story and a
real love and and, you know, anability to spot story, to know
how to refine the story. Andthat's something else I want
people to think about as youdon't know who that is in your
(35:55):
classroom. So is it that kiddothat's just having a really
tough time with those elementsof being able to get the
morphemes and the graphemes hangin there with them. That's how
important you are as theirinstructor, and that's why this
information is so important,because you don't know who those
students are in your classroom,and you may have that next
budding author, or somebodyelse, but just some or someone
(36:16):
who just can really enjoy text,and you're going to give them
that gift. Yeah, I love
Stacy Hurst (36:20):
that. To end where we started, this info map is a
good way for all of us to take alook at where in my practice or
my knowledge can I improve. AndI actually have no different
answer than the two of you haveshared. I am thick into writing,
including sentence structure andgrammar, vocabulary, including
(36:41):
morphology, because I get tocreate a course for my pre
service teachers that focus onthat as well as written
expression. So that's probablywhere I'm spending and will be
spending a little chunk of mytime. But at the same time, I am
also very invested in thecritical thinking aspect,
because I really want mystudents to be able to look at
(37:03):
scores and interpret what thatmeans for students, not just
taking them at face value, forinstance, along with all of the
great things that we have accessto, to read and learn. So thanks
for answering that question. Andthen on page 44 this is we'll
end the episode with this.
Hopefully we've sold you onreading this whole section
(37:24):
because it's great, and justtake the time to critically
think about what each sectionmeans and how that applies to
your practice and yourknowledge. I think it's no
accident that Ida also hasknowledge and practice standards
that we can also use inconjunction with this. So here
(37:45):
we go. Page 44, final quote, thetenets of structured literacy
will continue to evolve withadditional research, and we know
that because it's informed bythe science of reading, but
there is sufficient evidence tofully implement, fully
implement, a structured literacyapproach now and then the
(38:07):
powerful sentence studentsdeserve, no less. So. Thank you
so much, Donnell and Lindsay forthis conversation today. And I
know us, we are going to keeptalking about this, by the way,
but we're just not going to berecording it, because there's a
lot to talk about here, and it'sbeen a really interesting
(38:28):
conversation. So thank you andto our listeners, thank you for
joining us. Please join us forthe next episode of literacy
talks.
Narrator (38:39):
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. You.
Welcome to literacy talks, the podcast for literacy
leaders and championseverywhere, brought to you by
Reading Horizons. Literacy talksis the place to discover new
ideas, trends, insights andpractical strategies for helping
all learners reach readingproficiency. Our hosts are
Stacey Hurst, a professor atSouthern Utah University and
(00:26):
Chief Academic Advisor forReading Horizons. 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 (00:48):
Welcome to this episode of literacy Talks. My
name is Stacy Hurst, and I'mjoined by Donell Pons and
Lindsay Kemeny. And if you'vebeen listening this season, you
know that we are focusing on theperspectives on language and
literacy, 75th anniversary issuetitled structured literacy,
grounded in the science ofreading. In our last episode, we
(01:12):
introduced the fact that we arediscussing pages 30 through 45
of that issue titled structuredliteracy and integrated approach
to the science of reading. Andas Barbara Wilson, who is the
author of those pages, statedthat this really is a tour of
the info map, so we're usingthat as our guide. And last
(01:34):
time, we covered the a littlebit of the why, and we dove into
the what, and we are going to betalking today about the content
that we didn't get to we talkedin the last episode about word
recognition, handwriting andspelling and what goes into that
type of instruction. So if youneed to catch up, feel free to
(01:55):
listen to that episode. Andtoday we're going to be talking
about comprehension andcomposition. Now again,
adjacently on the the what partof the info map we have word
recognition, includinghandwriting and spelling, and we
kind of just went through all ofthat highlighting the words. I
think all of us have said thesewords in this conversation,
(02:16):
integrated and simultaneous, weare doing we are teaching
reading and we're writing at thesame time, both are going to be
included. Now we're alsosimultaneously going to be
addressing comprehension andcomposition as well. So in the
article, there is a quote that Ijust made note of in the
(02:37):
structured literacy approachteachers bolster student
comprehension and compositionthrough strategies that
integrate there's that wordagain, reading, writing and oral
language activities structuredliteracy classrooms include the
following instruction,vocabulary and background
knowledge, sentence structureand grammar, text structure and
(03:00):
critical thinking. So that iswhat we're going to talk about
next. Let's start withvocabulary and background
knowledge. And she does statethat some of these can even be
fostered before formal readinginstruction begins in this and
let's just talk about that. Howwould you bolster or foster
(03:23):
these before formal readinginstruction begins? Lindsay,
what do you share with parents?
