The Ultimate Plain Talk Recap: Our Must-Share Insights from the Conference

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 Stacy 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
Okay, welcome to this episode of literacy talks. It has become, I think, one of our favorites. By the way, I’m Stacy Hurst, and I’m joined by Donell pons and Lindsay Kemeny, like we are every week. I’m assuming some things there, but what we get to talk about today is kind of a recap of the plane talk conference that we all just attended. It’s been two weeks now. We’ve been home a whole week, so it’s still kind of fresh in our minds, but we always like to have a conversation and share with you our takeaways about the experience. I especially when we do these episodes, I’m thinking of my friends and colleagues who did not get to attend. So hopefully there’s something you can get out of the conference, even though you aren’t able to go. So let’s just start off. I think I can’t, I can’t remember, this is my fourth or fifth plane talk conference. But Donell and Lindsay, how many have you been to now? Oh,

Lindsay Kemeny 1:50
I don’t remember. I can’t remember if this is my third or fourth, fourth maybe,

Stacy Hurst 1:55
Donnell, do you happen to know the answer?

Donell Pons 1:59
I don’t. I think I’ve done one more than Lindsay.

Stacy Hurst 2:01
I thought this was a great one, though, I will say that over my time of attending plane talk, I my first plane talk conference was the conference right before COVID. So I can tell you, it was not as attended as it has been since we’ve been back and attending from COVID. So I know it’s a conference that’s gaining traction that was sold out again this year. So if you’re wanting to go next year, you need to register early. Did there was another important announcement that took place at this conference, and Lindsay, do you want to tell us about that

Lindsay Kemeny 2:41
my book, because I, we talked about, yeah, I had a launch party for, I have a resource book coming out. It’s a resource companion to seven mighty moves. And so it’s seven mighty moves reading resources. I look, I have it right here, if you’re watching on YouTube, and I’m, I’m so excited. So scholastic had a launch party for me during lunch on one of the days and during plane talk. And you guys, I don’t know why, but anytime there’s an event, I was stressing, and no one will come dead every time, every time, and like, the room that we were in was kind of farther away from, like, all the main action. And I was like, Oh, great. Now it’s gonna be hard to get to hard to find no one’s gonna come. But guess what? There was a lot of people there. So it was so fun. It was just, it was really nice. So, yeah, it was, it was good times, and I did have so the my seven mighty moves resources are coming out March 18, so I don’t know when this is going to air. So it was a little early, so we didn’t, we couldn’t have copies of the book there, but they surprised me with a copy. So I have, like, the very first copy in my hands right now of the book. And, like, that was a total surprise. I didn’t know that they were gonna have it, so I was so excited. I think who was there, Stacy, I think you were I ran into you right after, because I was like, Look, I’ve gotta go, yeah, yeah. After. And Donnell, you were there at my party, so you saw it too. And, yeah,

Stacy Hurst 4:23
it was fun. But then there was an announcement at that party. Oh,

Lindsay Kemeny 4:28
yes, okay, yes. Also, yeah, okay, my special announcement was that I have a third book coming out this summer. Rock your literacy block. So,

Stacy Hurst 4:40
yeah, which is so cool. I think a lot of people like this conference, especially, I feel like attracts a lot of practitioners, which we love, and that’s really going to be valuable for them. I think even if you don’t follow your literacy block to a T Lindsey, like, if somebody doesn’t, there’s. Still gonna get great ideas

Lindsay Kemeny 5:01
Absolutely. And I say that a lot of times in that book, because I’m like, Hey, your blog doesn’t need to look exactly like mine, but I want to share what’s working for me. And I want to get you thinking about like, how you structure things, how you transition from one thing to the other, how you’re making the most of every minute. Well,

Stacy Hurst 5:20
thank you for sharing, also, anything about the conference in general that you guys have to add. I

Lindsay Kemeny 5:26
think this conference is just, I love this conference, and I think they do such a good job of putting together a great conference with a lot of excitement enthusiasm we have, like the marching band that comes through and the songs and the and, you know, always like this wide variety of really excellent speakers. I love it,

Unknown Speaker 5:47
yeah,

Donell Pons 5:48
and it’s teacher, student focused, which I love. You’ll also see students. Students get up and they do a little vignette before they introduce the keynote every day, which is great, because it centers you, focuses you. As you say, there’s a band as well. It’s always really terrific musicians, young people, and it focuses you on why you’re there, who you’re there for, and it’s for the youth, right? For our young students to be able to help them reach their goals and literacy. And so your mind is always focused on why you’re there. And then I love because there’s a lot of camaraderie. Because, as you say, Stacey, it’s a great conference for teachers. And so there’s a lot of teachers meeting up and maybe making friendships for the first time and getting to know each other so that they’ll be able to support each other. I think it’s great. I forgot

