Literacy Talks

Game-Changer: A Book Talk about Speech to Print: Language Essentials for Teachers

September 13, 2022 Reading Horizons Season 2 Episode 6
Literacy Talks
Game-Changer: A Book Talk about Speech to Print: Language Essentials for Teachers
Show Notes Transcript

For many of us, one book can make a profound difference in how we teach, our understanding of reading science, and our insights into how students learn to read. In this episode of Literacy Talks, our experts share the impacts that the book Speech to Print: Language Essentials for Teachers by Louisa Cook Moats, Ed.D, continues to have on their work in classrooms with young readers, pre-service teachers, and adult learners alike.

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Narrator:

Hello literacy leaders and champions. Welcome to literacy talks. We are so excited to welcome you to this podcast series from Reading Horizons dedicated to exploring the ideas, trends, insights and practical issues that will help us all improve our professional practice in teaching reading. Our series host is Stacy Hurst, professor at Southern Utah University and Chief Academic Officer of 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 led by Donell Pons is speech to print and a high impact book that's made a profound difference for our podcast hosts. Let's get started.

Stacy Hurst:

Today, we get to talk about a book that is Seminole. And there's a lot of other words that we can use to describe it. But Donell will be leading our discussion today.

Donell Pons:

Great, thank you, Stacy. You know, this is our favorite thing to do. All three of us love to chat about books. And all three of us have participated together and separately in conversations, whether we're presenting or talking. And we rattle off a list, or there are books that are referenced in a PowerPoint. And we quickly hand this off, and we assume everybody's going to dive right in and love every book. And I'm not so sure that's always what happens. Oftentimes, you meet like minded folks who have read the same book. And that's fantastic. And you can have a few minutes to talk about everything you learned from that book. But oftentimes, I'm left as someone who loves to share this information thinking, I wonder if they really did have an opportunity to get into that book to order it to check it out from the library. And so this is an opportunity even though we do have large, long lists, this is an opportunity for us to kind of take a close look at just one. So that's hard for us realize this is very hard for us to take a close look at one. But we also felt like this is Stacy said his seminal work speech to print language essentials for teachers by Dr. Louisa cook mozz. So if you're looking for it, if you want to find it somewhere, that's the full title, and it's now in its third edition. This has been Two decades since it was originally released. And Dr. moats true to her word is updating. And that's the other thing you'd like to see is, is those individuals who really understand the science of reading, are aware that this isn't everything we know it's not static, we do need updates, there will be additional research and so true to her word, she puts out nice regular updates and adds that new research and understanding. So that's always nice to say. I was thinking about her quote that we often quote about Dr. Louisa Moats. And this is just another thing to put in your mind, as we're talking about this book. She's often quoted as saying teaching reading is rocket science. And she's one of those to give it its do that when you really do dive in, you want to know everything you need to know to be that excellent reading teacher than it is a lot like rocket science, right? You're doing the research, you're doing the study. So on that note, we're gonna dive into this book, try to think of one you were introduced to the book one, that was how long ago? And then try to think of maybe one of the key elements that you took away from it. No, that's asking a lot of for some that might be reaching back. And so, Stacy, I'm gonna start with you. When did you were you introduced to this book?

Stacy Hurst:

Well, you know, just to preface this with if, if I remember correctly, I think the first edition was published in like, around 2000. Right, in the second 2010. Two decades. Yeah, yeah. And so I'm not gonna lie a little bitter that I didn't even hear about the book until after the second edition. And I feel like there were so many things informing my practice in 2000, including the first grade studies in the National Reading Panel. But man, this would have been so helpful, too, because she does do such a good job of taking it from the research to the practice side of it. So it was about the time I started working on my master's thesis, and I actually did a replicant study of her teacher knowledge survey. And so I devoured the book at that point. And I remember it to this day saying it's the same story. The introduction just sings to me, because she sets the stage for why this is so important. And I just I really remember relating so strongly to that. It's emotional. There's no other word for it. I was just like, Yes, this is what we need. She talks about teacher preparation, and the fact the relationship between knowledge and practice and the impact that has anyway I just remember feeling like I have found the thing I need. Yeah, it was so yeah, so critical to me.

Donell Pons:

Okay, so Stacy switching from that gear to Lindsay, how about you? When were you introduced?

