Literacy Talks

Are We Overcorrecting? Making a Case for Clearing the Confusion

December 06, 2022 Reading Horizons Season 2 Episode 12
Literacy Talks
Are We Overcorrecting? Making a Case for Clearing the Confusion
Show Notes Transcript

In the world of education and instructional approaches, the pendulum is always swinging. In early literacy, there’s a new and welcome emphasis on applying the science of reading to teaching practices and curriculum content. In this episode of Literacy Talks, our trio of literacy experts explores the bigger picture, helping educators and administrators alike think about their literacy programs as a strategic mix of components. Phonics is at the core as the training wheels for building skills in comprehension, writing, and reading to learn. It’s an eye-opening discussion with context and perspectives that will help us understand the what, how, why, and when of reading science in the classroom.  

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Narrator:

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 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 episode is all about the need to look at literacy instruction through the lens of each child's reading development needs. Our literacy experts explore what the science of reading is really all about, and how we can move beyond the perception that it's only phonics. It's an important conversation. So let's get started.

Stacy Hurst:

Welcome to another episode of literacy talks. I'm Stacy Hurst. I'm the host and I'm joined by my awesome co hosts, Lindsay Kemeny and Donell Pons. And as you know, by now, if you've been listening for a while, we take turns choosing the topic. And I'm happy to say this week, it was not my turn. It's Lindsay. She gave us a little teaser in a meeting last week. And I'm really excited to see how this episode goes. It'll be a fun conversation. Lindsay, why don't you tell us what it is?

Lindsay Kemeny:

Yeah, so this is something that I've been thinking about for a while. And it's just that sometimes we have this tendency to kind of overcorrect, what we're doing. And it's just I see a lot of confusion out there, where sometimes things aren't always black or white. And it's kind of more like in the middle. We were talking about this a little bit when we talked about Tim Shanahan's blog post, and we're tipping the boats, and how you know, I think the boat was in even I can't remember the story in his blog. But so everyone went to the other side. And then you know, we're taping the boat that way, where we need to spread things out to even it out a little bit more. And so we talked about this last time with phonics and how, you know, we've gone from, you know, polling, which where it was really no phonics, to some people are incorrectly saying that the science of reading is all about phonics, and it's a phonics only approach, which is not what it is. And anyone that understands the science of reading, and is that an advocate for the science of reading knows there's so much more and hopefully you know that if you've been listening to our podcast, however, there are some people that are overcorrecting and really only focusing on phonics in their classrooms, which can be a mistake. And so we talked about this last time out this like overcorrection, right. So I just have some other things that I was thinking about, that tend to kind of I don't know, get a little bit muddy sometimes. And I just want to get your guys's reactions, and we'll talk about it and maybe hopefully clear up some confusion. So the first thing, decodable texts, we've had a whole podcast episode on this, and a lot of advocates for the science of reading are saying, you know, we have this phonics, this is so great to practice those phonics concepts with connected text. And one way to do that is through Dakota rules. But then I see some things online, for example, I see a fourth grade teacher who is commenting, I teach fourth grade, what are some good decodable ZZ for my class? What's the problem with that? Who wants to take it? Stacy?

Stacy Hurst:

I know dono has definite opinions about this, too. So I'm looking forward to hearing what you have to say as well don't know, I think in fourth grade, if that's all they're using as decodable texts, then that's problematic. I'd also say for the typically developing fourth grader, not necessary, right. For those who are struggling or are developing still, then absolutely, that's a scaffold that they need. And I think we talked about this on our episode, I think the Decodable text is a scaffold. And the important thing about scaffolding is it it needs to go away eventually. And I think by fourth grade for most of our students, it should be not there.

Lindsay Kemeny:

Exactly. Most of the students are not going to need to in fourth grade, there's going to be a little subset though, that that's going to be helpful for but if you're looking for your whole class, they shouldn't need them by by then. Don't know.

Donell Pons:

You know, I can see Lindsey why alarm bells go off when you see just a blanket statement like that, because it's so problematic to just make a statement like that. And as both of you have pointed out, we're backtracking to say why did you say that? So why is the teacher saying that they need decodable text in fourth grade right? So then the teacher is a lot on. Have you Get your students. Do you understand where they are? Do you understand their reading development so that it opens the door for a whole host of questions I have about what the teacher understands about reading in fourth grade, right, as you both have stated to very well and articulately. The other thing is, is that we know that we do have struggling readers that are in fourth grade. Unfortunately, all across the country, some states have more, some cities have more than others. So they do need opportunities, like Stacey had stated, you know, they need opportunities to be able to work in that text. And if we're teaching skills, and relating those skills to that tech, so they have an opportunity to then practice those skills within that text. That's where that comes into play. But notice, that's a really specific instance that I've just noted right there, there are a lot of pieces that went into it. I didn't just say, blanket. And as both of you have pointed out by fourth grade, if we've done our job, and we were on it, we had all those things go in and that early space, then we're not needing it in fourth grade.