Lindsay Kemeny (03:28):
Oh, read aloud to them. You know, from the time
they're young, from the timethey're babies, Donnell shared
how your son was reading to hisbrand new baby, your first
grandchild, right? Of course,engaging them in a lot of
conversation is important, butit's also important to read to
them, because the language inwritten text is much more
(03:52):
different, is much differentthan speaking, right? And
they're going to get, you know,more exposed to that academic
language. It's really important.
And of course, you're buildingbackground knowledge as you're
reading about all thesedifferent topics. So you're
reading both fiction and nonfiction to them.
Stacy Hurst (04:09):
Great. Donna, would you add anything to that? Gosh,
Donell Pons (04:12):
all of that yes, then a hearty Yes, yes. And
also, it's kind of interestingthe word relationships too, from
reading a text to a young one.
They may not know the meaning ofthat first word, but if they
hang in there to the nextsentence and the next and so on,
meaning becomes available tothem right as the words have
relationship. And so then, oh, Ididn't understand that in the
first sentence, but now thatwe've added some additional
(04:33):
layers with the other sentences,oh, I now understand that word
that's interesting. And studentswho have been read to and have
those opportunities with textsthat are still struggling to
read themselves. But you cantell that difference when I have
students come to me that I knowhave had opportunities for
hearing orally, having it readto them, because they do sit
with that and wait for that nextsentence and the next but
(04:55):
students who haven't inevitablyright when they're in the sense,
well, I don't know. What thatmeans. I don't even know what
that means. But if a student,even if they've had decoding
challenges, and they can't readreally well for themselves yet,
if they've been read too, I findthat really interesting. That's
one of the things that they haveis Oh, it'll come. It'll come,
you know, the next sentence ortwo, and I'll be able to know
what that means. It's really,it's really, really interesting
to watch that sometimes happen,but it's important too, because
(05:17):
we also are cadence changes, allof these. We have these
different kinds of things in ouroral, spoken language that occur
when we are reading, when it's atext and it's not just
conversation. Conversation isfantastic too, don't get me
wrong, but we need all of them,as Lindsay was saying, because
they provide different things,and even the patterns are
different.
Stacy Hurst (05:37):
Yeah, and you know, you mentioned this, she led into
my next question, because sheBarbara Wilson mentions
developing students wordawareness mindset in my classes,
we use the teaching readingsource book, and they call it
word consciousness in there. Butshe says to do this by asking
(06:00):
students to consider wordmeaning and structure. What do
you think Donald? What does shemean by word structure?
Donell Pons (06:08):
Yeah, what's the word structure? What's the words
meaning? And she actually sayson page 37 if someone's
interested in looking at itthemselves, teachers help
students learn multiple meaningsof words and word relationships
in semantic clusters. So it's alittle bit about what I was
talking about, words and wordphrases, such as happy content,
joyous and over the moon whenstudents successfully decode or
(06:30):
spell a word, it should alwaysbe linked to its meaning. I'm
going to put a plug right here.
I'm just going to say it. So becareful about using nonsense
words out of a very specificperson purpose, because I've
seen them used and so righthere, just take a note footnote.
If, oh gosh, I'm having kidstrying to come up with
definitions for nonsense words,maybe that's not a great idea.
Yeah, so as we're talking aboutright here. So do go back,
(06:52):
reread this kind of sit with itfor a minute, see if it makes
sense to you. So they shouldalways be linked to their
meaning. That's why it'simportant to have words have
meaning. This development ofword consciousness is another
example of that integratednature. Again, so again, it's
those it's the play of wordstogether, how they're used in a
sentence. That's how we get tomeaning. That's why I was
talking about those students whohave had the opportunity to do
(07:13):
that, even if they can't decodethe words for themselves. But
they've been getting a goodopportunity to hear words in
sentences, hear text, then theyare developing that skill set to
say, Oh yes, the next sentence,they may have some other words
that then give me additionalmeaning for this. It's all of
that interplay. Yeah,
Stacy Hurst (07:31):
great point. And just, I like how you emphasized,
let's not teach nonsense words.