Lindsay Kemeny:

Yeah, much later than Stacy. So I didn't even I don't even think I knew who Louisa Moats was till about 2018. And I think that's the year that my son was diagnosed with dyslexia. So, you know, I knew who Fountas and Pinnell were. But I didn't know Louisa Moats. And then that journey, which I talked about before, led me to investigate dyslexia and researching dyslexia brought me to how the brain learns to read and the what we call now the science of reading and Louisa Moats. So I read a lot of her articles I read teaching, reading is rocket science, but I didn't read speech to print until actually the third edition came out, which was in 2020. So two years later, I'm actually glad that I didn't read speech to print first, because I don't think it's the best choice for beginners. I think it's a little bit heavy and technical. I just, I needed some background knowledge, I think it was more helpful for me to have some good background knowledge before I read it.

Donell Pons:

And that's interesting, Lindsay, you should mention that, because that was one of the things in reading about speech to print and the history of how it came to be that Dr. moats over time with each revision has tried to make it more user friendly and approachable for educators. So I think that's really interesting that you should mention that. And there does seem to be and we've addressed it before in the podcast, a gap between where teachers are when they exit a teacher preparation program, and where the expectation is of where they should be with their knowledge when they enter a classroom. Right. We've talked about this so many times that deep chasm, that wide Canyon, and as you talk about Lindsay, had you been introduced to this very early on having come freshly out of a program, it would have been a lot to take on right to think and to digest. And I'm kind of in the middle between YouTube sitting between Stacey and Lindsey, in terms of when I was introduced to speech to print. And it's interesting to me how many people have a similar story as to yours, Lindsey, that you really get into the nitty gritty when you have someone who's struggling, right when you really come in touch with the struggling student. And then that realization that all of this good knowledge and information benefits, not just the struggling student, but the entire classroom, right, we can accelerate learning for everybody is the other piece that you quickly catch on to is, this is really good for anybody. And I'm kind of sitting in between timeline wise, between the two of you when I came onto this. And I think I've mentioned my first introduction to really understanding reading and getting into it obviously was with my own child, and was with overcoming dyslexia with Dr. Sally Shaywitz. And there's always mentioning of other individuals and researchers that you see happening within work. And Dr. motes, of course, is one of those. Now, Stacy, you mentioned some interesting things that you were pulling out of it that you found, let's zero in on a few of those that came out of speech to print for you.

Stacy Hurst:

Yeah, for sure. And I think a lot of it is just her body of work, Louise, the most specific body of work in general. But I am always fascinated with the intersection between knowledge and practice. And as I mentioned, my master's thesis was a replicant study. And that's where I learned that we have a lot of studies that have measured teacher knowledge, it's a little tougher to measure practice, we don't have as much research on the impact teacher knowledge has on student performance. And there's a step in between all of that, which is practice. So What influence does knowledge have on practice would influence practice having student reading ability, but this quote really kind of helps put things into perspective, I returned to it frequently. What does an effective teacher actually do, I should say, this is in the introduction, part two, hundreds of small decisions guide the teachers actions hour to hour in the course of any day, the teacher must continually peek children's motivation to read and write, by showing them that it is possible to progress given instruction that is on target and engaging them by whatever means necessary. The teacher is also responsible for introducing students to different kinds of texts, and organize the class so that he or she can instruct smaller groups, she really sets up the fact that there are million decisions that teachers need to be equipped to make in the day. And then she also the section title, where that quote is, is titled The importance of teaching students not programs. And I think that's vital. You can hand a teacher the best organized, well written program, and it's still not going to guarantee that you're going to meet the needs of every student, because you have as a teacher need to have the knowledge to know how to address those needs as they arise. And you can't script that. Right.

Lindsay Kemeny:

Yeah, that's why I almost think it's like, not best practice to tell teachers to teach this program with fidelity. Because I think it's like, well, you know, they didn't Understand this. So I gotta change a little bit at the next part of the lesson. I can't just keep reading that script or,

Stacy Hurst:

yeah, I think that's an interesting conversation and maybe one for another time too, because I think especially we've alluded to that talking about this book that you can't hand it probably to just a random teacher and have them know how to put it into practice. I know that based on Dr. motes, is, in my opinion, achieved goal in life, to help teachers understand what they need to know, letters training evolved out of that. But something I frequently hear from that is, yes, we've learned a lot, but how do you implement it? So I do think it is a balance, but also because some of these concepts are so sophisticated compared to what we learned in our pre service programs. I think a script is sometimes necessary.

Lindsay Kemeny:

Yeah, I definitely think it's necessary. And I'm not saying it like that. But yeah, a good teacher knows when they maybe need to go off a little bit or Yeah, you know what I mean? Yeah.

Stacy Hurst:

Because it seems like some teachers have a death grip on the fidelity piece. Yeah.

Lindsay Kemeny:

And that's what I mean.