Lindsay Kemeny:

And Donal, you've talked before. And so maybe you can mention this again, because you are teaching adults who are struggling readers. And so I imagine that you give them decodable rules to help some of those phonics concepts, but you're also giving them authentic text, right? Do you want to talk a little bit about how you use both of those?

Donell Pons:

Yeah, absolutely. And depending on the student, so I may have an adult who is well beyond being in any sort of school program. And so the world text that we're using, or you know, the the environmental tax, whatever text is they're being presented may look different than the student who is in college, I could never read any of the Shakespeare plays are now being accountable to know some of the Shakespeare plays, I'm finding text that maybe has been, we're gonna use another problematic term, Don't roll your eyes leveled. That's one that maybe teachers will understand. But in other words, we're working with the text so that it's not at a level where the student is an app. It's not decodable text by any means. But it has been brought to a level that the student might have the skills for, right. And so we can have a whole conversation about that, too. And that's a different instance. So again, notice how I didn't give you just one blanket answer. I didn't say, oh, every time I'm going to do this, I said, depending on the student, I may use. And so that's the important piece here is my background is as a teacher, staying up with what I know in the science of reading, and the best approach for helping my students and then also, knowing my students, right.

Lindsay Kemeny:

That's so good. And I love we talked before how decodable texts are like training wheels, and we do want to get rid of them as soon as possible. So we don't want to keep them in decodable texts forever. And sometimes people equate science of reading to decodable text is what they're saying. So then they think everything else is bad. When we're saying decodable texts for beginning readers, and you want to move them out of them, right and you you want to do that shift. And definitely in second grade, most of my students were out but there was a lot I'm still transitioning. If they're guesser, if they guess a lot in those regular authentic texts, then I'm putting them back into a decodable to really get practice and solidify their sound spelling correspondences, but this is never everything they're exposed to. In kindergarten, I'm having them read when they're practicing the reading is decodable. But I am reading to them, grade level text more complex text, and we're talking about it discussing vocabulary and higher level thinking, you know, we don't just expose to decodable. So now I'm teaching first grade, if a student wants to pull out, Pete the cat, and they're going to browse that story. That's great. They can't read it yet. And that's okay. Because you know what they can they've, they've heard that they've heard me read it to them, they might want to retell the story themselves as they're looking at the pictures. That's wonderful. They're not reading, and I'm not counting that as their reading time, you know, but if they're browsing that that's wonderful. They're enjoying books, and I want them to enjoy books. So, Donna

Donell Pons:

and Lindsey, I would add to that with the older students, because that's one, as you say, a lot of the work that I've done when parents are working with their young ones at home, because this is another question that comes up a lot of time I spend only so much time with them, but their parents spend a great deal of time with them. And they always ask what can I do to help support? Right? It's always the question. I know, they asked it for youngers too. But if you've got a struggling reader that's continued on, you're still in that space. And so oftentimes, like you said, you'll have an older student who has a text that a lot of the students are reading around them, they're talking about this book or that book, and they don't have the skills to be reading it, then they can choose that. And the parent reads with the student and reads, as you say, so they get exposure, they get to hear that text, they get to talk about what's happening in those stories and talk about the storylines and the characters. And then they're also doing a text that they can read write more controlled texts that they're able to read on their own.

Stacy Hurst:

Yeah, I'm also thinking about what you would be covering in literacy instruction in fourth grade. And part of that would be morphology, right? So a lot of morphemes can be specific to content areas. So you'd want to choose texts that have the words that are the morphemes that you're focusing on. instruction in the text as well. And at that point, it would not just be reading them, but also writing those words that have those morphemes that you're focusing on. And to

Donell Pons:

add what Stacey said, just so nobody misunderstands, I'm not just picking stuff out of the air that I'm using with adults, I have a program, right, we're up. We're on a schedule. I mean, it's very structured, right? I'm using that there's method to what I'm doing. Yeah.