Let's not practice a ton ofnonsense words that not we use
nonsense words for a veryspecific reason, and that is to
recognize whether or notstudents have the ability to at
Site recognize words thatthey've never read, words
(07:52):
they've never seen before. Youalso stated, you quoted from the
article, when studentssuccessfully decode or spell a
word, it should always be linkedto its meaning. Now we have a
lot of words that we areaddressing in a day's
instruction. So Lindsay, how doyou do this? Say during phonics,
when you're having yourstudents, if you're doing
(08:12):
dictation and you're dictatingwords, how do you do this
without taking up a ton ofinstructional time? What do you
do
Lindsay Kemeny (08:21):
during dictation? Isn't too hard,
because every word that Idictate, I'm going to give a
sentence with it to give it somecontext and some meaning. When
you have, you know, whenstudents are reading a text,
it's a little more connected,right? And you can, you can, you
know, so they should beattending to meaning, and you
can strategically choose somewords from that text that you
(08:45):
need to teach the meaning of.
Now also in our phonics lesson,we're going to have like, we're
going to choral read maybe 10words together, and I have the
little word list that they readin partners, that they read, and
those are isolated words. It'sjust not possible to stop and
define every single one. It'snot or you're not going to get
through your lesson. But you canbe strategic and choose some
(09:07):
that you think students don'tknow. Even if you have a lot of
English learners, they need thislanguage. But again, you're
going to have to be strategicand choose the ones that you
think, okay, yes, here are someyou know, words that they will
see quite often that are reallyimportant. And I don't think
that they that they know. Butwhen you're you know, when I'm
(09:30):
going through a whole list of 12words with my whole class, I
can't stop and define everyone Iwon't get through all parts of
my lesson.
Stacy Hurst (09:39):
Yeah, I like, that's my Yes. That's good,
intentional and strategic. Butalso, like Donnell mentioned
earlier, when we were talkingabout fostering these things,
even before formal readinginstruction begins, the more
that they're exposed to thecontext of a sentence, using the
word in the context of asentence, or even hearing the
words that's going to behelpful. Wonderful,
Lindsay Kemeny (10:00):
yeah, and I was gonna say in this phonics lesson
is not when I'm gonna go throughthe whole Vocabulary Routine
like I might do with words likebefore our close reading lesson.
It's gonna be a quick littledrop in, a quick explanation, if
you were really on top of itbefore school and you got some
pictures put together, awesome.
And if not, just do a quickexplanation. Oh, a cot is a
(10:22):
little bed like that you'd layon when you're camping. Okay,
cot. Let's keep going, you know,great,
Stacy Hurst (10:30):
yeah, and it give them that exposure, yeah, don't
know.
Donell Pons (10:33):
And you know, with older students Stacy, we can
start doing this really ratheryoung too. I don't want to imply
that it's just for olderstudents, but connotation,
denotation to within wordmeaning. So a lot of us have a
connotation of a word, what itmight mean to us, how we hear
the word, how we use the word inour community or with our
friends. And then a denotation,which is that dictionary
(10:54):
standard definition. Do theydiffer? I mean, pointing that
out to kids oftentimes, isreally interesting too, to say,
what did we think it meant? Whatdoes the dictionary say that it
mean? Oh, that's kind ofinteresting. So again, you can
turn this into some veryinteresting opportunities for
talk and and that kind of athing, but it helps us
understand how we do personalizea lot of our vocabulary right
experience,
Stacy Hurst (11:14):
and to just become aware of that. I think there,
that's where there's nuance inmeaningful ways, too, for
students. So the next thing thatwe're going to talk about the
next part of the what issentence structure and grammar.
This is on page 37 BarbaraWilson says direct instruction
in the nature of language occursat the word sentence and text
(11:38):
levels. Instruction involvesexamining sentence construction
and learning to expand sentencesand combine short, choppy
sentences into longer,grammatically correct ones.
Additionally, from early on,students learn conventions of
written language such ascapitalization and punctuation.
(12:00):
There is a lot there. And myfirst question is for Lindsay,
because I can tell you that inmy experience, I was least
prepared to teach this aspect,even on a first grade level in
some cases. So my the way I'veapproached this type of
instruction has changeddramatically over the years. And
(12:21):
Lindsay, I know you and I wereboth pre service teachers back
in the balanced literacy days.
So how has your instruction inthis area changed over time?