Lindsay Kemeny 6:28
about those students I was just gonna piggyback. I forgot about those students who introduced the keynotes. I thought this year was like the best. They were so good, they had these little skits prepared. And it was really entertaining and really a fun way to introduce the keynote,

Stacy Hurst 6:47
yeah, and a way to keep us all centered, like Donnell, like you were saying on the reason we’re there. I also really love the camaraderie we got to see people that we haven’t seen in real life for a while, I love that even something like at lunchtime, you’re sitting with people that you’ve never met before, and always you have something in common. I meet new people every time, but I will say this year, there were actually people there that I was looking forward to seeing in real life that I didn’t, because I think there’s enough people there that you can’t assume that you’re going to see everyone there. But there were a lot of people,

Lindsay Kemeny 7:28
I think 3000 right? Wasn’t there 3000 I think so. They did a good job spacing us out. You know, like a few years ago when we went, I think we talked about on this podcast how we were like, Oh my gosh, it was so crowded, and there was a problem with people coming off the escalator with nowhere to go, and I think since then, they’ve done such a better job keeping us spread out. And we were even over in that whole other section of the hotel, which I don’t think in the past, we’ve ever had classes over there. So there were, you know, anyways, it was great because there was a lot of space, I thought, yeah.

Stacy Hurst 8:03
And this year, though they didn’t do breakfast, is that right? That was different, yeah. But lunch, I felt like, went a little smoother than it did last year. I remember they ran out of lunch sometimes, and just the way that they coordinated it. This year you had a certain room you were assigned to, and you did have to register for the sessions ahead of time. Did any of you get have any trouble getting into sessions that you wanted to

Lindsay Kemeny 8:34
I was worried about that, because I was really upset. Within like two hours, we got the email, like, some of the sessions I wanted to go to were already full. And I’m like, No, I really wanted to go to that. But the day of, like, you know, I went and they have kind of a, you know, I’m calling them a bouncer for each room and who’s scanning your badge. And, you know, I’m like, I’m not in here. Can I? Can I get in? And they would be like, we’ll just come back, like five minutes after, 10 minutes after, and their space will let you in. And I was able to get in, like the two that I tried. So that was good.

Stacy Hurst 9:09
I thought the app was really great too, because I did that I’d start out, well, actually, didn’t do this very often, but if you’re in a session and you’re like, oh, you know, this isn’t quite what I expected it. So then you could look to see which sessions still had space, which was handy in the moment.

Donell Pons 9:26
And, you know, I don’t know what it was this year you guys, but I was like, I was on fire. I should have gone to Vegas with this kind of luck, because I feel like I hit the jackpot on every single one. And that doesn’t usually happen.

Stacy Hurst 9:41
It was great. And Donnell, right before we started recording, you were pointing out too, that a lot of the sessions this year, I noticed were on, maybe we could say the upper strands of the rope, lots on writing and syntax and comprehension. And at first I thought it was just those were the ones I was. Noticing, because I that’s what I’m focusing on right now. But seemed like there were a lot of offerings in those areas.

Lindsay Kemeny 10:07
I noticed that too. There were a lot and the app, did anyone play that there’s like a game, I think that they were playing on the app. I didn’t play it. But Did anyone see that?

Stacy Hurst 10:16
Yeah, let’s

Donell Pons 10:18
eat. Oh, you’re talking to I didn’t play the game.

Lindsay Kemeny 10:22
I think we’re all, like, the three of us. We’re also focused on get to the session, learn. And I think the game was about like going, like, maybe talking to so many people at the booths and finding out information about them or something. And I mean, I think it would be fun. It was just like, there’s so many other things to do during the conference. So yeah, that’s

Stacy Hurst 10:41
true. And then some things that we each kind of have our own little thing about Lindsay. Do you want to talk about the program?

Lindsay Kemeny 10:50
Yes, I have it right here. I saved it because I need my paper program when I go to a conference. Donnell has hers too. And so I was so excited, because I’m like, Oh, they have the paper program. And I don’t know, I’m just kind of a dinosaur about these things, like, I know there’s the app, but for me, it’s easier. I want my program. I can star it. I can easily see all my selections and where they’re going to be. And what I love about this particular program is it’s small, like, that’s like, you know, instead of, like, a huge one, which is perfect fits in your hand as you’re walking from place to place. So, yeah,

Stacy Hurst 11:28
I thought they did a very good job of that. And that was exactly what you just heard from Lindsay, was exactly her reaction when we got so usually comment on the bags. And these bags stellar. They’re big, they’re like, they’re good, super cool, yeah, and because bags are not donnell’s thing, I got two of them. So super happy about that.