Stacy Hurst:

Yeah, I'm almost wondering Lindsey, because of your great question. And we do call it decodable text. But I think if we take a step back, right, maybe it is just scaffold the text. And the way you scaffold is different, depending on the learner.

Lindsay Kemeny:

Yeah. And then when you get them in complex text, grade level text, you can scaffold that. And so like in second grade, you know, and in first grade, besides, if we need to quotables in small group, which most of mine in first grade right now, do, some don't. But in our whole group, we just have a first grade, authentic texts that we read all together. And I'm going to scaffold that like I'm going to do echo reading, I read a small part, they read a small part, or we're going to do choral reading, when we're reading it all together, I just model it for all of these, their finger has to be following tracking with me, you know, and after we've done that, then we can partner read, and I'm intentional with how I set those partners up. So I've done a lot of things to help them get ready for this complex texts. And then let's add here because Donnelly, you kind of brought this up a little bit, and I was going to add it in is that this level text, and I see teachers saying, oh, so no leveled text in my classroom, I can have no level text. And then this is also where it gets confused with the Okay, so I guess we only read decodable texts. This is not right, either. And I guess maybe we need to define level text. Because to me, any text can be leveled. So when someone says level text, I'm just thinking any authentic text, and no, we should get rid of those. Because I have some comments on that. I have

Stacy Hurst:

so much to say. And when I'm you just give me the Shut up sign. I will. But I think of this. I'm sorry, this is very personal for me. Because as a pre service teacher, I actually learned about readability formulas. I don't hear that happening anymore. And I had great professors who helped me understand that. So that gave me the impression that anytime we're talking about a Lexile level already level, that there is a very solid formula behind that. Right. And I think I was nuanced enough to know that there were different formulas, and they focus on different things. But generally speaking, it was a very reliable way to do that. So I'm your one year two into teaching first grade. And as we've talked about on this podcast before, I've fully embraced the balanced literacy approach, I mean, fully, I'm all in. Again, thank you National Reading Panel for helping me not be only that, right. Science was guiding my decisions. But when it came to that level text, I remember thinking, you know, I want to know how these are leveled. And I got to the point where I literally could look at a book and say, That's level B. That's Level II. And I was just like, kind of gut feeling it right. Well, when I did my research, I couldn't find the formula. I finally found the formula and I am going to say, those names that shall not be spoken Fountas and Pinnell. It was that formula that leveling system and when I found how they determined those, literally, you guys, my heart sank. That was a moment. This is why it's personally I just found out that, you know, something that I had been really anchoring all of my instruction on was based on gut feeling, essentially, or how many words on the page or even pictures supporting those words and all of these things that were not formulaic, really. And then when I found out they just put a lot of teachers in the same room and they discussed and came to consensus about that level. Now looking back, I can see what that did to my students literally. And I will have to say in Fountas, and Pinnell his defense, they always encouraged that students not know what level they were on. But the second I told the parent not to say that they did. So the students are constantly comparing. So anyway, I think that we can still use level texts. I'm also thinking about the time as a literacy coach we've spent as a country, you guys probably billions of dollars on level text. So let's not just throw them out there still text, but the way we scaffold them currently for use in the classroom should be through the lens of what we know about science and what tech students should be encountering as they're learning to read. You guys are are so nice. You haven't given me the Be quiet. I'm going to be quiet now. But that is yeah, there's that's a good question, really good topic to discuss,

Donell Pons:

Stacey, I really appreciate you laying that groundwork and foundation for us and having this conversation there will be There's much more we could say, like we said, we've done a whole podcast on various aspects of this. But one thing that I think you pointed to and indicated, Stacey that if you aren't doing it, maybe you should and try it out. Whenever you do recommend, say, a series of books or a way of helping a parent find a book for their student, you're going to be talking about some sort of, well, what books should I recommend for my student, and you're gonna have to have some sense of what they can read, right? So we're going to be talking about whatever this is level, whatever you want to call it, in order to help people find a just write text, right? Otherwise, you're reading above or below. And so this is a conversation that's going to crop up everywhere. But I would recommend that whenever you're talking about a particular book or series, like Stacy said, they're not all the same. So maybe scholastic has a way of putting a level on a text that feels and reads differently than, say, another series of books. So being familiar with what it is you're recommending, I think, is really important and critical in this conversation. Because as you say, Stacy, not all things are equal when you're having that conversation. Yeah, and

