[Listen Again] Ep. 109: The Right to Read with Second Language Educator, Kim Lockhart

Episode Transcript
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Lori (00:01):
Welcome teacher friend.
I'm Laurie and I'm Melissa.
We are two literacy educatorsin Baltimore.
We want the best for all kidsand we know you do too.

Melissa (00:11):
Our district recently adopted a new literacy
curriculum, which meant a lot ofchange for everyone.
Laurie and I can't wait to keeplearning about literacy with
you today.

Lori (00:25):
Hi everyone, welcome to Melissa and Laurie Love Literacy
Literacy Podcast.
We are here with a wonderfulCanadian teacher who reached out
to us.
She is awesome and we have suchan important conversation to
have today.
Melissa, I know you're excitedbecause I mean Canada's just….

Melissa (00:43):
I know we have another Canadian friend.

Lori (00:46):
Seems like everyone else has it together, but you know
we're all working on the samething, so it's exciting to talk
about that, yeah, and excitingthings happening in Canada, so
welcome Kim.

Melissa (00:57):
Thanks for joining us today.

Kim Lockhart (00:59):
Thank you.

Lori (01:00):
Thanks for having me, and you know we love teachers.
So you have your color-codednotes.
You're all ready to go totoday's conversation, right?
Super prepared.
Categorized everything withcolor, I feel like you might
have to take a picture of yournotes for us, for social media,
so that we could post.
We could be like guess who this?
Is, and everybody would be likea teacher, definitely a teacher
.

Melissa (01:17):
Yes, different color highlights Love it.
Well, kim, thank you so muchfor joining us today, and we
know you're a busy classroomteacher, so we really appreciate
you taking the time to talk tous.
Can you just tell us a littleabout yourself?

Absolutely so well .
First of all, thank you so muchfor inviting me to be here.
I listen to your podcast allthe time.
I'm a big cross-country skierand every day my husband and I
would go cross-country skiingand I would be listening to
Melissa and Laurie Love.
Literacy podcast and I'velearned so much from you, so I
am super thrilled to be here.
I'll just give you a little bitof information about myself.

(01:59):
Oh and just by the way, wedon't have snow anymore, so the
cross-country ski season.
I don't want to give people thewrong impression.
That was like three months ago.

Melissa (02:07):
The snow is gone Finally.

But anyway.
So I am a second languageclassroom teacher here in
Kingston Ontario.
I have a very unique position.
I'm both a classroom teacher aswell as the special education
teacher at my school, and I workin what used to be a dual-track
school but is now asingle-track school, teaching
French to second languagelearners and I've been doing.

(02:36):
I've been working as a teacherfor 22 years, but I came into
the role of French immersionteacher in 2005, after starting
my career in internationalteaching and I did a teaching
placement in Singapore, I did ateaching placement in France and
I taught for three years inMexico, so just absolutely love

(02:57):
second language learning.
We don't have a lot of Spanishhere in Kingston Ontario, so I
started working as a Frenchimmersion teacher and have
really loved helping kids attainbilingualism and learn a second
language.

Lori (03:18):
Oh my gosh, that's so cool .
I wish I had taught in allthose places too.
I know what a wonderfulexperience, oh my gosh.
Well, thank you for being herefrom Canada.
I'm wondering if you might beable to share a little bit about
the executive summary that cameout, if you could just tell us

(03:42):
about it and we know that theOntario Human Rights Commission
put out the right to readexecutive summary and that
caught our attention.
Oh, there's a lot of buzzaround it.
Yeah, a lot of it.
That's how we connected withyou, so can you just share a
little bit about the buzz thatlike?
I know you were excited forthis, so a little bit about your
excitement about it.

Yeah, absolutely so I'm just going to backpedal a
little bit.

Melissa (04:09):
Please do.

So I started teaching in a second language
program back in 2005, and I wasa classroom teacher and I was
teaching a grade two classroomand I was using all the reading
strategies that had been taughtto me from Teachers College, and
a lot of those strategies werebased on a balanced literacy

(04:32):
approach to language and we wereusing strategies from the three
queuing system.
And I noticed that a lot of myFrench immersion students
weren't able to use that threequeuing approach because I was
using the books that wereprovided to me and using the
three queuing system, we werelooking at the pictures in the

(04:55):
book and the students weren'table to guess the pictures,
which was one of the strategiesthat I had been taught.
And so I realized that thethree queuing system wasn't
working for my second languagelearners.
But, on the other hand, theyweren't able to read the text
either, because they didn't havethe phonics, they didn't know

(05:17):
the code, they didn't know theletter sound correspondence to
actually read the text.
So all of a sudden, ice cameout a bit of a crossroads.
I thought well, they can't readthe text because it has been
directly translated from Englishinto French, and so the code
that we call the phonemegraphing correspondence was too

(05:37):
complex, but they also weren'table to use the strategies that
I have been taught in my teachertraining.
So I just always, basically atthe time, knew something was
wrong but didn't know what to doabout it.
So just consider that thosekids were special education kids
, and so usually every year Ihad three or four kids that

(05:59):
needed special education support, and that looked very different
for a lot of the kids.
But then, in 2011, I applied forthe job of special education
teacher at a French immersionschool and I thought, okay, I'm
going to be the spec-ed teacher,I'm going to be able to teach
kids how to read, and so Ientered the role back in 2011,

(06:19):
and I started working withstudents in small groups and I
thought this is brilliant.
Small group ratios.
This is where it's at, and whatended up happening was I was
now seeing three or four kidsfrom every classroom in the
school in second languageprogram and I realized that the
small group ratio wasn'tactually enough.

(06:41):
It wasn't enough to teach thesekids how to read, and I was
really.
I had no other tools in mytoolbox.
I had the same tools, the samestrategies, the same approach,
which is known as the balancedliteracy approach using the
three queuing system that theclassroom teachers were using.
So I decided to explore readinginstructional a little bit more,

(07:09):
and so in 2013, I started amaster's program and here in
lovely Kingston, ontario, wehave a very well-known
university and faculty ofeducation known as Queen's
University, and I decided to domy MEd, and my research in
particular was on supportingstudents with reading

(07:32):
difficulties in second languageprograms French immersion in
Ontario.
So I thought this is it.
This is how I'm going to figureout how to help that.
You know 15 to 10 or 15% ofstudents in every class, and
there wasn't actually a lot ofresearch available.

(07:54):
What I found in my MEd wasusually, historically, students
in second language programs inFrench immersion were cancelled
out.
If they weren't learning toread through the regular
instructional approach, thenthey were usually just deemed
not fit, were not suitable forFrench immersion and were

(08:17):
cancelled out and into theEnglish program.
But I thought, well, that's notright.
I taught in Singapore, I taughtin France, I taught in Mexico
for three years.
No one was cancelled out of ESL.
Nobody was cancelled out.
They were provided with theinterventions, they were
provided with the instructionalsupport they needed.
And so, after graduating with myMEd I, I explored the

(08:43):
Orton-Gillingham approach and wehave this magical clinic here
in Kingston.
It's called the Reading Clinicand a lot of our students go to
the Reading Clinic to.
A lot of students who struggleto read go to the Reading Clinic
.
And so I went to the ReadingClinic and I said will you hire
me?
And they said, well, don't youalready have a job?
I said, yes, but I want tobring the Reading Clinic magic

(09:05):
into the public education systemand I want to do what you're
doing in English and adapt itfor my FSL students.
And they said, well, that'ssilly, why don't you just go to
Toronto, which is only two hoursfrom where I live, and take the
training that we took?
So I did a two-week intensivecourse in Orton-Gillingham and

(09:26):
when I came back, I adaptedparts, elements of the
Orton-Gillingham approach intomy second language classroom.
So I've been doing.
I've been using this structuredliteracy approach an explicit,
systematic, very sequentialapproach to reading instruction

(09:50):
in my FSL French as a SecondLanguage classroom since 2018.
And it has dramatically changedstudents' motivation to learn a
second language, their abilityto read the words.
But what I didn't realize wasthat this was actually going on
all across the province ofOntario that the things that I

(10:13):
was seeing, the difficultiesthat I was seeing those three,
four, five kids in everyclassroom wasn't unique to my
community.
It was actually happeningacross the country.
So a number of parents andeducators and stakeholders
approached the Ontario HumanRights Commission in 2019 and

(10:35):
said there is a massive problem.
There are too many students whoare falling through the cracks,
too many students who are notbeing identified early, too many
students who are not gettingthe reading interventions that
they need, and that is whatprovoked the OHRC to reading

(10:58):
query.

