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Literacy Talks
Welcome to Literacy Talks, a podcast from Reading Horizons, where reading momentum begins. Each episode features our trio of literacy champions: Stacy Hurst, an assistant professor of reading at Southern Utah University and Chief Academic Advisor at Reading Horizons; Donell Pons, a dyslexia specialist, educator, presenter, and writer, who now works with adults with reading challenges; and Lindsay Kemeny, a dedicated elementary teacher who is a CERI-certified Structured Literacy Classroom Teacher and author of 7 Mighty Moves.
Each episode is a conversation among friends with practical literacy strategies, powerful tips, and a real passion for teachers and students alike. Listen, laugh, and learn with Literacy Talks, brought to educators everywhere by Reading Horizons.
Literacy Talks
Episode 9: Bridging Research to Practice: The Need to Focus on the “How” for Classroom Teachers
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Research in the science of reading is expanding in breadth and depth, and the data points to important changes in classroom instructional practice and materials. The challenge for frontline classroom teachers is translating that research data into sequential, explicit literacy instruction to ensure all students build the foundational skills they need to read proficiently at grade level. In this episode of Literacy Talks, our trio of literacy educators gives teachers the practical insights and tips to put reading research to work, helping students achieve reading milestones. It’s a powerful connection between the “why’s” in reading science research and the “how’s” in the classroom.
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Hello literacy leaders and champions. Welcome to literacy talks, the podcast series from Reading Horizons dedicated to exploring the ideas, trends, insights and practical issues that will help us create literacy momentum. Our series host is Stacy Hurst, professor at Southern Utah University and Chief Academic Officer at Reading Horizons where reading momentum begins. Joining Stacy are Donell Pons, a recognized expert in literacy and special education. And Lindsay Kemeny, a Utah based elementary classroom teacher. Today's topic is bridging research to practice. So classroom teachers can successfully apply the science of reading to teaching. Let's get started.
Stacy Hurst:So today, I thought we would talk about something that is more it's becoming more and more apparent, as we all learn more about the science of reading I'm using as my inspiration to that line of thought the reading journal from the September October edition 2021, were the very first article, the title is the science of reading is incomplete without the science of teaching, reading by Jung Suk, Kim and Catherine snow. And I have long followed Catherine snow in her research because my focus, undergrad research and graduate research was on teacher knowledge. But in all of that literature and research, that was the thing that was highlighted, we know that teacher knowledge is important, but we don't know enough about how it impacts teacher practice and how that affects reading outcomes. I overheard a conversation from a teacher who was talking about podcasts with another teacher, and they were saying there's so many and one of them said, I just don't have time. The other one said, you know, they're really good. But not very many of them, tell me what to do. It's all very good information. But I don't know what to do. I don't know how to take it to my classroom tomorrow. I overheard that at the same time that I reread this article, and it just kind of came together nicely. So we can know all the things but unless we do it, apply it accurately, we're not going to get the results we hope for John Oh, what are you thinking?
Donell Pons:Ken? It just seems to me to that we've all been sort of in a mode of there's so much need. And there wasn't a whole lot of information available. We need to get this information in the hands of educators the understanding of let's call it the science of reading, right? This this research and information that had for whatever reason, I mean, work if we can point a lot of fingers to say why didn't it get into the hands of educators prior to getting into the classroom? At any rate? Here we are. And then a lot of focus was put on? Oh, well, let's inform folks about what the science of reading is the research that they didn't get that base of practice. And so there wasn't a whole lot of emphasis put on the how, and it was sort of kind of an assumption, I think in a lot of ways that, oh, we've got all this information about the foundation and the research.
Stacy Hurst:So it is the misuse of the term science of reading by the misuse is happening by well meaning teachers who just want to know what to do. So the question often comes up on social media platforms is this science of reading? Do you guys know of a science of reading program, and I know that they mean aligned with the science, but they're really focused on practice as good teachers are? And so that's where some of that probably stems from? Because yes, there is a science behind what we do. But what we do is equally important and how we do it,
Donell Pons:right. So And don't you think we live in an age right now in the information age where we like to take big concepts and boil them down. And I think that's not done a lot of service to the science of reading, boiling that down, because it really shouldn't be can't be to really do it service.