Stacy Hurst:

importantly, I think, determining how that level is, knowing how that level is determined is important. The Common Core State Standards chose to use the Lexile formula for leveling text, which has some value, especially when you're talking about comprehension. But in every case that I'm familiar with, those levels are determined the student is given a Lexile, it's a multiple choice test, right, and they're focusing on comprehension. So wouldn't be as sensitive to decode ability, as we might think it would be

Lindsay Kemeny:

in any book can be leveled. And so that doesn't mean that we want to get rid of those books. The only books that I really suggest that you set aside are typically levels A through D, if you do those guided reading levels, and that is because those are specifically written to like these repetitive texts, that the only way to read them is to memorize the pattern of the text and to guess from the pictures. And that was why they were written. So those ones I suggest you replace with Dakota bowls. And then all your others, even though they're leveled doesn't mean they're bad books, they're great authentic books, by all means, have your kids reading, you know, frog and toad and you know, all those other great literature out there. We're not leveling our kids, the books are level. So we're not saying this child can only read this level of text, because as you heard, the way people level texts is really different. It can be kind of arbitrary sometimes. And students can read more complex text if they have background knowledge in that. So it's really going to vary what they can read. So then, because of this, like levels thing, here's the comments that I heard that I was really taken aback by where this teacher was saying in her school district, they are switching to the science of reading, so there are no more levels. And they said, the teachers are not allowed to say if the student is on above or below grade level. And that's how they interpreted this. So reactions to that.

Donell Pons:

My first question is to what end? You know, how does this help? Right? What how is this informing that's kind of an interesting thing. And then I go back to Lindsey, you made the point of not telling a student that they're leveled right with their reading, because it all should be fair game. You can read anything below what's really comfortable at and maybe pushing you a little bit and anything above like you say, it's all fair game. So to hear even this, taking it to the soul, we're not even allowed to say that's really interesting. Stacey, you're ready to jump in and tell me what you're thinking?

Stacy Hurst:

Yeah. Well, I'm curious. I have a lot of questions about that. I'm intrigued by that comment, but I'm also wondering what they would say instead, right?

Lindsay Kemeny:

And that's maybe teacher was asking, she came on and she says we can't do levels. So you she's like, What can I use them to tell them where they're at? And I said, Hey, could you use a cadence? That's what I use. It's a free screener. And then that will tell you if they're on below or above grade level. And that's where she came back and said, they weren't even allowed to say that.

Donell Pons:

I do wonder what motivated it because I'm often baffled by students who graduate from high school, they're reading on a third grade level, and I thought we never had a conversation at any point as to where this student was reading. Right. So that wasn't helpful. Clearly, the student who's now graduated from high school would like to go on to college. She was very bright is going to struggle, because obviously we didn't have the reading conversation early on and hard enough.

Lindsay Kemeny:

Yeah. And you know what, what like pains me is when I see things like this is they attribute it to the science of reading with just more muddies the name and, you know, because I saw another parent note that was saying, because of the science reading, we're not sending home other books, we're only sending home decodable books and I was like, ah, that's, you know, it's just like I said, we're tipping the boat a little bit, and we're just confusing things. And so, you know, yes, we should be able to tell parents and see if our students are on grade level, or, you know, working towards grade level, you know where they're at. Okay, here's another one. Flashcards. So because a lot of what we talked about high frequency words, and you know, kind of this over reliance before on using flashcards to teach those and to memorize the whole thing as a word. So now I hear people saying no flashcards at all. What do you think of that?

Stacy Hurst:

Well, I actually just taught my students to create those after they study the high frequency words that the students are tutoring, and to make sure they have a deck that they're reviewing. I think as long as we're focusing on that phoneme grapheme correspondence, initially at first, right, anything cognitively that we want to be automatic has to happen slowly at first. Yeah, repetition, I think is good. And then making sure that they can also produce those in writing, not just recognize them in reading. Yeah, not to throw that baby out with the bathwater.

Lindsay Kemeny:

Exactly. Good. Did you want to add something? No, no.

Donell Pons:

Yeah, I'd like to respond, Stacy, that's solid spot on. And it also has a lot of utility for students who have have struggled for a long time to have a group of words that they're really familiar with. But again, you've taught correctly, right? It's not just we're not just flashing these, as Stacey said, we've met, we've done the work the hard work of doing the teaching of why we're doing what we're doing. But then to get that automaticity that level of feeling like I can get these words and recognize them as Louise emote said, we're working towards having every word be a sight word, meaning I can recognize it on site, right? She just said that recently. Again, it really made me think so all of this goes into that area of helping a student develop that sense of confidence, right?