Melissa (10:59):
Can I just say this is terrible to say, but it makes me
feel better that it's not justthe United States.
I hate that there's a problemanywhere, but I'm glad we're in
it together.
I'm glad we can learn from youall too Well and it's not just
Canada and the United States.

We've been looking at countries all over the world
Australia and England and thereare countries all over the
world that have been using thisholistic approach to reading
where we think that studentswill magically learn to read by
exposing them to a language-richenvironment.
And I don't want to jump too farahead, but we know through

(11:41):
research that learning to speakis a natural process and I love
Dr Louisa Motez and she has thiswonderful quote and she's the
author of Teaching Reading IsRocket Science and she loves
that.
It is such a great article andlearning to speak is a natural

(12:06):
process, but learning to readand write is not so in second
language programs.
Often parents will say I don'tunderstand why my child's having
difficulty.
He or she speaks the languageof instruction all the time at
home.
Well, students who are immersedin a language-rich environment
may learn to speak andunderstand the language, but

(12:28):
learning to read and write in asecond language can be just as
difficult and can be just aschallenging in a second language
as it is in their firstlanguage and it needs to be
explicitly taught.

Lori (12:41):
Would you say that the challenges are the same or
similar?
I mean, I know there'sdifferent ones, but I feel like,
foundationally, the challengeis that they're not being
explicitly systematically taughtto read, and that's in a
structured way.
To me, that would be thefoundational piece.
Do you think that that'saccurate?

(13:01):
Or?
I mean, I'm not a secondlanguage teacher, so I'm really
relying on you here.

So I always thought the missing piece was
the decoding piece, because mystudents were learning to speak
and they were able to askquestions and they seemed to be
able to follow instructions.
Granted, a lot of them wereprobably looking at their peers
and just following what theirpeers were doing.
And so I always thought it's theword recognition.
And if you think of the simpleview of reading, and if your

(13:29):
viewers or audience isn'tfamiliar with the simple view of
reading, this is aninstructional model.
This is a model that wasdeveloped back in 1986.
I can barely say that it's along ago, 1986.
And basically it says forstudents to achieve reading
comprehension they need twothings.

(13:49):
They need word recognition,which is decoding, being able to
peel the sounds off the page,being able to read the words.
But then the second piece ofthe puzzle is being able to
understand what they're reading,to attach meaning to those
words.
And I feel that in secondlanguage classrooms this is just

(14:11):
my I'm speaking from myexperience, having taught
internationally as well asteaching here in Kingston French
immersion that we need to putmore emphasis on the language
comprehension, because studentsare not coming into the
classroom with the oral languageskills in the second language
that they're coming in with intheir first language.

(14:35):
So, for example, students whoare going to school in their
native language that was theword I was looking for when
they're coming to school intheir native language, they
typically have 1500 to 2000words.
So a child who's just enteringkindergarten for the first time
already has a bank of vocabularyin their brains.
They have like a mentaldictionary.

(14:55):
But when I get these kiddos onSeptember 1st in French
immersion and I say, okay, mesamis, vas-y à la porte, they
have no idea.
There's a lot of sign that saysthe word.

Melissa (15:08):
Do you know what Madame Lockhart's doing?

So there needs to be a lot of attention, a lot of
explicit, systematic instructionin those oral language skills,
because oral language skillstruly are the foundation of the
reading process.
Because I can teach students todecode and we know that
students with readingdisabilities and dyslexia
particularly struggle withdecoding and, given my

(15:33):
background with theOrton-Gillingham approach, I can
help kids with the decodingprocess the letter, sound
correspondence, the blending ofsounds, putting syllables
together to make words.
But they have to attach meaningto those words and so they have
to have that foundation of thelanguage comprehension to help

(15:54):
them with reading comprehension.
And so, to answer your question, I do think, I truly believe
that second language learnersare tasked with the extra
challenge.
I think there are somemisconceptions that students who
are learning a second languagethat it comes naturally and you

(16:15):
just immerse them Right.

Melissa (16:18):
Especially at a young age.
Exactly, they'll just catch onLike a sponge their brains are
like a sponge.

Lori (16:25):
I mean, I'm just saying all the things I want to guess.
That's exactly yes.

Well, exactly, and I think we have all believed
that, but we do have apercentage.
In fact, there is some researchto show that 60% of students
will learn to read and write andspeak very naturally, but we
have about 40% of students whoneed explicit, systematic, code

(16:48):
based instruction, and so Ithink we need to remember that
that applies to second languagelearners as well.

Melissa (16:56):
Yeah, that's so important and they know that we
are always on this podcasttalking about the science of
reading and how it is not justthe decoding side of that rope
but both sides.
So thank you for giving thatexample.
It's really helpful.

Lori (17:11):
Yeah, and when we actually do get to talk about the
executive summary that was thenote that I made I was like what
about the rest of the rope?
It only talks about some of it,so that was really interesting
to me, so maybe that's our segue.

No, that's a phenomenal segue because there
has been a lot of not Ishouldn't say there has been a
lot, but there has been somepushback to the OHRC report,
feeling like that it's focusedtoo much on phonemic awareness,
which are the sound skills andphonics.

(17:46):
But the OHRC report is actuallyhas quite a broad scope within
the area of word recognition andit acknowledges right from the
get go, right from the verybeginning, the OHRC report
acknowledges that learning toread is a very complex process
and there are many differentstrands of their rope and if you
think of the Scarborough'sreading rope, we know that

(18:10):
language comprehension.
If you tease it out, there aremany different components of
language comprehension.
However, students can'tcomprehend until they can peel
the words off the page andthat's the word recognition
piece.
So the OHRC report reallyfocused on the word recognition
piece because that seems to bethe piece that's missing here in

(18:33):
Ontario.
That was the piece thatteachers were trained in.
Teachers, I think in teachertraining programs, had a lot of
training in the languagecomprehension read alouds and
vocabulary, rich texts and evensome of the oral language piece

(18:56):
and background informationmaking connections, making
predictions, the languagecomprehension piece.
But what was lacking was theinstruction in the word
recognition piece.
So that's why the OHRC reportreally focused on that piece.

Melissa (19:10):
That's so helpful to like point out.
Just that it's not that that'sthe only thing that matters.
It's not that teachers weremissing right now and why that's
the emphasis in the report.
That's really helpful.