Donell Pons:

And Lindsey, I understood that it mean, just knowing you in practice, it's really understanding the fidelity part is understanding all the components and what they do within the lesson right before you abandon and I think you absolutely, Lindsay, as an educator, know that entirely. That's, you're speaking from that experience, where you're saying that, so that makes sense to me. Yeah. Interesting. I

Stacy Hurst:

love that. And let's make a note, because I think this is another conversation epic. Yeah. And the definition of fidelity, right? Yeah. Because I think teachers are you probably we can probably ask 10 teachers and maybe get 10 different.

Lindsay Kemeny:

That's true. That would be interesting, because people probably interpret it differently.

Stacy Hurst:

Yeah,

Donell Pons:

Kate, Lindsey, how about you? What is something you Stacy's told us her is what she took away?

Lindsay Kemeny:

Okay, so it was so fun just leafing through the book last night. And so I just was kind of rereading all the things that I had highlighted. And it's like, I forgot just all the powerful nuggets in this book, there's so many good things. So it was really hard to choose. I picked out this one section. Well, I picked out a few so if we have time, you know, I'm reading with backup answers. I picked out this one part and then it was really fun. So I put a little post it note in there and then I went on and was like wasting time on social media. And someone reached out to me and a teacher in a in a Facebook group. And she said this comment was just made earlier today by a teacher. And I kind of froze helped me know how to respond next time. It was so awesome because I just like opened up speech to print and to that little poster I snapped a picture and I'm like, here you are next time and she's like Louisa Moats ready with the mic drop and I'm like, That's right. So the teacher had made this comment this person has said Why bother teaching students phonics basically all the phonics correspondences when the English is only 50% predictable English spelling's only 50% predictable anyway, and so this quote is on page 124. And she says consider the facts 50% of common English vocabulary can be spelled accurately by phoneme grapheme correspondences alone, okay. 36% More can be spelled with one error using only phoneme grapheme correspondence rules, then 10% More are spelled accurately if word origin, word meaning and morphology are considered. And fewer than 4% are true oddities. So she says, If multiple layers of language organization are taken into account, English is a predictable and rule based system of writing. And isn't that we hear that all the time. English is crazy. It's not predictable. And so I love that right there. That's awesome. I've

Stacy Hurst:

marked that page too. Yes, and for this reason, and I know it's ironic, because I spent a good portion of my career working for, you know, writing curriculum for a phonics program. But structured literacy is not just phonics. And that's why we need to do more than phonics. And this book really helps us to know what those layers are, and how to approach them. So that teachers point about why do we teach phonics? We'll the question should be what else? Do we need to teach? Phonics? Yes. Why a why wouldn't we? That's half the equation. And be what else do we need to be addressing? And I love

Donell Pons:

that she leans into the numbers, because the numbers do all the work, right? There they are. And trust her for that. That's what I love, too. I was going to say my one of my favorite, there are so many favorite parts. And everybody we're all nodding our heads. And when Lindsey talked about the sticky note pad, I went through several lessons, just re embracing many of the concepts in the book. But Stacy mentioned the term structured literacy and I'm leaning into this one because social media again, someone was posting about the term structured literacy and struggling with it. There was someone who was struggling with the term structured literacy hung up on syllables and saying that well, it truly can't be the speech to print that I want or that I was taught about because As you talk about syllable types, and I thought that was really interesting that she's hung up on one concept and so I thumbed through the book and of course, trust Louisa Moats, she again has that that nice pithy phrase, but on page 20, to 21. And this is I'm in third edition. And I'm really going to lean in over on page 21. But she takes apart structured literacy. So bless her. Thank you, Louisa Moats does the heavy lifting. And she takes apart the term structured literacy. And so again, nice updates, because that term has evolved over time. And she's gone ahead and taken it apart. But on page 21, she goes ahead and kind of breaks it apart structured literacy, and she has seven principles of it that she goes into. And I highly recommend that you don't take my hodgepodge, but read the seven principles in their entirety. But number three on our principles, she says, It's better to teach the code of written English systematically and explicitly than it is to teach it randomly indirectly. Or incidentally, lining us up for yr was there syllables, the units for instruction, and she puts in parentheses, sound syllable, morpheme word should vary according to students reading and spelling skill. So don't you love her pointing out why we're doing what we're doing explicitly and systematically. But also that room like you said, Lindsay before for a teacher to know should vary according to student's reading and spelling skill. And that's where teacher knowledge about their students comes into play. And then she also goes on to talk a little bit more about syllables. But I just love the way she so very clearly lays it out. So yes, it's a dense volume. But she does a really, I think, good job of laying it out very clearly and succinctly. It's worth rereading, and you'll have to probably do several rereads, because it is pretty deep. But she also lays it out really well.