Lindsay Kemeny (12:30):
Okay, well, I don't think I taught anything
explicitly early on in mycareer, and grammar and syntax
are no different. So what I'lltell you, what I used to do. I
used to give my kids this dailyoral language their little these
little half sheets, and I passthem out, and I had an answer
(12:51):
key. And first I would just givethem time to, like, correct the
sentences, and then we would goover the answers and then check
done. My grammar was finishedfor the day. And then, you know,
a few years ago, you know, andthere's research that shows like
(13:12):
there's the isolated grammaractivities like that do not help
students with their writing, andthey don't, you know, they don't
transfer that knowledge. Then Igot a little better a few years
ago, and I, I came across thesyntax project, which I would
recommend, and I started workingon, you know, kind of sentence,
(13:33):
different crafting sentences.
We'd start out orally. I startedthis in kindergarten, and they
have, the syntax project has allthese slides with pictures, and
it was really great, becausewe'd say, what's the who and the
do, and then we put it to asentence, and then we'd add in a
win, you know, and then after,you know, a week or two, we'd
add a where, and we practicethese different sentences. And
that was really great. Nowthough, I have taken it even up
(13:56):
a notch, because now I've tiedit in to what we're reading and
writing about. So the syntaxproject was really great because
it kind of taught me what Ishould be doing, you know, as I
was doing it, and how to createthese sentences and teach my
students to do that. But now Iconnect it with what we're
(14:18):
learning about.
Stacy Hurst (14:21):
I love it, and it correct me. If I'm wrong, the
syntax project is from literacyhow? I
Lindsay Kemeny (14:27):
don't think so.
I think it's a group out ofAustralia. Maybe I can't
remember, Oh, if you just Googlesyntax project, it will come
out. It will come up. If youjust Google syntax project, it
cut it's like the first one, andit has all these, it's for each
grade level. So that's reallynice, but I would just say, try
(14:49):
to connect it with your content.
You know, yeah, that's
Stacy Hurst (14:55):
critical. And I think literacy how has some
great resources for syntax as.
Well, Donnell, you are thedifferent one in this case,
because Lindsay and I have thissimilar trajectory with this
aspect of Donnell
Lindsay Kemeny (15:13):
was doing sentence work with her kids,
right? Used to notes all overthe window. I remember Donnell,
yeah, my
Stacy Hurst (15:20):
dad, my neighbors were saying, What are you doing?
Yes. I mean, of all the thingsmy parents, that was just not
one of them. Yeah. So Donnell,what advice would you give to
someone who is overwhelmed by orwho wants to improve their
teaching on this component?
Because I think that that wouldbe a lot of us, honestly,
Donell Pons (15:44):
yeah, and, you know, it's kind of interesting,
because I've said before that myfirst career was journalism,
right? So it was writing, andit's interesting to find out how
many people are veryuncomfortable with writing, and
that's the reason why they don'twant to teach it much. It's not
that they don't think it'simportant, that they don't think
they ought to be in their doing.
They're just uncomfortable, andwe have to acknowledge that and
(16:07):
say, Hey, I'm uncomfortable. Howcan I become more comfortable?
So I think that's first step.
Number one is to say it's okayto say I'm uncomfortable, right?
But to tell folks it's allright, you don't have to pretend
that you love it or it isn'tuncomfortable, because a lot of
folks didn't get the integratedteaching that we're talking
about, where writing wasincorporated into all of it, and
so it was just great because youlearned, you got picked up some
(16:30):
skills, but instead, a lot offolks have the same experience
where it wasn't really taughtvery well, it didn't feel very
comfortable. And I'm still not,and now I'm expected to teach it
that can be very uncomfortable.
So recommend reading at the baseof that page, 37 and then little
by little, take your baby stepsinto it, and you start with for
yourself. That's what I loveabout being able to teach a lot
of things, is you can break downfor yourself. Well, let's begin
(16:51):
at the sentence level, once wegot the words down and we've got
our spelling, and then let'sbegin at the sentence level.
Okay, then let's talk about theaspects of what's occurring in
this sentence. What are theparts of speech? What are the
words doing in the sentence? Howdo they interact? And just use a
sentence. Start there, and thenwe connect sentences. Then we
can start connecting sentences,and maybe we get to a paragraph.
And then eventually we'refeeling comfortable. We get
longer than that. Now we'recomposing, right? It's
(17:13):
composition. So a lot of thebase skills are put in there.