Absolutely, and I think one thing that came out of
the OHRC report is not thatteachers are doing anything
wrong.
Teachers are actually doingeverything they have been
trained to do Myself included.
For 18 years I was tellingstudents look at the pictures,
make predictions and guess theword.
But in second language programsit is far more startling to see

(19:46):
that these strategies don'twork, and Dr Kilpatrick has a
great quote and it is that thethree queuing system and
guessing it are strategies thatpoor readers use and so here we
are you know?
reinforcing and prompting kidsto look at the picture and make

(20:07):
a good guess, which they can domaybe in their first language,
but certainly not in a secondlanguage when they don't have
the vocabulary.

Lori (20:13):
No, I mean, it's so scary that we're teaching that or
teaching that to kids.
You know that that's what badreaders do.
Yet we're like do what badreaders do you know?
Would it be helpful if, whenMelissa and I read the report,
we pulled out some that stoodout to us.
Would it be helpful for us tojust kind of name some of those

(20:34):
so that we could elicit someconversation around them?
Mr Bent, melissa, what do youthink of that?
Yeah, sounds good.
Okay, all right.
You want me to start?
Sure, all right.
So the recommendations.
Well, I'll start with the bigtakeaway.
The big takeaway is thatstudents need structured
literacy, regardless of thelanguage of instruction, and I

(20:59):
think that that's the mostimportant thing to take away
from this.
Then, the recommendations thatstood out to us.
First of all, I love that theycalled the Ministry of Education
.

Melissa (21:09):
It's sound reminds me of Harry Potter.

Lori (21:14):
The whole time I was reading, I was picturing Harry
Potter and I'm like this issomething that you're doing.

Melissa (21:18):
We both thought that we had to talk about it.

Lori (21:21):
That's important for work, not Harry Potter.
Okay, at the end, though, youwill have to teach us how to do
our Canadian O's.
Maybe you could teach us thatbefore we go.

Oh, I don't think we said our O's differently.

Lori (21:34):
Say it differently.

I know some people say baggle rather than baggle.

Melissa (21:38):
Oh, that's a good one.

I would like to think I'm not one of those
people who says baggle.

Lori (21:44):
We didn't hear you say that.
No, all right.
So the Ministry of Education,the OHRC, which is the Ontario
Human Rights Commission,recommends that the Ministry of
Education, faculties ofeducation and school boards
explicitly recognize the termdyslexia, which I thought was
awesome that they named that.

(22:04):
But I was curious, like why dowe have to name that?
Is it not a recognized term?
Do you have any intel, kim?
And if not, that's fine, I knowwe're putting you on the spot
with that one.

Well, no, that's okay, because this has been a
burning question of mine formany, many years, and so, and
I've asked everyone I know, whydon't we use the term dyslexia?
How do you don't use it at all.
It is never written in a formalreport.

Melissa (22:30):
And when a child is diagnosed.

So we use psychoeducational assessments To
make a diagnosis of a readingdisability.
The child is always identifiedwith a learning disability in
reading, or in reading andwriting, or learning disability
and reading, writing and mathand knowing what I know now.

(22:54):
A learning disability inreading is dyslexia, a learning
disability in writing isdysgraphia, and learning
disability in mathematics isdyscalculia, and so this is
something that has to come fromthe ministry, I believe, and in
the boards of education theydon't use the word dyslexia, but

(23:15):
I am really hoping that, withthe new curriculum that is to
come out in September 2023, thatthere are recommendations to
actually call a spade a spade.
It really helps parentsunderstand what it is and what
it means if we actually call itwhat it is.

Melissa (23:37):
And teachers.
I mean, as a teacher I will sayI didn't know much about
dyslexia, but I knew it existed.
I knew what it was.
But because I never saw it onan IEP and I always saw the same
thing where it was just like alearning disability, I was like,
well, I don't know what that is.
I never put it together.

Lori (23:56):
I also think it's almost scarier, isn't it almost scarier
, as, like it feels like one ofthose things where, if you name
it, you're like this is what itis, it's called dyslexia, this
is and then fill in the blankright, rather than saying this
is a learning disability.
There could be lots of optionsfor that Right.

Melissa (24:13):
That's what I always thought as a teacher.
Like I don't know what it is,then it could be a million
things.

Well, exactly, especially if we call it a
learning disability in readingand writing and math.
But I've always said what'smore important than naming the
learning disability, whetherit's you know, it is very
important to call it dyslexia,so that we can target our
interventions, because it's theinterventions that are really
important.

(24:38):
And actually that brings me toanother one of the
recommendations in the OHRCreport.
In the report they recommenduniversal evidence based
screeners on foundational skills, focusing on word reading and
fluency.
And I feel like this is one ofthe greatest takeaways that I
read in the report, becauseright now in Ontario we have

(25:01):
what I call a wait and seeapproach, and in second language
programs the wait and see iseven longer than it is for
students in their first language, because students in French
immersion here don't startEnglish classes until they're in
grade three, so apsychoeducational assessment

(25:22):
isn't provided until the childis in grade four, five or six.
So we're talking about a childwho's been in school for five,
six years and more likely thannot, the child was experiencing
difficulties in language at avery young age and there may
have been red flags when theywere four or five, but we're

(25:42):
waiting until they're nine, 10,11 years old before providing a
psycho-adassessment.
So I love the fact that theOHRC recommended evidence based
screeners.
Now a lot of people might bethinking well, what is an
evidence based screener?
That is psycho-ed and it's not.
A psychoeducational assessmentcan diagnose for a learning

(26:03):
disability like dyslexia.
But screeners screen forstudents who are at risk.
So there are risk factorsassociated with dyslexia.
There are some what we callwarning signs or red flags that
a student may possibly havereading difficulties, and some
of those include articulationdifficulties, difficulties with

(26:25):
sound skills.
Does the child have difficultyunderstanding the beginning
sounds, ending, sounds of words?
And so those are some earlyindicators.
And just as importantly asearly screening is the early
intervention, and that's reallywhat I focus on in my job.

(26:46):
Are those early interventionsand preventing sort of a weight
to fail approach, preventingthose gaps from growing further
and hopefully, you know,providing them with enough
skills and those foundationalreading skills so that that they
don't fall further and furtherbehind.

Melissa (27:06):
I really want to hear about what you do in your
classroom for this.
But before we get there, I justwant to call out a couple other
things that were in the report,because they also talk about
training teachers, about all ofthese things that you're talking
about.
Not only you know professionallearning once they become
teachers, but I love that ittalked about teacher education
programs and making sure that weget this training before we

(27:30):
become teachers.
So we know, you know, so wedon't have to do like you did,
kim right, and go find your owntraining and figure it out, but
everyone's getting that training.
So I just I wanted to call thatout because I just think it's
really important.

Absolutely, and this truly is a systemic issue.
We need professors, we needinstructors in the faculties of
education who are experts, andright now I don't know if I
should say this, but it's likethe blind leading the blind.
Often we have people who aren'texperts in reading, who are in

(28:07):
the faculties and truly needexperts in reading so that we
can create experts in theclassroom, because all classroom
teachers really do need to beexperts.
Back in the day, we might havesome special education
classrooms, but now with aninclusionary approach and with a
more integrated approach, everyclassroom teacher would benefit

(28:28):
from knowing how to teachstudents with reading
difficulties and with dyslexia.

Lori (28:36):
So good.
I'm excited for that.
It does feel like that they didthink about like the whole wrap
around the big picture for thisexecutive summary.
So that was again Melissa.
I echo the same sentiment.
It was really heartening to seethat pre-service teachers will
be receiving information as wellas professional development for

(28:58):
teachers who are alreadyworking, because who has two
weeks to take off to I mean,other than in the summer to go
do a training?
Do you even get your summersoff, kim?