Lindsay Kemeny 11:55
And there were some good goodies inside the bags too.

Stacy Hurst 11:58
Yeah, I thought so too. I actually got done else inside innards, too. Ever bad

Lindsay Kemeny 12:05
you did. Did you get the little like tackle box thing with all that? No,

Donell Pons 12:09
that, right? No, I did. I kept the tackle that was

Lindsay Kemeny 12:13
great. And that was from the Center for literacy and learning, right? They had this little, like, little mini tackle box, you guys. And it had, like a mini stapler. It was so cute, a little post it No, a little teeny tape. Oh my gosh,

Unknown Speaker 12:28
mini staples, yeah,

Stacy Hurst 12:31
no, no, no. Darnell was very she is selected, yeah, yeah. But so I did now, I get two of those. But

Lindsay Kemeny 12:39
she kept that it was a

Stacy Hurst 12:41
bag was worth it, having two of those for sure. Okay, so now let’s get to like the meat of it. All the the sessions. What did you guys, what sessions stand out to you? Should we just go day one, day two, day three? Maybe we’ll just take turns talking about a session at a time that we attended, and that some key takeaways,

Donell Pons 13:05
first day, you got to mention that in the Grand Ballroom there was Anita Archer. And I don’t care what you say, She’s phenomenal. I mean, just I can always do a little Anita Archer and always have a good day. And that’s just the thing about her. She’s so steady and consistent and just reminds you of those things that you heard her say for a long time, but it’s always good to hear her say it again. And so I just appreciate a session with her. It was fun to have her there, but then I went on to a session that I did want to mention, and that was John Bennetts and Devon Kearns. And some folks will probably be familiar with Devin Kerns, but John Bennett says, in a school setting, and they’re working together, and it was on bridging the gap and aligning tier one and tier two for reading success. And so Devon Kearns and John Bennetts have actually worked together on developing a spreadsheet that they then shared with those who attended the session and said, Please use it and then give us feedback. But it’s a spreadsheet that helps you determine what aspects might be lacking in your tier two or your tier one, and to help get your materials to talk to each other through tier one and tier two, which I thought was fantastic, boy, we need this conversation for a long time. So they did a great job of presenting. Opened it up for questions. Of course, there were plenty of questions, but then it really was, take this and test drive it, and let’s hear back. So I’m hoping there’s another session where we get back together and say, Okay, here’s what works. Here was, here’s what doesn’t work. It’s great.

Stacy Hurst 14:24
And I attended that session too, so I’ll just add quickly about that. That’s how things should be developed, yeah. Like, from people who are really aware of those situations, and like, I noticed, they would even have recommendations for changing certain wording from one program to an X, from tier one to tier two, and it was just a very thorough way to look at it. Yeah. Lindsay, what about you? I

Lindsay Kemeny 14:51
went to Carol Tolman, and I don’t think I’d I’ve heard her present live before, but she was great. She was talking about the upper. Strands of Scarborough’s reading rope. So the title was about language structures and verbal reasoning. And I remember her, she’s like standing up on a chair, and she has ropes, and she has all these ropes around her talking about each strand. And so, you know, one thing interesting I thought she was sharing was about talking about like, what makes a sentence difficult. So she really focused a lot on a sentence level and what makes a sentence difficult to understand. There’s a few things, the number of propositions or idea units in the sentence, the distance between the subject and the verb that can make it difficult, and the order of the subject, verb object, the order of them. And so that was really interesting. And she was showing us actions like, you know, when you it’s a capital letter. And so she would have her hands go up tall, and then the period, and she would do a little like, halt, stop with her hand. And I’ve never really done the hand actions, and just reminded me that I see teachers do that a lot. It’s so fun and cute. And so I was like, I need to try that with my students. So as we say the sentence verbally, we can do those little actions to help us remember we need a capital at the beginning and then hurt a stop at the end. Or you could do like a question mark, or, you know, exclamation point. So,

