Literacy Talks

The Infomap: A Roadmap for Teaching Literacy, Part 1

• Reading Horizons • Season 7 • Episode 5

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In this episode of Literacy Talks, we dive into the Structured Literacy Infomap, a powerful tool designed to align educators on the principles and practices of effective literacy instruction. Hosts Stacy Hurst, Donell Pons, and Lindsay Kemeny explore how this visual framework supports professional development, bridges gaps between teacher knowledge and practice, and enhances reading and writing instruction. From phonemic awareness to morphology, syllable structure to orthographic conventions, our hosts break down key components of Structured Literacy and discuss practical strategies for integrating them into the classroom.

Whether you're a seasoned educator or just beginning your literacy journey, this episode offers valuable insights to help you navigate the road to literacy success.

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Narrator:

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

Stacy Hurst:

Welcome to another episode of literacy Talks. My name is Stacy Hurst, and I'm joined by Donnell pons and Lindsay Kemeny. And those of you who've been joining us this season know that we are focusing on the perspectives on language and literacy. 75th anniversary issue. It's titled structured literacy grounded in the science of reading. And today we are going to address the overview section of that issue. It's that is titled structured literacy and integrated approach to the science of reading, lots of really good information. If you're following along in your issue, it is pages 30 through 45 so we have a lot to cover, and I have the privilege of leading this discussion, which I always love, because I get to ask questions and hear what Donnell and Lindsay have to say. I love it, a big part of this section. And as you two know, of the issue is the info map, and that is found on page 31 and Barbara Wilson is the author of this article, and she says this article is designed to synthesize and summarize key points following the International Dyslexia Association's structured literacy info map, that's what they're calling it. So we will refer to it like that. So the educators are aligned on a framework. So I appreciate that that's the mission, that we're aligned. The info map provides a visual representation of structured literacy principles and practices. And then she points out again that the term structured literacy is relatively new, but the tenants of the approach are not and she goes on to define it. Of course, it's all kind. It's informed by all kinds of domains across language and as it pertains to reading and writing written expression. So she also clarifies again, which I think we've done frequently, that structured literacy is not a program. And then she also states this, most importantly, teachers must have professional learning and significant support to provide high quality, structured literacy in a comprehensive way. She suggests that the info map can play a significant role in teacher training. So Donnell and Lindsay, I'd be curious to know how you think that the info map would enhance professional development, and what potential does it have to help bridge gaps between teacher knowledge and practice about the science of reading?

Lindsay Kemeny:

Well, I think it can kind of serve as a roadmap for you to look at to see, okay, do my teachers have knowledge in all these different areas? Do they need help and support? And I think the key in that quote you just read Stacy was it was saying they need training, but also support, and that's huge, and that's what's a lot of times, what is missing where we have the professional development, but we don't have the follow up and the support maybe that we need as teachers to do what you're asking us to do. So just, I think that's so key. Let's remember to support the teachers, provide them with the materials they need and maybe the coaching they need, and maybe they need some scheduling help in the classroom. You know, to do these things. Yeah,

Donell Pons:

Lindsay, I was just, I was nodding my head clearly, if you couldn't see me doing that because all of those things. And then I want to add the part where it talks about integrated. So also, on this map, remember these domains or these things we're going to talk about that are on this info map, they're integrated, which also means, again, as Lindsay was pointing out, it's not just learning about how to help students recognize and decode words. That's a portion. It is also handwriting, and that can be very involved for a lot of students. It's also about a composition, putting together long that can be very involved. So these are all the components we're asking teachers to be informed on. And that's really driven home by looking at the. Info map is to say it's more than just Oh, letters and sounds. That's that's a really good and foundational piece, absolutely. But we're asking teachers to do a whole lot more than that, to bring full literacy, the full complement of literacy for a student, and that, as Lindsay, you pointed out, Stacey, we've all said it many times, requires really good ongoing training and support and appropriate materials the time, all of these things. I think that's important too. With the info map, it shows you that,

Lindsay Kemeny:

yeah, and you just reminded me, you know, I saw something online recently from a teacher who said, you know, what can I share with some colleagues? Because they're saying that structured literacy is just about phonics. How can I show them that it's not just about phonics? And I responded and said, Look at this info map, right here. You look at the info map, and it's there's clearly more than just phonics on there. The phonemes and graphemes are one small part, and there's a lot of other things on there, and there's clearly on their comprehension, you know, and the things that go into it. So, yeah. So I think it's a, it's a great overview of structured literacy. And the IDA, they're the organization that termed that coin to the term structured literacy,

