The Infomap: A Roadmap for Teaching Literacy, Part 2

Episode Notes

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Narrator 0:03
Welcome to literacy talks, the podcast for literacy leaders and champions everywhere, brought to you by Reading Horizons. Literacy talks is the place to discover new ideas, trends, insights and practical strategies for helping all learners reach reading proficiency. Our hosts are Stacey Hurst, a professor at Southern Utah University and Chief Academic Advisor for Reading Horizons. Donell pons, a recognized expert and advocate in literacy, dyslexia and special education, and Lindsay Kemeny, an elementary classroom teacher, author and speaker. Now let’s talk literacy.

Stacy Hurst 0:48
Welcome to this episode of literacy Talks. My name is Stacy Hurst, and I’m joined by Donell Pons and Lindsay Kemeny. And if you’ve been listening this season, you know that we are focusing on the perspectives on language and literacy, 75th anniversary issue titled structured literacy, grounded in the science of reading. In our last episode, we introduced the fact that we are discussing pages 30 through 45 of that issue titled structured literacy and integrated approach to the science of reading. And as Barbara Wilson, who is the author of those pages, stated that this really is a tour of the info map, so we’re using that as our guide. And last time, we covered the a little bit of the why, and we dove into the what, and we are going to be talking today about the content that we didn’t get to we talked in the last episode about word recognition, handwriting and spelling and what goes into that type of instruction. So if you need to catch up, feel free to listen to that episode. And today we’re going to be talking about comprehension and composition. Now again, adjacently on the the what part of the info map we have word recognition, including handwriting and spelling, and we kind of just went through all of that highlighting the words. I think all of us have said these words in this conversation, integrated and simultaneous, we are doing we are teaching reading and we’re writing at the same time, both are going to be included. Now we’re also simultaneously going to be addressing comprehension and composition as well. So in the article, there is a quote that I just made note of in the structured literacy approach teachers bolster student comprehension and composition through strategies that integrate there’s that word again, reading, writing and oral language activities structured literacy classrooms include the following instruction, vocabulary and background knowledge, sentence structure and grammar, text structure and critical thinking. So that is what we’re going to talk about next. Let’s start with vocabulary and background knowledge. And she does state that some of these can even be fostered before formal reading instruction begins in this and let’s just talk about that. How would you bolster or foster these before formal reading instruction begins? Lindsay, what do you share with parents?

Lindsay Kemeny 3:28
Oh, read aloud to them. You know, from the time they’re young, from the time they’re babies, Donnell shared how your son was reading to his brand new baby, your first grandchild, right? Of course, engaging them in a lot of conversation is important, but it’s also important to read to them, because the language in written text is much more different, is much different than speaking, right? And they’re going to get, you know, more exposed to that academic language. It’s really important. And of course, you’re building background knowledge as you’re reading about all these different topics. So you’re reading both fiction and non fiction to them.

Stacy Hurst 4:09
Great. Donna, would you add anything to that? Gosh,

Donell Pons 4:12
all of that yes, then a hearty Yes, yes. And also, it’s kind of interesting the word relationships too, from reading a text to a young one. They may not know the meaning of that first word, but if they hang in there to the next sentence and the next and so on, meaning becomes available to them right as the words have relationship. And so then, oh, I didn’t understand that in the first sentence, but now that we’ve added some additional layers with the other sentences, oh, I now understand that word that’s interesting. And students who have been read to and have those opportunities with texts that are still struggling to read themselves. But you can tell that difference when I have students come to me that I know have had opportunities for hearing orally, having it read to them, because they do sit with that and wait for that next sentence and the next but students who haven’t inevitably right when they’re in the sense, well, I don’t know. What that means. I don’t even know what that means. But if a student, even if they’ve had decoding challenges, and they can’t read really well for themselves yet, if they’ve been read too, I find that really interesting. That’s one of the things that they have is Oh, it’ll come. It’ll come, you know, the next sentence or two, and I’ll be able to know what that means. It’s really, it’s really, really interesting to watch that sometimes happen, but it’s important too, because we also are cadence changes, all of these. We have these different kinds of things in our oral, spoken language that occur when we are reading, when it’s a text and it’s not just conversation. Conversation is fantastic too, don’t get me wrong, but we need all of them, as Lindsay was saying, because they provide different things, and even the patterns are different.

