March 14, 2025 • 56 mins
Episode 155 (from July 21, 2023)
Curious about how words shape learning? Join us as we chat with linguist and author Lyn Stone about vocabulary, etymology, and their impact on literacy.
Lyn shares practical strategies for teaching morphology and etymology, the importance of teacher knowledge, and great resources to build students' word awareness. We also dig into grammar and syntax—how they reflect thinking and why they matter for literacy. Plus, Lyn gives us a sneak peek at the new edition of Language for Life. Don't miss this insightful conversation!
Resources
- Language for Life by Lyn Stone
- LifelongLiteracy.com
- Etymonline
- Once Upon a Word: A Word-Origin Dictionary for Kids
- The Writing Revolution Book Judith Hochman and Natalie Wexler
- The Writing Revolution Podcast (Melissa and Lori Love Literacy)
- Ox, House, Stick: The History of Our Alphabet
We answer your questions about teaching reading in The Literacy 50-A Q&A Handbook for Teachers: Real-World Answers to Questions About Reading That Keep You Up at Night.
Grab free resources and episode alerts! Sign up for our email list at literacypodcast.com.
Join our community on Facebook, and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, & Twitter.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Lori (00:00):
Words are powerful.
Students need to develop a deepunderstanding of language and
vocabulary, to comprehend whatthey read and to write well.
But as a teacher, where do youstart?
What strategies actually work?
Melissa (00:14):
We are thrilled to have linguist and author Lyn
Stone on the podcast today.
She'll share insights on thejoy of teaching words, the
science behind vocabularyinstruction and the resources
teachers need to bring etymologyand morphology to life.
Lori (00:30):
If you've been searching for ways to make vocabulary
instruction more engaging oryou're curious about how
etymology and morphology cantransform student learning, this
episode is for you.
Hi teacher friends, I'm Loriand I'm Melissa.
We are two educators who wantthe best for all kids, and we
(00:51):
know you do too.
Melissa (00:52):
We worked together in Baltimore when the district
adopted a new literacycurriculum.
Lori (00:57):
We realized there was so much more to learn about how to
teach reading and writing.
Lori, and I can't wait to keeplearning with you today how to
teach reading and writing, lori,and I can't wait to keep
learning with you today.
Hi everyone, welcome to Melissaand Lori Love Literacy.
I saw Lyn Stone present at boththe Reading League Conference
and at Plain Talk Conferencethis past year, and she makes
(01:19):
learning words so easy and somuch fun, might I add.
Melissa (01:25):
Yeah, so we're so excited to have Lyn Stone here
today, and you may know her asthe author of several books
Reading for Life, spelling forLife, language for Life.
Are there any other ones that Imissed, Lyn?
Lyn Stone (01:35):
There's one coming out soon called Writing for Life
, and when I say soon, I've beensaying that for about three
years, so who knows?
Melissa (01:42):
Well, we're excited for it, we're ready for what it
is soon, and welcome to thepodcast today.
Lyn Stone (01:47):
Thank you, it's a great pleasure to be here.
I'm really excited.
Actually.
I'm a big fan of your podcast,so huge honor, thank you.
Lori (01:54):
Yeah, thank you.
Well, we're a big fan of yoursand we were a little nervous.
We were like nervous to ask youto be on the podcast because
you know you're so fancy.
Lyn Stone (02:06):
Okay, I'm definitely putting that on my CV Linstone
fancy.
Melissa (02:11):
Yeah, god, I can't wait.
So well done.
Lyn Stone (02:13):
That's great.
No, it's a huge honor to behere and lovely to talk to you
as well.
Lori (02:20):
Yeah Well, thank you.
I thought actually we couldstart with the way that you
started the conference at theReading League, and I'll refresh
your memory you simply sharedwhat are words.
You just shared with everyonewhat are words, and I thought
that was brilliant.
So I was hoping you could justkind of ground us in what are
(02:41):
words and what we should thinkabout.
Lyn Stone (02:43):
Yeah Well, I love that question actually, and the
reason I sort of do talks likethis and ask questions like what
are words, is because there arequite a few misconceptions out
there and my job is to try toclear up those misconceptions
from the viewpoint of someonewho's trained in the structure
of language.
So you know, as a linguist,what you think about is words
(03:06):
and you think about them at thesubword level, so all the parts
that make up words, and youthink of them in the sort of the
cluster level as well, whereyou have phrases and sentences
and so on.
So words are my stock and tradeand therefore I think it's a
good idea to talk about that.
And I think also, from littlekids all the way up to adults,
(03:29):
everybody's interested in words.
You're kind of hardwired tolearn about that stuff because
what they are is the foundationof communication and, as we know
, communication is survival in asociety.
So everybody wants to know in asociety.
So everybody wants to know.
So I like to start there and Ilike to talk about that.
And in terms of what words are,well, one principle is a really
(03:51):
good starting point and thisalso clears up a little bit of
gosh morphology.
That's really hard, right.
So a lot of people findmorphology a bit intimidating.
Well, if you start from thisprinciple, and that is that
every single word that you useis a base, it's a basis like a
Lego base that you can put otherparts onto.
(04:13):
There are some words that youcan't, and they're called
unalterable bases.
So you've got words like of.
You know those little functionwords.
You can't put a prefix orsuffix on, of, you can't make it
plural, you can't put it intothe past tense, you can't do all
of that stuff, so they'reunalterable.
But they're a tiny, tiny set.
Everything else is an alterablebase and actually some of the
(04:36):
bases are.
They have to be altered to beEnglish words, you know, like
struct, right, that doesn't hangaround by itself.
It's not a base that you seeunattached to other word parts.
So you've got to put prefixesor suffixes, like structure or
construct and so on.
So that's what words, everysingle word.
If you start with that, everysingle word is or contains a
(04:59):
base and that's the part thatcarries the majority of the
meaning.
If you start there, it helps tobuild mental models of the
entire system.
Melissa (05:09):
Well, I'm wondering, and I know our audience is, and
I'm sure this has a millionanswers, but we'll start here
and see where we go.
Which is what should teachersbe thinking about as they're
teaching words?
Lyn Stone (05:21):
or students are learning words, yeah, huge huge
thing and huge question and, asyou said, lots and lots of
answers, and I can only reallyanswer it from my viewpoint.
I can only really answer itfrom my perspective, whereas you
know there may be otherperspectives as well but the way
that I look at it and what'sbeen successful for me because
(05:42):
I've had lots and lots ofstudents over time and now my
students are teachers as well,because I don't even see
students one-on-one anymore.
I do see groups of students,but teachers are my students.
And so what should we bethinking about?
Or what should teachers wantchildren to be thinking about?
I think I love that question.
(06:02):
Do you mind if I go from thatperspective?
Yeah, so what do we wantchildren to think about?
Well, we want them to have theconcept, first of all, of what
words are and how they can bebuilt, what their structure is
and what their smaller parts are.
And I think phonics right, thisword that gets bandied around a
(06:25):
lot is basically a way ofhelping children think about the
sub-word parts, the parts ofwords that are not the words
themselves but the components ofwords.
And if that's taught to them ina systematic way rather than a
kind of random way, oh, we'lltake your name and then we're
going to look at the parts ofthat, but a systematic way, like
(06:46):
here's some really common onesthat you can put together to
make new words without me.
Then that helps children tobecome wordsmiths.
So, teachers, thinking about,what do I want children to know?
I want them to know those parts, I want them to be able to put
those parts together, I wantthem to be able to take words
apart as well.
That's a really good, brilliantstarting point and from that you
(07:08):
can then build.
Well, guess what?
There are other units, thereare other parts of words that
are bigger than just sounds andletters, that carry meaning as
well, and that's where we justeasily, smoothly, can transition
into morphology, and when youdo that, you're never
disappointed.
It's always a fun, reallyexciting, wonderful thing to do
(07:30):
and you're constantly learningit.
I'm still learning, I'm stilllearning about word parts, and
it's really nice.
I love it.
Lori (07:39):
Yeah, okay, so we'll transition into morphology.
I think that's a good place togo.
But I will say the thing thatstruck me as I was preparing for
this.
I was reading language for lifeand the thing that struck me is
just the playfulness of thetone of the book and how fun it
is to play with words.
(08:00):
And I just want to say thatbefore we jump into morphology
because you brought it up and Ithink it's really important that
to say that kids and and Ithink as a teacher you know I
always loved playing with words.
I thought that was so much fun.
So I'm wondering if we couldkind of start with kind of
grounding ourselves in like what, what does it mean to what does
(08:21):
morphology mean?
What does?
I think we should maybe go intoetymology.
I think that might be a goodthing to reference as well.
You're the expert, so I'll letyou go ahead and then maybe what
the research says about it all.
Lyn Stone (08:35):
Okay, yeah, again, a tiny little question there.
No, look, I like the way you'veput all of that, because
they're inextricable, aren'tthey?
They're units of language thatwork together.
That, you know, we can sort ofconsciously separate, but when
we're communicating with oneanother, they're all mixed
together at the unconsciouslevel, which is awe-inspiring in
(08:59):
itself.
And I'm actually reminded of anexercise that I do when I'm
training teachers to show thedifference between conscious and
unconscious right, which isreally relevant for what we're
talking about today.
We talk about syllable emphasisin one of the things that I do.
We talk about in every wordthat's got more than one
(09:19):
syllable.
There's going to be a strongone that you hear louder, or the
vowel is more clear, or so on.
And I say to them you know this, you actually, and most
children, by the time they'resix, totally know this from
language, from just beingimmersed in language.
It's something that they know,and you know where the syllable
(09:41):
emphasis is, because when youtalk, a typically developing
four or five, six-year-old willhave their syllable emphasis
absolutely perfect, right.
And any native speaker knowswhere to put the strong
syllables in.
But you do all that at theunconscious level.
When I start to ask teachers tobe conscious of it.
When I say, hey, take this worddinosaur, right, where's the
(10:04):
strong syllable there?
Because we don't go dinosaurlike that, right, we go dinosaur
.
And so the strong bit is thatfirst syllable.
They've really struggled withthat and I go.
You know it unconsciously, butwhen you're conscious of it,
when you actually have to startarticulating what that is, it's
really difficult.
And so it is with morphology,with morphemes.
(10:31):
We do understand the basicmeanings of most of the
morphemes when we have ourlexicon built, when we've built
our vocabulary, but actuallytalking about that and
deconstructing it is reallyreally hard, and so morphology
and etymology, where the wordscome from, are intertwined to
help to bring that into and upto the conscious level.
So I think, in my view,etymology will inform why the
(10:55):
morphemes are like they are.
Even though we know the meaningof the morphemes and we can
pronounce the morphemes andmaybe even spell them, etymology
helps us bring that to theconscious level, and that's why
it's important to talk aboutboth of those things.
So I've answered two of thethings that you were talking
about there.
I'm not sure if I answered allof them, though, so you can
reframe the question if you wish.
Lori (11:16):
Yeah Well, I think I'd love to hear some of the
research and what it says aboutthat, but I also think it might
be helpful.
I love examples.
Do you have any examples thatyou could give to share how
etymology informs the morphology?
Lyn Stone (11:31):
Yeah, here's what I learned really recently Because,
like I say, it's a lifelongjourney and you're always
discovering new stuff, right?
And here's a new thing that Iwasn't conscious of when I again
, when I work with people, I saygive me the words that you find
the hardest to spell or thehardest to teach or remember,
because I'm really interested inthose.
(11:51):
Why is it that we don'tremember those words?
And inevitably this wordonomatopoeia comes up.
Right, because you know it'sfairly complicated there's lots
of schwa vowels in there and isit?
onomatto or is it onomattobecause I say onomatto and blah,
blah, blah, right, and and thatpia bit right.
P o e is this.
(12:14):
It's a base and I, I, somebodytold me this about a month ago
it's a base that is also in thebase poem, right.
When we make poems it's to dowith words and sounds.
Oh, do you know?
I mean p-o-e, p-r, right poem,even though the pronunciation is
completely different.
The etymology helps to tell usthe base does both.
(12:37):
Both those bases are the same.
They help to tell us how tospell that flipping word, right.
And I was just to say thatactually will help me.
That's the brilliant thing.
So there's a morpheme there,but it's the etymology of those
morphemes that drives thatsequence of letters, that makes
that word, that word andtherefore easier to spell and
(12:59):
easier to conceptualize.