Stacy Hurst 16:24
oh, good. Very cool. Sounds great. She is a great presenter. Um. The first session I attended was also on um comprehension. It was called transformational comprehension results for all children. And I am going to slaughter this last name, but I’m gonna give it a go. It was by Kay widge Kumar, maybe I said it right, actually, yeah. And she’s very blunt, straightforward. In fact, she was talking about the nape stores, scores, sorry, scores. And she said the patient is dead. Okay, people, the patient is dead, so she was talking about how to facilitate comprehension and students, she has a well tested strategy. And these were my takeaways, text structures because so there’s a big focus on that should be used to determine the main idea. Then from the main idea, extend that into a summary, and then extrapolate inferences. And so she says, if you get the main idea right correct, then you can use it to get all the other strategies. So she’s saying, get the kids to think, don’t reset the purpose. The purpose is comprehension is the purpose. That’s why we’re reading. So anyway, I thought it was really insightful, and she’s had a lot of great success. I know she mentioned that Elsa Cardenas Hagan has been involved with this approach, and they have a lot of really good research and results from it. So,

Lindsay Kemeny 18:03
yeah, so if you have the, if you get the reading leak journal, I’m pretty sure she has an article. It’s, I’m pretty sure it was last year, the 2024 I don’t remember which one, but she has one on this. It’s called her like, knowledge acquisition framework. I think that’s right. And, yeah, yeah. And then we talked about it. If you guys go back and listen to our reading league summary from just last fall, 2024 we, you know, we, I went to a session on that too, so you can get, like, a double dose and kind of dig it, dig into that a bit more. But yeah, she’s had a lot of like, she has a lot of strong evidence to back up what she’s doing. Yeah, it

Stacy Hurst 18:44
sounds very compelling, and it is knowledge acquisition and transformation. So, yeah, transformation,

Lindsay Kemeny 18:50
yes, yeah, yes. Okay,

Stacy Hurst 18:52
all right, Donnell, and just one

Donell Pons 18:56
that gets an admirable mention. So it was one of the first ones that I attended, as well, was on handwriting, and I just do not think we can talk about it enough, because it kind of got tossed to the wayside for a bit and then brought back as people realized, oh yeah, there’s actually a lot of research that supports the fact that good, good handwriting, we should spend some time on that, because actually helps students, and particularly when it comes down the road for their writing. And so it was Sean dachshuk. I hope I’m doing his name some justice. And he is with the Iowa reading research center, and he introduced folks in that session to some free resources, which I thought were great. And one of them is called literacy lifter. So you just type that in. Literacy lifter is some free resources that you can get, and it’s about how to teach handwriting if you don’t have a program, or you can even look at the research to make sure am I doing that correctly, or the things I could change or tweak, they say they’re going to come out with one that’s for cursive, because we know that cursive writing is also very important. Serves a purpose, and that will be in April, that that will have a cursive lifter, and it comes with videos. So it’ll do a whole it’ll do the whole thing for you, if you don’t. Something. And again, these are free resources, and they’re also making it so that can align to your phonics program as well. So they’re trying to make those things come together. So I appreciate that people are doing this thoughtful right reflection about, okay, what would really be helpful or useful for teachers? Well, it’d be nice if they could get it to adapt with what they’re teaching in their phonics so I really, I like that when I see it.

Lindsay Kemeny 20:25
I went to a session on handwriting too. It was by Jane Ashby letter formation. And I love that she mentioned that letter knowledge is letter recognition and letter formation. So you, know, students need both, and we know the letter formation, retrieving that from memory is harder than just recognizing like that that’s A, B or D or whatever, but when we’re focusing on that letter formation, that is going to strengthen them being able to recall the name and the sound. And so it’s really important. But there’s something that she said that I had never heard before, and I thought it was really interesting. She said that our attention is elevated like our our she and she says cognitive research shows this, but I didn’t get a citation, but attention is elevated at something that’s between your hands, between your hands. So she was saying that’s why, like, if they’re right handed, they’re going to hold the paper with the left hand, and then they have the right hand, and their attention naturally is going to pay more attention to what’s in the middle, you know. And obviously the opposite, if you’re left handed, where you’re holding the paper with your right hand, and you have your pencil with your left and then your attention is focused on what’s in the middle. And I just thought that was interesting. I had never heard that before, and she talked about those short sessions, two to three minutes for handwriting, distributed practice. It’s something I always do, and we’ve talked about this before, like, just a few letters. You don’t need to do rows and rows of, like, an a, you know, because then it actually they start to get sloppy. I’ve noticed. So we’d rather have like, a few. When I in my classroom, I’m like, Okay, write three lowercase A’s, you know, and attending to that letter formation, correct letter formation. Yeah, that’s

Stacy Hurst 22:08
awesome. Another session from day one, which I won’t even spend a ton of time at all talking about, because it’s in the reading league journal, but it is 17 misconceptions about the science of reading, and Sharon Vaughn did that one. So I recommend that article to anyone. It was a good summary of that I attended on day one, Donnell, we both attended. Tim Odegard, yeah,

Donell Pons 22:34
I was gonna say give a shout out to Dr. Tim Odegard, that was a great presentation. That

Stacy Hurst 22:38
was very powerful. Oh, it was okay.

Donell Pons 22:41
So we’ve seen him do a similar presentation, and that was at Big Sky, and it was very compelling then too. And then he’s tweaked it a little bit. Has even more research, but Tim talks about that emotional, social impact of reading difficulties, and it’s even, I mean, he makes a very good case for child neglect when we do not intervene and help young people learn to read, it is equivalent to the impact on those, on those young people is equivalent to child neglect. It was very, very powerful. Yeah.

Stacy Hurst 23:17
And the research he shared was a longitudinal study from three different countries. And I might be getting some of this incorrect, but um, they first of all asked the question, do any of these issues? And they had things like being bullied, depression, anxiety, add how much of an impact do they have on reading, on learning to read, and in most cases, it was very little, with the exception of attention, which makes sense, right? It was all No, it doesn’t really impact learning how to read. However, then they flipped the question and said, How much of not like if all these things, anxiety, depression, attention, are negatively impacted by not being able to read, and 100% it was, yes, they all exacerbate not knowing how to read exacerbates or causes some of those issues. And so that was really compelling to me,

Donell Pons 24:18
and and not to lose sight, right? Because there’s, there’s a lot of challenges to staying the course, to making sure that we don’t slide right, and we don’t take take our attention off of and so I thought it was a really great presentation. I hope he continues to to have that available to folks, yeah, and

Stacy Hurst 24:36
we did have a we were able to talk to him afterwards. And Dr ergaard, if you’re listening, thank you for the conversation, because it did help put on a perspective as well. Of it could help explain why some children are more resilient when they experience those what we call aces in their life, because having access. This to knowing how to read actually helps them cope with those adverse experiences. So it was, it did kind of just put a big exclamation mark on why reading is so important. Yeah,

Donell Pons 25:15
and mentorship, didn’t you find that was also very interesting that he brings out is the importance of having a peer peer to peer mentorship. How important that was? Yeah, very

Stacy Hurst 25:25
impactful.

Narrator 25:27
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Stacy Hurst 26:05
Lindsay, what else did you attend?

Lindsay Kemeny 26:09
Well, the next day, we had Marianne Wolf, who I just think hit it out of the park. She was so great. I love listening to her. And something she said that I really liked was she said, we should you be united in our love of books? And I loved that. I thought that was such a great sentiment, right? Yes, we should be united in that love of you know, we love books. We love teaching our kids to read. We want them to learn to read so that they have the opportunity to love it, right?

Donell Pons 26:44
Yeah, and I love that. She also said that we are connectivists. We connect things. All pieces are connected. Look at all the processes, parts for fluency. It’s not only what you read, but how you read. So connecting everything. I thought that was also important,

Stacy Hurst 27:01
yeah, which is very apparent in her possum approach, helping us to remember those things. And you just can’t not pay attention when Mary Ann Wolfe is presenting, because she’s so animated and energetic. There are sometimes it makes me tired to watch her present, but she is fantastic and speaking of really engaging people, I did attend Lynn Stone’s session, and she, of course, was focusing on grammar and writing and how important that is. A couple of big takeaways from her session. Was she cited the research that the meta analysis that said the effects of writing on learning, no matter what the topic is, science, social studies or math, is significant, like it really improves all learning no matter what the content is. And then she said this about grammar, which really resonated with me, because I feel like, you know, no shade to my junior middle school junior high teachers, but I don’t really think I got great instruction when it comes to grammar. So she said, what grows naturally as far as grammar is concerned, is just a small part of what adults need to function properly in the modern world. And that resonated with me, because we can get by, we can recognize improper grammar, but if we really have a grasp on the language and we know more about it explicitly, then we have more opportunities available to us for reading and writing, but I thought that was really cool. Also, she’s very engaging and funny all the time.

Lindsay Kemeny 28:47
That second day, I went to Pam Kastner. I love Pam Kastner. She Great. Gave a great presentation. It was geared towards upper grades. But I went anyway, and I found, definitely found a lot of things, you know, relevant to me as a first grade teacher. And you know, I love that she says, and if you follow her online or anything, you see that she’s been posting this a lot lately, integrate, don’t isolate, right? We need to integrate those skills and and not just teach everything in these like silos.

Stacy Hurst 29:22
Yeah, I went to that same presentation at the reading league conference, and I really thought this is one thing I just love about Pam Kastner. She can understand a topic so well that she makes it simple third to fifth grade reading. That’s a big topic, but she just made it like, here’s how you do it. This is what’s important. I thought it was really great. Donnell, yeah, and

Donell Pons 29:49
on Thursday, I saw Nicole Orman D, who’s with Ames, and she talked about assessments for writing and writing instruction. And that was really good. It was very good. Down to Earth. Information that she shared, again, a lot of those resources are available free on their website, and that’s what the aim Institute. And then I also saw Alfreda Hebert. We’ve had her as a guest on the podcast. She was great with the text project. This time she was addressing AI and decodable text, and she talked about how she has worked very hard to come up with correct prompts. You know, just knowing enough about decodable text and working with AI isn’t enough, and there was a whole lot of experimentation about getting the correct way in which to work with AI, and she was willing to share a lot of that with folks. So she said, email me. I’ll share that with you. I thought that was great that she’d done that homework. She also said, we make this some assumption that we can just, you know, do a little prompt into AI, it’ll give us decodable text. But she said a lot of that decodable text has not been entered into a lot of our language models, some of it behind pay walls and such and different things. And she said, it’s just, it’s not as prolific as you would think, and so she’s had to do a lot of homework. Anyway. That was a really good one. And then I did another round of Marianne Wolf, because then she went out and did a break out and did a breakout session, and she was going to talk about fluency and its multi component intervention the possum. And instead, she treated us to an impromptu session on the impact of this digital age that we’re living in, and all the reading skimming that we do online, and what it does in terms of deep reading and being able to get to deep reading and comprehension. And it was very good. She’s always

Stacy Hurst 31:26
good, you know. Speaking of technology, I went to one that was called ed tech and the science of literacy development results from a meta analysis. So I there wasn’t anything really revelatory shared. I think most of us who’ve used tech in the education space would not have been surprised by any of the findings, but one was 73% of teachers say that there’s not enough support for Ed Tech and that we need more research on this, specifically on technology for Writing and Language Development, and there were some programs in this meta analysis that are less effective than if students didn’t use them at all. So it actually, yeah, I thought that was a little bit scary, honestly. And then they, they don’t we. There’s a lot we still don’t know about it, but I thought that was really interesting. And it sounds like Dr Hebert and Marianne wolf touched on maybe some of the things to be aware of too. Yeah.

Lindsay Kemeny 32:33
Because sometimes I think there’s this attitude that like technology, it’s like, oh, that’s the end all be all. Or like, oh, you need to have the newest shiny thing in your classroom. So that’s a that’s an interesting check to reality there where, you know, sometimes it’s not and we need to be a little more careful before jumping into something,

Stacy Hurst 32:54
yeah, and thinking about, I think you’ve said it at the beginning, Lindsay, when you were talking about your third book, just how can we make our instruction more efficient? And I think there are some programs that students spend an awful lot of time on the computer for, and I don’t know if that’s the best use of our instructional time, and it could be that it is, but we don’t really have a ton of research for that yet, and I think especially it’s an critical conversation to have when brains are developing. And I think Marianne wolf calls that out really well in her book, read or come home, because of the impact that having access to too much technology has on language development.

Lindsay Kemeny 33:39
Well, it’s sad to me, like, just okay, this is, I guess, off topic a little bit. But, you know, we had indoor recess a couple weeks ago. And I usually, you know, this particular day, one child asked me, you know, can I get on the iPad during this indoor recess? And I’m like, Sure. And then, as everyone came in from this was after lunch. They all got on the iPad, and I looked around and I’m like, This is so sad. They’re all on the iPad and no one is talking, and it’s just silent, but it’s technically recess. It just had to be indoor recess because of the weather. And I’m like, next time I’m saying no when they ask me if they can get on the iPad, I’m gonna say no, because I would rather a noisy classroom during this time, because I want them to practice their social skills and their oral language skills, and I want them to play with the toys and the the other things. But I just remember looking around being like, This is sad.

Stacy Hurst 34:37
That makes sense. And I think now we did have to leave on Friday. I think we got to attend one session. Is that right before we catch our flight, and I did go to teaching sentence level writing and vocabulary explicitly and efficiently by Dr Lorraine Hammond. It was very good, and. I should mention the day before, I had gone to Dr Pamela Snow’s session as well. So Australia was well represented this, this conference, for sure. Those were good presentations. Yeah, they were great. What did you go to on Friday morning? Well,

Lindsay Kemeny 35:17
the keynote was Jake Daggett, and I was just looking forward to that. I just absolutely love him. He brings so much energy and enthusiasm. I’m like, Oh my gosh, you must have been the most fun teacher. He’s not in the classroom anymore. But, I mean, he’s still in the classroom because he’s helping like coach other teachers and do all the things. But wow, what energy he has and really just showing us, you know, ideas to make your your lessons a little more engaging, get everyone participating. You know, I wrote down quote, unquote, bundle it up, baby. Do you remember that Donnell he, he just had us, you know, chanting and singing and laughing, and it felt so good to laugh like I was just laughing and laughing. It was a really fun session. Yeah,

Stacy Hurst 36:09
he definitely has high energy. I first learned of him on Tiktok, and then he was on the Kelly Clarkson show, and I think I saw a news story about that. So, yeah, he is very worthwhile to Google a

Lindsay Kemeny 36:21
warning he had. I just looked at my notes. He said, comparison is deadly, and I think that’s important to remember as as teachers, not to compare yourselves to others, but focus on being the best you can be.

Donell Pons 36:34
Good advice for our students too. Huh ourselves and Devin Kerns again. So he was one I popped in on. I wished I could have stayed, because he had some really good conversation going on. And the session was titled, I want to get the title because it do just as critical concepts for students versus foundational facts for teachers. What do students need to learn and what do only teachers need to know? But actually, he was very compelling. He put up a slide where he had a PowerPoint. And the first one he showed, it had a bunch of different concepts about reading, so like, you know, left and right brain, what’s occurring and what information is being shared. There were a few slides on that. And then he had a few slides on knowing some some really intricate concepts about why sounds are the way they are, and how letters, different letters impact each other. And so he had a bunch of them, and then he said he had three spots. And he said, What does a reading researcher need to know? What does a teacher need to know? And what do students need to know? Out of these things that we’ve just seen up here, and there was some, you know, debate going on. In the end, settled on just two of those for the reading research researcher almost everything, except for one for the teacher and just two of those for the student, two of those concepts would be useful for the student. So it really was a great visual for the fact of how much a teacher who really has been trained supported and is in that classroom getting everything that teacher needs in order to be the great reading teacher what it takes. And I thought that that first stood out to me, and then what also stood out to me is that we’re oftentimes spending a lot of time, even for teachers, giving them the information that’s not really going to be useful or helpful to them in the classroom, because they’re already responsible for the majority. Thing I was thinking about is be really careful about what you think a teacher what you’re going to tell a teacher that they need to know that was important really be thoughtful about it. And then also on the student side is, when is it too much information that we’re sharing? And I think you’ve got to think about that a lot. That’s good,

Stacy Hurst 38:31
yeah, which kind of calls into, I wouldn’t say, question, but focus the importance of the way that we’re providing professional development for our teachers. And I, I can’t remember which session I was in. It might have been Sharon Vaughn that said we are behind with professional development, and some of that might be because we get too mired in things that that may not be the important thing to know. Yeah. Okay, so as we are talking about this, or even as we left the conference, what did you leave thinking? I’m going to put into action from what I learned in the conference. I will start by saying, generally, I get to write a new course that will be focused on vocabulary, writing and comprehension. So I That’s one reason I attended all of those sessions. So I will be very intentionally applying when I learned to do create a whole new course. But what about you guys?

Lindsay Kemeny 39:41
I think, oh, it’s that’s kind of hard. But I think, which I didn’t even mention this, I forgot to mention this session I went to by Margie Gillis, but it kind of had, there were similar themes throughout many of the ones I went to, and that is like this art of conversation. Conversation and this basis of oral language, and I’m always telling my students, like, if you can’t say it, you can’t write it, and so we say it first and but besides, just because I do a lot of this in preparation for writing, but I really like the idea of helping our students really learn the art of conversation. So those turn and talks that we do all the time, I feel like I need to do a little more work in helping them be better speakers and listeners as they are talking with a partner and encouraging them to, like talk in full sentences and listen and expand to an idea that their partner has presented. So I don’t know that’s something I’ve just been thinking about that I need to work on.

Unknown Speaker 40:43
I love that. It’s

Donell Pons 40:44
interesting Lindsay, because I just listened to a podcast by a behavior behavioral scientist who talked about how when they were young, their mother would ask them, Who asked you a really good question today, and what was it was always asking them to think about the questions they were being asked. And she said, I’ve applied this to my children as well as to my students, asking them, let’s list the really great questions we were asked today. And I thought, Oh, I ought to try. That sounds really good activity. But the takeaway for me, I mean, there were quite a few I didn’t even mention one to Lindsay that come to mind. I am already using and applying Lorraine Hammond and Jen Hasbrook. They did one where they were supporting students to achieve reading fluency. But it was way more than that. They had a study that was being conducted in Australia. They just quickly flashed up some of the key points and then showed some teaching. The engagement was high, and it was 72 responses by the students within so many minutes of teaching. I mean, it was phenomenal for me, and I just really it reinvigorated how much you need to have your students that it’s there, it’s really for them, right? And so you need to have them engaged, and they need to be talking, and how much more I could do that in my teaching. So right away I was like, yeah, yeah, I’m gonna play that one. And then the handwriting, I tell you, I’m on it. Guys, this one’s my big thing lately, because and I work with older students who handwriting is still a challenge, and just making a few changes and going back and saying, What can I do to really support this student? Because clearly, they didn’t receive what they needed, and Can I try some of these things for them now? And how much, how much it really does help. And so, yeah, really motivated,

Stacy Hurst 42:16
yeah. And I think it was one. I think Lynn Stone mentioned this when she was talking about handwriting, it forces our brain to slow down, and that’s where, that’s when the information has the opportunity to get into our long term memory. So

Donell Pons 42:30
yeah, the connections you make, right? Yeah, for sure.

Stacy Hurst 42:35
Um, any other things you want to implement based on what you learned,

Donell Pons 42:40
all of the great things.

Lindsay Kemeny 42:43
Yeah, I know we want to implement everything,

Stacy Hurst 42:47
all the things. Yes, well, and one question that we talked about before was, what are some challenges and considerations to applying what it what we’ve seen, and for me, I am feeling at this point pretty overwhelmed because, again, I get to apply it to a whole course. But how do you make that palatable, understandable enough for students to apply to then teach their students? I think I have my work cut out for me, but I have a lot of good resources, which I think will be very helpful. So I was glad for that. What about you guys, challenges?

Lindsay Kemeny 43:29
Time. Time is always a challenge in the classroom. We never have enough time to implement all the things that you’re seeing. So I

Stacy Hurst 43:37
would agree just time that’s a good challenge that’s pretty ubiquitous, right? Okay, um, anything else that you guys want to share about the conference in general, or our experience with

Lindsay Kemeny 43:51
it? I just love playing talk. I hope we can go next year. I just think they do such a an excellent job and such like high caliber speakers. You know, it’s wonderful.

Donell Pons 44:02
It’s well thought out.

Stacy Hurst 44:04
I agree, and I’d have to say, too, right? Related, unrelated, I don’t know. We just got the most recent NAEP scores in Louisiana, made some really impressive gains. And so I think, you know, this is housed in Louisiana. It’s always been there. I appreciate it in the program, learning about the history of the conference as well. And I just think it’s really great for educators, no matter where you are, but what a great offering for us. So thank you. And yes, I hope we get to go next year too. We did have, oh, we didn’t really talk about the vendors, but they did have a separate Hall for all of that. What did you guys think about that? I don’t think I really got to see a ton of that, but

Lindsay Kemeny 44:53
I thought it was fun. It’s better than, you know, before they had them all in the hallways, and remember, that’s how it was all due. Unpacked, so it kind of nice that they had them in a room, but they had some out in the hallway in that other area too. And it’s fun. I always love exploring the different offerings by different companies. I think it’s exciting, because I feel like we’re getting better and better things out there. So it’s great.

Stacy Hurst 45:17
Yeah, I agree. Donnell, did you happen to see anything in the vendor hall that was new and exciting, or

Donell Pons 45:24
no, just, I’d agree with Lindsay that that’s it’s really fun to see those things offered, and for teachers to be able to see them hands on, and being given these opportunities and being treated like professionals, which I think is amazing. Yeah, I do like

Stacy Hurst 45:37
because they really do cater to the teacher in that sense, right? Which sometimes isn’t the thing, because they’re most often companies are usually having conversations with people who sign the POS or so. I do love that, that there were a lot of things for teachers. I saw teachers with their bags full. So you know, not to beat a dead horse, but those bags were amazing, and they were big, so you could fit a lot of swag in them, a lot of free stuff, for sure. So Well, on that note, we will end this recap for this year’s conference of plane talk. We’ll be sure to do the same thing for next year’s conference. And we do have a we have a couple other conferences coming up before then, so we look forward to having you join us for recaps of those conferences too. And in the meantime, we hope you’ll join us for the next episode of literacy talks.

Narrator 46:38
Thanks for joining us today. Literacy talks comes to you from Reading Horizons, where literacy momentum begins. Visit Reading horizons.com/literacy. Talks to access episodes and resources to support your journey in the science of reading. You.