Stacy Hurst 5:37
Yeah, and you know, you mentioned this, she led into my next question, because she Barbara Wilson mentions developing students word awareness mindset in my classes, we use the teaching reading source book, and they call it word consciousness in there. But she says to do this by asking students to consider word meaning and structure. What do you think Donald? What does she mean by word structure?

Donell Pons 6:08
Yeah, what’s the word structure? What’s the words meaning? And she actually says on page 37 if someone’s interested in looking at it themselves, teachers help students learn multiple meanings of words and word relationships in semantic clusters. So it’s a little bit about what I was talking about, words and word phrases, such as happy content, joyous and over the moon when students successfully decode or spell a word, it should always be linked to its meaning. I’m going to put a plug right here. I’m just going to say it. So be careful about using nonsense words out of a very specific person purpose, because I’ve seen them used and so right here, just take a note footnote. If, oh gosh, I’m having kids trying to come up with definitions for nonsense words, maybe that’s not a great idea. Yeah, so as we’re talking about right here. So do go back, reread this kind of sit with it for a minute, see if it makes sense to you. So they should always be linked to their meaning. That’s why it’s important to have words have meaning. This development of word consciousness is another example of that integrated nature. Again, so again, it’s those it’s the play of words together, how they’re used in a sentence. That’s how we get to meaning. That’s why I was talking about those students who have had the opportunity to do that, even if they can’t decode the words for themselves. But they’ve been getting a good opportunity to hear words in sentences, hear text, then they are developing that skill set to say, Oh yes, the next sentence, they may have some other words that then give me additional meaning for this. It’s all of that interplay. Yeah,

Stacy Hurst 7:31
great point. And just, I like how you emphasized, let’s not teach nonsense words. Let’s not practice a ton of nonsense words that not we use nonsense words for a very specific reason, and that is to recognize whether or not students have the ability to at Site recognize words that they’ve never read, words they’ve never seen before. You also stated, you quoted from the article, when students successfully decode or spell a word, it should always be linked to its meaning. Now we have a lot of words that we are addressing in a day’s instruction. So Lindsay, how do you do this? Say during phonics, when you’re having your students, if you’re doing dictation and you’re dictating words, how do you do this without taking up a ton of instructional time? What do you do

Lindsay Kemeny 8:21
during dictation? Isn’t too hard, because every word that I dictate, I’m going to give a sentence with it to give it some context and some meaning. When you have, you know, when students are reading a text, it’s a little more connected, right? And you can, you can, you know, so they should be attending to meaning, and you can strategically choose some words from that text that you need to teach the meaning of. Now also in our phonics lesson, we’re going to have like, we’re going to choral read maybe 10 words together, and I have the little word list that they read in partners, that they read, and those are isolated words. It’s just not possible to stop and define every single one. It’s not or you’re not going to get through your lesson. But you can be strategic and choose some that you think students don’t know. Even if you have a lot of English learners, they need this language. But again, you’re going to have to be strategic and choose the ones that you think, okay, yes, here are some you know, words that they will see quite often that are really important. And I don’t think that they that they know. But when you’re you know, when I’m going through a whole list of 12 words with my whole class, I can’t stop and define everyone I won’t get through all parts of my lesson.

Stacy Hurst 9:38
Yeah, I like, that’s my Yes. That’s good, intentional and strategic. But also, like Donnell mentioned earlier, when we were talking about fostering these things, even before formal reading instruction begins, the more that they’re exposed to the context of a sentence, using the word in the context of a sentence, or even hearing the words that’s going to be helpful. Wonderful,

Lindsay Kemeny 10:00
yeah, and I was gonna say in this phonics lesson is not when I’m gonna go through the whole Vocabulary Routine like I might do with words like before our close reading lesson. It’s gonna be a quick little drop in, a quick explanation, if you were really on top of it before school and you got some pictures put together, awesome. And if not, just do a quick explanation. Oh, a cot is a little bed like that you’d lay on when you’re camping. Okay, cot. Let’s keep going, you know, great,

Stacy Hurst 10:29
yeah, and it give them that exposure, yeah, don’t know.