But I also want to have funalong the way, and I oftentimes
do this with my students, is forthe grammar part of it and for
punctuation is that we changethings up a little bit and we
say, well, what would it looklike if I didn't put any
punctuation in here? Let's dothree sentences. You write
yours. I'll write mine. It's onthis certain topic, and I'm
going to hand it to you. You seeif you could read it. Oh, they
(17:34):
love that. Because I'mimmediately like, I have a clue
what you're trying to say. It'slike, wow, it is hard, isn't it,
because I know what I was tryingto say. I had it in my head, but
if I don't put it on there,you're not gonna be able to tell
right? That's really fun. It'skind of a fun activity. It's
just three sentences. You leaveall the punctuation out, and
then they realize, Oh, that isreally important. Nowhere to put
that period, otherwise you'regonna string it all together.
But that's the piece where, if Iget comfortable, I can start
(17:56):
having a little bit of fun withit, and then my students can
have fun with it. When I'mhaving fun with it,
Stacy Hurst (18:03):
I love that. I'm going to do that with some of my
students. And remember, mine arepre service teachers, so they I
think they will love it. So thenext aspect of instruction is
text structure, and this issimply awareness of types of
text and the organizationrelated to them. And the
(18:28):
research says that awareness oftext structure supports both
comprehension and writing insimple terms. Narrative
structure involves charactersetting, problem, solution. I
think we've heard that before,events in the story, some rising
action, a climax and fallingaction, right? Expository or
(18:49):
informational text structureincludes description, sequence,
chronology, compare, contrast,problem solution and cause and
effect. Lindsay, how do you fitthis type of instruction in to
your teaching day? I
Lindsay Kemeny (19:05):
connect text structure both with during close
reading and our close readinglesson and our writing lesson.
And so, you know, I will teach,for example, a narrative. We're
going to kind of map the story.
We can map the story to, like,teaching them the story
elements, story grammar. So weuse a mnemonic called C, space,
(19:26):
character, setting, problem orpurpose, action, conclusion,
ending, emotion. And so we canwhen we read a story, we can
afterwards. I can ask somequestions. Who are the
characters we write it, youknow, and we can fill that out.
And then when we're writing, wecan use the exact same acronym
that we've been learning to plana story. So, you know, the same
(19:47):
with informational but we have adifferent mnemonic there.
Stacy Hurst (19:52):
So great. I know that I taught that text
structure, hopefully Iemphasize. It all throughout the
day, but I did teach it duringwriting explicitly, just so that
I could fit it in my day.
Actually, Donnell with olderlearners there, I think in their
day to day interactions, they'reprobably exposed to more non
(20:14):
fiction text or informationaltext. But how do you teach? Do
you teach one text structuremore than the other? And how
have you seen your studentscomprehension improve once you
point these things out to them?
Teach them.
Donell Pons (20:32):
Yeah, it's really interesting. Because more than
text structure, I lean intostorytelling, because that's the
natural piece to all of this,whether it was oral before we
could read and write, or whethernow it's a written it's we're
imparting information, and it'sin a storytelling fashion. You
(20:52):
come racing in to tell somebodyabout something, you have a
lead, the most exciting part,and then you build that thing,
and then you gotta close it outsomehow. So we do it all the
time orally. And I remindstudents, hey, you've done this.
You've done this a lot. Some ofyou are better at it. You're
great storyteller. Some of ustakes your while to get there.
Somebody's telling you, hurryup. What are you doing? Right?
So you kind of you orient themto the fact that you do this all
the time. We're just now goingto be more formal about how we
(21:15):
do it with writing it here, andwe're going to think about the
different audiences that wemight have, and we might think
about the different topics thatwe might have to convey
information about. So I take itmore that way, because we tend
to get kind of caught up inwhether it's this type of
writing or that type of writing.
And then there's somebody Ithink is phenomenal because he
has dyslexia. That's why I thinkthis guy is phenomenal about
(21:36):
teaching writing. And his bookis called Invisible Ink. It's
invisible ink building storiesfrom the inside out. He's a
screenplay writer, among otherthings. So he's very talented,
not only thing he does, but healso has dyslexia, and I think
that's why the book is so good,is because he straightforward,
puts down the writing process.