Narrator:

Get all the resources discussed during literacy talks, podcast episodes, and stay up to date about webinars and other special events from Reading Horizons, go to reading horizons.com/literacy talks, and subscribe to our podcast digest. So you're always in the know about everything literacy.

Stacy Hurst:

So to your point about structured literacy, you notice the last chapter, it's new to the third edition. And she titled it structured language and literacy instruction. There's a lot of really good information in there. But it reminded me well, you all know where I stand on this. I feel like we need to embrace lean into use more often the term structured literacy as opposed to the way that the term science of reading, it gets confused with that. But I it was a good reminder to me, I like further refining it to say structured language and literacy. And yeah,

Donell Pons:

yeah, I'm glad you brought that up about the title because I like that, too. Lindsey, you had something you wanted to say, Oh,

Lindsay Kemeny:

well, it was is kind of just along the same lines. I was gonna say, hey, there's more about structured literacy at the end of the book. And when I was revisiting it last night, I'm like, oh, okay, I didn't I don't remember that she had this whole section on structured literacy, talking about like, the, all the different parts, you know, multimodal diagnostic, explicit, systematic, and kind of a basic lesson plan with possible minutes and everything. And so I just, I love that. And I think so for me, like earlier, I was talking about how it was felt like, this wasn't the best choice for me as a, as a beginner, I, it was good for me to read some other books, and then read this. And I think a lot of that it could be at the beginning, where she gets really technical with all the sounds of language, and possibly that could be a little overwhelming at first. So I would just say to someone who's reading it, keep going, because there's a lot of great information throughout, there's more to it than just the speech sounds.

Stacy Hurst:

I might recommend start with that last chapter. Exactly.

Donell Pons:

I would say Sam was leaning into what you're going to say, in fact, the index. So just going through the index and looking at subjects, because trust me, anything that you've had a question about, is is listed in her index. And then you can just go to that section to that's a nice thing to do, as well pick things you're familiar with, to maybe get your feet under you with how motes presents and how that information is in context. And then you could also be doing the full read as well. So there are lots of ways to approach this. Until you love having it on your desk for answering questions. Yes, your first go to isn't it? Because, you know, if the answer isn't there, you'd probably get close enough to direct it to your next level to be able to find the answer.

Lindsay Kemeny:

So I tend to go to her also authored by Louisa Moats, her letters, manuals. I kind of think I go to those first because I think they're a little more accessible for beginners. I mean, I'm not a beginner anymore. Sometimes I appreciate approach to

Donell Pons:

any exam. I'm glad you brought up letters because that's going to be a whole other podcast. It's going to be talking about letters, clearly but you're absolutely right, Lindsay between those two volumes, those two works. You do have at your fingertips. So much of everything you need really have everything you need. Right. And Stacey, you've been through letters training a long time Imago because there are many people just coming to it for the first time, it's kind of having a resurgence we've noticed across the country. Yeah.

Stacy Hurst:

And you know, it was very helpful at the time, it was separated into different modules, more manuals, but there were shorter. But it was still really good information. I would just echo what you both are saying too, about rereading anything that we've been talking about today, and just layering it in. And you know, don't feel like you have to read it from cover to cover, right? You've mentioned the index dot o go there. Find if there's something you're looking for that also the glossary very good as well. And so if you're wondering what a term is, it's a good place to go.

Lindsay Kemeny:

Yeah, because I remember at first being like grapheme phoneme, you know, when I first came, science of reading, what are all these terms? Now? I feel like how could you not know that? You know, but I remember at first having to look that up and having colleagues who kept asking, Okay, so wait, what's a graphene? Which ones graphene?

Stacy Hurst:

Do you know, the only term I knew was diphthong. And that was from my vocal training from singing. Oh, sad is that like, anyway, so yeah, she's bringing to light a lot of things that we should have known a long time ago,