Stacy Hurst:

I as a reading specialist and literacy coach worked with a first grade teacher who did a whole lot of lists and flashcards. And I think that was the bulk of the instruction, because her students could pass off those lists, they can pass off the flashcards, but did not recognize the same word and connected text in a sentence. And so if we're using something like flash cards, just making sure a we do the teaching first, and that we're not limiting the recognition to that card.

Donell Pons:

That's an excellent point. And make sure that in those flashcard words, too, you're not using words that need context to be pronounced correctly, because that can really throw students off to I've seen lists of words to like that, that need context. Right? Yeah. Anyway, all those things, you're saying,

Lindsay Kemeny:

that's such a good point, because I like years ago, when I would send home with kindergarten, I'd have like three words on a little column page, they pass those off, and they go to the next three, next three. And they would kind of memorize which ones were together on the card. So that really helped them. And so what a good you know, let's emphasize that so you can have those flashcards for repetition, but then you need to also practice in context, right with connected texts. So that's so great. And then just also, we can't just judge a teacher suddenly, because, oh, they have flashcards. Because maybe they have hopefully intentionally and explicitly taught that thing on the flashcard. And this is a review. So

Stacy Hurst:

and you know, I used something a little bit similar when I taught first grade, but it wasn't necessarily the flashcard it was old technology. You guys remember overhead projectors? Remember those? I used to use those. What are they called now that the you know the pages or I'd write it right on the projector, splash it off and on really fast and see if my students could recognize it. And I meant well, right. But if I hadn't taught the pattern or the word on the same on the phoneme grapheme level, then most of my students struggled with it until we had more experience with the word and phonics.

Donell Pons:

Stacey, I'm gonna own that I became a teacher solely because of that overhead. I wanted to be able to do the transparency in the worst way. I thought that looks so cool.

Stacy Hurst:

You know, I worked with a school. Unfortunately, their school had caught on fire in the summer. Thankfully, nobody was hurt. But when they rebuilt it, they did not purchase overhead projectors, and there was a large contingency of teachers who were not happy with that decision. They would come to us as really in a lot of unique ways.

Narrator:

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Lindsay Kemeny:

Okay, so another one is using context. So we talked a lot about this as bad this should not be used for decoding. In other words, you should not be, you know, reading the sentence and figuring out and kind of guessing what would fit. Okay, but when is it good to use context,

Stacy Hurst:

when you're trying to find the meaning of the word when you're focusing on the meaning we think about the forepart processing model of word recognition. And that meaning and context processors are activated when we're doing in context. There are a couple words, however, that we would use context to determine the pronunciation of but those are words like wind and wind contract and contract.

Lindsay Kemeny:

Read, read, read, read, read. Yep. Good. And, you know, that crossed my mind when I when we were interviewing Anita Archer, because she's talking about I was teaching them to use context, and she's talking about using context to find the meaning of the word you look within the word do you recognize, you know, prefix, suffix, anything? You don't know that you look around the word in the sentence, you know? So anyway, okay, good. All right. Here's technology, technology accommodations, a lot of our students with dyslexia need this. So how could we tip the boat here,

Donell Pons:

and I think we had a really good conversation, I don't even think we were recording anything, we're just having it amongst ourselves, it was really interesting, talking about the difference between an accommodation and a modification. And I think that's where I see the boat get tipped way over where we flip the boat, right upside down, and we're trapped underneath it is where we have said, I've taken an accommodation, the student really struggles to be able to write this out, save, it's dysgraphia, maybe there's even dyslexia on board. And so actually writing is really difficult. However, ideas are fantastic orally, being able to tell the story, not a problem. And so we want to help by maybe having Keyboarding in there, and the student is able to use the keyboard in order to write the story. But then I see it getting overboard with Well, it seems to be really hard to produce. So you just do one paragraph, the rest of the class is going to do a page. And then this carries on to the next as the student gets older, you're only responsible for a few paragraphs, the rest of us are going to do a whole book report on this. And pretty soon you're finding that the student has made it all the way graduating from high school, and they've only ever been responsible for maybe a one page report, and now they're facing a college paper, not that they couldn't have been able to produce a college paper, they just never weren't given the opportunity, because the accommodation overtook into a modification.