You're just making more pathsin your brain about what
onomatopoeia really is and howthat relates to poetry.
Oh, that's so fun.
Melissa (13:11):
I love learning those.
Did you all see the thing aboutMother recently that came out
on some of the Facebook pages?
There was like this wholeargument about someone did a
really cute little thing forMother's Day A schwa.
It had the schwa for the o andthen people were like that's,
it's not a schwa for the o.
And I, you know, I didn't, Idon't know those things too well
(13:34):
.
So I was like reading all thecomments, I was really into it
and then I got really deep andsomeone had said that what's it
called lyn Lyn, when it was likebecause it used to be a U?
but then in old script scribal Oand then people like it's not
actually a scribal O because ofthe etymology and the word that
it came from from, like I'mgoing to get it wrong, but
(13:57):
somewhere, like in a Germaniclanguage way long ago, it was
actually the root was still Oand it was just this whole
argument.
Was actually the root was stillO and it was just this whole
argument.
I just thought it was likefascinating to see like where
did this come from?
Just a simple word.
Simple word like mother.
There can be a lot of myths outthere, a lot of arguments,
absolutely Arguments and myths,and also sometimes we lose sight
(14:17):
of the woods.
Lyn Stone (14:19):
You know for the trees, you know what I mean.
I don't know a lot of kids thatget past elementary school, not
being able to spell mother andnot knowing what it means.
So can you move on?
Because we've got bigger fishto fry right Than this word that
everyone can spell andunderstand right.
It doesn't drive me crazy.
(14:39):
I mean, I love the fact, right,that people like linguistics,
they like the structure oflanguage, and that makes me
really happy when they get upset.
It's not good.
But there is a thing that doesdrive me crazy on the social
media and I and thank you forgiving me this platform to say
it out loud- and are you ready?
(15:01):
Are you on the edge of your seat?
It's this right.
It's when people go how do yousay the sounds in this word?
And you're talking about, youknow, maybe a hundred thousand
people from all sorts ofdifferent backgrounds and
different countries anddifferent towns, even within
their own countries.
And somebody goes how do yousay it?
(15:23):
Or, even worse, the worstquestion is how do I map this
word as if?
How do I squish these phonemesinto these graphemes?
Or what are the correct?
What's the right way to saythis word?
There is no right way, come on.
And then all these argumentsensue but oh, but, if you say it
properly, it's like this, or Isay it like this.
(15:45):
Therefore, everyone in theworld needs to say it like this.
And that drives me crazy,because what the original poster
is trying to do is say,basically, how do I teach that
so that children remember it?
And that's got nothing to dowith how people think the word
should be said.
It's got everything to do withthe sequence of letters, and the
(16:07):
sounds are secondary, thesecondary to it.
So that drives me crazy, but Ido try and talk about that a bit
.
Melissa (16:14):
Wow, and I love that you brought up that.
I mean, you know we're talkingto you and obviously we would
say a lot of words differentlyin two different countries.
But, like you said, even withina state, from city to city, you
might say things differently,and I love that you say it and
(16:35):
we need to respect all the waysthat people say words yeah.
Lyn Stone (16:38):
What are the signs in this word is not the right
question.
The right question is what isthe letter sequence?
Why is it like that and how doI teach it so that people
remember that?
Lori (16:49):
That's really helpful.
Yeah, for sure that's reallyhelpful.
I love that.
That's going to be my newcomment, Lyn.
Lyn Stone (16:54):
Okay, good, If it helps one person, it's been
worth going mad for.
Lori (17:00):
You're right, Lyn Stone says oh no, don't quote me.
No shame if any listeners haveposted no, not at all, I mean, I
never do it to shame anyone.
Lyn Stone (17:15):
I just I try to get people to ask better questions.
You know better questionsbecause that leads to better
answers and better outcomes andthen that leads to better lives
and so on.
So it's like, you know, it'slike that old thing for want of
a nail, a shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe, a horse waslost.
You know that sort of thing forwant of a better question, an
answer was lost, and that canbuild to a whole.
You know, academic career islost, right?
Melissa (17:32):
I'm wondering about.
I mean, laura, you brought upthis idea of like how words can
be so fun and the tone of Lyn'sbook is really fun.
And I'm just wondering, Lyn ifyou have any suggestions for
teachers on how to keep or howto build that like curiosity and
fun kind of way of looking atwords, versus making it feel
like memorizing a bunch of rulesand old ways, that this is how
(17:57):
words were made and it couldfeel, I think, really boring for
students depending on how it'spresented.
You're quite right, you'requite right, melissa.
Lyn Stone (18:06):
And you know, something else that's really
boring for students is givingthem a list of whole words and
then going color that in or drawa coffin around it.
You know those sort of things.
That sort of thing.
That's really boring too.
So there's that.
But look, I think it starts withor I've seen this happen in
real life with real teachers itstarts with teachers having an
(18:29):
expanded knowledge of this.
We can't have the blind leadingthe blind, and so that's where
I come in, where I try to raiseteacher capacity on this.
And, as I said, you know, I'mpretty far on in my career and
I've been studying words for along time and I'm still learning
this stuff.
There is absolutely no shame inany of that.
(18:52):
That's an attitude that reallyhelps.
So that's the first thingYou've got to want to be this
lifelong learner of that stuff,and there's no shame involved.
Or, you know, sometimes, when welet go of things that didn't
work that well before, it'sreally crucial to not have an
(19:12):
identity crisis while we'redoing that.
And after all, when you go intoteaching, that does become your
identity, especially withmodern teacher training methods.
There will be a lot during thatdegree that you do that goes.
What is your philosophy?
How is this bound with youridentity?
There's a lot of exercises youhave to do on that, right, so
(19:39):
therefore it can lead to a bitof a crisis, letting go of all
that other stuff and then havingto think really hard and deeply
about words.
But when you do that's whatstarts to make it fun.
It's not really.
You know, I can't give you atip and go, oh, make it fun by
doing this.
Can't give you a tip and go, oh, make it fun by doing this.
You make it fun by knowing andhaving that openness to finding
(19:59):
out and not being worried thatyou're going to encounter
something that you don't know,because, guess what?
We have this thing called theinternet, right, and if you
don't, know, there are reallygood places that you can go to
find it, and I can be standingthere in front of hundreds of
people and somebody will ask mea question about a word and I'll
(20:20):
go.
I don't know, I don't carry allof it in my head, but I've got
Etim Online, the app here on myphone, so I'm just going to look
it up for you.
I don't mind doing that.
That's what makes it fun whenyou can actually model that
behavior, that well, if I don'tknow, I know where to find that
out.
Let's do that together.
You never, ever, have to bethis kind of guru.
(20:41):
You know that has it all inyour head and you can be wrong
as well.
I've had lots of hypothesesabout words that have turned out
to be absolutely, completelyfalse.
I'm all right, I'm fine to letthat go as well.
It's okay.
So I think that's the fun part.
I'm sorry if it's vague, but itcomes from teacher capacity and
the broadening of teacherknowledge.
(21:02):
First and foremost, you need toknow more than your students
and you need to make sure thatyour students understand that.
If there is a limit to yourknowledge, but that's okay too
and there's a way to you know,move the limits on that
knowledge.
Lori (21:17):
Yeah, I'm wondering if, like the words that we're
choosing right.
So I'm thinking about a teacherlistening and I'm thinking,
okay, the teacher's reading anovel or reading a book with
their students the words that wechoose, it almost feels less
important to.
I mean, it's important in itsown right, but it's less
(21:37):
important to obsess over thatpart than like, okay, now we're
going to play with these wordsand kind of like, allow your
students to get in there and getmessy with the words, but you
have to be familiar and you knowand have some sort of preset
knowledge about some basicmorphology, quote stuff.
Does that sound right?
(21:58):
Like you know, I just thinksometimes, I know when I was a
teacher I would stress so muchabout like, are these the right
words, Are these the rightacademic words to be teaching?
And you know, I think justtrying words feels really
important here, just trying toplay with words and language,
and I think students arebrilliant in that way.
They are.
Lyn Stone (22:17):
They find it very interesting because, again, it's
a survival mechanism.
Playing with words is the waythat an infant will acquire
their native language.
So it's something that you'rehardwired to do, first of all,
so you build on that instinctand therefore you can make it
really, really joyful.
But I like, laurie, what youwere saying about obsessing over
(22:38):
is this the right word?
Time and time again I'll beasked well, do you have a list
of those words?
Like, can I have a list?
This thing that you've, thisresource you have, is there a
list in there?
This resource you have, isthere a list in there?
And all my career I've resistedmaking lists because the best
(22:59):
word list is a book.
That's the best word list thatyou can get.
Right, it's a book that eitherbuilds knowledge or craft craft,
what's the word I want to say?
Craftfully, is that even a word, or did I just make that up?
See, it doesn't matter, right,you made it up.
Lori (23:15):
I think, but it doesn't matter, I'm going to substitute
it.
Lyn Stone (23:19):
Artfully.
Melissa (23:20):
We know what you mean, Artfully deftly right.
Lyn Stone (23:25):
So the way that you teach the words within that book
, you know, and the joy that youhave with that and the way that
you build knowledge and buildstories that children listen to.
That's the important thing.
If you take it, that's the artbit.
Right, let's take it to thescience bit.
Okay, I'm going to give yousome numbers.
If you have a fully formedlexicon and that's, you know, a
(23:49):
vocabulary that is a typicallydeveloping adult vocabulary or
developed adult vocabulary,you're in between about 30,000
to 70,000 word and word parts.
You kind of know instantly andautomatically, without having to
look them up.
You know what those words are.
If you have a sight wordvocabulary, you can also read
(24:12):
those words and if you have anorthographic lexicon, you can
spell those words as well, whichis quite a lot.
And they're all separate formsof language, right.
But anyway, 30 to 70,000 is thepantry, is the ingredients of
language.
That you're working with 30 to70,000 units, which is insanely
good, right, it's justawe-inspiring.
(24:34):
Now, you did not acquire those30,000 to 70,000 units from your
teacher having a list, right,there was no, there is no.
Melissa (24:45):
That would be a lot of lists.
Lyn Stone (24:46):
That's a huge list.
Imagine that at 10 a week.
Okay, can you see?
That's not how we acquire ourvocabulary, what we do, still
not enough.
Lori (24:54):
10 a week.
Can you see?
That's not how we acquire ourvocabulary, what we do Still not
enough.
Lyn Stone (24:57):
10 a week, I know You'd be there until you were
the oldest person in the worldplus some, right?
So that's not how it happens.
It doesn't happen like that.
That's not how we acquirelanguage.
It's not how we build ourlexicon.
We can facilitate the buildingof our lexicon though lexicon.
We can facilitate the buildingof our lexicon, though, and
teachers can facilitate that bycoming up with really good
(25:18):
examples of words and wordfamilies, right, and discovering
them.
So back to that list thing.
If you want to know what theword, what the right words
should be, I'd like to get youto ask a better question.
There's a better question here,right?
And the better question is whatis the family that these words
(25:39):
belong to?
How are they related to oneanother?
Because, instead of studyingone word, you've got four or
five, six words that have gotthat pattern or have got that
morpheme or have got thatetymology, and now we're really
talking about building a mentalmodel of how the writing system
works.
So the best word list is a bookand that your choice of words.
(26:00):
It's only ever going to beexemplars of the 30 to 70,000
words that you build throughspeaking and listening, through
reading and through writing.
Melissa (26:11):
Lyn can you give an example of that family that you
were?
Just I know?
Lyn Stone (26:16):
I'm asking you to like pull it out of your head,
but just so people know what youmean.
Luckily, there's lots in myhead when it comes to this stuff
, so you know so that's one ofmy favorite ones, and I did this
quite recently with a student.
It's the word candle.
Right, that's a great word,candle, you know.
Blow out the candle and so on.
Turns out that canned bit lightor fire, right, comes in
(26:42):
incandescent as well.
So that's light that you getfrom heat.
So canned incandescent, I lovethat.
That's a great family, that'sone I love.
There's probably other words inthe candle family, but off the
top of my head I don't know now,so I'd have to look that up.
But yeah, so you can studycandle and you can go.
Oh well, let me see, that's twosyllables, and the first
(27:04):
syllable is CDC and the secondsyllable is consonant plus LE.