Stacy Hurst:

yeah. And she makes a good point here, too, where she says that the term science of reading and structured literacy are not interchangeable, and I think of it a little bit historically, like research, which is the science of reading right, has always informed practice. I appreciate that they coined the term structured literacy, because what else would we call it? Right? And you think back to in the last 50 years, the fact that research has always influenced what we call our instruction. So we had Ken Goodman's research that helped inform what we called in practice whole language, and then we had the national reading panel that helped us coin the term in practice based on their meta analysis of the research. Our practice became known as balanced literacy, and now that we are focusing more on the science of reading as a whole, now it's called structured literacy, I think that just makes so much sense, right? So in this article, she goes over the what, why, how and who, and so I thought we'd just go chronologically, the what I think is very important. There's a lot of information here. So essentially, the what is the instructional content, or the components of the evidence based instruction, and I love they use the word often in this article simultaneously. So written language skills and Donnell, you've already mentioned it in this podcast, should be taught simultaneously for both reading, for word recognition and comprehension, and writing, which includes handwriting, spelling and composition. So they're pointing out structured literacy is comprehensive. So we're going to start with word recognition and handwriting and spelling. And even in the design of the info map, you can see how they're emphasizing simultaneous use of the two. So we start with phonemes and graphemes. So who this will be a quiz for Donnell and Lindsay and myself throughout the whole episode. But we're going to start by defining who wants to define what phonemes and graphemes are.

Lindsay Kemeny:

A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound. So if I say, er, like, that's the phoneme and the grapheme that represents that sound, it's the spelling that represents so when I said, er, we have E R, I r and u r are graphemes that represent this phoneme. Er, good

Stacy Hurst:

definition. Lindsay, a phoneme is the smallest unit of speech, and we are a grapheme spells a phoneme. So you'll always have as many graphemes in a word as you have phonemes, right?

Lindsay Kemeny:

Oh, and I'd add a grapheme can be anywhere from one to four letters,

Stacy Hurst:

true. And we I talked about the just today in my class that one of my classes I taught, for example, in the word though, we have two phonemes, and O, and the grapheme that spells O and that word is O, U, G, H, so four letters can spell that one phoneme. Okay, so let's talk about then we know what phonemes and graphemes are. They really are the elements that we're working with in language, right, written and spoken. So now let's talk about phoneme awareness. Donnell, how would you define phoneme awareness?

Donell Pons:

Well, it's the ability to be aware of and consciously think about phonemes or individual speech sounds in spoken words. So folks, if you're listening and you're thinking, oh gosh, I'm maybe a little rusty on these terms, is that okay? Yes, it's perfectly fine. My heavens and all on page 30, or is it 35 there are definitions of a lot of the stuff we're talking about. So again, if this is new for some people, and they're still kind of swimming in the definition, hey, I know how to do this, though, don't worry, right? So again, everybody's on a little different trajectory. Maybe this isn't new for you, or it's very familiar. Some of this might be unfamiliar, but that's okay. And remember again, everybody can be in a different place. So if you want the terminology, you're thinking, this is going pretty quickly for you. You're feeling a little nervous, look at page 35 in the structured literacy of the handbook, or the manual perspective, and you can take a look at it. We just wanted to give a little note regarding the page number references that are mentioned during conversations of the podcast regarding the perspectives publication, it's drawn to our attention that the page numbers do not match oftentimes. And so there are differences between maybe an online version versus a print publication. And so it would be best just to skin the article and see where maybe the piece is mentioned. And so unfortunately, those numbers do not match. But, yeah, that's phoneme awareness. So it's that ability to be aware of and what does that mean to be aware of and consciously think about? So that's the piece where I need to do something with it. I may be aware of it, I may be doing it all the time, but then what can I do with it? That's the consciously aware part of it, right? So we make a lot of assumptions about kiddos. When they're Hey there. They seem to be just fine. They're speaking fine. And then you start getting into the nitty gritty and saying, Well, let's peel off a sound or two here, and then what's left, and what do you hear? And what, how do you manipulate that? And that's when you really start to find out that there can be a deficit for a student who otherwise looks just fine, blends into a classroom. But then when it comes down to the nitty gritty, being able to pull that apart and really be able to work with sounds. There might be a challenge there. That's what we want to get to right to help kids with that and others.