Donell Pons 10:33
And you know, with older students Stacy, we can start doing this really rather young too. I don’t want to imply that it’s just for older students, but connotation, denotation to within word meaning. So a lot of us have a connotation of a word, what it might mean to us, how we hear the word, how we use the word in our community or with our friends. And then a denotation, which is that dictionary standard definition. Do they differ? I mean, pointing that out to kids oftentimes, is really interesting too, to say, what did we think it meant? What does the dictionary say that it mean? Oh, that’s kind of interesting. So again, you can turn this into some very interesting opportunities for talk and and that kind of a thing, but it helps us understand how we do personalize a lot of our vocabulary right experience,

Stacy Hurst 11:14
and to just become aware of that. I think there, that’s where there’s nuance in meaningful ways, too, for students. So the next thing that we’re going to talk about the next part of the what is sentence structure and grammar. This is on page 37 Barbara Wilson says direct instruction in the nature of language occurs at the word sentence and text levels. Instruction involves examining sentence construction and learning to expand sentences and combine short, choppy sentences into longer, grammatically correct ones. Additionally, from early on, students learn conventions of written language such as capitalization and punctuation. There is a lot there. And my first question is for Lindsay, because I can tell you that in my experience, I was least prepared to teach this aspect, even on a first grade level in some cases. So my the way I’ve approached this type of instruction has changed dramatically over the years. And Lindsay, I know you and I were both pre service teachers back in the balanced literacy days. So how has your instruction in this area changed over time?

Lindsay Kemeny 12:30
Okay, well, I don’t think I taught anything explicitly early on in my career, and grammar and syntax are no different. So what I’ll tell you, what I used to do. I used to give my kids this daily oral language their little these little half sheets, and I pass them out, and I had an answer key. And first I would just give them time to, like, correct the sentences, and then we would go over the answers and then check done. My grammar was finished for the day. And then, you know, a few years ago, you know, and there’s research that shows like there’s the isolated grammar activities like that do not help students with their writing, and they don’t, you know, they don’t transfer that knowledge. Then I got a little better a few years ago, and I, I came across the syntax project, which I would recommend, and I started working on, you know, kind of sentence, different crafting sentences. We’d start out orally. I started this in kindergarten, and they have, the syntax project has all these slides with pictures, and it was really great, because we’d say, what’s the who and the do, and then we put it to a sentence, and then we’d add in a win, you know, and then after, you know, a week or two, we’d add a where, and we practice these different sentences. And that was really great. Now though, I have taken it even up a notch, because now I’ve tied it in to what we’re reading and writing about. So the syntax project was really great because it kind of taught me what I should be doing, you know, as I was doing it, and how to create these sentences and teach my students to do that. But now I connect it with what we’re learning about.

Stacy Hurst 14:21
I love it, and it correct me. If I’m wrong, the syntax project is from literacy how? I

Lindsay Kemeny 14:27
don’t think so. I think it’s a group out of Australia. Maybe I can’t remember, Oh, if you just Google syntax project, it will come out. It will come up. If you just Google syntax project, it cut it’s like the first one, and it has all these, it’s for each grade level. So that’s really nice, but I would just say, try to connect it with your content. You know, yeah, that’s

Stacy Hurst 14:54
critical. And I think literacy how has some great resources for syntax as. Well, Donnell, you are the different one in this case, because Lindsay and I have this similar trajectory with this aspect of Donnell

Lindsay Kemeny 15:13
was doing sentence work with her kids, right? Used to notes all over the window. I remember Donnell, yeah, my

Stacy Hurst 15:20
dad, my neighbors were saying, What are you doing? Yes. I mean, of all the things my parents, that was just not one of them. Yeah. So Donnell, what advice would you give to someone who is overwhelmed by or who wants to improve their teaching on this component? Because I think that that would be a lot of us, honestly,