Here in Canada, we do, we do, we do Okay.

Lori (29:14):
We have sunshine, do you?

have year-round school.

Lori (29:17):
I mean there's lots of different ways but yeah, I think
that that is so good that youlike found the training, but
also that you found a reputabletraining.
Like you know, I feel like withthat kind of thing it could
have been up in the air.
So really lucky that you didyour homework, did the right
thing and got yourself what youneeded.

Well, that's interesting.
You'd say that because I trulyfeel very fortunate to have been
able to do this.
First of all, my sister livesdowntown Toronto, so it was a
little bit like a staycation.
I was able to stay with her,and my husband, who is a
phenomenal source of support,stayed home with the kids, and
so I was very fortunate.
But it was not inexpensiveeither.

(29:59):
So part of the reason I like todo what I do is because not
everyone has that fortune oftaking two weeks of intensive
Orton-Gillingham training, and Ijust want to say too that there
are many other programs outthere other than
Orton-Gillingham.
So I took my Orton-Gillinghamtraining because it was

(30:20):
recommended to me before I knewwhat I know now.
Like I said, I went toKingston's reading clinic and I
said teach me the magic, and Ididn't really want a second job
as a mom of two young children,but I really wanted to ensure
that the students in my schoolhad equal access Because, as

(30:40):
Prostya said this earlier, myschool is very diverse and we
have some very affluent studentsand we have some students who
really live in vulnerablecommunities here in Kingston,
and so I was really seeing thatdiscrepancy between those who
could afford private tutoringand those who couldn't, and it

(31:01):
was that inequity that wasreally really bothering me and
that drove me to seek out myOrton-Gillingham.
But there are other optionsthat are more affordable, and
I've taken some science ofreading courses since my OG, so
please don't think thatOrton-Gillingham is the only way
to get structured literacytraining and to help students

(31:23):
with dyslexia.
There are certainly otheraffordable programs out there
too.

Lori (31:27):
Yeah, thank you for naming that too.
Yeah, for sure.

Absolutely.

Melissa (31:32):
So, kim, tell us a little bit about what happens in
your classroom, like, how didyou learn all this great stuff?
And you had to kind of figureout what that means for second
language learners.
Right, it's a little not aone-to-one correlation.
So what do you do?

So what?
I've been doing this, like Isaid, since 2011 and I've got it
down to a fine art and like Ithink the kids love coming
because all kids love feelingsuccessful and so they come into
my.
I have a small room and I takethree or four students.

(32:12):
Now, during COVID, it looked alittle bit different.
Typically, what I do is I groupsmall groups of students based
on learning need.
So if I have students who arereally struggling with phonemic
awareness skills, if they'rehaving difficulty identifying
beginning sounds and words, orif they're having difficulty
with syllables or if they'rehaving difficulty with phonics,
then I would group thosestudents together.
Obviously, during COVID we hadto cohort, so I was seeing

(32:36):
students with similar needs inthe same classroom.
So a basic day for me would beI see about 25 students in five
short 15-minute blocks.
So I will take a small group offour or five students into my
class and we work on a targetedscale.

(32:58):
So I have done some screenerson these students.
Sometimes I use phonemicawareness screeners, sometimes I
use a phonics screener and whatI do is I use this magical tool
that I learned inOrton-Gillingham, which is
essentially letters on cards,and it's as simple as it's.

(33:19):
Unfortunately your viewerscan't see me, but they are cue
cards or recipe cards from thedollar store and I simply put
the graph theme or the letter onthe front of the card and on
the back of the card I might puta key word.
So in French we might have theletter B and I would say to the
student in French, this is theletter B, can you say B?

(33:41):
They would say the B and I willsay it says the sound B and I
would make sure when they saythe sound that they're not
putting that extra uh at the end.
So like right from the get-go Iwould make sure that they're
pronouncing the word correctly.
And so you know, slowly webuild what I call our code pack

(34:01):
and those are letter soundcorrespondence in their second
language.
So by the, I work with thestudents in six-week walks.
So I'll see 25 students for sixweeks and we will go through
the code, we will review thecode, that that they know and
just review it.
But then I introduce a new soundthat is new or unfamiliar and

(34:28):
we practice that.
And the way we practice that is, I show them what the sound
looks like and I always approachreading from a speech-to-print
perspective.
Like I'll say the sound.
So I'll use the sound, becausethis is new for you too, because
I don't believe you speak inFrench.
The sound is the sound is waand wa is represented with the
letter O and I.

(34:49):
So this does not exist inEnglish.
So this looks actually verydifferent in English than it
does, or, sorry, it looks verydifferent in French than it does
in English.
So I would show them the O andI on my cue card and I would say
this is the sound wa.
Can you think of any words withthe sound wa?
And depending on their gradeand their oral language, they

(35:10):
may have some French words withthe sound wa and a lot of them
do, because one of the firstthings they learn in school is
can I go for a drink of water?
And the word drink is wa, sothey may or may not know the
word wa.
Sometimes I have to guide them,but I really want them to hear
that sound and so that they canassociate that sound with the

(35:31):
letters.

Lori (35:32):
And then Can you take us through how you would help them
hear that sound Like?
Is that too intricate?
No, I would, because I feellike Melissa and I have no idea
how like we could totally beyour students right now.
I would love it if you were mystudents.

So I would go through the code.
Unfortunately I don't have acode pack in front of me right
now, but I would say I wouldshow you my code and I would we
start with a visual drill.
So I would show them theletters that we have practiced
and that they have consolidated,and so we're just gonna go
through the alphabet and you canjust repeat it after me.
Let's pretend this has theletter a on it and I would say a

(36:07):
and you'd repeat a, a, b.

Melissa (36:10):
B C.

D, d, d.
Okay, be careful.
You don't want to have thatschwa at the end.
You don't want to have the a,so we have to make sure it's
clean, it's.

Lori (36:22):
And it's not?
Yeah, great, I was trying tosay it in a Canadian accent.

Do we get to the letter R with the R rolling?

Melissa (36:33):
I can't do it, I can't roll, I don't know.

Well so so I would essentially start with a visual
drill and we would go throughthese and then I do what I call
a seesaw approach.
I would then get out theirlittle whiteboards.
I use one of my husband's oldsocks that they put on their non
dominant hand, and with theirdominant hand they have their
marker, and then we would do theauditory drill.

(36:58):
I would say the sound, so Iwould say a and they would write
the letter a and I'd make surethat they're writing it
correctly.
Hand handwriting is incrediblyimportant, but especially for
students with dyslexia, who havea hard time maybe
discriminating between certainletters that may look similar,
like B looks similar to D.

(37:21):
They look similar.
So I would show them that theseletters are actually drawn
differently.
The letter B we start with inFrench it's le baton we start
with the line and then we do labelle and then for the letter D,
we actually start with themagic C.
So that kinestheticdifferentiation helps the

(37:42):
students differentiate betweenthe letters and, more
importantly, the letter sounds.

Lori (37:46):
So I would say, can I, can I quickly describe?
You started with for those whoare not like watching right now
because they didn't, it'spodcast.
So you started with the line.
So for the B, you started atthe top and came down to the
bottom and then hooked around tosweep.
You know the little hook of theB with the D.
You started with the hook firstand then went up to the line.

(38:07):
Is that right?
That is correct, okay, I justwanted to describe it also in
English.
I could hear you speak Frenchall day, though.
It's beautiful.

Oh, my goodness, that's very nice of you to say.
Unfortunately, yeah, I wouldlove to go back to France and
just do one more year in France.