Lindsay Kemeny:When I go to like professional development trainings and different things. I love hearing from the experts. But I also really love hearing from those practitioners and the teachers and the interventionists that are in it and letting me know how they're applying those things. Like just yesterday, I was in a training, I was so excited because I wanted to learn how to better use certain texts in my classroom. And I was so disappointed because they didn't get to the how, until about the last half hour of the three hour training, which was the main thing I wanted. And and then the it was rushed, it was really kind of rushed, because we had run out of time. And I was just so frustrated because I thought I missed the house is what I wanted. And I think sometimes that happens a lot where we don't get enough of the how.
Stacy Hurst:Yeah, I agree. And until the knowledge base increases, which I think we're doing a lot to help with that then we can't assume I mean, we go right to the how but we couldn't we can't assume that teachers know the contexts in which that should happen. Right. So all very important. I appreciate your comments. So I'm just going to read three things that I underlined out of this The article and just I'll ask your thoughts about it. The first one is there is a need to develop and expand bi directional communication between the research community and the community of practice, including Teacher Educators, teachers, school administrators, policymakers and parents. Another one is research findings have difficulty. I like those wording a lot. Research findings have difficulty traversing the long road into the classroom. And ideas and voices from the classroom are not systematically reflected in research. Less is known how to build and CO construct knowledge between the research community and the community of practice to generate and contribute to research on teaching literacy, and to improve student literacy outcomes. They also use a couple of phrases I thought were useful create linkages, and rescale the transformation of knowledge. Did any of that resonate with you? And how?
Donell Pons:Yes, and in fact, Stacey, it made me think of a thought I had the other morning, when I was out for a run, the thought popped in my head of always hearing about the art of teaching. And that does us a real disservice. Because it removes the professionalism of teaching really, right. And art is wonderful. Don't get me wrong. I think that's fantastic. It's very creative. But a lot of what takes place in the classroom is a has a base in research and professionalism. And so it's kind of trying to marry these ideas and concepts that we've had about teaching over the years, particularly in this most important skill that we teach reading. And here we have to be very clear that it's not art. It's not creativity that's taking place in this area, but we have hard science and research and understanding of how we acquire reading, and therefore how we teach reading. And so that just kind of resonated with me and hearing you say that.
Lindsay Kemeny:And I also think though that it does take an art right and think it is like you were saying Darnell, this marriage of the two, because I have seen classrooms where it's all just the art of teaching and there's really no science there. Right? And then I've seen I've watched some experts very knowledgeable teaching a class and it's very science research based, but oh my goodness, I was going to fall asleep. There was no art of teaching in that. So the best I think scenario is when you have someone who's very knowledgeable that also brings the art of teaching, and like Darnell says, marries the two, I think that's where the magic happens.
Donell Pons:Just to add, there was a thought that I was going to tack on to the end Diane Ravitch, I think many are familiar in the education world with Diane Ravitch, who served on many a committee and very well known in the education world, written many books. And she wrote in one of her books, The Life and Death of the American school system. She had a chapter in it was fascinating on what makes a great teacher. And so Stacy, you brought up this conversation, we're talking about the marriage of art and science and professionalism. In that chapter, she lays out her favorite teacher, you know, all the characteristics of her favorite teacher and she said many students hated her. Didn't like her at all couldn't stand her. If you were to ask them who maybe their worst teacher was, she'd probably be top of the list. But for me, she was my favorite teacher. So that was the other thing that Diane Ravitch said is this is a very mystical thing to try to come up with, like the unicorn, the perfect teacher, what are the all of the things that go into the perfect teacher? And if it had a list, they're gonna look very different, right?
Stacy Hurst:And you know, that made me think I had a teacher in high school is my Spanish teacher. Nobody actually wanted to be in her class, and I got to be in her class. And if I'm being honest, I really didn't like her. I had a hard time. But she was such a good teacher, that I couldn't help but learn. I mean, I would have had to try hard not to. And I think she was a good example of combining that art and science because even art requires skill and preparation.
Donell Pons:Absolutely. And you know what's interesting, Stacy, the one key thread that Diane Ravitch in the end did come up with is the teacher knows their stuff. So the teacher knows their stuff.