(21:58):
And all writing is three acts,the beginning the first act,
second and third, and you wrapup by the third, and every good
story falls down on having avery poor first act. Well, what
does that sound a lot likehaving a really good thesis
statement. So it can be appliedto all kinds of or types that
you say of writing a good thesisstatement, the whole thing will
fall down if my thesis statementisn't good. So I think he's
(22:19):
that's a really good one, butit's helping people understand
you do this all the time.
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Lindsay Kemeny (23:06):
Another thing about tech structure that I
learned, it was kind of like, Iguess, a little aha for me, that
I learned from Dr K wichikumar,where you know, you have problem
solution and you have cause andeffect. So if you're trying to
help your students learn, like,was this a problem solution,
structure or cause and effect?
Well, you can ask them, youknow, was there a problem in the
story, and then was the problemsolved? If the problem was
(23:28):
solved, it's a problem solution.
If the problem was not solved,it's cause and effect, right?
And that's just like a littlesimple thing. But I thought, oh,
yeah, that makes sense. And thatwas so easy to explain to
students when you're helpingthem with that.
Stacy Hurst (23:44):
I love that. And Tim Shannon just recently
released a podcast episode, andtoday is January 27 that I think
it's new today about this textstructure. His main point his
podcast episodes are reallyshort, but his main point was
not to over emphasize thestructure of a text, so that
(24:07):
you're not getting meaning fromit, right? That you're over
analyzing the structure. You'renot focusing on the meaning of
text. I thought that, along withwhat you just shared, Lindsay is
a good thing to remember whenyou're teaching these things to
students, Okay, the next thingis something that I love is
listed on here, and it iscritical thinking, teaching
(24:30):
students to think deeply aboutwhat they're reading. And I'm I
added emphasis to this takessignificant instructional time
and determination. And thenBarbara Wilson continues to say,
and this is on page 38 thiseffort must be intentional and
(24:50):
prioritized, especially in thisage of digital reading, where
students often skim rather thanread deeply. Okay, it is really
it was interesting to me thatshe called out explicitly the
time and determination it takesto teach students to think
deeply about what they'rereading. Does this resonate with
(25:13):
either of you as teachers? I'mgoing
Donell Pons (25:16):
to dive in just because I work with older
students, absolutely. So I thinkoftentimes people have the
misconception that if I've beentaught the things, and again,
this is with us, thinking aboutthem in separate pieces, rather
than integrated, right? Then ifI've taught the things, then,
oh, okay, now that I'm a littlebit better at a lot of these
things, then I'm all good. Butthere's so much more to it to
(25:39):
really become that reader whodesires to pick up a text and
stay with it, and even if it'schallenging, hang in there and
come back to it, ponder on it,connect it to other things. I
mean, that's deep reading,right? That's deep reading, and
that takes a lot, and it's andit's a, it's a learned thing,
too, and over time of havingsuccess, right? With different
(26:01):
kinds of texts that kind ofbuilds that ability to get to
the to the next level, so tospeak, of text. So again, it's
not happen overnight. And what'sinteresting is, I've noticed
that I've taken an approach withmy older students, that once
we're we are cooking along,right? We're cooking along
because we got a lot of thingswe're getting done that I always
want to pull out some time andopportunity to stay with a text.
(26:24):
So I may have a running textthat's a side, you know, running
alongside other activities thatwe're doing to build different
skills, but it's a text where wehave to keep characters in mind.
We have to keep the story inmind. And because that's a
skill, it's a skill to be ableto pick that back up and stay
engaged with it. And I'venoticed I've had more success
(26:46):
with students, and we've talkedlater about, okay, what was the
most powerful thing? And thatcomes back to that, hey, it's
when we did that text. Rememberwhen we had to keep coming back,
and it wasn't easy, and I had toYeah, because that's what is
critical thinking. It's puttingall the pieces together.
Stacy Hurst (27:03):
And she also states, what does this entail?
What do we do when we'reteaching critical thinking? It
involves comprehension,monitoring, prediction,
inference, making readingstamina, as you pointed out, as
well Donnell and developing acomprehensive mental model of
what they are reading. So as Ithink of all those skills, I'm
(27:25):
thinking this could beespecially challenging for
younger learners, becausethey're very concrete thinkers.
So Lindsay, because you'reworking with first graders, what
are some ways that you fosterdeep thinking with them?
Lindsay Kemeny (27:38):
You know, one thing we can do is model this by
thinking aloud. So as we'rereading aloud a text with
students, we can, kind of, youknow, try to peel back the
curtain on your own, thinkinglike, oh, this. Just said this,
but I was thinking this. Iwonder what you know and and
(27:59):
kind of, you know, share yourthoughts out loud, then keep
reading and then say, Oh, thatmakes sense now, because and
sharing these thoughts would behelpful with them also. You
know, sometimes I have a studentwho she is such a deep thinker.
I love it because she will raiseher hand and she interrupts. But
(28:21):
I love it, because she alwayshas these really good questions
where she is thinking deeply andI'm trying to think, because
we've been reading books aboutastronomy and space, and I can't
remember what it was. There wassomething about the moon, you
know, that she had learned fromanother text that she kind of
said, but I thought that, and itwas, I wish I could remember. It
was just so good and so butsomething I can do is point that
(28:44):
out. Look how, you know, what agood question you are really
thinking carefully about whatwe're reading, you know, to get
the other students to go, oh,you know, that's good. These
questions are good. And I alsothink, you know, students can't
think critically about somethingthey don't have knowledge about.
So we are building knowledge aswe're helping them read texts.
(29:08):
And of course, in our contentareas like science and social
studies, and we can have to helpbuild their knowledge on a
topic. We can use text sets. Soyou know, especially if I know,
like, oh, in my curriculum,we're going to be reading this
really hard text coming up.
Well, I can prep them with a feweasier texts on the same topic
to help prepare them for thatharder one. And that's just
(29:31):
going to, you know, it's just,it's creating an environment
where more critical thinking canhappen.
Stacy Hurst (29:38):
Yeah, I love that.
And I think we haveopportunities in our read alouds
too. I'm a big fan of dialogicreading. You're really
intentional about those promptsthat can help facilitate that
kind of deeper thinking. Iremember when I taught first
grade, two things come to mind.
I was reading the unabridgedversion of Les Mis in my
personal life, but I rememberhow. Having those conversations
(30:01):
with my students and evenpresenting dilemmas to them,
right? Like, what would you do?
And those kind of things. Onebook I did read aloud to one
first grade class is called asingle shard. It was a great
book, and I remember beinghesitant about reading aloud,
like, can they really get thisit? It took to Barbara Wilson's
point a lot of time anddetermination on my part to help
(30:22):
call out the parts that theyneeded to be remembering, like
you were saying, Donnell, andthe connections that they needed
to make. But it was verypowerful. I won't forget that,
because it had an impact on ourwhole class because of that
deeper thinking that we wereable to do so. Thank you for
that. Okay, the really coolthing about the what I think, is
(30:44):
that bar at the bottom of theinfo map that says this, this is
important integrated language.
This includes integratedlanguage, reading and writing
instruction, supportingautomaticity, fluency and
reading proficiency while youare teaching all of the things
(31:05):
that we just went throughsection by section, and
emphasizing the need for in thispart, she also emphasizes the
need for reading from theBeginning with appropriate, aka
scaffolded text thatcomprehension and written
expression should be integrated,like we pointed out, and engage
(31:27):
corresponding strategies likereading and writing narrative
text. And then she also says onpage 39 reading comprehension
improves when writing processes,including sentence construction,
are explicitly taught writingabout topics also improves
fluency and comprehension, andshe didn't list it. But of
(31:51):
course, we build backgroundknowledge and a million other
things too, right? So we'vetalked about a lot today, and I
know that there's so much morethat we could cover before we
succinctly summarize the how andthe who, I do want to maybe
we'll end the episode. So I'llask the question now and give
(32:12):
you a minute to think about it.
But what which aspects of thismodel have you most recently
focused on or want to focus on,to solidify your knowledge or
refine your practice. So thinkabout that for a minute while I
summarize the how I'm reallyjust going to say these are
terms we have heard before,explicit, systematic,
(32:32):
sequential. I think there's areally interesting point to be
made in the fact that Ida choseto use the word multi modal
instead of multi sensory, andBarbara Wilson clarifies the
difference in this part of thearticle. So I'm not going to
spoil it for you, other than tosay it's a teaser. Go read it.
Go read it. And then also justhow it is mastery oriented from
(32:58):
the beginning, that's somethingimportant to focus on, of
course, the who would involvethe students and the teachers,
as well as the system supportthat we need right and that we
all need to be involved inpromoting literacy for our
(33:20):
students. So that's what we needto be thinking about again. I'm
just gonna say to those of youwho are listening, we won't have
time to cover it in thisepisode. Go back, read the rest
of the article and share with usthings that stand out to you. I
would love to know that. I thinkwe would all be interested in
hearing that. Okay, so back tothe question, which aspects of
(33:41):
this model have you mostrecently focused on or want to,
to solidify your knowledge andor refine your practice?
Lindsay Kemeny (33:54):
I've been taking a deep dive into sentence
structure and grammar, and soit's been really fun to pull out
all my books I have, I was justrereading Margie Gillis and
Nancy Eberhard book on syntaxalso, you know, I can't think of
the title, but it's Haines andJennings book, and then pulling
out like speech to print and thebig multi sensory teaching of
(34:18):
basic language skills and allthose, because everything has a
chapter on this, and so it'sbeen fun to kind of take a deep
dive and figure out how toimprove things in my classroom.
Unknown (34:28):
Great, Darnell, you know,
Donell Pons (34:31):
it's interesting.
I've been spending more time onthat. I'm guessing critical
thinking is more where I've beenhanging out with my older
students and thinking about howI can really help build that
ability to make connectionsbetween text and really get into
a text, and to feel like youit's yours right to take it on,
and then also their own profileof how they approach a text. So
(34:53):
understanding what do I need inorder to really get into a text?
So comfort of. The material thatI'm looking at do, I need to do,
because even they've separatedthemselves from this experience
so much. And so I think this hasallowed me to really focus in
on, you know, going back throughand looking through these
aspects and saying, Gosh, Ithink I'm that's, that's a piece
(35:13):
that's super important to me.
And then it's reallyinteresting, because I've been,
I've been able to have someconversations with my son, who
I, you know, I've talked aboutbefore, he's really struggled
with reading his dyslexia,dysgraphia, dyscalculia, but he
his insight into story isamazing. And I've asked him a
few times, do you think it wasbecause of the dyslexia that
(35:35):
this the story, just in order tobe able to get into it, had to
come alive for you? And he goes,Ah, we're never able to figure
that out. But he does have areal affinity for story and a
real love and and, you know, anability to spot story, to know
how to refine the story. Andthat's something else I want
people to think about as youdon't know who that is in your
(35:55):
classroom. So is it that kiddothat's just having a really
tough time with those elementsof being able to get the
morphemes and the graphemes hangin there with them. That's how
important you are as theirinstructor, and that's why this
information is so important,because you don't know who those
students are in your classroom,and you may have that next
budding author, or somebodyelse, but just some or someone
(36:16):
who just can really enjoy text,and you're going to give them
that gift. Yeah, I love
Stacy Hurst (36:20):
that. To end where we started, this info map is a
good way for all of us to take alook at where in my practice or
my knowledge can I improve. AndI actually have no different
answer than the two of you haveshared. I am thick into writing,
including sentence structure andgrammar, vocabulary, including
(36:41):
morphology, because I get tocreate a course for my pre
service teachers that focus onthat as well as written
expression. So that's probablywhere I'm spending and will be
spending a little chunk of mytime. But at the same time, I am
also very invested in thecritical thinking aspect,
because I really want mystudents to be able to look at
(37:03):
scores and interpret what thatmeans for students, not just
taking them at face value, forinstance, along with all of the
great things that we have accessto, to read and learn. So thanks
for answering that question. Andthen on page 44 this is we'll
end the episode with this.
Hopefully we've sold you onreading this whole section
(37:24):
because it's great, and justtake the time to critically
think about what each sectionmeans and how that applies to
your practice and yourknowledge. I think it's no
accident that Ida also hasknowledge and practice standards
that we can also use inconjunction with this. So here
(37:45):
we go. Page 44, final quote, thetenets of structured literacy
will continue to evolve withadditional research, and we know
that because it's informed bythe science of reading, but
there is sufficient evidence tofully implement, fully
implement, a structured literacyapproach now and then the
(38:07):
powerful sentence studentsdeserve, no less. So. Thank you
so much, Donnell and Lindsay forthis conversation today. And I
know us, we are going to keeptalking about this, by the way,
but we're just not going to berecording it, because there's a
lot to talk about here, and it'sbeen a really interesting
(38:28):
conversation. So thank you andto our listeners, thank you for
joining us. Please join us forthe next episode of literacy
talks.
Narrator (38:39):
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. You.
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