There's the syllable typesHooray, let's move on right.
Or you can go see that basecand that's in this word
incandescent.
What a cool word that is.
I know which one I would choose.
So that's what I mean byfamilies and that information is
freely available.
It's not like you have to carryit in your head.
(27:25):
You can figure all of that out.
So I'd encourage teachers to dothat, and it's a big ask, I
know.
So you've got to do a lot morein your day than just go on Etim
online and you know, have youknow rapture over words, but
still.
Melissa (27:43):
Oh, I just learned that chandeliers I knew there
was another one.
Lyn Stone (27:46):
Yes, that's right, yeah.
Lori (27:50):
Isn't it great, oh my gosh , it's joyful.
It's so fun.
It's so much fun.
And they expect.
I don't know if it's becausewe're like word nerds or what,
but we want everyone.
Melissa (28:01):
And it's like a little puzzle when you hear and you're
like oh, like that does fitright.
It's like it fits together.
I see it.
Lyn Stone (28:06):
Your brain just grew your brain just grew in your
pathway and you know which isreally nice, and we want
everyone to be word nerds.
It's not that I want thechildren to then be able to
spell chandelier andincandescent, right.
It's not that.
It's that we're setting thescene and we're helping them
build schemas, and schemas aremental models of things, and you
(28:28):
can build those mental modelsor you can have everything in
silos with no connection to eachother, and you're going to
build your lexicon much slowerthat way.
I know that there comes a pointwhen you're building your
lexicon and I remember beingconscious of it where you go.
Oh, I can see where all thedots join.
I could see it in my head wherethey're all joined right and
(28:50):
how they all join together.
Something that's really handyfor that is learning other
languages as well.
So I learned dutch and Ilearned french.
I learned german and latin.
So I was lucky in that I hadthose other vocabularies um to,
to fall back on and make thoseconnections as well.
So you know, this is anotherthing I recommend in primary
school especially.
(29:10):
It's that children start tolearn other languages.
Melissa (29:13):
And is that especially true for English, like for
people learning English to knowother languages, because I feel
like English is kind of amishmash of so many different
languages.
Lyn Stone (29:24):
Yes, it can.
It can be, I suppose, becauseit has it.
You know, there are lots ofwords in English, and there are
lots of words that mean almostthe same thing, because of the
migration patterns of humans.
You know, visiting the Britishor Romance languages, or both,
is incredibly helpful, you know,for building again your English
(30:00):
lexicon.
So, yeah, languages other thanEnglish, no matter what they are
, though, are good to study, andit's funny because people who
don't speak English as theirnative language basically learn
their native language andEnglish, because that's the
lingua franca of the world ofbusiness and commerce and trade,
and, you know, science andeverything.
(30:22):
So everyone learns English, butthe English speaking people
just learn English, which is abit of a shame, because we're
completely capable of learningother languages as well.
Lori (30:31):
I feel like it's kind of a great good time to say that
there are tons of resources.
Like I know teachers out theremight be wondering, like, what
resources do I have formorphology, for etymology and in
language, for life?
There's.
I mean, it's great.
It walks you through everything, but at the back, if you really
want a list, you kind of did doa list.
(30:51):
You did a list of morphemes.
Yeah, latin and greek ones.
Lyn Stone (30:58):
I, I think you kind of.
If you're going to talk aboutmorphology and write about it,
you might as well do that list.
But I'm not saying to teachersyou know, take the first five
items and teach that and thentest it on friday and move, you
know it's a reference point.
But yeah, you're right, youcaught me.
I made a list.
Lori (31:15):
It's like it's.
This is just it's messy.
Yeah, it's, it's.
It's not as clean as we I thinkall would like it to be.
You also recommended anotherresource, which at Plain Talk,
which I purchased immediatelyand we've been having a lot of
fun with it in our house.
It's called Once Upon a.
Word.
I've been looking at my Amazonorder on my phone I couldn't
remember the name of the bookOnce Upon a Word, a word origin
(31:38):
dictionary for kids, and thathas been really fun to see if
the words that we're pulling outof the books that we're reading
are in that word origindictionary.
So those resources I think arereally cool and usable for
teachers and students.
Lyn Stone (31:53):
They're lovely, they're absolutely lovely.
Do you have anything else?
Yes, I'm glad you asked Because, for students as well, there's
this book that we sometimes useas well and it's called House Ox
Stick and it's an etymology ofthe alphabet.
So it takes every letter of thealphabet and it goes this is
what it used to look, look like,or this is why we've brought it
(32:13):
in to our present alphabet andwith beautiful illustrations and
really, really at that kidlevel but hugely enlightening
for teachers as well.
So it's got that dual purposeof of giving, of expanding our
knowledge, and giving us avehicle to expand the knowledge
of children as well.
It's called Ox House Stick.
Melissa (32:40):
I'm not good with the order of stuff.
No, that's okay, I was justGoogling, so I'm making sure I
have the right one.
Lyn Stone (32:45):
I've got it on the shelf behind me, but yeah, I
prefer to keep my eyes on thescreen.
So sorry about that.
Yeah, so what is it?
Ox House, stick that way round.
Lori (32:56):
Ox House Stick.
Sorry about that, yeah, so what?
What is it?
Oxhouse stick that way around?
I gotta remember that.
Oh hs, yep, got it.
Okay, we'll link it.
We'll link it.
Melissa (33:03):
I'm just curious.
I we feel like we've touched onthis already, but I just want
to like make it super clear forpeople and make sure they
they're taking away the rightthing that what I hear us
talking about this whole time isthat both etymology and
morphology can be helpful forall parts of reading.
I want to say, when they'respelling, it can help students
(33:27):
when they're comprehending ormaking meaning of the text, and
it can help in all of thoseplaces.
Is that correct to say, Lyn?
And then can you tell a littlebit about how it helps for each?
Lyn Stone (33:41):
Yeah, again, I'm speaking from two perspectives.
So the first one is aperspective of a practitioner
who has succeeded over and overagain to teach children to read
and write.
So you know, you've got myanecdotes there, which are not,
you know, they're anecdotes, butthey're anecdotes of a fairly
(34:03):
long and successful career inintervention.
So they have some.
I don't know truth to them, Iguess or use maybe, but it's
also backed up with.
There is quite compellingresearch about morphology, about
word parts and how that's veryhelpful for helping to embed
(34:26):
those higher levels ofvocabulary in students.
If you want the names of thestudies, I'll come back to you
with those because, again, Idon't carry those in my head at
all.
So I'll look them up for you.
But there is, you know, when,when I succeed at something in
my career, I go I have toreverse, engineer that and go
well, why, why?
Why did that work it's?
(34:48):
It's not enough just to go, ooh, that works and then try to
market that it's.
Why did that work?
What is it, what are thecomponents of that?
And so I will look for reasonswhy that worked, and then that
also helps me to tweak what I'malready doing.
So one of the things that wastransformative for us at
(35:10):
Lifelong Literacy and for thetutors that work with my
students is that we did twothings that really changed
things for us.
And then I had to look for oh,why is that?
How come that worked?
Because I did it from instinctmore than anything else.
One of the things is that weshifted our focus from reading
(35:32):
to writing.
So say, you're in a 45-minutesession with a student, what we
used to do was maybe 35 minutesof reading interventions, so
we'd warm up with phonemicawareness and we'd get a text
and we'd decode it and we'd lookat component parts and we'd
drill.
(35:53):
You know, like I'm showing youSH, what sound, shh great.
I'm saying shh what.
Write it down.
You know all that sort of stuff.
That's all reading type work.
Let's do this for fluency.
Read that again with your voicebetter, and what did that mean?
And so on.
Right, so we did that.
When we shifted for 10 minutesof reading as opposed to 35
(36:18):
minutes of writing, two thingshappened over time.
One of the things that happenedwas that the children got
better at writing.
Of course they did right,because we were practicing
writing, but they also gotbetter at reading.
When we were just focusing onreading.
They got better at reading butthey didn't get better at
(36:38):
writing.
So that was one thing whereword parts and things like again
it's inextricable etymology,morphology, phonology as well.
They all join together to makehelp children form robust mental
orthographic images of words.
So that's placing words intolong-term memory.
(36:59):
They all help them to do that.
When we got them to write thewords rather than just read or
recognize the words, thatstrengthened it even further for
them.
And I'm talking about childrenwho have developmental disorders
of literacy, dyslexia,dysgraphia and other problems
with memory or working memoryand processing speed and so on.
(37:20):
So I'm talking about apopulation that usually gets
absolutely missed out in generaleducation and they became
better at reading and writing.
So that transformed what we didand their path.
So I hope that's answering yourquestion, melissa.
But then there was another partas well, and the other part that
transformed things for us waswhen we stopped giving them
(37:43):
words and sentences andparagraphs on decontextualized
things, you know.
So if we're studying the word,let's say we're studying the
grapheme CK, and I want them tobe able to use that grapheme and
to know that it doesn't occurat the beginning of English
words and it's usually after asingle vowel and so on.
Right In the old days, I wouldjust take any random word and
(38:09):
I'd go hey, this word thick,right, this is an example of
that.
Right, and this word think, thek in think is just a k on its
own, because you can't use ckafter a consonant right, except
for max plank.
But that's a whole differentthing, right, okay, we won't go
down that path just yet.
Right, so, right, so, um, well,it would be random.
(38:34):
Whereas when I started lookingat the work of natalie wexler,
judith hochman, I realized thatwe needed to build knowledge,
and that realization also camefrom a trend, a worrying trend,
that I saw in the students thatwe were working with over the
last 20 years, and what I wasseeing with them was a knowledge
(38:55):
gap as well.
I saw that these childrendidn't know the days of the week
, the months of the year, theydidn't know, they couldn't
recite those, and that's verybasic stuff.
What else didn't they know?
It turns out quite a lot,because during their primary
education they were doingdecontextualized stuff that
never built into anything either.
So there was this knowledge gap.
So there were being taughtthings like let's do inferencing
(39:19):
this year.
Right.
So for a whole year they woulddo blah, blah, inferencing on
stuff that wasn't related, thetopics that weren't related to
one another, and their knowledgewas suffering.
So when we started to, insteadof just take random words and
random sentences, when westarted to build knowledge with
that and stick to one subject.
So now that CK graphene well,we're studying birds A baby bird
(39:41):
is a chick, right?
So chick is going to be morerelevant and part of that mental
model than you know the wordthick or the word stick, unless
you're saying you build a nestwith sticks and so on.
Do you know what I'm saying?
So when we came away fromrandom and went into knowledge
building, that transformed theprogress of the response to
(40:04):
intervention as well.
And therefore, if you've got abetter response to intervention,
you kind of know that at tierone, if you're doing something
like that, you're going to thenprevent rather than have to
intervene.
You're building fences at thetop of the cliff rather than
being an ambulance at the bottom, which you know isn't ideal.
Lori (40:25):
That's fascinating.
It really aligns, too, withsome of the ahas that we had as
we started learning aboutknowledge building, and it makes
me think about a quote.
I'm not going to get it right,melissa, because I didn't pull
it up exactly, but spoiler alertfor anyone listening.
We have Doug Fisher later onthis summer, and it's making me
(40:46):
think of something that he saidduring the podcast.
He said every writer is a goodreader, but not every reader is
a good writer.
Am I right, melissa?
Do you remember that?
I don't.
Melissa (40:59):
I don't remember.
Or good readers, good writersare.
Lori (41:07):
That was the gist, for sure, that was the gist.
I was like I'm trying to get itverbatim, it's not going to
happen, but that it feels.
That feels like exactly whatyou're saying, Lyn right, Like
if you can do it one way, you'renot necessarily able to reverse
it, but if you can reverse it,you can do both.
Yep absolutely.
Lyn Stone (41:19):
Reading and writing are not the flip side of one
another.
That's really, really, reallynot true.
Reading is a sub-skill ofwriting.
You've got to be able to havean understanding of how the
graphemes go together and themorphemes go together to make
words, to be able to write.
And you can stop right there.
(41:40):
You can stop at reading andnever, ever write a word, but
you can't get to writing unlessyou do have that basic
foundational knowledge of how itall goes together, and that
comes through reading.
So, yeah, it's a little bitdaunting and a little bit
frightening to go.
I'm not going to focus onreading.
What do you mean?
(42:01):
Little bit frightening to go?
I'm not going to focus onreading.
What do you mean?
It's not called the writingleague right, it's not.
Lori (42:07):
You know, what do you mean ?
Lyn Stone (42:08):
I'm not going to talk about reading as much yeah.
Melissa (42:13):
What about the science of reading?
Oh my gosh, you know it's notcalled.
Lyn Stone (42:16):
That's what everyone's talking about.
Exactly Like.
This is a huge word, you know,and we've done a really, really
good job, I think, of evenmaking that part of the national
conversation Just readingitself.
But hey, you know, got bad newsfor you guys Writing's the hard
part, reading's a piece of cake, right, relatively speaking.
Melissa (42:39):
And I'm not saying that to insult anybody- who
hasn't acquired reading.
Lyn Stone (42:42):
I don't, I don't mean that, but you know I've.
I've worked in special ed for along time and it was absolutely
a no brainer that every childthat came to see us would end up
reading like course, course,but not writing.
You never, ever, took that forgranted, because as a
practitioner you know that thatis tough, it's really tough and
(43:03):
it's not the same.
Lori (43:05):
Yeah, it is so tough, that is such a difficult skill to
write well and to be able tohave the knowledge of the topic
to do it.
I feel like when we can supportstudents in any area like that,
that's helpful to get them to.
I mean, they're removing thatknowledge piece they can.
If we're giving them that right, then they have more time, more
(43:26):
space in their brain freed upfor all the other tasks that are
difficult with writing, so theydon't have to think about, well
, what am I writing about?
I have that knowledge and andnow I, you know, I, I've, I've
been studying birds I know thata chick is a is a baby, you know
.
So I can put that together,yeah.
Lyn Stone (43:45):
Yeah, and they support one another, of course.
I mean the more you read, thebetter it is for you in terms of
your spelling, because you getthis exposure again.
You know, statisticallyspeaking, to what, what the
common patterns are and what theconstraints are in language.
You've got to read.
(44:07):
But of the first things that wedo with a student is we say
this is how you improve yourspelling, even if you never come
to see us again.
And the first thing that youneed to do is read.
You need to read a lot and theysupport one another.
Of course they build, but withreading and writing there are
finite and constrained skillsthat we want children to become
automatic at as quickly aspossible, and that's decoding
(44:27):
and that's spelling andpunctuation.
We want them to be able to nothave to think about that so that
they can get over to the reallynice parts where they become
increasingly strategic.
If you think of the readingrope, even even the simple view
of reading.
We want them to be concretelystrategic at linguistic
comprehension and at textgeneration and we get through
(44:49):
that by giving them those skillsearly and well when you're
making me think too.
Melissa (44:54):
I know we've talked mostly.
We wanted to stay focused onetymology and vocabulary during
this, but now I'm.
Now I just have a quickquestion because we've talked
about writing and I just readthe Language for Life and I want
to know do you want to talk atall about this idea of grammar,
because I know that is anotherone where it's often painfully
boring in school and verydisconnected from the other work
(45:17):
that's happening.
Do you want to talk a bit aboutthe power of it and maybe some
best practices?
Lyn Stone (45:24):
Sure, Do I want to talk about grammar?
No, I never want to talk aboutgrammar.
It's just a terrible subject,it's not useful at all and I
hardly think about it ever.
Grammar and syntax I think goshright, it's so cool because
what, what it is, what grammarand syntax is is the outward
expression of the workings ofthe inner mind.
(45:46):
Right, the way that words gotogether and the relationships
that they have.
They're like people, it's likeMelrose Place.
Okay, a sentence is like a soapopera, right, because it's got
these components, all with theirindividual personalities, but
not just their personalities,their relationships, the way
(46:07):
that they have power over oneanother, the way that they
govern one another, the way thatthey skew one another, that you
can place a word before anotherword and suddenly the sentence
means a completely differentthing.
I mean, you know grammar andsyntax.
I've never heard grammar.
Melissa (46:22):
It sounds so cool.
Lori (46:30):
I'm very excited right now .
I want to know where Lyn waswhen I was in sixth grade, with
a purple piece of chalk, havingto deconstruct a sentence.
Lyn Stone (46:35):
Really.
Look, I love thatdeconstructing of sentences.
But yeah, I know that you'rereading and you know I don't
want to be too kind of productspecific.
But yeah, I know that you'rereading and I don't want to be
too kind of product specifichere.
But I know that you're readingLanguage for Life right now.
That edition of Language forLife doesn't have my thinking on
it regarding the personalitiesand the relationships quite as
(46:56):
much as this new edition thatI'm working on has.
So I'm handing in themanuscript for that on the 1st
of September fingers crossed,barring any cataclysms.
I'm handing that in and thenthat will go through its
publishing process and bereleased sometime next year.
Now that has got things like.
I've got to show you this sinceyou asked.
It's got their personalitiesand illustrations.
(47:17):
So pronouns right are syntacticstunt doubles so we've got this
woman, a stunt double, dressedup in her stunt kit, with her
motorbike helmet under her arm,and they have really brought the
whole personality andrelationships thing into it and
I think it's a good idea.
It's a really good idea andkids dig it.
(47:39):
So we can always make it moreinteresting.
But it comes back down toteacher knowledge.
What I'm really trying to do isget that idea into teachers
that this isn't just a noun, isa naming word.
Let's move on.
It's like a noun.
They're syntactic royalty.
They have servants.
Did you know that they have likea whole retinue of words that
(48:00):
only work for nouns and won'twork for anyone else?
Nouns?
Did you know that they havelike a whole retinue of words
that only work for nouns andwon't work for anyone else?
Nouns are the only words thathave that.
They've got these servants, youknow.
They've got pronouns that comein for them.
They've got determiners thatkind of go hey, everybody, look
busy, a noun's coming.
They've got adjectives they'rethe only ones that describe
nouns.
And they've got prepositionsthat will connect nouns to
everything else.
(48:20):
That's amazing, right, butnobody ever talks about that.
It's just a noun is a namingword.
It's not.
It's a soap opera out therefolks.
Lori (48:31):
I know I was thinking as you were talking.
If this were like the middleages, you could probably create
like a whole cool chart with,like, the hierarchy of the
grammar system, although MelrosePlace is like maybe a good
college version.
Lyn Stone (48:46):
Yeah, it's kind of outdated too.
You know, anybody sort of bornafter 1990 will have no idea
what I'm talking about there.
But at least I didn't say atleast I didn't say dynasty right
, at least I said Melrose Place,which was a bit more modern.
Lori (49:03):
Oh, so that's a good one that we say differently.
Oh, you say dynasty.
Lyn Stone (49:06):
Dynasty.
Lori (49:08):
And you know.
Melissa (49:09):
I say dynamite.
Lyn Stone (49:10):
I don't say dynamite because it's all to do with
power, right D-Y-N?
Yeah, it's to do with power.
So you know, pronunciationnever consistent.
But boy, that morpheme'sconsistent, isn't it?
Lori (49:21):
So there's a teachable moment.
So can I ask you a question?
Can I ask a question that'sbeen like I've been thinking
about, since you were talkingabout the playing with words,
with morphology, and then weconnected it to writing.
(49:42):
Is there, have you ever seenkids in their editing process
feel more comfortable movingthings around?
After they feel good aboutplaying with words and like
moving the word parts around andexploring that?
Do you ever see that transferinto writing?
Because I always felt like whenI was a teacher, the hardest
part was to get kids to edit andto move parts around and to get
excited about, oh, you know,changing this part or that part
(50:04):
or switching it from start tothe end of the sentence, to the
beginning.
And wouldn't that sound moreexciting?
Because they were like no, Idid it, I'm done, I just I just
want to hand it in and I alreadywrote it down.
You know we weren't doingthings always on the computer,
so again, I'm aging myself rightnow.
Lyn Stone (50:23):
Well, there's two ways.
Again, there's two sort ofanswers I have for that.
The first one is that let'sface the reality of writing.
There's a reality in writingand that reality is this editing
is horrible, it's a nightmare,it's unpleasant and, you know,
nobody likes it Like I.
I could, I could call myself awriter.
Now I think I it'd be okay forme to actually use that title, I
(50:46):
guess.
Right, I call.
So I might call myself a writer.
But boy, I don't want to goback and look at what I've
written.
I would rather do anything elsein the world it's like yeah,
it's how I developed myincredibly gifted
procrastination skills, right,just from having to edit stuff.
I'm, you know, so good atprocrastinating because editing
(51:06):
exists.
Do you know what I mean?
So?
So let's face that realityfirst of all.
Okay, that's a real thing andit happens in everybody's brains
, right?
How do we remedy that?
That's the second part of thequestion, and the remedy for
that is to actually make sureagain, it's about proportions,
it's about numbers, it's aboutpercentages and to make sure
(51:27):
that when you are actually doinga writing focus and when you're
in a writing block, forinstance in your literacy block,
that you reduce the draftingtime and you increase the
editing time.
And the way that you do that isusing work like Hockman and
Wexler.
Again, they really put into avery, very structured way of how
(51:50):
to recognize what fragments areand know how you can manipulate
fragments of sentences to makereally good sentences in a way
that doesn't actually kill youwith boredom, right?
So that's my review of thewriting revolution.
Basically, it's the remedy forediting boredom, right?
(52:11):
So, yeah, hopefully that givesyou some insight into how, maybe
to help.
It's about proportion and it'sabout intentionally working with
that manipulation of sentenceparts, and that comes from
fragments, it comes from apositives, it comes from
(52:31):
conjunctions and so on.
So yeah, hockman and Wexler,there isn't a better resource
for that.
Lori (52:37):
I don't think, yeah, and I have the book right here.
So if you're watching, you'rewatching.
Here's the book, If you here,so if you're watching you're
watching.
Melissa (52:42):
Here's the book.
Lori (52:44):
If you're not.
If you're listening, we hadthem on the podcast, so we'll
make sure to link that episodetoo, so you can learn more about
the writing revolution.
I'm wondering, though, lyn, ifwe might want to kind of bring
this home with some practicalways teachers can apply what we
talked about today.
(53:04):
Do you have any recommendationsfor teachers?
I don't know.
Three sounds like a nice roundnumber, but I will leave it up
to you.
Lyn Stone (53:11):
Firstly, don't reinvent the wheel.
If you are going to buildknowledge and get students to
write about it, there will be atext out there that you can use.
You don't have to rewrite andinvent new texts and have that
as part of your planning.
So there are lots of resourcesfor that core knowledge and even
, dare I say, chat GPT.
(53:34):
You can actually go to that botnow and say write me a short
paragraph for grade three onravens, and they'll give you a
framework so that you can thenwork from that.
You can even go put moreadjectives in, because we're
studying adjectives right now,or I want more words that have
CK in them, and so on.
(53:54):
You can do that.
You can make the bot do thatRight.
So that's the first thing Usewhat's around you rather than
thinking that you have to comeup with all of this stuff
yourself, because that's thefirst thing Use what's around
you rather than thinking thatyou have to come up with all of
this stuff yourself, becausethat's a nightmare for teachers.
It's a lot of work In terms ofagain writing.
When it comes to grammar andsyntax, make sure you, as a
(54:15):
teacher, are really comfortablewith what the parts of speech
are and how they relate to oneanother, and there's plenty of
training out there.
There are plenty of resourcesabout that.
Your dictionary is a really,really good resource.
On your computer you havesomething that will tell you
what part of speech a word isand all the different parts of
(54:38):
speech it could be, depending onwhere they are in the sentence.
So, again, there is a resourcefor that already.
Become familiar with that,because that's going to help you
answer all of those stickyquestions.
And then, thirdly, the big tipreally is understanding and
being happy to grow yourunderstanding of how words are
(54:58):
formed and what those word partsare.
And that comes from thisunderstanding that every word is
a base, and we're coming rightback to where we started Every
word is a base or contains abase, even if it doesn't look
like it.
If you can figure out and findways to figure out what that is,
you're laughing and you'llnever, ever be disappointed.
(55:19):
It's always, alwaysenlightening and fun.
We love that.
Thank you so much, an enormouspleasure.
Thank you Again.
I'm honored, really honored, tosit amongst your guests and
look forward to hearing lotsmore of your podcasts.
Melissa (55:39):
To stay connected with us, sign up for our email list
at literacypodcastcom, join ourFacebook group and follow us on
Instagram and Twitter.
Lori (55:49):
If this episode resonated with you, take a moment to share
with a teacher friend or leaveus a five-star rating and review
on Apple Podcasts.
Melissa (55:59):
Just a quick reminder that the views and opinions
expressed by the hosts andguests of the Melissa and Lori
Love Literacy Podcast are notnecessarily the opinions of
Great Minds, pbc or itsemployees.
Lori (56:11):
We appreciate you so much and we're so glad you're here to
learn with us.
Thank you.
Words are powerful.
Students need to develop a deepunderstanding of language and
vocabulary, to comprehend whatthey read and to write well.
But as a teacher, where do youstart?
What strategies actually work?
Melissa (00:14):
We are thrilled to have linguist and author Lyn
Stone on the podcast today.
She'll share insights on thejoy of teaching words, the
science behind vocabularyinstruction and the resources
teachers need to bring etymologyand morphology to life.
Lori (00:30):
If you've been searching for ways to make vocabulary
instruction more engaging oryou're curious about how
etymology and morphology cantransform student learning, this
episode is for you.
Hi teacher friends, I'm Loriand I'm Melissa.
We are two educators who wantthe best for all kids, and we
(00:51):
know you do too.
Melissa (00:52):
We worked together in Baltimore when the district
adopted a new literacycurriculum.
Lori (00:57):
We realized there was so much more to learn about how to
teach reading and writing.
Lori, and I can't wait to keeplearning with you today how to
teach reading and writing, lori,and I can't wait to keep
learning with you today.
Hi everyone, welcome to Melissaand Lori Love Literacy.
I saw Lyn Stone present at boththe Reading League Conference
and at Plain Talk Conferencethis past year, and she makes
(01:19):
learning words so easy and somuch fun, might I add.
Melissa (01:25):
Yeah, so we're so excited to have Lyn Stone here
today, and you may know her asthe author of several books
Reading for Life, spelling forLife, language for Life.
Are there any other ones that Imissed, Lyn?
Lyn Stone (01:35):
There's one coming out soon called Writing for Life
, and when I say soon, I've beensaying that for about three
years, so who knows?
Melissa (01:42):
Well, we're excited for it, we're ready for what it
is soon, and welcome to thepodcast today.
Lyn Stone (01:47):
Thank you, it's a great pleasure to be here.
I'm really excited.
Actually.
I'm a big fan of your podcast,so huge honor, thank you.
Lori (01:54):
Yeah, thank you.
Well, we're a big fan of yoursand we were a little nervous.
We were like nervous to ask youto be on the podcast because
you know you're so fancy.
Lyn Stone (02:06):
Okay, I'm definitely putting that on my CV Linstone
fancy.
Melissa (02:11):
Yeah, god, I can't wait.
So well done.
Lyn Stone (02:13):
That's great.
No, it's a huge honor to behere and lovely to talk to you
as well.
Lori (02:20):
Yeah Well, thank you.
I thought actually we couldstart with the way that you
started the conference at theReading League, and I'll refresh
your memory you simply sharedwhat are words.
You just shared with everyonewhat are words, and I thought
that was brilliant.
So I was hoping you could justkind of ground us in what are
(02:41):
words and what we should thinkabout.
Lyn Stone (02:43):
Yeah Well, I love that question actually, and the
reason I sort of do talks likethis and ask questions like what
are words, is because there arequite a few misconceptions out
there and my job is to try toclear up those misconceptions
from the viewpoint of someonewho's trained in the structure
of language.
So you know, as a linguist,what you think about is words
(03:06):
and you think about them at thesubword level, so all the parts
that make up words, and youthink of them in the sort of the
cluster level as well, whereyou have phrases and sentences
and so on.
So words are my stock and tradeand therefore I think it's a
good idea to talk about that.
And I think also, from littlekids all the way up to adults,
(03:29):
everybody's interested in words.
You're kind of hardwired tolearn about that stuff because
what they are is the foundationof communication and, as we know
, communication is survival in asociety.
So everybody wants to know in asociety.
So everybody wants to know.
So I like to start there and Ilike to talk about that.
And in terms of what words are,well, one principle is a really
(03:51):
good starting point and thisalso clears up a little bit of
gosh morphology.
That's really hard, right.
So a lot of people findmorphology a bit intimidating.
Well, if you start from thisprinciple, and that is that
every single word that you useis a base, it's a basis like a
Lego base that you can put otherparts onto.
(04:13):
There are some words that youcan't, and they're called
unalterable bases.
So you've got words like of.
You know those little functionwords.
You can't put a prefix orsuffix on, of, you can't make it
plural, you can't put it intothe past tense, you can't do all
of that stuff, so they'reunalterable.
But they're a tiny, tiny set.
Everything else is an alterablebase and actually some of the
(04:36):
bases are.
They have to be altered to beEnglish words, you know, like
struct, right, that doesn't hangaround by itself.
It's not a base that you seeunattached to other word parts.
So you've got to put prefixesor suffixes, like structure or
construct and so on.
So that's what words, everysingle word.
If you start with that, everysingle word is or contains a
(04:59):
base and that's the part thatcarries the majority of the
meaning.
If you start there, it helps tobuild mental models of the
entire system.
Melissa (05:09):
Well, I'm wondering, and I know our audience is, and
I'm sure this has a millionanswers, but we'll start here
and see where we go.
Which is what should teachersbe thinking about as they're
teaching words?
Lyn Stone (05:21):
or students are learning words, yeah, huge huge
thing and huge question and, asyou said, lots and lots of
answers, and I can only reallyanswer it from my viewpoint.
I can only really answer itfrom my perspective, whereas you
know there may be otherperspectives as well but the way
that I look at it and what'sbeen successful for me because
(05:42):
I've had lots and lots ofstudents over time and now my
students are teachers as well,because I don't even see
students one-on-one anymore.
I do see groups of students,but teachers are my students.
And so what should we bethinking about?
Or what should teachers wantchildren to be thinking about?
I think I love that question.
(06:02):
Do you mind if I go from thatperspective?
Yeah, so what do we wantchildren to think about?
Well, we want them to have theconcept, first of all, of what
words are and how they can bebuilt, what their structure is
and what their smaller parts are.
And I think phonics right, thisword that gets bandied around a
(06:25):
lot is basically a way ofhelping children think about the
sub-word parts, the parts ofwords that are not the words
themselves but the components ofwords.
And if that's taught to them ina systematic way rather than a
kind of random way, oh, we'lltake your name and then we're
going to look at the parts ofthat, but a systematic way, like
(06:46):
here's some really common onesthat you can put together to
make new words without me.
Then that helps children tobecome wordsmiths.
So, teachers, thinking about,what do I want children to know?
I want them to know those parts, I want them to be able to put
those parts together, I wantthem to be able to take words
apart as well.
That's a really good, brilliantstarting point and from that you
(07:08):
can then build.
Well, guess what?
There are other units, thereare other parts of words that
are bigger than just sounds andletters, that carry meaning as
well, and that's where we justeasily, smoothly, can transition
into morphology, and when youdo that, you're never
disappointed.
It's always a fun, reallyexciting, wonderful thing to do
(07:30):
and you're constantly learningit.
I'm still learning, I'm stilllearning about word parts, and
it's really nice.
I love it.
Lori (07:39):
Yeah, okay, so we'll transition into morphology.
I think that's a good place togo.
But I will say the thing thatstruck me as I was preparing for
this.
I was reading language for lifeand the thing that struck me is
just the playfulness of thetone of the book and how fun it
is to play with words.
(08:00):
And I just want to say thatbefore we jump into morphology
because you brought it up and Ithink it's really important that
to say that kids and and Ithink as a teacher you know I
always loved playing with words.
I thought that was so much fun.
So I'm wondering if we couldkind of start with kind of
grounding ourselves in like what, what does it mean to what does
(08:21):
morphology mean?
What does?
I think we should maybe go intoetymology.
I think that might be a goodthing to reference as well.
You're the expert, so I'll letyou go ahead and then maybe what
the research says about it all.
Lyn Stone (08:35):
Okay, yeah, again, a tiny little question there.
No, look, I like the way you'veput all of that, because
they're inextricable, aren'tthey?
They're units of language thatwork together.
That, you know, we can sort ofconsciously separate, but when
we're communicating with oneanother, they're all mixed
together at the unconsciouslevel, which is awe-inspiring in
(08:59):
itself.
And I'm actually reminded of anexercise that I do when I'm
training teachers to show thedifference between conscious and
unconscious right, which isreally relevant for what we're
talking about today.
We talk about syllable emphasisin one of the things that I do.
We talk about in every wordthat's got more than one
(09:19):
syllable.
There's going to be a strongone that you hear louder, or the
vowel is more clear, or so on.
And I say to them you know this, you actually, and most
children, by the time they'resix, totally know this from
language, from just beingimmersed in language.
It's something that they know,and you know where the syllable
(09:41):
emphasis is, because when youtalk, a typically developing
four or five, six-year-old willhave their syllable emphasis
absolutely perfect, right.
And any native speaker knowswhere to put the strong
syllables in.
But you do all that at theunconscious level.
When I start to ask teachers tobe conscious of it.
When I say, hey, take this worddinosaur, right, where's the
(10:04):
strong syllable there?
Because we don't go dinosaurlike that, right, we go dinosaur
.
And so the strong bit is thatfirst syllable.
They've really struggled withthat and I go.
You know it unconsciously, butwhen you're conscious of it,
when you actually have to startarticulating what that is, it's
really difficult.
And so it is with morphology,with morphemes.
(10:31):
We do understand the basicmeanings of most of the
morphemes when we have ourlexicon built, when we've built
our vocabulary, but actuallytalking about that and
deconstructing it is reallyreally hard, and so morphology
and etymology, where the wordscome from, are intertwined to
help to bring that into and upto the conscious level.
So I think, in my view,etymology will inform why the
(10:55):
morphemes are like they are.
Even though we know the meaningof the morphemes and we can
pronounce the morphemes andmaybe even spell them, etymology
helps us bring that to theconscious level, and that's why
it's important to talk aboutboth of those things.
So I've answered two of thethings that you were talking
about there.
I'm not sure if I answered allof them, though, so you can
reframe the question if you wish.
Lori (11:16):
Yeah Well, I think I'd love to hear some of the
research and what it says aboutthat, but I also think it might
be helpful.
I love examples.
Do you have any examples thatyou could give to share how
etymology informs the morphology?
Lyn Stone (11:31):
Yeah, here's what I learned really recently Because,
like I say, it's a lifelongjourney and you're always
discovering new stuff, right?
And here's a new thing that Iwasn't conscious of when I again
, when I work with people, I saygive me the words that you find
the hardest to spell or thehardest to teach or remember,
because I'm really interested inthose.
(11:51):
Why is it that we don'tremember those words?
And inevitably this wordonomatopoeia comes up.
Right, because you know it'sfairly complicated there's lots
of schwa vowels in there and isit?
onomatto or is it onomattobecause I say onomatto and blah,
blah, blah, right, and and thatpia bit right.
P o e is this.
(12:14):
It's a base and I, I, somebodytold me this about a month ago
it's a base that is also in thebase poem, right.
When we make poems it's to dowith words and sounds.
Oh, do you know?
I mean p-o-e, p-r, right poem,even though the pronunciation is
completely different.
The etymology helps to tell usthe base does both.
(12:37):
Both those bases are the same.
They help to tell us how tospell that flipping word, right.
And I was just to say thatactually will help me.
That's the brilliant thing.
So there's a morpheme there,but it's the etymology of those
morphemes that drives thatsequence of letters, that makes
that word, that word andtherefore easier to spell and
(12:59):
easier to conceptualize.
You're just making more pathsin your brain about what
onomatopoeia really is and howthat relates to poetry.
Oh, that's so fun.
Melissa (13:11):
I love learning those.
Did you all see the thing aboutMother recently that came out
on some of the Facebook pages?
There was like this wholeargument about someone did a
really cute little thing forMother's Day A schwa.
It had the schwa for the o andthen people were like that's,
it's not a schwa for the o.
And I, you know, I didn't, Idon't know those things too well
(13:34):
.
So I was like reading all thecomments, I was really into it
and then I got really deep andsomeone had said that what's it
called lyn Lyn, when it was likebecause it used to be a U?
but then in old script scribal Oand then people like it's not
actually a scribal O because ofthe etymology and the word that
it came from from, like I'mgoing to get it wrong, but
(13:57):
somewhere, like in a Germaniclanguage way long ago, it was
actually the root was still Oand it was just this whole
argument.
Was actually the root was stillO and it was just this whole
argument.
I just thought it was likefascinating to see like where
did this come from?
Just a simple word.
Simple word like mother.
There can be a lot of myths outthere, a lot of arguments,
absolutely Arguments and myths,and also sometimes we lose sight
(14:17):
of the woods.
Lyn Stone (14:19):
You know for the trees, you know what I mean.
I don't know a lot of kids thatget past elementary school, not
being able to spell mother andnot knowing what it means.
So can you move on?
Because we've got bigger fishto fry right Than this word that
everyone can spell andunderstand right.
It doesn't drive me crazy.
(14:39):
I mean, I love the fact, right,that people like linguistics,
they like the structure oflanguage, and that makes me
really happy when they get upset.
It's not good.
But there is a thing that doesdrive me crazy on the social
media and I and thank you forgiving me this platform to say
it out loud- and are you ready?
(15:01):
Are you on the edge of your seat?
It's this right.
It's when people go how do yousay the sounds in this word?
And you're talking about, youknow, maybe a hundred thousand
people from all sorts ofdifferent backgrounds and
different countries anddifferent towns, even within
their own countries.
And somebody goes how do yousay it?
(15:23):
Or, even worse, the worstquestion is how do I map this
word as if?
How do I squish these phonemesinto these graphemes?
Or what are the correct?
What's the right way to saythis word?
There is no right way, come on.
And then all these argumentsensue but oh, but, if you say it
properly, it's like this, or Isay it like this.
(15:45):
Therefore, everyone in theworld needs to say it like this.
And that drives me crazy,because what the original poster
is trying to do is say,basically, how do I teach that
so that children remember it?
And that's got nothing to dowith how people think the word
should be said.
It's got everything to do withthe sequence of letters, and the
(16:07):
sounds are secondary, thesecondary to it.
So that drives me crazy, but Ido try and talk about that a bit
.
Melissa (16:14):
Wow, and I love that you brought up that.
I mean, you know we're talkingto you and obviously we would
say a lot of words differentlyin two different countries.
But, like you said, even withina state, from city to city, you
might say things differently,and I love that you say it and
(16:35):
we need to respect all the waysthat people say words yeah.
Lyn Stone (16:38):
What are the signs in this word is not the right
question.
The right question is what isthe letter sequence?
Why is it like that and how doI teach it so that people
remember that?
Lori (16:49):
That's really helpful.
Yeah, for sure that's reallyhelpful.
I love that.
That's going to be my newcomment, Lyn.
Lyn Stone (16:54):
Okay, good, If it helps one person, it's been
worth going mad for.
Lori (17:00):
You're right, Lyn Stone says oh no, don't quote me.
No shame if any listeners haveposted no, not at all, I mean, I
never do it to shame anyone.
Lyn Stone (17:15):
I just I try to get people to ask better questions.
You know better questionsbecause that leads to better
answers and better outcomes andthen that leads to better lives
and so on.
So it's like, you know, it'slike that old thing for want of
a nail, a shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe, a horse waslost.
You know that sort of thing forwant of a better question, an
answer was lost, and that canbuild to a whole.
You know, academic career islost, right?
Melissa (17:32):
I'm wondering about.
I mean, laura, you brought upthis idea of like how words can
be so fun and the tone of Lyn'sbook is really fun.
And I'm just wondering, Lyn ifyou have any suggestions for
teachers on how to keep or howto build that like curiosity and
fun kind of way of looking atwords, versus making it feel
like memorizing a bunch of rulesand old ways, that this is how
(17:57):
words were made and it couldfeel, I think, really boring for
students depending on how it'spresented.
You're quite right, you'requite right, melissa.
Lyn Stone (18:06):
And you know, something else that's really
boring for students is givingthem a list of whole words and
then going color that in or drawa coffin around it.
You know those sort of things.
That sort of thing.
That's really boring too.
So there's that.
But look, I think it starts withor I've seen this happen in
real life with real teachers itstarts with teachers having an
(18:29):
expanded knowledge of this.
We can't have the blind leadingthe blind, and so that's where
I come in, where I try to raiseteacher capacity on this.
And, as I said, you know, I'mpretty far on in my career and
I've been studying words for along time and I'm still learning
this stuff.
There is absolutely no shame inany of that.
(18:52):
That's an attitude that reallyhelps.
So that's the first thingYou've got to want to be this
lifelong learner of that stuff,and there's no shame involved.
Or, you know, sometimes, when welet go of things that didn't
work that well before, it'sreally crucial to not have an
(19:12):
identity crisis while we'redoing that.
And after all, when you go intoteaching, that does become your
identity, especially withmodern teacher training methods.
There will be a lot during thatdegree that you do that goes.
What is your philosophy?
How is this bound with youridentity?
There's a lot of exercises youhave to do on that, right, so
(19:39):
therefore it can lead to a bitof a crisis, letting go of all
that other stuff and then havingto think really hard and deeply
about words.
But when you do that's whatstarts to make it fun.
It's not really.
You know, I can't give you atip and go, oh, make it fun by
doing this.
Can't give you a tip and go, oh, make it fun by doing this.
You make it fun by knowing andhaving that openness to finding
(19:59):
out and not being worried thatyou're going to encounter
something that you don't know,because, guess what?
We have this thing called theinternet, right, and if you
don't, know, there are reallygood places that you can go to
find it, and I can be standingthere in front of hundreds of
people and somebody will ask mea question about a word and I'll
(20:20):
go.
I don't know, I don't carry allof it in my head, but I've got
Etim Online, the app here on myphone, so I'm just going to look
it up for you.
I don't mind doing that.
That's what makes it fun whenyou can actually model that
behavior, that well, if I don'tknow, I know where to find that
out.
Let's do that together.
You never, ever, have to bethis kind of guru.
(20:41):
You know that has it all inyour head and you can be wrong
as well.
I've had lots of hypothesesabout words that have turned out
to be absolutely, completelyfalse.
I'm all right, I'm fine to letthat go as well.
It's okay.
So I think that's the fun part.
I'm sorry if it's vague, but itcomes from teacher capacity and
the broadening of teacherknowledge.
(21:02):
First and foremost, you need toknow more than your students
and you need to make sure thatyour students understand that.
If there is a limit to yourknowledge, but that's okay too
and there's a way to you know,move the limits on that
knowledge.
Lori (21:17):
Yeah, I'm wondering if, like the words that we're
choosing right.
So I'm thinking about a teacherlistening and I'm thinking,
okay, the teacher's reading anovel or reading a book with
their students the words that wechoose, it almost feels less
important to.
I mean, it's important in itsown right, but it's less
(21:37):
important to obsess over thatpart than like, okay, now we're
going to play with these wordsand kind of like, allow your
students to get in there and getmessy with the words, but you
have to be familiar and you knowand have some sort of preset
knowledge about some basicmorphology, quote stuff.
Does that sound right?
(21:58):
Like you know, I just thinksometimes, I know when I was a
teacher I would stress so muchabout like, are these the right
words, Are these the rightacademic words to be teaching?
And you know, I think justtrying words feels really
important here, just trying toplay with words and language,
and I think students arebrilliant in that way.
They are.
Lyn Stone (22:17):
They find it very interesting because, again, it's
a survival mechanism.
Playing with words is the waythat an infant will acquire
their native language.
So it's something that you'rehardwired to do, first of all,
so you build on that instinctand therefore you can make it
really, really joyful.
But I like, laurie, what youwere saying about obsessing over
(22:38):
is this the right word?
Time and time again I'll beasked well, do you have a list
of those words?
Like, can I have a list?
This thing that you've, thisresource you have, is there a
list in there?
This resource you have, isthere a list in there?
And all my career I've resistedmaking lists because the best
(22:59):
word list is a book.
That's the best word list thatyou can get.
Right, it's a book that eitherbuilds knowledge or craft craft,
what's the word I want to say?
Craftfully, is that even a word, or did I just make that up?
See, it doesn't matter, right,you made it up.
Lori (23:15):
I think, but it doesn't matter, I'm going to substitute
it.
Lyn Stone (23:19):
Artfully.
Melissa (23:20):
We know what you mean, Artfully deftly right.
Lyn Stone (23:25):
So the way that you teach the words within that book
, you know, and the joy that youhave with that and the way that
you build knowledge and buildstories that children listen to.
That's the important thing.
If you take it, that's the artbit.
Right, let's take it to thescience bit.
Okay, I'm going to give yousome numbers.
If you have a fully formedlexicon and that's, you know, a
(23:49):
vocabulary that is a typicallydeveloping adult vocabulary or
developed adult vocabulary,you're in between about 30,000
to 70,000 word and word parts.
You kind of know instantly andautomatically, without having to
look them up.
You know what those words are.
If you have a sight wordvocabulary, you can also read
(24:12):
those words and if you have anorthographic lexicon, you can
spell those words as well, whichis quite a lot.
And they're all separate formsof language, right.
But anyway, 30 to 70,000 is thepantry, is the ingredients of
language.
That you're working with 30 to70,000 units, which is insanely
good, right, it's justawe-inspiring.
(24:34):
Now, you did not acquire those30,000 to 70,000 units from your
teacher having a list, right,there was no, there is no.
Melissa (24:45):
That would be a lot of lists.
Lyn Stone (24:46):
That's a huge list.
Imagine that at 10 a week.
Okay, can you see?
That's not how we acquire ourvocabulary, what we do, still
not enough.
Lori (24:54):
10 a week.
Can you see?
That's not how we acquire ourvocabulary, what we do Still not
enough.
Lyn Stone (24:57):
10 a week, I know You'd be there until you were
the oldest person in the worldplus some, right?
So that's not how it happens.
It doesn't happen like that.
That's not how we acquirelanguage.
It's not how we build ourlexicon.
We can facilitate the buildingof our lexicon though lexicon.
We can facilitate the buildingof our lexicon, though, and
teachers can facilitate that bycoming up with really good
(25:18):
examples of words and wordfamilies, right, and discovering
them.
So back to that list thing.
If you want to know what theword, what the right words
should be, I'd like to get youto ask a better question.
There's a better question here,right?
And the better question is whatis the family that these words
(25:39):
belong to?
How are they related to oneanother?
Because, instead of studyingone word, you've got four or
five, six words that have gotthat pattern or have got that
morpheme or have got thatetymology, and now we're really
talking about building a mentalmodel of how the writing system
works.
So the best word list is a bookand that your choice of words.
(26:00):
It's only ever going to beexemplars of the 30 to 70,000
words that you build throughspeaking and listening, through
reading and through writing.
Melissa (26:11):
Lyn can you give an example of that family that you
were?
Just I know?
Lyn Stone (26:16):
I'm asking you to like pull it out of your head,
but just so people know what youmean.
Luckily, there's lots in myhead when it comes to this stuff
, so you know so that's one ofmy favorite ones, and I did this
quite recently with a student.
It's the word candle.
Right, that's a great word,candle, you know.
Blow out the candle and so on.
Turns out that canned bit lightor fire, right, comes in
(26:42):
incandescent as well.
So that's light that you getfrom heat.
So canned incandescent, I lovethat.
That's a great family, that'sone I love.
There's probably other words inthe candle family, but off the
top of my head I don't know now,so I'd have to look that up.
But yeah, so you can studycandle and you can go.
Oh well, let me see, that's twosyllables, and the first
(27:04):
syllable is CDC and the secondsyllable is consonant plus LE.
There's the syllable typesHooray, let's move on right.
Or you can go see that basecand that's in this word
incandescent.
What a cool word that is.
I know which one I would choose.
So that's what I mean byfamilies and that information is
freely available.
It's not like you have to carryit in your head.
(27:25):
You can figure all of that out.
So I'd encourage teachers to dothat, and it's a big ask, I
know.
So you've got to do a lot morein your day than just go on Etim
online and you know, have youknow rapture over words, but
still.
Melissa (27:43):
Oh, I just learned that chandeliers I knew there
was another one.
Lyn Stone (27:46):
Yes, that's right, yeah.
Lori (27:50):
Isn't it great, oh my gosh , it's joyful.
It's so fun.
It's so much fun.
And they expect.
I don't know if it's becausewe're like word nerds or what,
but we want everyone.
Melissa (28:01):
And it's like a little puzzle when you hear and you're
like oh, like that does fitright.
It's like it fits together.
I see it.
Lyn Stone (28:06):
Your brain just grew your brain just grew in your
pathway and you know which isreally nice, and we want
everyone to be word nerds.
It's not that I want thechildren to then be able to
spell chandelier andincandescent, right.
It's not that.
It's that we're setting thescene and we're helping them
build schemas, and schemas aremental models of things, and you
(28:28):
can build those mental modelsor you can have everything in
silos with no connection to eachother, and you're going to
build your lexicon much slowerthat way.
I know that there comes a pointwhen you're building your
lexicon and I remember beingconscious of it where you go.
Oh, I can see where all thedots join.
I could see it in my head wherethey're all joined right and
(28:50):
how they all join together.
Something that's really handyfor that is learning other
languages as well.
So I learned dutch and Ilearned french.
I learned german and latin.
So I was lucky in that I hadthose other vocabularies um to,
to fall back on and make thoseconnections as well.
So you know, this is anotherthing I recommend in primary
school especially.
(29:10):
It's that children start tolearn other languages.
Melissa (29:13):
And is that especially true for English, like for
people learning English to knowother languages, because I feel
like English is kind of amishmash of so many different
languages.
Lyn Stone (29:24):
Yes, it can.
It can be, I suppose, becauseit has it.
You know, there are lots ofwords in English, and there are
lots of words that mean almostthe same thing, because of the
migration patterns of humans.
You know, visiting the Britishor Romance languages, or both,
is incredibly helpful, you know,for building again your English
(30:00):
lexicon.
So, yeah, languages other thanEnglish, no matter what they are
, though, are good to study, andit's funny because people who
don't speak English as theirnative language basically learn
their native language andEnglish, because that's the
lingua franca of the world ofbusiness and commerce and trade,
and, you know, science andeverything.
(30:22):
So everyone learns English, butthe English speaking people
just learn English, which is abit of a shame, because we're
completely capable of learningother languages as well.
Lori (30:31):
I feel like it's kind of a great good time to say that
there are tons of resources.
Like I know teachers out theremight be wondering, like, what
resources do I have formorphology, for etymology and in
language, for life?
There's.
I mean, it's great.
It walks you through everything, but at the back, if you really
want a list, you kind of did doa list.
(30:51):
You did a list of morphemes.
Yeah, latin and greek ones.
Lyn Stone (30:58):
I, I think you kind of.
If you're going to talk aboutmorphology and write about it,
you might as well do that list.
But I'm not saying to teachersyou know, take the first five
items and teach that and thentest it on friday and move, you
know it's a reference point.
But yeah, you're right, youcaught me.
I made a list.
Lori (31:15):
It's like it's.
This is just it's messy.
Yeah, it's, it's.
It's not as clean as we I thinkall would like it to be.
You also recommended anotherresource, which at Plain Talk,
which I purchased immediatelyand we've been having a lot of
fun with it in our house.
It's called Once Upon a.
Word.
I've been looking at my Amazonorder on my phone I couldn't
remember the name of the bookOnce Upon a Word, a word origin
(31:38):
dictionary for kids, and thathas been really fun to see if
the words that we're pulling outof the books that we're reading
are in that word origindictionary.
So those resources I think arereally cool and usable for
teachers and students.
Lyn Stone (31:53):
They're lovely, they're absolutely lovely.
Do you have anything else?
Yes, I'm glad you asked Because, for students as well, there's
this book that we sometimes useas well and it's called House Ox
Stick and it's an etymology ofthe alphabet.
So it takes every letter of thealphabet and it goes this is
what it used to look, look like,or this is why we've brought it
(32:13):
in to our present alphabet andwith beautiful illustrations and
really, really at that kidlevel but hugely enlightening
for teachers as well.
So it's got that dual purposeof of giving, of expanding our
knowledge, and giving us avehicle to expand the knowledge
of children as well.
It's called Ox House Stick.
Melissa (32:40):
I'm not good with the order of stuff.
No, that's okay, I was justGoogling, so I'm making sure I
have the right one.
Lyn Stone (32:45):
I've got it on the shelf behind me, but yeah, I
prefer to keep my eyes on thescreen.
So sorry about that.
Yeah, so what is it?
Ox House, stick that way round.
Lori (32:56):
Ox House Stick.
Sorry about that, yeah, so what?
What is it?
Oxhouse stick that way around?
I gotta remember that.
Oh hs, yep, got it.
Okay, we'll link it.
We'll link it.
Melissa (33:03):
I'm just curious.
I we feel like we've touched onthis already, but I just want
to like make it super clear forpeople and make sure they
they're taking away the rightthing that what I hear us
talking about this whole time isthat both etymology and
morphology can be helpful forall parts of reading.
I want to say, when they'respelling, it can help students
(33:27):
when they're comprehending ormaking meaning of the text, and
it can help in all of thoseplaces.
Is that correct to say, Lyn?
And then can you tell a littlebit about how it helps for each?
Lyn Stone (33:41):
Yeah, again, I'm speaking from two perspectives.
So the first one is aperspective of a practitioner
who has succeeded over and overagain to teach children to read
and write.
So you know, you've got myanecdotes there, which are not,
you know, they're anecdotes, butthey're anecdotes of a fairly
(34:03):
long and successful career inintervention.
So they have some.
I don't know truth to them, Iguess or use maybe, but it's
also backed up with.
There is quite compellingresearch about morphology, about
word parts and how that's veryhelpful for helping to embed
(34:26):
those higher levels ofvocabulary in students.
If you want the names of thestudies, I'll come back to you
with those because, again, Idon't carry those in my head at
all.
So I'll look them up for you.
But there is, you know, when,when I succeed at something in
my career, I go I have toreverse, engineer that and go
well, why, why?
Why did that work it's?
(34:48):
It's not enough just to go, ooh, that works and then try to
market that it's.
Why did that work?
What is it, what are thecomponents of that?
And so I will look for reasonswhy that worked, and then that
also helps me to tweak what I'malready doing.
So one of the things that wastransformative for us at
(35:10):
Lifelong Literacy and for thetutors that work with my
students is that we did twothings that really changed
things for us.
And then I had to look for oh,why is that?
How come that worked?
Because I did it from instinctmore than anything else.
One of the things is that weshifted our focus from reading
(35:32):
to writing.
So say, you're in a 45-minutesession with a student, what we
used to do was maybe 35 minutesof reading interventions, so
we'd warm up with phonemicawareness and we'd get a text
and we'd decode it and we'd lookat component parts and we'd
drill.
(35:53):
You know, like I'm showing youSH, what sound, shh great.
I'm saying shh what.
Write it down.
You know all that sort of stuff.
That's all reading type work.
Let's do this for fluency.
Read that again with your voicebetter, and what did that mean?
And so on.
Right, so we did that.
When we shifted for 10 minutesof reading as opposed to 35
(36:18):
minutes of writing, two thingshappened over time.
One of the things that happenedwas that the children got
better at writing.
Of course they did right,because we were practicing
writing, but they also gotbetter at reading.
When we were just focusing onreading.
They got better at reading butthey didn't get better at
(36:38):
writing.
So that was one thing whereword parts and things like again
it's inextricable etymology,morphology, phonology as well.
They all join together to makehelp children form robust mental
orthographic images of words.
So that's placing words intolong-term memory.
(36:59):
They all help them to do that.
When we got them to write thewords rather than just read or
recognize the words, thatstrengthened it even further for
them.
And I'm talking about childrenwho have developmental disorders
of literacy, dyslexia,dysgraphia and other problems
with memory or working memoryand processing speed and so on.
(37:20):
So I'm talking about apopulation that usually gets
absolutely missed out in generaleducation and they became
better at reading and writing.
So that transformed what we didand their path.
So I hope that's answering yourquestion, melissa.
But then there was another partas well, and the other part that
transformed things for us waswhen we stopped giving them
(37:43):
words and sentences andparagraphs on decontextualized
things, you know.
So if we're studying the word,let's say we're studying the
grapheme CK, and I want them tobe able to use that grapheme and
to know that it doesn't occurat the beginning of English
words and it's usually after asingle vowel and so on.
Right In the old days, I wouldjust take any random word and
(38:09):
I'd go hey, this word thick,right, this is an example of
that.
Right, and this word think, thek in think is just a k on its
own, because you can't use ckafter a consonant right, except
for max plank.
But that's a whole differentthing, right, okay, we won't go
down that path just yet.
Right, so, right, so, um, well,it would be random.
(38:34):
Whereas when I started lookingat the work of natalie wexler,
judith hochman, I realized thatwe needed to build knowledge,
and that realization also camefrom a trend, a worrying trend,
that I saw in the students thatwe were working with over the
last 20 years, and what I wasseeing with them was a knowledge
(38:55):
gap as well.
I saw that these childrendidn't know the days of the week
, the months of the year, theydidn't know, they couldn't
recite those, and that's verybasic stuff.
What else didn't they know?
It turns out quite a lot,because during their primary
education they were doingdecontextualized stuff that
never built into anything either.
So there was this knowledge gap.
So there were being taughtthings like let's do inferencing
(39:19):
this year.
Right.
So for a whole year they woulddo blah, blah, inferencing on
stuff that wasn't related, thetopics that weren't related to
one another, and their knowledgewas suffering.
So when we started to, insteadof just take random words and
random sentences, when westarted to build knowledge with
that and stick to one subject.
So now that CK graphene well,we're studying birds A baby bird
(39:41):
is a chick, right?
So chick is going to be morerelevant and part of that mental
model than you know the wordthick or the word stick, unless
you're saying you build a nestwith sticks and so on.
Do you know what I'm saying?
So when we came away fromrandom and went into knowledge
building, that transformed theprogress of the response to
(40:04):
intervention as well.
And therefore, if you've got abetter response to intervention,
you kind of know that at tierone, if you're doing something
like that, you're going to thenprevent rather than have to
intervene.
You're building fences at thetop of the cliff rather than
being an ambulance at the bottom, which you know isn't ideal.
Lori (40:25):
That's fascinating.
It really aligns, too, withsome of the ahas that we had as
we started learning aboutknowledge building, and it makes
me think about a quote.
I'm not going to get it right,melissa, because I didn't pull
it up exactly, but spoiler alertfor anyone listening.
We have Doug Fisher later onthis summer, and it's making me
(40:46):
think of something that he saidduring the podcast.
He said every writer is a goodreader, but not every reader is
a good writer.
Am I right, melissa?
Do you remember that?
I don't.
Melissa (40:59):
I don't remember.
Or good readers, good writersare.
Lori (41:07):
That was the gist, for sure, that was the gist.
I was like I'm trying to get itverbatim, it's not going to
happen, but that it feels.
That feels like exactly whatyou're saying, Lyn right, Like
if you can do it one way, you'renot necessarily able to reverse
it, but if you can reverse it,you can do both.
Yep absolutely.
Lyn Stone (41:19):
Reading and writing are not the flip side of one
another.
That's really, really, reallynot true.
Reading is a sub-skill ofwriting.
You've got to be able to havean understanding of how the
graphemes go together and themorphemes go together to make
words, to be able to write.
And you can stop right there.
(41:40):
You can stop at reading andnever, ever write a word, but
you can't get to writing unlessyou do have that basic
foundational knowledge of how itall goes together, and that
comes through reading.
So, yeah, it's a little bitdaunting and a little bit
frightening to go.
I'm not going to focus onreading.
What do you mean?
(42:01):
Little bit frightening to go?
I'm not going to focus onreading.
What do you mean?
It's not called the writingleague right, it's not.
Lori (42:07):
You know, what do you mean ?
Lyn Stone (42:08):
I'm not going to talk about reading as much yeah.
Melissa (42:13):
What about the science of reading?
Oh my gosh, you know it's notcalled.
Lyn Stone (42:16):
That's what everyone's talking about.
Exactly Like.
This is a huge word, you know,and we've done a really, really
good job, I think, of evenmaking that part of the national
conversation Just readingitself.