Donell Pons 15:44
yeah, and, you know, it’s kind of interesting, because I’ve said before that my first career was journalism, right? So it was writing, and it’s interesting to find out how many people are very uncomfortable with writing, and that’s the reason why they don’t want to teach it much. It’s not that they don’t think it’s important, that they don’t think they ought to be in their doing. They’re just uncomfortable, and we have to acknowledge that and say, Hey, I’m uncomfortable. How can I become more comfortable? So I think that’s first step. Number one is to say it’s okay to say I’m uncomfortable, right? But to tell folks it’s all right, you don’t have to pretend that you love it or it isn’t uncomfortable, because a lot of folks didn’t get the integrated teaching that we’re talking about, where writing was incorporated into all of it, and so it was just great because you learned, you got picked up some skills, but instead, a lot of folks have the same experience where it wasn’t really taught very well, it didn’t feel very comfortable. And I’m still not, and now I’m expected to teach it that can be very uncomfortable. So recommend reading at the base of that page, 37 and then little by little, take your baby steps into it, and you start with for yourself. That’s what I love about being able to teach a lot of things, is you can break down for yourself. Well, let’s begin at the sentence level, once we got the words down and we’ve got our spelling, and then let’s begin at the sentence level. Okay, then let’s talk about the aspects of what’s occurring in this sentence. What are the parts of speech? What are the words doing in the sentence? How do they interact? And just use a sentence. Start there, and then we connect sentences. Then we can start connecting sentences, and maybe we get to a paragraph. And then eventually we’re feeling comfortable. We get longer than that. Now we’re composing, right? It’s composition. So a lot of the base skills are put in there. But I also want to have fun along the way, and I oftentimes do this with my students, is for the grammar part of it and for punctuation is that we change things up a little bit and we say, well, what would it look like if I didn’t put any punctuation in here? Let’s do three sentences. You write yours. I’ll write mine. It’s on this certain topic, and I’m going to hand it to you. You see if you could read it. Oh, they love that. Because I’m immediately like, I have a clue what you’re trying to say. It’s like, wow, it is hard, isn’t it, because I know what I was trying to say. I had it in my head, but if I don’t put it on there, you’re not gonna be able to tell right? That’s really fun. It’s kind of a fun activity. It’s just three sentences. You leave all the punctuation out, and then they realize, Oh, that is really important. Nowhere to put that period, otherwise you’re gonna string it all together. But that’s the piece where, if I get comfortable, I can start having a little bit of fun with it, and then my students can have fun with it. When I’m having fun with it,

Stacy Hurst 18:02
I love that. I’m going to do that with some of my students. And remember, mine are pre service teachers, so they I think they will love it. So the next aspect of instruction is text structure, and this is simply awareness of types of text and the organization related to them. And the research says that awareness of text structure supports both comprehension and writing in simple terms. Narrative structure involves character setting, problem, solution. I think we’ve heard that before, events in the story, some rising action, a climax and falling action, right? Expository or informational text structure includes description, sequence, chronology, compare, contrast, problem solution and cause and effect. Lindsay, how do you fit this type of instruction in to your teaching day? I

Lindsay Kemeny 19:05
connect text structure both with during close reading and our close reading lesson and our writing lesson. And so, you know, I will teach, for example, a narrative. We’re going to kind of map the story. We can map the story to, like, teaching them the story elements, story grammar. So we use a mnemonic called C, space, character, setting, problem or purpose, action, conclusion, ending, emotion. And so we can when we read a story, we can afterwards. I can ask some questions. Who are the characters we write it, you know, and we can fill that out. And then when we’re writing, we can use the exact same acronym that we’ve been learning to plan a story. So, you know, the same with informational but we have a different mnemonic there.

Stacy Hurst 19:52
So great. I know that I taught that text structure, hopefully I emphasize. It all throughout the day, but I did teach it during writing explicitly, just so that I could fit it in my day. Actually, Donnell with older learners there, I think in their day to day interactions, they’re probably exposed to more non fiction text or informational text. But how do you teach? Do you teach one text structure more than the other? And how have you seen your students comprehension improve once you point these things out to them? Teach them.