Lindsay Kemeny:Stacey, when you were reading those quotes, one thing that came to mind was the organization research, Ed, I don't know if our listeners are familiar, but like the whole goal of this organization is to bridge that gap between research and practice. And so I love following them and they have conferences, they're really big worldwide. So they have you know, UK conferences regularly and in Australia. The ones here in the US have kind of been put on hold because of COVID. But I think I love that because the whole point is teaching teachers how to apply the research
Stacy Hurst:and you know, I think that is really important because we can hear all we want about this science but knowing how to apply it in a way that will give us the impact we want and I think that is key. Like you said, Danelle, we have a real propensity to synthesize things down maybe to a point where we can compromise their integrity, that bumper sticker mentality. But I know that we also in the field of reading have some very useful infographics that this still big concepts in a way that makes it palatable. It's like a doorway to all of that understanding. And we were joking beforehand about we have Scarborough's reading rope. We have Nancy Young's reading ladder. So we were, we were saying we have ropes and ladders. And we need chutes. And my whole point is that I feel like that kind of and with Scarborough's reading rep, let's just focus on that today. For example, we could spend a long time on every one of those strands, right? It's really brilliant on Hala Scarborough's part that she put that together in the way that she did, because it does outline the process component skills that go into reading comprehension. So I thought for the remainder of our conversation, we could just take a look at that reading rope. It's pretty ubiquitous. It's been around since 2000,
Lindsay Kemeny:I think it was around 2000 2001 Is what I'm looking at. Yeah. Okay,
Stacy Hurst:I knew it's about the same time as the National Reading Panel Report that I thought we could take maybe strand by strand and just talk about how that might look in the classroom. Now, I'm not diminishing the fact that this is process oriented, thinking that it happens over time. So it's not the comprehension is complex. And there is a system to all of this. So by focusing on individual strands, I don't want anybody to think that we teach them in isolation, right? We have to consider them all together. They operate and develop interactively, not independently. So I'm acknowledging that at the head of this conversation, but I did think just let's talk strand by strand. And these, of course, are things that have been identified through a lot of research that we need to be focusing on in our instruction. But how does that look in our classrooms, and I thought it would be especially useful in this setting, because we span developmentally reading instruction, right, just in our current jobs and jobs we've had in the past. So let's start with that lower strand, which is word recognition that includes phonological awareness, decoding, and sight recognition. So let's just start with phonological awareness. And I know we can say a lot about it. But Lindsay, what's one practice that you think is very helpful with that?
Lindsay Kemeny:One practice that I'm loving right now in my classroom is doing word chains. And we're chaining and I'm and I think this is a great way to bridge phonemic awareness with our letters. And so I have, you know, my students like I give them the word and then I'll say bag change, add to it. And they have a little whiteboards and they erase the and put it in, but it involves them thinking, where in the word is that sound? Because I don't tell them right away. And then they've got to change it to the right sound. And so I have this, not all of my students need this right now. But in small group, some really do.
Stacy Hurst:Yeah. Which is good as spelling does help inform that right? And then we know what to do next. No, no,
Donell Pons:you know, Stacy, one thing I was thinking about when you brought up Scarborough's rope is the impetus for the rope was when Scarborough was presenting to parents and trying to help parents get an understanding of how complicated the process of being a true deep reader could be write all those levels. So I thought that was interesting. Then I also thought it was interesting in the beginning before the written infographic, she would actually use pipe cleaners. So can you just see the visual of this. So she takes pipe cleaners and starts weaving them together? That would be a really powerful visual image for folks to see, I was just trying to imagine that as the kind of the first for this, in gaining an understanding of what she was talking about.
Stacy Hurst:Yeah, just to quickly interject there. That's actually what I do with my pre service teachers, we have a jigsaw activity, I separate each strand of their open, they have home groups, and then they meet back together after studying that feature. And then they create their own rope. And that pipe cleaner activity absolutely came from her. And it's powerful for my students to it gives them a tangible,
Donell Pons:visual. Yeah. So as you can imagine that phonemic awareness piece that you will see at the beginning, and you see that color, say it's blue, and as it goes throughout the whole process, right to the very end. You don't lose these as you go. So as Lindsay was describing word chaining is the very same thing with older students. So just like Dr. David Kilpatrick is famous for saying when people ask him, so what do we do with older students? And he says the same thing to do with younger students, what skills do they need the same skills that younger students need? And so just hearing Lindsey, you providing background into that activity. This is also the same thing that I would be doing with my older students. By the time you get to be an older struggling reader, and you do say have an issue with phonemic awareness phonemic proficiency He was always a challenge for you, and no one ever really addressed it, to have an opportunity for somebody to zero in on that when you're older and to say, oh, let's wait a second, let's back up, let's try a few of these activities. And then as an adult, that self awareness to realize just what you were missing, and how important it is. So that's the piece I get to see with the older students when they're younger, you don't typically see that recognition. But you're an older student, definitely. It's like the light bulb, the switch, and they are so grateful for the opportunity to be able to stop, receive some backup in that and see it apply to those skills. We do work training activities to just like Lindsey described, there's so much power in that for the builder student to
Stacy Hurst:Yeah, especially because everything we do in reading and writing is anchored to the phoneme right. And so opening that up to them in the case of the students who you work with the fact that oh, there is a rhyme and reason there is an anchor that I can rely on. Really helpful.