Donell Pons:

you know, what I was going to add to that glossary to, it's important, because there's a lot of things we can google search today. And you're just find Google searching them. But some of this terminology, you got to be careful with, because oftentimes just not a popularity, but not necessarily accuracy, things pop up first. And so particularly on the terminology, I've always been good to go back to particularly one of these books like votes in speech to print to make sure that the definition is correct. Because I've been noticing that the more popular terms become, they kind of get co opted into conversations that people are having. And so I've had to be careful with some of my Google searches. I don't know if you guys have noticed that as well, in what you're receiving the information that you're getting, okay, I'm going to have to do it guys. I'm going to I'm going to ask you to crack into chapter four. Because this is one of my favorites. And when you're doing that hopping around in the book, I highly recommend if you're going to hop Chapter Four is one of those you're going to hop to and that's the structure of English orthography. Yeah, right. Stacy's eyes like up. Nerds, nerds, right. Yep. What I love about it, though, is she's done a really good job. I think Dr. motes has because again, realize that even though we've been speaking English our entire lives, in many of us, we've never had the opportunity to learn another language. So it is the only language right? You've been exposed to that this history of the language that you have spoken your entire life is going to be new to you. I mean, that just right there. And then what I love about that realization is that once it's yours, your students are never going to have to be like that because of you. Because now you have that history. And it is such a an L kind of door opener, isn't it to understand the history of your own language that I can't imagine why we don't do more of it. And so Lindsay and Stacey, I'm gonna ask you both because you both teach in very different environments. Stacy, you're on the higher ed end of it, teachers entering into the school system. And then Lindsey, you're teaching and you're teaching young students, I like to kind of hear a little bit about how you take the history of English and maybe weave that into what you're teaching and how it informs how you teach your students. Yeah, I

Lindsay Kemeny:

think I do it gradually. Throughout lessons. For example, we were reviewing pH yesterday. So I am bringing in Greek words are the ones where we're going to have a pH. And these are mostly kind of your science words. And I'm just kind of quickly giving them this little you know, but they know I get so excited. It's so fun. When you find a spelling that's a little strange. There's probably a reason or story behind it, which is exciting.

Donell Pons:

Gosh, I love that. I love hearing how you weave that in there. And Stacey, how

Stacy Hurst:

about for you? Yeah, and I always say there are more explanations than there are exceptions, especially when it comes to spelling and pronunciation. I have two perspectives to that because even with my first graders, sometimes with pronunciation if we talk like Harry Potter, then we can help emphasize that the spelling is the same, but sometimes the pronunciation changes for I'm thinking of our controlled vowels, specifically in England, they don't really pronounce in the same way we do. So that was helpful. And then we talk about where a word comes from, right. But with my pre service teachers, that is where I have so many lightbulb moments, right in class. You know, I frequently use the word Colonel to demonstrate that because it is so crazy the way that it's spelled and the way we pronounce it. But once we talk about the history of it, I was teaching them about the phones theme WR the other day, and how that has meaning attached to it. Any word that starts with WR has something to do with twisting. The thing I love about my pre service teachers is they immediately try to find the exception. And so we went through all of them. We looked up the word wrath, which means the origin the definition didn't tell us this. But the origin of the word told us that it may meant twisted anger. And so that was that's a really fun way. To involve those and then I do frequently when I'm working with teachers training them as well. I will say anything that phonics can't answer in the way of why something is spelled the way it is compared to how we pronounce it. We look to the history of the word. That's just a really simple and easy thing to do. You know, Edom online.com. Yeah, I

Lindsay Kemeny:

was just gonna say that best resource

Stacy Hurst:

for that there are others. In fact, I just got a book. Oh, don't

Donell Pons:

you dare, Stacy. Oh, I

Unknown:

know. It's really great, guys.

Donell Pons:

Don't you dare introduce us to another

Stacy Hurst:

once upon a word. Oh, origin dictionary for kids, though. Oh, that's cool. Is that like, is super friendly that way? Oh, nice. All right, not to derail is by another book rewrite. We're focusing on one book today, one book, okay.

Donell Pons:

We're nearing the end of our conversation. And so I appreciate you, Stacy, bringing us back to these resources that are now available to us online. So being able to research as you say, the origin of a word and having that right at your fingertips. You don't have to go find a book and make sure it's a book that goes far enough, deep enough. But we can rather search it up online, how fun that is for our students to to involve them in that and all these wonderful things. What a great conversation, you guys. I mean, thank you so much. I appreciate being able to chat about this book with you.

Stacy Hurst:

That's a great idea. Can I just say thank you for bringing it up. Again. I have my copy. Anybody can look through it. I have it marked. I mean, I've been referring to it for years. But I it is really timely because next week I get to teach my students about morphology and I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm gonna go here. Thank you.

Narrator:

Thanks for listening to literacy talks, the podcast series for literacy leaders and champions everywhere. Literacy talks comes to you and your colleagues from Reading Horizons, we're reading momentum begins. Visit reading horizons.com/literacy talks often for resources, ideas and great literacy learning conversations, subscribe to our podcast digest and you'll always be up to date on all things literacy. See you next time.