Donell Pons 20:31
Yeah, it’s really interesting. Because more than text structure, I lean into storytelling, because that’s the natural piece to all of this, whether it was oral before we could read and write, or whether now it’s a written it’s we’re imparting information, and it’s in a storytelling fashion. You come racing in to tell somebody about something, you have a lead, the most exciting part, and then you build that thing, and then you gotta close it out somehow. So we do it all the time orally. And I remind students, hey, you’ve done this. You’ve done this a lot. Some of you are better at it. You’re great storyteller. Some of us takes your while to get there. Somebody’s telling you, hurry up. What are you doing? Right? So you kind of you orient them to the fact that you do this all the time. We’re just now going to be more formal about how we do it with writing it here, and we’re going to think about the different audiences that we might have, and we might think about the different topics that we might have to convey information about. So I take it more that way, because we tend to get kind of caught up in whether it’s this type of writing or that type of writing. And then there’s somebody I think is phenomenal because he has dyslexia. That’s why I think this guy is phenomenal about teaching writing. And his book is called Invisible Ink. It’s invisible ink building stories from the inside out. He’s a screenplay writer, among other things. So he’s very talented, not only thing he does, but he also has dyslexia, and I think that’s why the book is so good, is because he straightforward, puts down the writing process. And all writing is three acts, the beginning the first act, second and third, and you wrap up by the third, and every good story falls down on having a very poor first act. Well, what does that sound a lot like having a really good thesis statement. So it can be applied to all kinds of or types that you say of writing a good thesis statement, the whole thing will fall down if my thesis statement isn’t good. So I think he’s that’s a really good one, but it’s helping people understand you do this all the time.

Narrator 22:24
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Lindsay Kemeny 23:06
Another thing about tech structure that I learned, it was kind of like, I guess, a little aha for me, that I learned from Dr K wichikumar, where you know, you have problem solution and you have cause and effect. So if you’re trying to help your students learn, like, was this a problem solution, structure or cause and effect? Well, you can ask them, you know, was there a problem in the story, and then was the problem solved? If the problem was solved, it’s a problem solution. If the problem was not solved, it’s cause and effect, right? And that’s just like a little simple thing. But I thought, oh, yeah, that makes sense. And that was so easy to explain to students when you’re helping them with that.

Stacy Hurst 23:44
I love that. And Tim Shannon just recently released a podcast episode, and today is January 27 that I think it’s new today about this text structure. His main point his podcast episodes are really short, but his main point was not to over emphasize the structure of a text, so that you’re not getting meaning from it, right? That you’re over analyzing the structure. You’re not focusing on the meaning of text. I thought that, along with what you just shared, Lindsay is a good thing to remember when you’re teaching these things to students, Okay, the next thing is something that I love is listed on here, and it is critical thinking, teaching students to think deeply about what they’re reading. And I’m I added emphasis to this takes significant instructional time and determination. And then Barbara Wilson continues to say, and this is on page 38 this effort must be intentional and prioritized, especially in this age of digital reading, where students often skim rather than read deeply. Okay, it is really it was interesting to me that she called out explicitly the time and determination it takes to teach students to think deeply about what they’re reading. Does this resonate with either of you as teachers? I’m going

Donell Pons 25:16
to dive in just because I work with older students, absolutely. So I think oftentimes people have the misconception that if I’ve been taught the things, and again, this is with us, thinking about them in separate pieces, rather than integrated, right? Then if I’ve taught the things, then, oh, okay, now that I’m a little bit better at a lot of these things, then I’m all good. But there’s so much more to it to really become that reader who desires to pick up a text and stay with it, and even if it’s challenging, hang in there and come back to it, ponder on it, connect it to other things. I mean, that’s deep reading, right? That’s deep reading, and that takes a lot, and it’s and it’s a, it’s a learned thing, too, and over time of having success, right? With different kinds of texts that kind of builds that ability to get to the to the next level, so to speak, of text. So again, it’s not happen overnight. And what’s interesting is, I’ve noticed that I’ve taken an approach with my older students, that once we’re we are cooking along, right? We’re cooking along because we got a lot of things we’re getting done that I always want to pull out some time and opportunity to stay with a text. So I may have a running text that’s a side, you know, running alongside other activities that we’re doing to build different skills, but it’s a text where we have to keep characters in mind. We have to keep the story in mind. And because that’s a skill, it’s a skill to be able to pick that back up and stay engaged with it. And I’ve noticed I’ve had more success with students, and we’ve talked later about, okay, what was the most powerful thing? And that comes back to that, hey, it’s when we did that text. Remember when we had to keep coming back, and it wasn’t easy, and I had to Yeah, because that’s what is critical thinking. It’s putting all the pieces together.