Lindsay Kemeny:

And then I also see intervention being neglected here. So we're just going to provide the accommodation. So now we're not going to teach them to write or now we're not going to teach them at all to read. You know, I had a friend who came to me saying, you know, her son is struggling with his reading fluency, he struggles tracking with his eyes. So the doctor said, you know, you're probably gonna want to do audiobooks. And I'm like, Well, hang on. Yes, audiobooks are great. But you still, that's not going to improve his fluency. If you want to work on his fluency, you got to work on it, and you have to have them read aloud, you know, and sometimes we start those accommodations too early. And I didn't understand this as a parent at first. And there were definite times I want them to use, you know, audiobooks or use their speech to text, but not at the expense of teaching them to read and write, we still need to be working on those things.

Donell Pons:

And I would even add Lindsey that oftentimes, it's an either or, and it should be all. So either you get accommodation, or you get instruction. And that's not the way it is you get accommodation and instruction. So I need to be able to stay up with my classmates so that I can get all that rich stuff that's happening in the classroom, while I'm getting my intervention and receiving remediation for that skill. And that's the real balance where you have to really know the student and understand what it is you're providing. Right.

Stacy Hurst:

Yeah. And we talked about this, I think on our spelling episode, even a technology like spellcheck, you can't over rely on that, because it's not, it's still not 100% accurate, you'd have to have some knowledge of how that word is spelled to recognize that it's the word you

Lindsay Kemeny:

mean. Okay, another one, we're almost out of time. But let's talk about this one really quick. I see people saying no centers, it's a waste of time to do centers. And I think this comes from kind of that workshop model, where really, you just had like a quick little mini lesson and then the kids were mostly working independently. And I will say that I will always be an advocate for centers because I find them so valuable. Now, the majority of my time, it is like this explicit, direct interactive instruction. But I love my center time, because then I can really get to know each of my students as readers, and I can give them immediate corrective feedback. Yes, I can walk around whole group and we're reading and I can give feedback, but not as much as when I'm in a small group. And I'm listening to every child reading aloud, and I can just correct it

Stacy Hurst:

right away. Amen. And I would say I, my use of centers evolved as a teacher. And again, that was an aspect of balanced literacy that I really embraced. And I'm glad I did, because I would still do that. I think the way we prepare students for centers is really important. But then also, again, over my years of teaching first grade, I got better and better and making sure that what I was asking them to do in the center was absolute application. And that is backed by science, when we say that the average student needs anywhere between five and 12 exposures to a specific spelling pattern before it gets put in their long term memory. That's another way that we can give them exposure to those patterns. And it helps them be productive, not just receptive as well. So I'm always going to advocate for that. And then Lindsey, what you said, I felt like that as a teacher, as soon as I could do small groups, and really give that personalized feedback, I felt like I was teaching, I no longer felt like I was just managing a class, right. And I see that with my pre service teachers right now where we are in the semester, they work with groups of three students, and they say that compared to the practicums, or nor with a whole class, I really feel like I'm teaching now. And you can see the excitement around that. But they also mentioned the light bulbs that go off. So those centers are Yeah, we cannot dismiss those for sure.

Lindsay Kemeny:

And it's you know, it becomes important for what yeah, what are the other kids doing? We could do a whole nother thing on that. And I know I've talked about that. Probably not in the podcast, but in like some professional development like the reading League, when I talked about like, what I did percentage, because you do want something intentional, where it's not just a waste of time. So that does become a challenge and also managing them but it can be done. Darnell, yes, I would

Donell Pons:

just like to add, don't forget the older students, if we did centers in older students, English Language Arts classrooms, wow. Because that's what I did when I was teaching language arts, and you can't lose centers, centers are as important for older students as they are for younger students, particularly more talking literacy, because we still have a lot of levels. And you get terrific things done, you get to see your students working, all those great things you mentioned, should be happening also for our older students.

Lindsay Kemeny:

So maybe we should do a separate episode just about centers, how to do ideas for them how to transition all the stuff because they can be done poorly, and which is where it gets a bad rap, or, you know, they can be done well. So we talked about most of the things I still have more things on my list, but we are out of time. So thank you guys for this conversation.

Stacy Hurst:

Yeah, thank you, Lindsay. It did not disappoint. And I think you know, as teachers, again, we need to cut ourselves some slack. If you heard something that you're doing in this podcast today that landed on tipping the boat side, that's okay, we're learning, right? And that's the whole thing about science. We don't just learn about science to learn about it. Science is applied. That's where we get the benefit from what we learn, right? So as teachers, the reading league always says this so well, and we know better we do better. Keep that in mind. Let's be generous. But thank you for joining us for another episode of literacy talks. We look forward to having you join us next time.

Narrator:

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