Stacy Hurst:

And along with phoneme awareness, there are a lot of different tasks that we can do with that. The definition essentially involves being able to identify and manipulate those sounds in language. And so as a part of manipulating them. There are a lot of different tasks that we can do. I love that. In this article, she points out, and I think the infographic helps illustrate this, that blending and segmentation at the phoneme level are the most important phonemic awareness skills, since they lead directly to the acquisition of decoding and encoding skills, meaning reading and spelling, right? So I think that's important, because when I started teaching and knowing about phonemic awareness, I spent a lot of time on things like rhyming or, yeah, onset rhyme word families. Had I known that on the phoneme level, blending and segmentation had a more direct impact on reading and spelling, I probably would have spent more time there. There. Lindsay, what does this look like in your classroom?

Lindsay Kemeny:

Well, we are blending and segmenting all day, because those are the skills, you know, the critical skills for reading and writing. And if we're reading and writing all day, we're working on those phonemic awareness skills. So, you know, I like to start I I'm teaching first grade, I start our phonics lessons with a quick warm up of blending and segmenting that usually contain the sound or phoneme. You know that we're going to be focusing on that day, like today we're practicing r a r r, and so we can blend and segment words that have a R R in them to just to warm up that take a few minutes. And then, you know, in our phonics lessons, well, when we're doing dictation, where we're going to practice spelling words with a R, R, and we're going to segment those sounds all together orally, and then they're going to write them just immediately after, and I'm going to have them say the sounds again as they're writing them. So there's what are they doing? They're stretching those sounds out in the word as they're writing them. You know, students are working on blending when they're reading. They might be fine, like at this time of the year, they might be fine blending. They might still struggle a little bit, especially the beginning of the year, first grade, we are, you know, I'm helping them blend CVC words. And when a student really struggles to blend, it's I really like to help that student in small group, because that's when I can really give them the most support. And you'll see that all the time. I see questions like, well, they know the sounds. They said app, but then they said tip, or they said Pat, and said it backwards, or they said top, or they said something completely different. That is showing you that they're struggling with blending. So then I'm going to help them, and we're going to say, and I'm going to just going to cover the P at first, and I'm going to help them blend those two sounds together, tap. Ah, now if they might not be able to blend those two phonemes together at first, especially if they have a weakness in this area, if they can't, and they go and they can't blend them, I blend for them, and I say TA, and I have them repeat TA, and they're gonna hang on to that, ah, until I unveil the last letter, tap, tap, and they'll be able to do that. And so I'm going to keep helping them, you know, scaffold that until eventually I can pull my voice back and they can blend the first two phonemes, fine. And then they add the third. And then suddenly, Oh, yay. After a couple weeks, hey, they can blend all three of those. And we're, you know, and then it's going to go to the next level. Once they're really good at CBC, we're going to add words with blends so you can hear, you know, words with four sounds is going to be harder, like stop, that's going to be harder for them to blend and segment. You'll see kids write SOP for stop because it's hard to pull apart those two letters that blend together. So, yeah, does that? Does that answer your question? There's a little a little a peak. I mean, this is like, this is first grade. This is what we're doing

Stacy Hurst:

exactly. I love how you highlighted that the connection between being phonemically aware, you need to be able to blend phonemes when you're reading. Once you connect the the spelling to the graph the phoneme to the grapheme, and then you need to spell. You need to you start with segmentation, so you can see how it would have a direct impact and how you're supporting that in your instruction. Donnell, how does this differ for younger versus older learners? Not much.

Donell Pons:

I was just saying. I've used a lot of the same strategies. It shouldn't surprise folks that there are a lot of people who had did not receive the instruction that they needed. And unfortunately, I have worked with adults who I'm doing exactly what Lindsay just described, because that's where we need to be. That's exactly where we need to be. And Lindsay said some really great things that are part of structured literacy, as well as she did her little demonstration about how she would help a student. That structured literacy includes being direct and systematic, and it's mastery oriented. I mean, all those parts of teaching as well. So not only it's what we're teaching, but it's how we're doing it, right? You watching Lindsay integrate right there, we're watching the integration of all that, right together, talking about how I would go about helping a student. And so I don't skip those pieces for older students. You don't say, Oh, just because you're older, you should have all of that, right? No, you don't. You don't make assumptions either. That's the other piece. And so what do youngers need? The same thing adults and vice versa? Yeah, yeah,

Stacy Hurst:

that's really important. I like how the how on the info map is adjacent to the what. So that I'm glad you pointed out it's really important.