Stacy Hurst 27:03
And she also states, what does this entail? What do we do when we’re teaching critical thinking? It involves comprehension, monitoring, prediction, inference, making reading stamina, as you pointed out, as well Donnell and developing a comprehensive mental model of what they are reading. So as I think of all those skills, I’m thinking this could be especially challenging for younger learners, because they’re very concrete thinkers. So Lindsay, because you’re working with first graders, what are some ways that you foster deep thinking with them?

Lindsay Kemeny 27:38
You know, one thing we can do is model this by thinking aloud. So as we’re reading aloud a text with students, we can, kind of, you know, try to peel back the curtain on your own, thinking like, oh, this. Just said this, but I was thinking this. I wonder what you know and and kind of, you know, share your thoughts out loud, then keep reading and then say, Oh, that makes sense now, because and sharing these thoughts would be helpful with them also. You know, sometimes I have a student who she is such a deep thinker. I love it because she will raise her hand and she interrupts. But I love it, because she always has these really good questions where she is thinking deeply and I’m trying to think, because we’ve been reading books about astronomy and space, and I can’t remember what it was. There was something about the moon, you know, that she had learned from another text that she kind of said, but I thought that, and it was, I wish I could remember. It was just so good and so but something I can do is point that out. Look how, you know, what a good question you are really thinking carefully about what we’re reading, you know, to get the other students to go, oh, you know, that’s good. These questions are good. And I also think, you know, students can’t think critically about something they don’t have knowledge about. So we are building knowledge as we’re helping them read texts. And of course, in our content areas like science and social studies, and we can have to help build their knowledge on a topic. We can use text sets. So you know, especially if I know, like, oh, in my curriculum, we’re going to be reading this really hard text coming up. Well, I can prep them with a few easier texts on the same topic to help prepare them for that harder one. And that’s just going to, you know, it’s just, it’s creating an environment where more critical thinking can happen.

Stacy Hurst 29:38
Yeah, I love that. And I think we have opportunities in our read alouds too. I’m a big fan of dialogic reading. You’re really intentional about those prompts that can help facilitate that kind of deeper thinking. I remember when I taught first grade, two things come to mind. I was reading the unabridged version of Les Mis in my personal life, but I remember how. Having those conversations with my students and even presenting dilemmas to them, right? Like, what would you do? And those kind of things. One book I did read aloud to one first grade class is called a single shard. It was a great book, and I remember being hesitant about reading aloud, like, can they really get this it? It took to Barbara Wilson’s point a lot of time and determination on my part to help call out the parts that they needed to be remembering, like you were saying, Donnell, and the connections that they needed to make. But it was very powerful. I won’t forget that, because it had an impact on our whole class because of that deeper thinking that we were able to do so. Thank you for that. Okay, the really cool thing about the what I think, is that bar at the bottom of the info map that says this, this is important integrated language. This includes integrated language, reading and writing instruction, supporting automaticity, fluency and reading proficiency while you are teaching all of the things that we just went through section by section, and emphasizing the need for in this part, she also emphasizes the need for reading from the Beginning with appropriate, aka scaffolded text that comprehension and written expression should be integrated, like we pointed out, and engage corresponding strategies like reading and writing narrative text. And then she also says on page 39 reading comprehension improves when writing processes, including sentence construction, are explicitly taught writing about topics also improves fluency and comprehension, and she didn’t list it. But of course, we build background knowledge and a million other things too, right? So we’ve talked about a lot today, and I know that there’s so much more that we could cover before we succinctly summarize the how and the who, I do want to maybe we’ll end the episode. So I’ll ask the question now and give you a minute to think about it. But what which aspects of this model have you most recently focused on or want to focus on, to solidify your knowledge or refine your practice. So think about that for a minute while I summarize the how I’m really just going to say these are terms we have heard before, explicit, systematic, sequential. I think there’s a really interesting point to be made in the fact that Ida chose to use the word multi modal instead of multi sensory, and Barbara Wilson clarifies the difference in this part of the article. So I’m not going to spoil it for you, other than to say it’s a teaser. Go read it. Go read it. And then also just how it is mastery oriented from the beginning, that’s something important to focus on, of course, the who would involve the students and the teachers, as well as the system support that we need right and that we all need to be involved in promoting literacy for our students. So that’s what we need to be thinking about again. I’m just gonna say to those of you who are listening, we won’t have time to cover it in this episode. Go back, read the rest of the article and share with us things that stand out to you. I would love to know that. I think we would all be interested in hearing that. Okay, so back to the question, which aspects of this model have you most recently focused on or want to, to solidify your knowledge and or refine your practice?