Melissa (38:22):
We'll join you in the wine region.

So I call it the seesaw approach.
So I show the students theletters on the cards and they
say the sound to match theletter, they say the phoneme to
match the grapheme and then wedo an auditory drill.
So then I say the sound andthey have to match the letter to
the sound, and then we doblending drills.
I would take a consonant thatthey know, so, for example, I

(38:51):
would take the letter S isalways a good one to start with
because many of the consonantsin French, as well as in Spanish
, are similar.
Many of the consonants are thesame in French as they are in
English.
So we would have the consonantS and it says and then I would
have our new sound, which is,and we do a blending drill, we

(39:12):
might go, and then I'd have theletter T and I put the T beside
the, which is.
But the really cool thing aboutteaching the second language is
for all of these kids.
These are just sounds.
There's no meaning attached tothem.
So what I tried to do and Iactually just did this this

(39:34):
morning is I always ask them youknow, what does this mean?
What does what does this mean?
And often they can sound outthe words, they can go swah,
swah, but they don't know thatthat is silk.

Melissa (39:49):
That's what I can do it , but I don't know what that
means why would they.

But once we start blending those together, they
can start making syllables.
So I always start with theindividual letter I actually
have.
I call it the backwards designof reading, and when I did my
masters at Queens I used abackward design of instruction

(40:16):
approach for my master's projectand I use a similar approach in
my reading instruction, and Ijust made this up.
But it makes sense.
We think that reading startswith a book and so often when we
want our kids to read, what'sthe first thing we do?
We give them a book.
The problem is they can't reada book until they can read

(40:38):
sentences.
So then we have to think ohokay, let's put the book aside,
you're not ready for that, let'slook at sentences.
But then they look at asentence and they really we
realize they can't read thewords yet.
So we put the sentence asideand we, you know, show them the
words, but they can't read thewords from a structured literacy
lens.
They can't read the words untilthey can match the sounds to
the letters.

(40:59):
Sure and so we think, okay,let's put the words aside, let's
look at the letter and whatsounds they make.
But I'm finding, especiallywith the pandemic, students are
having a lot of difficultysaying certain sounds.
So we have to go back evenfurther and we have to work on
the articulation of sounds, andso a lot of the work that I do
actually starts at the bottom ofthe ladder and it's saying the

(41:23):
sounds.
And I have a mirror in myclassroom.
We look at what my mouth does.
When I say wa, which is the oheye grapheme.
When I say what, what is mymouth doing, what are my lips,
what are my teeth, what am I?
And then we have sounds likeand mmm, which are similar
sounds, and my mouth is doingthe same thing.
But we put our hand on ourthroat to feel the vibration.

(41:44):
So students who havearticulation difficulties can
feel voiced, the voiced andunvoiced sounds, and then, once
they can say because, forexample, like a van is very
different than a van and so, ora van is very different than a
fan.
So we have to make sure nowthat's an example in English but

(42:06):
we have to make sure they cansay the words, because if they
can't say the word correctlyit's going to drastically yeah
affect their ability to makemeaning from that word.
So I have that sort of backwarddesign of reading.
You start with the sounds andfrom sounds we look at the
letter, sound correspondence,and then we do blending.
So when we're blending thesesyllables, I then have these

(42:30):
cards with syllables on them andwe do a drill with the
syllables.
So if we're working back to thesound, what you might, we might
do a drill like what swat, what, what, what?
And I would say what, what doesthat mean for?
And if they don't know, then Iwould tell them that that means
cold.

(42:51):
Because we have to attachmeaning to the sounds.
And what we're finding insecond language programs is
students are doing a great jobof decoding but they can't
comprehend what they're reading.
So I always make sure that Iattach that meaning piece or
that vocabulary piece to whatthey're decoding.
And in fact I got a little storyabout my time in Mexico.

(43:13):
Living in Mexico for threeyears, I was teaching at an
American school, so I taughtwith 80 other Canadians and
Americans.
But I really wanted to learnthe language.
So I went to Oaxaca, down inthe south, for a couple of weeks
and I went to a reading schooland I learned very quickly that

(43:36):
reading in Spanish is veryphonetic, meaning one sound.
One letter has one sound.
So when I came home atChristmas time I read a card
that someone had given to me inSpanish and my dad said
Kimberley, you are a beautifulreader in Spanish.
That's wonderful.
What does it say I said I haveno idea.

(43:57):
I have no idea because I hadlearned the letter sound
correspondence but I had no ideawhat I was actually reading and
I finding in second languageprograms.
We need to be very cognizant ofthat, because a child sounds
like they're reading doesn'tmean they're comprehending what
we're they're reading.
So we really need to build that, that language comprehension

(44:17):
foundation yeah, well, that'swhat I was gonna say.

Melissa (44:19):
In their native language.
They may have heard the wordsbefore, right?
So then when you put it to theprint, it's like oh, I know,
I've heard that, I know whatthat is, but if you you don't
have that background coming in,then it's a blank slate.

Exactly exactly so they're.
They're all on the same evenplaying field when they come in
but, there's a huge learningcurve for our second language
learners.
When they come into theclassroom, not only are they
learning the routines and thedo's and the don'ts of being
four years old, learning tobathroom by themselves and all
of that fun stuff, but they'realso trying to figure out what

(44:56):
the teacher is saying to them.
Yeah, and that's big is thereany?

Melissa (45:01):
I'm wondering if there's like even more confusion
ever, because I'm just I'mthinking of Spanish because that
was my second language that Itook some classes in and didn't
learn very well.
But you know there are lettersin Spanish that make different
sounds than they do in Englishand you know I could handle that
as a high school.
You know, student just taking aSpanish class like okay, the,

(45:22):
the J makes two different sounds, right, but I'm wondering how
that like does that become?
I don't know.
Is that complicated for you?

yeah, well, it's not complicated for me anymore,
but it certainly is complicatedfor our young learners and in
essence, they are learning twocodes and some of the letters do
crossover.
They do essentially have tolearn two different codes.

(45:50):
And what I find is happening issome of my students will go and
they'll have private tutoringin English, but then they come
to me and all of a sudden theyhave to learn that second code
again and really, reallypractice that.
And I also just just back toyour original question.
I just want to clarify thedifference between phonics and

(46:12):
phonemic awareness too.
So phonemic awareness are thesound skills and those are what
we call cross linguistic.
Those do transfer acrosslanguages.
So when I was going to talkabout parents later, but this
seems like a great time to talkabout.
I am a huge believer in parentengagement.
The more engaged parents are,the more we can connect the dots

(46:36):
between school classroom andhome and unfortunately there are
many parents of students insecond language programs who
feel they can't support thechild at home because they don't
speak the language ofinstruction and I always say
stop.
Yes, you can.
One of the best ways to supporta second language learner is by
practicing their sound skillsin their native language.

(46:58):
So, for example, often I willsay to parents in my school
community if you are reading astory to your child at bedtime,
instead of asking your childwhat was your favorite part, or
can you tell me about the maincharacter, ask your child to

(47:18):
name a rhyming word.
So if you're reading Dr Seuss'cat in the hat because who
doesn't love cat in the hat?

Melissa (47:22):
If you're reading cat in the hat, and we just read
that yesterday.

It's okay, it's in French.
It's in French too.
It's amazing.
Instead of saying, you know,tell me about the cat, what
color was he?
Ask your child to name somewords that rhyme with cat.
Point out the fact that theyhave the same ending sound.
Ask them you know, sam, I amSam.