Lindsay Kemeny:

And I just want to pin that, because Donnell, you brought up something where sometimes we have, like, we think, Oh, I, I, this is my phone like, we have a program, and this is my phonemic awareness program done, check the box, but the key there is no you are integrating that phonemic awareness throughout the day. So you could see how I was describing, like, we are connecting that phonemic awareness with letters as we're doing activities throughout the day. So as we're writing, we're segmenting and thinking about those sounds as we're reading. I was just showing you how I would help a student blend when they have the letters right there in front of them with the book, you know, like in small group, and I'm helping them read those words. We are working on that phonemic awareness. So it's it's just important to remember it's not like one and done, and it's not separate from everything else we're doing. But, yeah, I love that word integrate, and that's what we're doing. We're integrating it throughout the day. Yeah. And

Stacy Hurst:

another thing that is important, I think, to know for teachers is that Rhyming is great. It's a fun activity. Kids love it, but it's not going to have as directive an impact on your reading and spelling, like you're talking about with my students. And again, I'm in a higher ed situation. We're getting ready. It's the beginning of our semester. We're going to start our tutoring, and we use the assessing reading multiple measures book, so they have a phonological awareness assessment. Part C of that assessment is phoneme segmentation, and that's the only assessment I have my students give, because the other thing is, rhyming can come online at any point, right? But we need to get to that phoneme level, and if we want to accelerate our instruction and close gaps, that's where we need to be focusing on and like you two have both said making those connections.

Narrator:

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Stacy Hurst:

so next on the infographic, syllable and stress patterns. So who wants to define a syllable? Let's start there.

Lindsay Kemeny:

A syllable is a unit of language that contains a vowel sound,

Stacy Hurst:

exactly one vowel sound. Good job. Good job. Donnell, what? How would you define a stress pattern?

Donell Pons:

And so again, for folks, this is page 36 so if you're thinking to yourself, oh my gosh, I'm a little bit rusty, I don't know, go ahead and dive into your book, and you'll be able to see all of what we're talking about here. So we're not expecting to remember this or to have ready answers, but if this is new for you, so as Lindsay was saying about the syllable, educators teach students about syllables structure. It might be called something you know, patterns, whatever the name you're familiar with, but that's what you're doing, and it's including accent or stress, and that's whether it's accented or unaccented, the stress pattern within when you're speaking or saying those words, and that can be important, and it's regional. So let's remember this too. There are challenges, because I've had many teachers in trainings who have gone I'm not really sure about where the word is stressed or unstressed, and oftentimes it can be different depending on where you live, regionally, how you speak, yeah,

Stacy Hurst:

great definition and explanation. So research tells us that this instruction strengthens students word analysis ability and word recognition as well as their spelling skill. So I think my big question for both of you, how have you seen an improvement in those things, in word recognition and spelling, specifically as a result of syllable instruction?

Lindsay Kemeny:

Well, right now, let's see. It's when we're recording this. It's January. I'm teaching first grade, and really, I'm starting to focus on syllables right now, whereas before, I was really just having them blend and segment individual sounds. Just now, I'm saying, hey, let's count the syllables in a word, because we are now reading and writing multi syllabic words. And what happens sometimes, if you don't pay attention to this is like, when they put, oh, let's see. I'm trying to think of an example, but when they're gonna say, like, spell the word better, they might just put an R at the end. They got, might go, B, E, T, R, or, you know, maybe they'll even get the TT and then put an R. But when I start showing them, hey, as we're gonna practice writing multi syllabic words, which, you know, you don't need to use that term with them, but then I can show them better, how many syllables? Better too. And then we'll say first syllable. Bet, tell me it sounds but bet then they can write that second syllable, er, er, and then we're like, remember, every syllable needs a vowel, and that can help remind them to use that er, great. Great

Stacy Hurst:

example. Done now,

Donell Pons:

yeah, for those older students, I, for me, oftentimes, I call this the order in a world of chaos. When you start introducing, and you have a nice way of introducing the syllables you're gonna you're gonna boil it down to these, you know, General Major types first, because remember, we start with things that we can take in, and then we're going to add later, those things that can be a little more confusing when we got mastery. This is restored order for adults who were just hey, it never made a bit of sense. And I've been struggling the whole time. Spelling is very difficult. Reading is very hard for me. And you introduce the syllables and wow, it can be a fantastic moment for folks to say what. There's some order to this, what, and I'm going to learn some of this stuff first. What, yeah, it's the first time to actually feel like maybe I can do this.