Lindsay Kemeny 33:54
I’ve been taking a deep dive into sentence structure and grammar, and so it’s been really fun to pull out all my books I have, I was just rereading Margie Gillis and Nancy Eberhard book on syntax also, you know, I can’t think of the title, but it’s Haines and Jennings book, and then pulling out like speech to print and the big multi sensory teaching of basic language skills and all those, because everything has a chapter on this, and so it’s been fun to kind of take a deep dive and figure out how to improve things in my classroom.

Unknown Speaker 34:28
Great, Darnell, you know,

Donell Pons 34:31
it’s interesting. I’ve been spending more time on that. I’m guessing critical thinking is more where I’ve been hanging out with my older students and thinking about how I can really help build that ability to make connections between text and really get into a text, and to feel like you it’s yours right to take it on, and then also their own profile of how they approach a text. So understanding what do I need in order to really get into a text? So comfort of. The material that I’m looking at do, I need to do, because even they’ve separated themselves from this experience so much. And so I think this has allowed me to really focus in on, you know, going back through and looking through these aspects and saying, Gosh, I think I’m that’s, that’s a piece that’s super important to me. And then it’s really interesting, because I’ve been, I’ve been able to have some conversations with my son, who I, you know, I’ve talked about before, he’s really struggled with reading his dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, but he his insight into story is amazing. And I’ve asked him a few times, do you think it was because of the dyslexia that this the story, just in order to be able to get into it, had to come alive for you? And he goes, Ah, we’re never able to figure that out. But he does have a real affinity for story and a real love and and, you know, an ability to spot story, to know how to refine the story. And that’s something else I want people to think about as you don’t know who that is in your classroom. So is it that kiddo that’s just having a really tough time with those elements of being able to get the morphemes and the graphemes hang in there with them. That’s how important you are as their instructor, and that’s why this information is so important, because you don’t know who those students are in your classroom, and you may have that next budding author, or somebody else, but just some or someone who just can really enjoy text, and you’re going to give them that gift. Yeah, I love

Stacy Hurst 36:20
that. To end where we started, this info map is a good way for all of us to take a look at where in my practice or my knowledge can I improve. And I actually have no different answer than the two of you have shared. I am thick into writing, including sentence structure and grammar, vocabulary, including morphology, because I get to create a course for my pre service teachers that focus on that as well as written expression. So that’s probably where I’m spending and will be spending a little chunk of my time. But at the same time, I am also very invested in the critical thinking aspect, because I really want my students to be able to look at scores and interpret what that means for students, not just taking them at face value, for instance, along with all of the great things that we have access to, to read and learn. So thanks for answering that question. And then on page 44 this is we’ll end the episode with this. Hopefully we’ve sold you on reading this whole section because it’s great, and just take the time to critically think about what each section means and how that applies to your practice and your knowledge. I think it’s no accident that Ida also has knowledge and practice standards that we can also use in conjunction with this. So here we go. Page 44, final quote, the tenets of structured literacy will continue to evolve with additional research, and we know that because it’s informed by the science of reading, but there is sufficient evidence to fully implement, fully implement, a structured literacy approach now and then the powerful sentence students deserve, no less. So. Thank you so much, Donnell and Lindsay for this conversation today. And I know us, we are going to keep talking about this, by the way, but we’re just not going to be recording it, because there’s a lot to talk about here, and it’s been a really interesting conversation. So thank you and to our listeners, thank you for joining us. Please join us for the next episode of literacy talks.

Narrator 38:39
Thanks for joining us today. Literacy talks comes to you from Reading Horizons, where literacy momentum begins. Visit Readinghorizons.com/literacytalks to access episodes and resources to support your journey in the science of reading.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai