June 28, 2025 • 12 mins
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jocelyn (00:00):
Well, hello there and welcome to this episode of the
Structured Literacy Podcastrecorded here in Tasmania, the
lands of the Palawa people.
I'm Jocelyn, and welcome,welcome, welcome.
Once you've implemented yourphonics program, established
your partner reading routines,sorted out your spelling
instruction in years three tosix, and found a source for
(00:20):
quality text-based units, itwould be forgivable to think
that the job of schoolimprovement is done.
I'm sorry to tell you that it'snot.
Taking the next critical stepsto move your practice from good
to really great is not a matterof shining new things, it's not
a matter of getting new programsor doing more PL on its own,
(00:43):
but it's a matter of increasingthe impact we are having in our
literacy blocks.
In today's episode, I'd like toshare five ways that you can
increase the impact on studentoutcomes in your classroom.
Now, this is not an exhaustivelist, but it will give you a
starting point to level thingsup in instruction.
So lever number one is increasestudent responses and engineer
(01:09):
early engagements.
So the first lever that you canpull is to increase the number
of student responses in lessonsand engineer your first response
to be within the first 30seconds of the lesson.
This can be as simple as an Isay you say routine, where the
students repeat what you say andthen share that key vocabulary
(01:31):
with a partner.
But what it does is activatesthe alerting system, which is a
component of attention thatsignals our brain that it's time
to attend, it's time to payattention.
Now.
We don't just want studentsgiving more responses, though.
We want to increase the numberof correct responses.
(01:53):
Archer and Hughes in their textExplicit Instruction, emphasise
that high success rates arecrucial for learning and we see
this reflected in Rosenshine'sprinciples.
So managing this well is a must.
When we think about Stanislausde Haan's four pillars of
learning, attention is the veryfirst pillar.
So without directing studentattention to what we want them
(02:15):
to learn, the other pillarssimply cannot function
effectively.
So that quick I say you say atthe start of your lesson isn't
just a nice warm-up, it's aneurologically informed practice
that primes the brain forlearning.
And we don't just want thoseresponses to be at the start of
a lesson, we want them to be allthrough the lesson.
(02:36):
So remember the I do part ofyour lesson is not a 25-minute
lecture, it is the introductionof the lesson is not a 25-minute
lecture, it is the introductionof the lesson and students need
to be involved in some wayright from the start.
Leather number two is manageyour response ratio
strategically.
So closely related toincreasing the number of
(02:59):
responses students have toprovide is managing the ratio of
types of responses.
Simple repetition to focusattention, short responses to
check for understanding andelaborative responses are all
important.
The authors of PowerfulTeaching tell us that
elaborative responses helpstudents make connections and
(03:23):
deepen understanding, but theyrequire more cognitive load than
simple repetition.
The trick is to know which kindof response will get us which
desired outcome.
Are we looking for attentionfor remembering or for
application?
Plan these opportunities aheadof time for maximum benefit, and
(03:44):
you can use a questioningmatrix for this.
I'll link to one of ours in theshow notes in your planning
time.
So using the questioning matrixhelps you to plan the questions
in a really intentional way.
So think about a phonics lesson.
We might start with simplerepetition of phoneme grapheme
correspondences to focusattention, to check
(04:10):
understanding, and then useelaborative responses when
students explain the spellingpatterns they notice or make
connections to previouslylearned morphemes.
It's also when we ask them toconstruct simple phrases on
their own.
So these different sorts ofresponses are important right
across the curriculum.
(04:32):
Level number three has to dowith your daily review.
So literally review your dailyreview routine and do it as a
team more heads are better thanone and increase the ratio of
retrieval to recognition.
Retrieval is a much morepowerful mechanism for building
memories than simply recognizinginformation when we see it.
(04:55):
So instead of always askingstudents to tell you the phoneme
when you show them the graphemeand asking them to read words,
make sure that you are regularlysaying the phoneme and asking
them to write the grapheme,instead of just showing words
for them to read.
Ask the students to spell theword without having seen it
(05:17):
first.
And, in vocabulary, instead ofjust the recognition tasks of
vocabulary, ask them to providea meaning or to answer questions
, such as the question typesthat are outlined in Bringing
Words to Life, so you canintroduce a big box of questions
instead of or to complementyour existing daily review
(05:40):
PowerPoints.
I have a whole research to theclassroom series about this very
topic, which explores howretrieval practices strengthen
memory consolidation and makeknowledge more accessible for
future learning.
The research on this iscompelling.
The testing effect shows usthat the act of retrieving
(06:00):
information from memorystrengthens those neural
pathways much more effectivelythan simply reviewing the same
information repeatedly.
When we ask students to recallrather than recognize, we're
building robust, long-termmemories.
Leather number four is toimplement personalized practice
(06:21):
opportunities.
This can take the form of asimple manila folder with
materials inside that alignexactly with what your students
need.
This is most powerful forphonics and early morphology.
Work Resource stream membershave access to printables and a
mastermind training about usingthis effectively.
(06:42):
It's crucial that this is basedon real-time data, not general
same-same practice for the wholeclass.
Personal practice is aboutestablishing a tailored approach
to consolidate.
Personal practice is aboutestablishing a tailored approach
to consolidate.
Remember what we know aboutcognitive load theory Students
can only process so much newinformation at once, and what's
(07:02):
new varies dramatically fromstudent to student.
As I outline in my book ReadingSuccess in the Early Primary
Years, meeting students wherethey're up to is fundamental in
a structured literacy approach.
Some students might needadditional practice with basic
code correspondences, whileothers are ready for complex
code patterns.
Personalised practice ensuresthat every minute of practice
(07:25):
time is targeted and effective.
Lever number five is toencourage connection building.
So encourage your students tobe connection builders.
Part of schema making is makingconnections between what we are
learning now and what wealready know.
So model making theseconnections and actively
(07:48):
encourage students to do thesame.
This is one of Rosenstein'sprinciples, which is to begin
every lesson with a review ofprevious content.
That's not about daily review,that's about activating schema
to support working memory.
There are other ways to usethis connection building as well
, so you can begin withconnections to self, and that's
(08:09):
an easy bit.
Kids are pretty good at that.
So you can ask when have youever heard the word or does this
remind you of anything you'veever experienced?
Right, then stretch it out toinclude connections to prior
learning experiences, especiallywhen you know they have had
them because you provided themand checked for understanding.
When you're asking students tomake those personal connections,
(08:31):
just be a little careful in howyou do that, though, because
you don't want to alienate somestudents from the lesson.
So Hollingsworth and Ybarra'suniversal scenario is a great
way to do this.
Ask the question on somethingthat you know that everyone can
connect to Thinking aboutmorphology.
When teaching the morpheme unor un, you might ask students to
(08:55):
connect it to other un wordsthey've learned, or to think
about times they've undonesomething in their own lives,
such as I've undone my shoes orI've undone my bag.
When exploring charactermotivations in a text-based unit
, you might ask them to connectthe character's feelings to
emotions they explored in aprevious story.
(09:15):
This isn't just aboutengagement, though it certainly
helps with that.
When students actively makeconnections, they're building
and connecting the robust schemathat supports both
comprehension and retention.
They're doing the cognitivework that transforms isolated
facts into interconnectednetworks of knowledge.
(09:35):
So let's bring it all together.
These five levers aren'trevolutionary new practices.
They're refinements of whatyou've already been doing.
They're about being moreintentional, more strategic and
more responsive to what we knowabout how learning actually
works.
The beauty of these approachesis that they don't require you
(09:57):
to throw out everything you'veworked so hard to establish.
Instead, they build on yoursolid foundation of structured
literacy practices to createeven greater impact for your
students.
Remember, good teaching isoften about the accumulation of
small intentional decisions andactions rather than dramatic
(10:19):
overhauls.
So these five levers give youconcrete ways to increase your
impact without overwhelmingyourself or your students.
As you consider which lever topull first, think about your
current context and yourstudents' needs.
You might find that oneresonates more strongly with
where you are in your teachingjourney right now, and that's
(10:41):
ideal.
Start there, build confidenceand then layer in the others as
it makes sense.
Your students are fortunate tohave teachers who are committed
to continuous improvement.
Every time you refine yourpractice based on evidence about
how children learn, you'remaking a difference that will
ripple all through all theirfuture learning.
(11:02):
Until next time, happy teachingeveryone.
Bye.
Well, hello there and welcome to this episode of the
Structured Literacy Podcastrecorded here in Tasmania, the
lands of the Palawa people.
I'm Jocelyn, and welcome,welcome, welcome.
Once you've implemented yourphonics program, established
your partner reading routines,sorted out your spelling
instruction in years three tosix, and found a source for
(00:20):
quality text-based units, itwould be forgivable to think
that the job of schoolimprovement is done.
I'm sorry to tell you that it'snot.
Taking the next critical stepsto move your practice from good
to really great is not a matterof shining new things, it's not
a matter of getting new programsor doing more PL on its own,
(00:43):
but it's a matter of increasingthe impact we are having in our
literacy blocks.
In today's episode, I'd like toshare five ways that you can
increase the impact on studentoutcomes in your classroom.
Now, this is not an exhaustivelist, but it will give you a
starting point to level thingsup in instruction.
So lever number one is increasestudent responses and engineer
(01:09):
early engagements.
So the first lever that you canpull is to increase the number
of student responses in lessonsand engineer your first response
to be within the first 30seconds of the lesson.
This can be as simple as an Isay you say routine, where the
students repeat what you say andthen share that key vocabulary
(01:31):
with a partner.
But what it does is activatesthe alerting system, which is a
component of attention thatsignals our brain that it's time
to attend, it's time to payattention.
Now.
We don't just want studentsgiving more responses, though.
We want to increase the numberof correct responses.
(01:53):
Archer and Hughes in their textExplicit Instruction, emphasise
that high success rates arecrucial for learning and we see
this reflected in Rosenshine'sprinciples.
So managing this well is a must.
When we think about Stanislausde Haan's four pillars of
learning, attention is the veryfirst pillar.
So without directing studentattention to what we want them
(02:15):
to learn, the other pillarssimply cannot function
effectively.
So that quick I say you say atthe start of your lesson isn't
just a nice warm-up, it's aneurologically informed practice
that primes the brain forlearning.
And we don't just want thoseresponses to be at the start of
a lesson, we want them to be allthrough the lesson.
(02:36):
So remember the I do part ofyour lesson is not a 25-minute
lecture, it is the introductionof the lesson is not a 25-minute
lecture, it is the introductionof the lesson and students need
to be involved in some wayright from the start.
Leather number two is manageyour response ratio
strategically.
So closely related toincreasing the number of
(02:59):
responses students have toprovide is managing the ratio of
types of responses.
Simple repetition to focusattention, short responses to
check for understanding andelaborative responses are all
important.
The authors of PowerfulTeaching tell us that
elaborative responses helpstudents make connections and
(03:23):
deepen understanding, but theyrequire more cognitive load than
simple repetition.
The trick is to know which kindof response will get us which
desired outcome.
Are we looking for attentionfor remembering or for
application?
Plan these opportunities aheadof time for maximum benefit, and
(03:44):
you can use a questioningmatrix for this.
I'll link to one of ours in theshow notes in your planning
time.
So using the questioning matrixhelps you to plan the questions
in a really intentional way.
So think about a phonics lesson.
We might start with simplerepetition of phoneme grapheme
correspondences to focusattention, to check
(04:10):
understanding, and then useelaborative responses when
students explain the spellingpatterns they notice or make
connections to previouslylearned morphemes.
It's also when we ask them toconstruct simple phrases on
their own.
So these different sorts ofresponses are important right
across the curriculum.
(04:32):
Level number three has to dowith your daily review.
So literally review your dailyreview routine and do it as a
team more heads are better thanone and increase the ratio of
retrieval to recognition.
Retrieval is a much morepowerful mechanism for building
memories than simply recognizinginformation when we see it.
(04:55):
So instead of always askingstudents to tell you the phoneme
when you show them the graphemeand asking them to read words,
make sure that you are regularlysaying the phoneme and asking
them to write the grapheme,instead of just showing words
for them to read.
Ask the students to spell theword without having seen it
(05:17):
first.
And, in vocabulary, instead ofjust the recognition tasks of
vocabulary, ask them to providea meaning or to answer questions
, such as the question typesthat are outlined in Bringing
Words to Life, so you canintroduce a big box of questions
instead of or to complementyour existing daily review
(05:40):
PowerPoints.