Donell Pons:We'll just one of the things that made me think of two are a lot of my older students. Some of them are English language learners. However, it's not like this is new for them. I work in a workplace literacy setting. And so many of them have been using English as their primary language, for conversing at work for 1520 25 years, and they've just been struggling the whole time. They haven't received help, because you have this understanding of breaking things down and looking at Scarborough's rope. Just one of the basic questions I'll start asking a student is Okay, so here we have a letter, we'll talk about a letter. Can you tell me the sound? Can you give me the sound for this that you've representation here? The symbol, what's the sound? And they'll give me the name GE and I'll say, okay, great. Yeah, that's the name. What's the sound? It has a sound they'll ask, Oh, can you imagine? For 1520 years? Yeah, that's, that's huge. When you start to break it down. Yeah. Yeah.
Stacy Hurst:It's the alphabetic principle in a sentence, right? Yeah. Okay, and then talking to about word chaining, you can do that with or without letters, too. I mean, we do that in our phonemic awareness practices when we have the substitution tasks that we have our students do. So even scaffolding it that way, you know, turn peg to pig, say, Peg, now instead of sh, and then move transferring that to adding letters to help spell those sounds, to me, it's a good scaffold. Okay, what about decoding? What's one practice that we can apply in our teaching that will help support that there's so much to decoding, I
Lindsay Kemeny:have a hard time just choosing one thing. So I'd say like, overall, having a strong phonics program where you're actually, you're actually teaching those sounds simple correspondences. And there's more than one good one. And I've tried different lens. I currently use Reading Horizons for my phonics program. And I love it. I feel like it's kind of the the easiest for me just to implement and to kind of grab and go and kind of teaches me as I'm, as I'm using it, so and then I would add decodable, like, sorry, I had to choose to, but what better way to practice decoding than decoding in books that you will not have been taught those sound spelling correspondences.
Stacy Hurst:So you know, I love that. Because when I think about maybe the single most important thing to remember when we're talking about applying what we know about decoding, to our teaching, it's exactly what you said, Lindsay, there's explicit instruction that needs to be happening. So as a teacher, we need a tool to help us do that when of the findings of the national reading panel that phonics should be taught most effective is most effectively taught kindergarten through second grade. And if we're left to make that stuff up on our own, that's tough. So there are a lot of programs where there's a lot of thought that goes into it, aligning content with research that will help us to teach that explicitly, and then giving our students time and the right context to apply. So there's accuracy always precedes proficiency. But we also need to have an eye on proficiency too. So I love that you said that don't know.
Donell Pons:Yeah, Lindsey, you made me just think about when we introduce them with intention, right. So that's the other piece that's part of a good program is that you're introducing them with intention. So they build on the information, as I've been saying systematically. And then also, when you have a nice curriculum, when you're teaching it K through two, then you do you're able to take those students through each level as they go grade by grade and not miss teaching for students and make sure that you're teaching everything that the student needs. Because on my end, when I picked up the adult learners, there are so many holes, so many holes, and oftentimes the students will say, Well, when I was in first grade, the teacher was sure to go over this aspect. But then when I got to second grade, we didn't do any of that anymore. And so your students who were struggling the most really needed a very intentional way of teaching those pieces. And so I appreciate you, Lindsay, addressing that and talking about it. And then and Stacey, I think that kind of like blended into this when we were talking about phonological awareness, but talking about just the power of going over the letters that they see and what they know about them. And that's what a good decoding program does.
Stacy Hurst:Yeah. And one really important way to deliver that instruction with a focus on feedback for accuracy. And the application is what I know in the Reading Horizons program we call dictation, but it is that we do part of the I do we do you do framework, but it is that process of applying it to spelling. And then of course, we also to Lindsay's point need to practice recognizing those same patterns we're learning in print to become proficient, not just accurate. So in practice, there's a lot that we can do with that.
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Stacy Hurst:The last strand of that lower part of the rope is sight recognition, who wants to start practical application.
Lindsay Kemeny:So when I think of this, this is just being automatic, the automaticity, right, automatically recognizing this word. So this is kind of where fluency comes into play. I think repeated readings, repetition is one of the best ways some students only need to see a word a handful of times before they have that in their memory, and others need it many, many, many times. And so that repetition, and it doesn't need to be boring, it doesn't need to be drill and kill, it can be drill and thrill, depending what the teacher brings to it.
Stacy Hurst:And, you know, I think that's really important, because the science tells us and this is along the lines of the self teaching hypothesis that once they've been taught a spelling pattern, it takes the typically developing reader three to five experiences with that pattern or word before it goes into their long term lexicon. So as teachers, if we know that that's important, but then we also know that that's typically developing readers, some students need more. And so in our instruction, we can provide them with more opportunities. And the research does clarify that is not that the just the word being in front of their eyes, it's them working through the word, decoding, doing the work not being told what it is not looking at a picture to guess, but figuring it out. So as teachers, that would be a practical application, like you said, Lindsey repetition.
Donell Pons:That's why I like to sit here with the three prong because if we've done all of these parts, and we've done them, well, then that's where you bear fruit with that sight recognition, right? And it becoming increasingly automatic for that individual, obviously, with the words that are familiar with so
Stacy Hurst:that you can't unlearn it, right? Yes. And that part of the rope to Hollis Scarborough thought it was important for us to know rightfully so that all of that happens over the process of time, it is a process. And the focus should be in becoming increasingly automatic with those skills.
Lindsay Kemeny:Just before we move on, just to tell a few more kind of more specific things. One way to practice that we're talking about repetition, but one way fun way to do it is through poetry. And Tim Brzezinski talks a lot about this. And it's been so fun this year to have my students we do a poem a week, and they practice it and reread it and we practice it together. And they practice it in partners. And then on Friday, I put them in groups and whoever wants to can perform the poem. And that's just a fun way to add that repetition. See, that's not drilling kill. That's fun. Yeah,
Stacy Hurst:building that automaticity. At the end of the first grade year, we would always put on a reader's theater play. And I had different reading groups. So we had about three or four different readers theater that parents would come. But students had a lot of fun reading that script over and over. And they were from a publisher that scaffolded the level of text.
Donell Pons:What I love about this is Lindsey that activity cuz poetry. I don't think we use it nearly enough because there's such power within being able to put things into a verse, and then that rhyme or rhythm and the imagery that can be so powerful, and that's gonna lead us up to language comprehension. Right on the other apps, you can be doing many things at once.
Stacy Hurst:Yes, yes. I love that. So while we're teaching explicitly and systematically on one level, we're still building the framework and groundwork for the next round of the rope so to speak. And then also we know the heart word approach helps with that sight recognition to not to belabor that and along the line of poetry, music. Rap is very powerful.
Lindsay Kemeny:We did that this week, where we had our poem with lyrics to a song and it was actually sung on diagraphs so fun, and oh my goodness, the kids were so in fact, one of my students after we were singing it was just like, this is the best class. I just love this class. I never want to leave, you know, she was so they were all so excited. And we even had the principal come in and we performed the song for her with the little YouTube video that it went with. It was so fun.
Stacy Hurst:It's good. And it's aligning with becoming automatic at those skills. It's not just something cute. We do write
Lindsay Kemeny:Yes. Because they're reading it, you know? Yes. Yeah.
Stacy Hurst:Love it. Okay, so in the upper strand, let's start with background knowledge. That's very important. What are some ways that and I think here, too, it's probably important to clarify. So this kind of depends on what grade you're teaching. Because like we said, orally, we are focusing on these skills verbally, when at the same time that we're teaching decoding, we'd never not want to attend to those, but it does kind of depend on the student, and what grade they're in. But background knowledge, Donal, it's something that you do to help build that.
Donell Pons:Yeah, so I have older students, right? That's I'm working with older students who have a great deal of background knowledge. But oftentimes, it's helping my students to organize and compartmentalize how they know what they know, because oftentimes, they they missed all of the steps along the way. Right. And so it seems like just kind of, well, I just know, I don't know how I know. And that's been really powerful is to help my students understand where did you get that knowledge that you have, and organize it and tap into it. So that's really interesting for the older student, I think, who does come with a great deal of information, perhaps from different sources, but they've always felt like it was disorganized, that didn't quite understand how. And it's really helping them to understand how they organize that information and received it
Stacy Hurst:and how it applies to what they're reading. Yes, absolutely. Lindsay, what do you do?
Lindsay Kemeny:First, keep teaching science and social studies, because that gets cut out sometimes. Because of time, we can't cut that out. That's where they build their background knowledge. And then also, I'd say lots of teacher read alouds and discussion allowing access to audiobooks. You know, we talked about decodable earlier, but that's not the only thing they should be exposed to. So exposing them to lots of rich text and literature.
Stacy Hurst:Yeah. And utilizing technology, they may not know if you teach in a rural community what a skyscraper is, but we can certainly pull one up on the internet and learn all about it. Right. Thank you YouTube. Okay, vocabulary. Oh, that's another one we could spend a lot of time on. How do you focus on that?
Lindsay Kemeny:Well, I learned this great strategy from Dr. Deb Glazer, in top 10 tools. And it's like this three column notes. And so on Monday, we're going to write our word. And then in the next column, we're going to write a kid friendly definition, not a dictionary definition, but a kid friendly definition. And then they're going to draw a little picture. And so they do that for like four words. And then we kind of fold our columns over so that they're like these little flashcards with the word on one side, and on the back is the definition. And then they get to quiz each other. So they love this, because we walk around the classroom, I'm just walking, walking, and then they stop. And wherever they stop, they pair up with whoever they're next to. And they quiz each other on the words, or sometimes I have them say sentences back and forth. So we can kind of do this throughout the week, it's a nice way to get them up and going and review our words. And it's an activity they really love. Hey, ya know, yeah, and
Donell Pons:so again, here, the older space, right? So I have adult learners, or typically what we do is go through, say we have a read something that we've done, and in the sentence will circle all the words that you know, circle everything that you know, in that sentence, and how you know them. And that's really interesting exercise, because there's a lot of words that they know, just because I've seen them so many times where they have a simple understanding of them. And then every now and then there's a few words that No, I don't understand what this word is, how can we take this word apart and going through looking at the words that way, having been a struggling reader when they were younger, they've never even done this sort of activity where you take a sentence apart, look at it at the word by word level. What's really nice about that for the older learners to see how much they do know, right, because you're, again, reminding them how much they do know. Because when you've struggled for so long, you can forget that there's a lot of things that I do know. And that's always something that I reinforced for older learners with reading is look at all the things that you do know.
Stacy Hurst:Yeah, I love that. And I think another district practical application is making sure we're teaching morphology morphemes that could be I really, yeah, exactly. Totally is that that does bridge, you know what they're seeing with what the meaning of those words are, even if they've never, they don't know the word language structures, syntax, semantics, all of that fun stuff. I'm gonna let Darnell answer this first. This is your realm.
Donell Pons:So again, we could spend a whole podcast on this Yes, but just quickly, just some quick quick ones to get in there. So again, woven throughout the lesson, because you will be doing sentences and you can be doing some dictation. We're always talking about the parts of speech, you know, let's break this sentence apart. And again, as an older, older learners, older students, they don't remember ever having had this opportunity Of course, it was discussed in class, but they were so busy trying to get to the top and just kind of drowning in class that they don't remember any of it. And so having that opportunity to break things down, subject, predicate, object preposition, this may be the first time in their lives, that they've known what every single word in a sentence is doing, why it's there, and what it is doing, and breaking that down for them. That is just super powerful for older students. And again, it's woven throughout the lessons, you having many opportunities, I'm not waiting for a certain part of the lesson. I'm not going to do last five minutes. But we're weaving this throughout the lesson to make sure that the students are having opportunities to do this throughout great,
Lindsay Kemeny:Lindsey, I was just gonna say that sentence level work, we don't do enough instruction at the sentence level, and even high school students can benefit from sentence level work. And so that's been really fun to implement. Even my second graders last year did amazing with dependent clauses and talking about how to add one in and then it works if you can take it out. And what is the sentence and even just little things where we're circling the pronoun in the text and pointing back to what who is that pronoun? Who is it referring to? And all that just instruction on the sentence level? The writing revolution is great for ideas to us on the sentence level. And of course, William Van Cleave is just an expert on this syntax and grammar. Yeah, we lost him last year, but his website is still running. And he has a lot of great resources.
Stacy Hurst:Yeah, and you know, I had a conversation, a professor that teaches in the classroom, I do right after one of my classes is an English professor. And he's teaching a writing class. And he said, I just had a really frustrating day. Because I was assuming they knew what a dependent clause was. These are students who want to be writers. And he had to teach dependent clauses and independent clauses they didn't know. And I think as teachers in the elementary space, especially we don't lean into that, because we aren't comfortable with it. So I'd say maybe the number one application thing is don't be afraid to lean on those resources, like the ones Lindsay just mentioned, and, and apply them verbal reasoning, inference metaphor, I can just share really quickly one activity that I done is really helpful. First graders don't infer automatically, not something developmentally, that's right on the surface, and unless you make it explicit, so I got this activity out of strategies that work. And those of us who are trying to balance literacy probably have this book on our shelves at some point, you know what I'm talking to Lindsay right? I do. So it's the activity where I told my students that I have new neighbors, and I don't know them anyway, I said, I steal their garbage, because I want to find out more about them. So I had this garbage bag, it was full of garbage. Of course I am I constructed this. It's not actual garbage. But I'm pulling out things. And as we do, we're making you know, guesses about who these mysterious neighbors are. But I think that's one way to highlight inference. We're using clues that we have, and eventually we'd say, you know, these are in the text. And then we're going to make we're going to come to conclusions based on that. And we may change our our inferences as we go along to get more information. That's a really fun way to do it. And Lindsay, what do you do?
Lindsay Kemeny:Yeah, so yeah, it's definitely teaching them to look beyond the words on a page, right. And I think Amelia Bedelia is a fun way to kind of talk about the meanings of words, I also have just, you know, like the tone of your voice can change. And the emphasis on a word in the sentence can change what it means to have a page that says, I did not say you stole my red hat. And then it has that sentence repeated, and it bolds, what you're going to emphasize to like, I did not say you stole my Red Hat, or I did not say you stole my Red Hat, right. And we talked about how just the emphasis on certain weak words changes the meaning. It's really important, I don't know,
Donell Pons:well, I just love I'm going to do a tag for poetry here, because this is another excellent place to put poetry and you can have those foods. There's always metaphor, there's always inference. But also for older students, Junior High High School, there's a program called NaNoWriMo, to national novel writing contest, and it happens every fall, but they give you some excellent free resources that you can download. And I've never had a better time with my students. And what it is, is that you create a novel, but they give you the step by step pieces to do it. And in there are so many opportunities to talk about inference, we're going to do some character development, what are the inferences we can make by the things that we say about a character I have never had students so into something, because it was nice and manageable because it's written out for them. But yet it got them really thinking about the creative aspect of language and of writing. They just hadn't had a chance to do before. I love
Stacy Hurst:that. Okay, and last but not least literacy knowledge. Lindsey, how do you apply that in your classroom?
Lindsay Kemeny:So this is where a lot of you can talk about text structures and like the elements of a story and fiction versus nonfiction and the structure of each text and also just exposing them to a wide variety of literacy style. hills and stories, that kind of thing.
Stacy Hurst:Great. Dunno. Yeah, I
Donell Pons:love this one, I could talk about this one all day, because my first love is, is writing and I was a reporter for a local newspaper. And I taught journalism in a high school setting. And I love nothing more than introducing students to different types of writing. And I would have the students go around and have an opportunity to write movie reviews, then we're going to do a human interest story, then we're going to do straight news. And it was really interesting for the students to have an opportunity not just as a consumer of print and and reading a different type of story, but to be the one writing it to produce it, because those are two very different hats that you wear as the reader and also as the writer. And it was interesting to have them step into those roles. And then I would take the same stuff that I taught in the journalism class and take it into my English classroom. And we did our little classroom newspaper where we had opportunities. So to me, it's making it interesting as you are teaching different print concepts, and you're teaching them about genres. And you can have so many different opportunities. It's there's just the, it's endless, as long as you're enjoying it, and making sure they can have the joy of it, too.
Stacy Hurst:Yeah. And writing is so expressive, that it's a really good way to focus on all of those things that we're talking about today. It's it's not as passive as reading can be. Yeah, that's really great kind of solidifies it. Well, thank you for having this conversation. I don't exactly know the very best way to sum it up, because there's so much that needs to be done in this area of bridging that research to practice. And I know that our conversation today was just focusing on that and maybe giving some practical information on how to do that. But I think it's a bigger conversation that we can continue for a long time. And hopefully, we can all help contribute to how to bridge that gap. And so thank you guys for all that you're doing and for all of your conversation today. It's been fun. Thank you.
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