(47:46):
What's the first sound you hearin Sam?
And even though the reading isin English, those sound skills
are going to transfer over intothe second language.
So when I'm working with thechild in the class in the next
day and we talk about thecremier sound, they've already
practiced that, whether the wordis in English or in French or
in Spanish, a first sound is afirst sound, and so I do feel

(48:10):
that parents truly can help athome and they just need a little
bit of coaching.
Yeah, that's great.

Lori (48:20):
That's great, yeah, and I think that direction is really
helpful.
I think any parent wouldappreciate it.
Please tell us what to do andwe will do it to help the
teacher right, and I'm not justhelp the teacher, but to help
our child.

So Well and it's interesting because I did my
masters I ended up doing amaster's project.
I didn't do a thesis.
That just seemed like a lot ofwriting.

Melissa (48:39):
So I ended up doing.

I wanted something practical because I knew after
my masters I wanted to go backinto the classroom.
So I created a practicalresource for parents of children
who are struggling to read inFrench immersion, and part of
that was developing bookmarksfor parents, and traditionally
in the schools we have bookmarksthat are based on the three
queuing system and you may befamiliar with them.

(49:02):
They have try and lie in.
Tell your child to keep trying.

Lori (49:07):
I know it makes me wanna cry, but you can keep going, I
know.

It's cringe-worthy Lips.
The fish get your lips ready.
Well, you can get your lipsready if you know what the
letter says, but if you don'tknow, it's buh or dh.
Your lips are going to lookdifferent.

Lori (49:25):
So I also feel like let's do a real example, like a real
life example for adults here.
Let me get ready to go for arun.
I'm gonna put my sneakers on.
I'm gonna be ready.
I'm gonna get my runningclothes.
If I don't have know how tohave good running form, I'm not
going to make it a mile.
I could be ready all I want, Icould jazz up with all the gear,

(49:46):
but it is so ridiculous that wethink that getting your lips
ready is going to help anyone.

Or skip you the frog.
If it's too hard, skip it.
And then you ask the child totell you about the text.
Well, of course they can'tretell the story because they
skipped half the words.
And in a second language, to behonest, they're gonna skip all
the words because they can'tread any of them.

Lori (50:07):
I mean, I would right you asked me to do it right now.
I'd be like I don't know, kimhelp me, I'll just skip them.

Melissa (50:14):
Just skip you the frog, lori, just skip you the frog.

Lori (50:16):
You know what I would get my mouth ready and then just
skip.

And I would tell you to be a try and lie in.

Lori (50:22):
You're not trying hard enough.

You're not trying hard enough.

Lori (50:24):
Oh my God, I'd be like I'm trying to skip, okay, all right
, but it is ridiculous.

And those strategies may work temporarily
for kids who can read, but theyare not effective.
They are in fact harmful.
Telling kids to skip the wordor to I forget the looking at
the picture, I forget what thatpicture cue is, but it's like
looks at something is actuallyharmful.

(50:51):
It's teaching them to do thingsthat poor readers do.
So I did toss them, I recycledactually, I recycled them and I
rewrote my own bookmarks thatalign with the science of
reading.
And so I created some bookmarksthat I give to parents, that
give them very clear, concise,practical strategies that they

(51:14):
can use at home when reading toyour child, ask them to name the
first sound in a word, ask themto tell you running words, and
so I have many of the phonemicawareness strategies.
And then I created a secondbookmark for beginning readers
the first one's for emergingreaders and the second one's for
beginning readers and that is amore phonics based checklist,

(51:37):
so that parents have somestrategies.

Lori (51:39):
Yeah, Kim, I'm just anticipating us getting lots of
emails and requests like forthese bookmarks.
Is it something that you areable to share?
Sure?
I mean I would love to link itin our newsletter, I think that
might be because I'm imaginingus fielding a lot of inquiries.
Like Kim mentioned thesebookmarks that she made.

(51:59):
Are they anywhere?
I can find them, so we'll justlink them so that, if anybody's
wondering, you have it as aresource.
Sign up for our newsletter,literacypodcastcom.
We will send Kim's resourcesvia newsletter.

I'm more than happy to Do.
You want me to put your logo atthe top.

Lori (52:16):
Because right now it has my school logo, and that would
be really weird.
Yeah, no, but that was so fun,that'd be great.
Thank you, okay we'll do.
Thank you, Kim.
Thanks for sharing.

Well, the more parents and this is the thing
the more parents I can help, themore teachers that I can share
this information with,ultimately, the more students
who will benefit, and I trulybelieve there's an educator out
there who doesn't want to shareeverything they know and I mean,
we're teachers Sharing iscaring.

Lori (52:45):
Yeah, I feel like this is a great segue.
Melissa, you want to transitionus into all of Kim's incredible
personal work Before we do?

Melissa (52:51):
that Eagle?
Yeah, it was.
The Eagle Eye is the one thatwe don't want it.
Thank you To look at thepictures.

Eagle Eye.
I had to look at that.
I just sort of like shoved itout of my brain.

Lori (53:02):
It's unfortunate that we're connecting with these
lovely animals, you know.

Melissa (53:06):
I know, I know, but yes , Kim, we wanted to ask you
about because you did just whatyou talked about was like I got
to share this with other people,right?
This can't just be happening inmy classroom.
So can you tell us a little bitabout the work you did to get
the word out beyond yourclassroom?

Sure, it really started at the beginning of the
pandemic, and at the beginningof the pandemic, as a special
education teacher and not aclassroom teacher, the Ontario
Ministry of Education didn'tprovide a lot of guidance and so
I immediately thought parentsfor the first time around the

(53:47):
forefront of their children'seducation.
I'm going to try and helpparents, because not all of my
students had an electronicdevice and there's the Google
Meet or there were just a lot ofkinks to iron out.
So I immediately reached out toparents and I created a series
of 10 short videos on what I doin my classroom.

(54:08):
I did, and they were all threeto five minutes.
So I showed them how to use acode pack to do a visual drill.
I showed them how to do anauditory drill you say the sound
and the child writes the letter.
Or you say the syllable and thechild writes the syllable.
And I just sort of fell in lovewith the idea of helping

(54:29):
parents because that was thebest way for me to help the
students.
And so, around the same time,the International Dyslexia
Association of Ontario thecurrent president is Alicia
Smith and she is phenomenal.
So I want to give a shout outto Alicia Smith because she
certainly was instrumental inthe release of the Ontario Human

(54:49):
Rights Commission's OHRC report.
She is the mother.
Go Alicia, go Alicia, she is.
I don't know where she gets herenergy from, but she is.
She moves mountains.
Let's say that she movesmountains.
And she reached out to me andasked if I'd be interested in
facilitating parent and educatormentorship circles.

(55:13):
I said count me in, but what'sa mentorship circle?

Lori (55:16):
So they You're like yes, I'd be happy to do it.
I'm not sure.

Because we had four months of lockdown and I
was doing these parent webinars,which I thoroughly enjoyed.
But I really wanted to reachout and branch out and help as
many parents as I could.
So we facilitated thesementorship circles for parents
who have children in Frenchimmersion.

(55:42):
So these were parents who werelike, oh, my child's learning at
home in French, I don't speakFrench, how do I help them?
And so we did these mentorshipcircles focusing on structured
literacy and science of readingapproach.
And then it sort of grew fromthere.
I ended up helping our locallibrary.