But hey, you know, got bad newsfor you guys Writing's the hard
part, reading's a piece of cake, right, relatively speaking.
Melissa (42:39):
And I'm not saying that to insult anybody- who
hasn't acquired reading.
Lyn Stone (42:42):
I don't, I don't mean that, but you know I've.
I've worked in special ed for along time and it was absolutely
a no brainer that every childthat came to see us would end up
reading like course, course,but not writing.
You never, ever, took that forgranted, because as a
practitioner you know that thatis tough, it's really tough and
(43:03):
it's not the same.
Lori (43:05):
Yeah, it is so tough, that is such a difficult skill to
write well and to be able tohave the knowledge of the topic
to do it.
I feel like when we can supportstudents in any area like that,
that's helpful to get them to.
I mean, they're removing thatknowledge piece they can.
If we're giving them that right, then they have more time, more
(43:26):
space in their brain freed upfor all the other tasks that are
difficult with writing, so theydon't have to think about, well
, what am I writing about?
I have that knowledge and andnow I, you know, I, I've, I've
been studying birds I know thata chick is a is a baby, you know
.
So I can put that together,yeah.
Lyn Stone (43:45):
Yeah, and they support one another, of course.
I mean the more you read, thebetter it is for you in terms of
your spelling, because you getthis exposure again.
You know, statisticallyspeaking, to what, what the
common patterns are and what theconstraints are in language.
You've got to read.
(44:07):
But of the first things that wedo with a student is we say
this is how you improve yourspelling, even if you never come
to see us again.
And the first thing that youneed to do is read.
You need to read a lot and theysupport one another.
Of course they build, but withreading and writing there are
finite and constrained skillsthat we want children to become
automatic at as quickly aspossible, and that's decoding
(44:27):
and that's spelling andpunctuation.
We want them to be able to nothave to think about that so that
they can get over to the reallynice parts where they become
increasingly strategic.
If you think of the readingrope, even even the simple view
of reading.
We want them to be concretelystrategic at linguistic
comprehension and at textgeneration and we get through
(44:49):
that by giving them those skillsearly and well when you're
making me think too.
Melissa (44:54):
I know we've talked mostly.
We wanted to stay focused onetymology and vocabulary during
this, but now I'm.
Now I just have a quickquestion because we've talked
about writing and I just readthe Language for Life and I want
to know do you want to talk atall about this idea of grammar,
because I know that is anotherone where it's often painfully
boring in school and verydisconnected from the other work
(45:17):
that's happening.
Do you want to talk a bit aboutthe power of it and maybe some
best practices?
Lyn Stone (45:24):
Sure, Do I want to talk about grammar?
No, I never want to talk aboutgrammar.
It's just a terrible subject,it's not useful at all and I
hardly think about it ever.
Grammar and syntax I think goshright, it's so cool because
what, what it is, what grammarand syntax is is the outward
expression of the workings ofthe inner mind.
(45:46):
Right, the way that words gotogether and the relationships
that they have.
They're like people, it's likeMelrose Place.
Okay, a sentence is like a soapopera, right, because it's got
these components, all with theirindividual personalities, but
not just their personalities,their relationships, the way
(46:07):
that they have power over oneanother, the way that they
govern one another, the way thatthey skew one another, that you
can place a word before anotherword and suddenly the sentence
means a completely differentthing.
I mean, you know grammar andsyntax.
I've never heard grammar.
Melissa (46:22):
It sounds so cool.
Lori (46:30):
I'm very excited right now .
I want to know where Lyn waswhen I was in sixth grade, with
a purple piece of chalk, havingto deconstruct a sentence.
Lyn Stone (46:35):
Really.
Look, I love thatdeconstructing of sentences.
But yeah, I know that you'rereading and you know I don't
want to be too kind of productspecific.
But yeah, I know that you'rereading and I don't want to be
too kind of product specifichere.
But I know that you're readingLanguage for Life right now.
That edition of Language forLife doesn't have my thinking on
it regarding the personalitiesand the relationships quite as
(46:56):
much as this new edition thatI'm working on has.
So I'm handing in themanuscript for that on the 1st
of September fingers crossed,barring any cataclysms.
I'm handing that in and thenthat will go through its
publishing process and bereleased sometime next year.
Now that has got things like.
I've got to show you this sinceyou asked.
It's got their personalitiesand illustrations.
(47:17):
So pronouns right are syntacticstunt doubles so we've got this
woman, a stunt double, dressedup in her stunt kit, with her
motorbike helmet under her arm,and they have really brought the
whole personality andrelationships thing into it and
I think it's a good idea.
It's a really good idea andkids dig it.
(47:39):
So we can always make it moreinteresting.
But it comes back down toteacher knowledge.
What I'm really trying to do isget that idea into teachers
that this isn't just a noun, isa naming word.
Let's move on.
It's like a noun.
They're syntactic royalty.
They have servants.
Did you know that they have likea whole retinue of words that
(48:00):
only work for nouns and won'twork for anyone else?
Nouns?
Did you know that they havelike a whole retinue of words
that only work for nouns andwon't work for anyone else?
Nouns are the only words thathave that.
They've got these servants, youknow.
They've got pronouns that comein for them.
They've got determiners thatkind of go hey, everybody, look
busy, a noun's coming.
They've got adjectives they'rethe only ones that describe
nouns.
And they've got prepositionsthat will connect nouns to
everything else.
(48:20):
That's amazing, right, butnobody ever talks about that.
It's just a noun is a namingword.
It's not.
It's a soap opera out therefolks.
Lori (48:31):
I know I was thinking as you were talking.
If this were like the middleages, you could probably create
like a whole cool chart with,like, the hierarchy of the
grammar system, although MelrosePlace is like maybe a good
college version.
Lyn Stone (48:46):
Yeah, it's kind of outdated too.
You know, anybody sort of bornafter 1990 will have no idea
what I'm talking about there.
But at least I didn't say atleast I didn't say dynasty right
, at least I said Melrose Place,which was a bit more modern.
Lori (49:03):
Oh, so that's a good one that we say differently.
Oh, you say dynasty.
Lyn Stone (49:06):
Dynasty.
Lori (49:08):
And you know.
Melissa (49:09):
I say dynamite.
Lyn Stone (49:10):
I don't say dynamite because it's all to do with
power, right D-Y-N?
Yeah, it's to do with power.
So you know, pronunciationnever consistent.
But boy, that morpheme'sconsistent, isn't it?
Lori (49:21):
So there's a teachable moment.
So can I ask you a question?
Can I ask a question that'sbeen like I've been thinking
about, since you were talkingabout the playing with words,
with morphology, and then weconnected it to writing.
(49:42):
Is there, have you ever seenkids in their editing process
feel more comfortable movingthings around?
After they feel good aboutplaying with words and like
moving the word parts around andexploring that?
Do you ever see that transferinto writing?
Because I always felt like whenI was a teacher, the hardest
part was to get kids to edit andto move parts around and to get
excited about, oh, you know,changing this part or that part
(50:04):
or switching it from start tothe end of the sentence, to the
beginning.
And wouldn't that sound moreexciting?
Because they were like no, Idid it, I'm done, I just I just
want to hand it in and I alreadywrote it down.
You know we weren't doingthings always on the computer,
so again, I'm aging myself rightnow.
Lyn Stone (50:23):
Well, there's two ways.
Again, there's two sort ofanswers I have for that.
The first one is that let'sface the reality of writing.
There's a reality in writingand that reality is this editing
is horrible, it's a nightmare,it's unpleasant and, you know,
nobody likes it Like I.
I could, I could call myself awriter.
Now I think I it'd be okay forme to actually use that title, I
(50:46):
guess.
Right, I call.
So I might call myself a writer.
But boy, I don't want to goback and look at what I've
written.
I would rather do anything elsein the world it's like yeah,
it's how I developed myincredibly gifted
procrastination skills, right,just from having to edit stuff.
I'm, you know, so good atprocrastinating because editing
(51:06):
exists.
Do you know what I mean?
So?
So let's face that realityfirst of all.
Okay, that's a real thing andit happens in everybody's brains
, right?
How do we remedy that?
That's the second part of thequestion, and the remedy for
that is to actually make sureagain, it's about proportions,
it's about numbers, it's aboutpercentages and to make sure
(51:27):
that when you are actually doinga writing focus and when you're
in a writing block, forinstance in your literacy block,
that you reduce the draftingtime and you increase the
editing time.
And the way that you do that isusing work like Hockman and
Wexler.
Again, they really put into avery, very structured way of how
(51:50):
to recognize what fragments areand know how you can manipulate
fragments of sentences to makereally good sentences in a way
that doesn't actually kill youwith boredom, right?
So that's my review of thewriting revolution.
Basically, it's the remedy forediting boredom, right?
(52:11):
So, yeah, hopefully that givesyou some insight into how, maybe
to help.
It's about proportion and it'sabout intentionally working with
that manipulation of sentenceparts, and that comes from
fragments, it comes from apositives, it comes from
(52:31):
conjunctions and so on.
So yeah, hockman and Wexler,there isn't a better resource
for that.
Lori (52:37):
I don't think, yeah, and I have the book right here.
So if you're watching, you'rewatching.
Here's the book, If you here,so if you're watching you're
watching.
Melissa (52:42):
Here's the book.
Lori (52:44):
If you're not.
If you're listening, we hadthem on the podcast, so we'll
make sure to link that episodetoo, so you can learn more about
the writing revolution.
I'm wondering, though, lyn, ifwe might want to kind of bring
this home with some practicalways teachers can apply what we
talked about today.
(53:04):
Do you have any recommendationsfor teachers?
I don't know.
Three sounds like a nice roundnumber, but I will leave it up
to you.
Lyn Stone (53:11):
Firstly, don't reinvent the wheel.
If you are going to buildknowledge and get students to
write about it, there will be atext out there that you can use.
You don't have to rewrite andinvent new texts and have that
as part of your planning.
So there are lots of resourcesfor that core knowledge and even
, dare I say, chat GPT.
(53:34):
You can actually go to that botnow and say write me a short
paragraph for grade three onravens, and they'll give you a
framework so that you can thenwork from that.
You can even go put moreadjectives in, because we're
studying adjectives right now,or I want more words that have
CK in them, and so on.
(53:54):
You can do that.
You can make the bot do thatRight.
So that's the first thing Usewhat's around you rather than
thinking that you have to comeup with all of this stuff
yourself, because that's thefirst thing Use what's around
you rather than thinking thatyou have to come up with all of
this stuff yourself, becausethat's a nightmare for teachers.
It's a lot of work In terms ofagain writing.
When it comes to grammar andsyntax, make sure you, as a
(54:15):
teacher, are really comfortablewith what the parts of speech
are and how they relate to oneanother, and there's plenty of
training out there.
There are plenty of resourcesabout that.
Your dictionary is a really,really good resource.
On your computer you havesomething that will tell you
what part of speech a word isand all the different parts of
(54:38):
speech it could be, depending onwhere they are in the sentence.
So, again, there is a resourcefor that already.
Become familiar with that,because that's going to help you
answer all of those stickyquestions.
And then, thirdly, the big tipreally is understanding and
being happy to grow yourunderstanding of how words are
(54:58):
formed and what those word partsare.
And that comes from thisunderstanding that every word is
a base, and we're coming rightback to where we started Every
word is a base or contains abase, even if it doesn't look
like it.
If you can figure out and findways to figure out what that is,
you're laughing and you'llnever, ever be disappointed.
(55:19):
It's always, alwaysenlightening and fun.
We love that.
Thank you so much, an enormouspleasure.
Thank you Again.
I'm honored, really honored, tosit amongst your guests and
look forward to hearing lotsmore of your podcasts.
Melissa (55:39):
To stay connected with us, sign up for our email list
at literacypodcastcom, join ourFacebook group and follow us on
Instagram and Twitter.
Lori (55:49):
If this episode resonated with you, take a moment to share
with a teacher friend or leaveus a five-star rating and review
on Apple Podcasts.
Melissa (55:59):
Just a quick reminder that the views and opinions
expressed by the hosts andguests of the Melissa and Lori
Love Literacy Podcast are notnecessarily the opinions of
Great Minds, pbc or itsemployees.
Lori (56:11):
We appreciate you so much and we're so glad you're here to
learn with us.
Thank you.
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