I have a whole research to theclassroom series about this very
topic, which explores howretrieval practices strengthen
memory consolidation and makeknowledge more accessible for
future learning.
The research on this iscompelling.
The testing effect shows usthat the act of retrieving
(06:00):
information from memorystrengthens those neural
pathways much more effectivelythan simply reviewing the same
information repeatedly.
When we ask students to recallrather than recognize, we're
building robust, long-termmemories.
Leather number four is toimplement personalized practice
(06:21):
opportunities.
This can take the form of asimple manila folder with
materials inside that alignexactly with what your students
need.
This is most powerful forphonics and early morphology.
Work Resource stream membershave access to printables and a
mastermind training about usingthis effectively.
(06:42):
It's crucial that this is basedon real-time data, not general
same-same practice for the wholeclass.
Personal practice is aboutestablishing a tailored approach
to consolidate.
Personal practice is aboutestablishing a tailored approach
to consolidate.
Remember what we know aboutcognitive load theory Students
can only process so much newinformation at once, and what's
(07:02):
new varies dramatically fromstudent to student.
As I outline in my book ReadingSuccess in the Early Primary
Years, meeting students wherethey're up to is fundamental in
a structured literacy approach.
Some students might needadditional practice with basic
code correspondences, whileothers are ready for complex
code patterns.
Personalised practice ensuresthat every minute of practice
(07:25):
time is targeted and effective.
Lever number five is toencourage connection building.
So encourage your students tobe connection builders.
Part of schema making is makingconnections between what we are
learning now and what wealready know.
So model making theseconnections and actively
(07:48):
encourage students to do thesame.
This is one of Rosenstein'sprinciples, which is to begin
every lesson with a review ofprevious content.
That's not about daily review,that's about activating schema
to support working memory.
There are other ways to usethis connection building as well
, so you can begin withconnections to self, and that's
(08:09):
an easy bit.
Kids are pretty good at that.
So you can ask when have youever heard the word or does this
remind you of anything you'veever experienced?
Right, then stretch it out toinclude connections to prior
learning experiences, especiallywhen you know they have had
them because you provided themand checked for understanding.
When you're asking students tomake those personal connections,
(08:31):
just be a little careful in howyou do that, though, because
you don't want to alienate somestudents from the lesson.
So Hollingsworth and Ybarra'suniversal scenario is a great
way to do this.
Ask the question on somethingthat you know that everyone can
connect to Thinking aboutmorphology.
When teaching the morpheme unor un, you might ask students to
(08:55):
connect it to other un wordsthey've learned, or to think
about times they've undonesomething in their own lives,
such as I've undone my shoes orI've undone my bag.
When exploring charactermotivations in a text-based unit
, you might ask them to connectthe character's feelings to
emotions they explored in aprevious story.
(09:15):
This isn't just aboutengagement, though it certainly
helps with that.
When students actively makeconnections, they're building
and connecting the robust schemathat supports both
comprehension and retention.
They're doing the cognitivework that transforms isolated
facts into interconnectednetworks of knowledge.
(09:35):
So let's bring it all together.
These five levers aren'trevolutionary new practices.
They're refinements of whatyou've already been doing.
They're about being moreintentional, more strategic and
more responsive to what we knowabout how learning actually
works.
The beauty of these approachesis that they don't require you
(09:57):
to throw out everything you'veworked so hard to establish.
Instead, they build on yoursolid foundation of structured
literacy practices to createeven greater impact for your
students.
Remember, good teaching isoften about the accumulation of
small intentional decisions andactions rather than dramatic
(10:19):
overhauls.
So these five levers give youconcrete ways to increase your
impact without overwhelmingyourself or your students.
As you consider which lever topull first, think about your
current context and yourstudents' needs.
You might find that oneresonates more strongly with
where you are in your teachingjourney right now, and that's
(10:41):
ideal.
Start there, build confidenceand then layer in the others as
it makes sense.
Your students are fortunate tohave teachers who are committed
to continuous improvement.
Every time you refine yourpractice based on evidence about
how children learn, you'remaking a difference that will
ripple all through all theirfuture learning.
(11:02):
Until next time, happy teachingeveryone.
Bye.
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