(56:03):
So here in Kingston we haveeight branches of libraries and
I started doing webinars for ourlocal libraries, primarily
helping parents.
And then I reached out to theLearning Disabilities
Association of Kingston and Ireached out to the president,
helen Simpson, who is equallyphenomenal, and I said I would

(56:23):
really like to provide effective, research-based reading
instruction to students in ourcommunity, in our Kingston
community, who can't affordprivate tutoring.
I said what's near and dear tomy heart is ensuring that all
students learn to read.
And she was very supportive andso we got funding from a local

(56:48):
organization and we were able totrain 12 teachers sorry, 12
teacher candidates at Queen'sFaculty of Education.
So we got 20 candidatesoriginally and we now have 12
who were trained in the BigDippers Science of Reading
Online Training Program and Iprovided 10 weekly workshops

(57:10):
where I did everything you justsaw me do now with the code
packs.
And so these teachers have thebackground knowledge of the
science of reading, but thenthey also have the practical
classroom strategies that theyneed to help these struggling
readers and, with funding, areproviding free science of
reading tutoring to students whocan't afford tutoring, who live

(57:32):
in our areas most vulnerablecommunities.
So I'm super proud of thatinitiative.

Melissa (57:37):
Yeah, that's amazing.

Then one of the other things I'm super proud of
is five years ago I worked as atutor for Family and Children
Services for students in fostercare, and these are students who
certainly don't have access toprivate services.
So I approached Family andChildren Services and I said I
now have this wealth ofknowledge.
Could I share this with yourtutors so that these kids who

(58:03):
are in foster care, who are inchildcare, can have access to
research based instruction thatfocuses on word recognition?
So, with my good friend, emilyMorehead, we did a series of
four webinars for these tutorsso that students in foster care
can get evidence based tutoringfor free.

Melissa (58:27):
That's amazing.

So there is lots going on right now.

Melissa (58:29):
That is so cool.

Yeah, I just, love how you're like.

Melissa (58:32):
I have this knowledge, I have to share it Exactly.

It shouldn't be kept in a vault.
Knowledge should never be keptin a vault.
It should be shared.
And yeah, and to be honest, Ifeel like teachers are hungry
for this information.
I feel like this is the missinglink.
I think there are a lot ofteachers who have been looking
for this and who are eager tosoak it up.
It is, I think, overwhelmingfor some, but I feel like, if

(58:58):
you take a gentle approach, I'mjust going to mention one other
thing.
Last summer I said to my goodfriend, emily Morehead what do
you think about starting a bookclub?
Just a relaxed book club.
It was July.
I said we'll have people aroundthe pool, We'll make it relaxed
, and she said, great.

(59:18):
So we wrote a list of 10 booksthat align with the science of
reading.
Many of them were recommendedon the idea of Ontario's website
and we started a science ofreading book club and one of the
first books we read was byChristopher Satch, the art and
science of primary teaching,primary reading, and I feel like

(59:41):
people read that book andsomething in them clicked.
But, best of all, secondlanguage teachers are seeing
that this applies to them too,that this is not just for
English language or nativelanguage learners that the
science of reading how childrenlearn to read is applicable to
children in all differentlanguages.

Lori (01:00:04):
That's so cool.
I'm curious are you at thewebinars?
Are they available?
I mean, if they are, we'd loveto link them.
Will you send us all thoselinks?
Sure, Okay, I just want to makesure, as you're mentioning all
of these resources they areamazing resources Is your book
club?
Do you have a website, or wasit just total grassroots?
Hey, meet at So-and-So's houseon Thursday.

Melissa (01:00:24):
I went to the pool, lori.
Yeah, I know that's what I wasthinking.

Kim Lockhart (01:00:28):
I was hoping you could come to my backyard.

Lori (01:00:31):
I will come to your backyard.
Well, that's what I was hoping.
Can we do a book club fromMaryland?
We?

Melissa (01:00:36):
can, we can.

We have some people on the island here who
just tune in virtually soabsolutely Absolutely.
So I sent out an email to thisspecial education team in my
board and within 24 hours I had44 people signed up for this Wow
.
So about, I would say, 20people came in person and the

(01:00:58):
other 20 were on Zoom forvarious reasons, and we have now
introduced a special speaker ora keynote speaker.

Lori (01:01:05):
That sounds too formal, because it's certainly not
formal, like a guest, a guestspeaker at each event.

So we've had a speech and language pathologist,
we have someone who's doing herPhD in MTSS and we've had a
great team of French immersionteachers who are from the
Toronto area who have developeda French resource for phonemic
awareness and it's calledphonémique and it is phenomenal
and that was a terrible accent.

Lori (01:01:31):
I'm not even going to say it right Phonémique, did I say
it right?
Phonémique, phonémique,phonémique.

Phonémique, and it is a game changer.
So teachers are not having toreinvent the wheel.
They're not going on Pinterest.
They're not going on.
Teachers pay teachers.
They're not spending hours andhours of their own time at night
creating things.
Phonémique is a French resourcethat has been created to help

(01:01:59):
French second language teachersacross Canada.

Lori (01:02:03):
Really, so cool yeah, so great things happening.

It's super exciting and it's happening at
the speed of light.

Lori (01:02:11):
Like you said, teachers are helpers.
They're helping each other bydoing this.
That's amazing, absolutely.

Well, great team, I call them the dream team, I
know.

Melissa (01:02:22):
I feel like I have a million more questions for you,
but it's already been an hour, Iknow, I know.

Lori (01:02:26):
And one thing I do want to say before we get to Kim's like
rapid fire questions, the thingthat we talked about earlier
but you just mentioned, like oneof your French pathologists, I
just keep wondering.
Like my daughter, I remembershe had some, she had an IP for
speech when she was very youngand like before she got to
school and then intokindergarten and then you know,

(01:02:48):
she was quote, met thebenchmarks and was fine.
I'm so curious about kids whoare developing their speech and
language skills and havingdifficulty with speech.
But there are markers that like, for example, I believe I'm
like 99% sure, but I will say Ibelieve that the R sound is not

(01:03:12):
like developmental until they'reeight.
So how?
Always right, Okay, good.
So then how are they able to Imean that second grade and
that's when we would want themto be fluent in all of those
sounds how, if they're sayingthe sound incorrectly by no
fault of their own right, Evenwith the best teaching and

(01:03:33):
structured literacy, how can wehelp them if it's being said
wrong?

I well you've brought up.
We could talk a lot, I thinkabout that, like that's like a
whole other podcast, but that'swhat's rolling in my head of top
of mind right now?

Lori (01:03:47):
Like, okay, absolutely Like.
Is there another problem thatwe could solve as we're solving
this one?

Well, to make a long story short, I would say
MTSS multi tiered systems ofsupport.
We need a strong tier onebecause classroom teachers spend
more time with students thananyone else in the education
system.
So if a child is having adifficult time with
pronunciation, we'll use thesound R, for example.

(01:04:16):
Even though speech and languagepathologists are the experts,
the chances of a child seeing aspeech and language pathologist
in the public education systemfor more than 15 minutes every
two weeks is unheard of.
That certainly will not beeffective.
So we need a strong tier one.
We need teachers who aren'ttrained necessarily like a

(01:04:38):
speech and language pathologistbut have enough skills and feel
confident enough with theirskills to be able to give
students immediate feedback, toknow the proper articulation of
sounds and to not acceptnecessarily that I mean some
students are developmentally notable to say it.
But helping the student withthe shape of their mouth and

(01:05:00):
showing them where the tongue isand showing them where their
lips are are certainly thingsthat classroom teachers can do.
Having said that, not duringthe pandemic, when we're wearing
masks.

Lori (01:05:07):
Right.

So we are noticing or I am noticing a lot more
articulation difficulties Withstudents than I ever have seen
before and my own daughter, whoturned 10 yesterday she's a two
digit number she was having adifficult time with her letter.
R and I remember driving her todaycare when she was three and

(01:05:29):
sorry, I was driving her toschool and she was four and she
had recently broken both arms.
Oh my gosh, two separate fallswithin a 10 day period.

Lori (01:05:39):
Oh my goodness, that's a whole other story.

And she was very pensive and she said to her
sister she said, mia, the snowis white and I broke my white
arm, white and white.
And her older sister, mia, saidno, sophie, you broke your
right arm, say her.
She said it's okay, mia, somepeople can say it and some
people can't, and that describesher to a T.
She's a very confident kid.

(01:06:01):
But right away I thought weneed to correct this and so I
had a speech and languagepathologist see her and, like
you said, she was four and I wastold to wait until she was
eight and I thought by then itis going to be really difficult
to undo.
So we worked on it intensivelyand we got private services, and
so I do think I'm a bigbeliever in prevention before

(01:06:26):
intervention, and if we have astrong tier one, then we are
going to have fewer students whoneed interventions.
If we can help them in the mainclassroom, then we're going to
have fewer referrals made fortier two and certainly fewer
referrals for tier three, andthat goes for reading
instruction as well.

Lori (01:06:48):
Well, I can just tell you're so confident in what you
do and it's because of all theknowledge that you gained.
And I think it's so amazingthat you're advocating for that
strong tier one, because webelieve that too.
So, yeah, it's always nice tomeet a new literacy friend who
feels so much passion the waythat we do.

I love it Absolutely.
My husband thinks I'm a littleobsessed.

Lori (01:07:10):
Well, it's OK.
We don't mind Well, it could beworse.

Melissa (01:07:16):
Yes, all right, you ready for your five things you
love.

Lori (01:07:21):
I hope so First thing that comes to mind, here we go.
All right, what?

Melissa (01:07:25):
do you love to read?

Fiction when the Crawl Dads Sing is my favorite
textbook.

Lori (01:07:34):
What do you love to binge watch?
Sex in the City.
Very relatable, it's the best.
Wait, did you want to share one?
The Canadian?

one oh the Bachelor.
Is that one oh the Canadian.

Lori (01:07:53):
Yes, thank you.
I was like the Bachelor.
That's my show.
Go ahead, let's go Talk moreGuilty pleasures.

No, you're right, I love Sex in the City, but also
CBC here in Canada has aphenomenal show called Working
Moms.

Melissa (01:08:07):
Oh, I know that show.

Lori (01:08:08):
I love that show, isn't it on Netflix?

Melissa (01:08:11):
It is yes.

And it's filmed right outside of my sister's
condo.

Lori (01:08:15):
So everyone's on a wave tour.
That is so funny yeah it'samazing.

It's so great.

Lori (01:08:23):
OK, well, I'm sure a lot of listeners can relate to that
show.
Oh, it's so good.

Melissa (01:08:27):
The first time I watched it, though, I was on
maternity leave, and they talkedabout how long their maternity
leave was, and I was like well,wait a second.
This is not in the UnitedStates.

Lori (01:08:35):
Oh no, you get 12 months and I believe we can now.

I don't want to say it in case I'm incorrect.
When I was on maternity leave,I took 12 months, but I believe
you can extend it for 18 nowwithout losing your role.

Lori (01:08:49):
We're lucky if we get paid or unpaid.
That's my real question.
Is it paid maternity leave?

I was paid, but part of it is through EI and the
other part you're topped up byyour organization.
Ok, but don't quote me on that.
I'm not 100% sure.

Lori (01:09:06):
I say don't quote me, but it's being recorded, so I don't
know what to do with that.
That's all right?

Melissa (01:09:10):
Well, we're going to get strong.
We will hold you to it.
We will hold you to it.

Lori (01:09:13):
No, yeah, you're saying you're not sure, it's OK.

Melissa (01:09:16):
We're very fortunate.
All right, what do you love tolisten to?

Ooh, bob Marley, yeah Ooh.
And podcasts, your podcast, bobMarley, or Melissa and Laurie
Love Literacy.

Lori (01:09:30):
You're fitting right in here.
This is the right space for you.
All over the place.
Well, I mean, that's how westarted the podcast.
I asked about the right to read, and then we went back in, and
then we came back around to it.
So we're good, like theliteracy Exactly, yeah, exactly,
thank you.
What is a memory you love as ateacher or a student?

A memory that I love.
As a teacher, I would saythat's a tough one.
I wish I had a little moreforewarning for that one.
I would say I had recently achild who came to me in grade
three, who had been moved fromshelter to shelter, to shelter

(01:10:13):
to shelter, who had four lettersounds.
That was it, and after eightweeks of working with him one on
one he could read 66 words.

Melissa (01:10:23):
Oh, wow.
So, I was.
That's so cool.

Yeah, I that.
That's why I love doing what Ido.

Melissa (01:10:31):
Well, that's the last question.
Why do you do what you love?

Oh well, that was a good segue.
Why do I do what I love, or whydo I teach?

Melissa (01:10:42):
Well, why do you do what you love for education and
literacy?

I feel that I'm the luckiest person in the world
to give students the ability toread.
I feel like reading opens doorsto opportunity.
For me, it a second languageopened doors to travel.
I was able to live in Francefor a year, I traveled to other

(01:11:07):
French speaking countries, Imade friends internationally,
and so I want to give that sameprivilege and same luxury to
other students in living in abilingual country.
Not only does it open doors foropportunity, but it opens doors
to employment opportunities too, and so I just want to give my

(01:11:29):
students the world, and I feellike one of the ways to do that
is to give them literacy and togive them a second language
education as well.
Love it.

Lori (01:11:40):
We appreciate you being here so much and also for doing
what you do every day.
Thank you for just being soaware and for taking action.
That's really amazing.

Well, thank you for having me.
I don't feel like I deservethat credit.
I truly feel like there areequally incredible educators out
there who are doing the samething, and I've just been lucky
to be able to share it todaywith you.

Melissa (01:12:06):
Well, thank you so much .
It was great to meet you.

I'm the third Canadian you know.
I know yeah, woo, yeah, yeah.
Now you know the bachelorette,jillian.

Lori (01:12:17):
Harris.

Jillian Harris.

Lori (01:12:19):
Although I haven't met her yet.
Kate Nguyen Kate Nguyen, she isone of your guests.
Previous podcast.

A great science of reading, friend of mine and now
me.
So thank you very much.

Lori (01:12:28):
We're three for three and we love you all.

Well, thank you.
We love listening to you hereand really appreciate all the
work the two of you do as well.

Lori (01:12:36):
Thanks so much, kim, thank you.

Thank you.

Lori (01:12:42):
Thanks for listening.
Literacy lovers, we release anew podcast episode every Friday
and share more resources in anewsletter on Tuesday.
Sign up for our newsletter atliteracypodcastcom.
Each week, you'll receiveimportant information, resources
and connected content.

Melissa (01:13:02):
We're excited to create a space for community
discussion about our podcast.
We want to connect with ourlisteners and support you in
answering your questions, but wealso realize there are a lot of
other educators out there whohave great advice and experience
too.
Let's keep learning together inour Melissa and Lori Love
Literacy Podcast Facebook group,and be sure to follow us on
Instagram and Twitter.

Lori (01:13:23):
If the content in this episode helped you share with a
fellow educator and teacherfriend.
Our literacy lover communitywelcomes educators at every
stage of their learning journey.
We're so glad you're here tolearn with us.

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