Stacy Hurst:

I also appreciate that both of you have said that it's important to make it cognitively manageable for them, and I've seen students who may not as be as confident in their reading skills, when they get to a long word in print, it's so much easier to break it down by syllable and then apply it to what they're seeing. Lindsay, were you gonna add to that? I

Lindsay Kemeny:

was, you know, we have all these different syllable types, open, close. You have your vowel constant E, you know, you have your valve teams and your r controlled, and we need to teach all those things. And we had a podcast episode before we were talking about, how much do we do of this? Uh, you know, breaking the syllables and and, you remember, we played that little video of my son when he was doing it. We're kind of discussing how much do we need, but we do need some, but we know some researchers, you know, I think we talked about Devon Kearns is, you know, kind of advocates, not to rely on those too much, and we talked about how the key is flexibility and to give our students these tools. Because sometimes students come to a big word and they just freeze and they don't know what to do. And you know, if they've been taught a process of, hey, look for the vowels. What's in between them divide it that kind of helps them and makes it more manageable. And I was just listening to a podcast with Louisa Moats, who said she, you know, felt like these syllables are helpful, just not to go overboard. But she kind of mentioned she thought Devon Kearns was going a little overboard, the other way so, and I just thought that was really interesting, because we had just talked about that where she had said that, I'm like, oh, but it's good to know. Sometimes, you know, I don't know. We don't have all the answers, you know. And so sometimes you do need to just kind of take a more balanced approached. I don't want to use the word balance.

Stacy Hurst:

I also think there's nuance to all of this, right? In order to be flexible with syllabication, you have to have a foundational knowledge of those vowel sounds, and that is always determined by the letters that surround those vowels, so it's good to have that working knowledge. Donnell, were you going to say something else as well? Well, it's

Donell Pons:

just those principles of structured literacy. Again, if you're trying to be direct and systematic with your student and you're helping them to be mastery oriented, you're going to follow your student's lead, and you have all those skills, hopefully, that you've been learning and being supported with, you'll know how to adjust and adapt for your students particular needs, staying well within what you know is the framework of what's correct, but you can certainly help them, yeah,

Stacy Hurst:

and once we're on the syllable level, you can't ignore the next topic, which is morphology or morphemes, right? So we need to directly and explicitly teach about those. What is a morpheme? We know phoneme is the smallest unit of speech. What is a morpheme?

Donell Pons:

And again, bottom of page 36 if you're saying, Oh, what's a morpheme? Jump to the bottom. You'll have the answer. Morphemes are the smallest units of meaning, and written morphemes are called Word elements.

Stacy Hurst:

And I this is actually part of the article. Now this structured literacy is not I'm not new to it, but I love that we can always learn something that will add just enough nuance to provide the clarification we need to accurately teach our students, right? I have always got hung up on the difference between a root and a base, always, but the way that Barbara Wilson describes morphemes in general, and she uses the term base element that helped me refine my thinking, okay, now I can distinguish. I'm a little bit closer to mastering that distinction, right? And then she does say also on page 36 like you pointed out, Donnell words with more than one base element account for more than half of the vocabulary that students encounter while reading beyond a fourth grade level. So that goes to show you, in the NRN game, those morphemes are going to play a really big role, but we need to start somewhere. So Lindsay, when should the teaching of morphemes begin? How do you teach these in first grade?

Lindsay Kemeny:

Yeah, you can start teaching them really young. I mean, kindergartners, when you just teach them to add an s, you know, at the end of a word, like dog, and you add an s, guess what? That's a morpheme. So you're starting this from the time they're young to say, hey, just adding this one letter S change the meaning. And you can show a picture of one dog versus more than one dog, you know, a few of them to kind of drill that in. So tomorrow, in my first grade class, I'm going to be teaching the ED suffix, so that's a morpheme because now that's showing past tense. And so we can do that right in our in our phonics program. So yeah, we can, you can start when they're young.

Stacy Hurst:

Yeah, I love that. And it when they're young. The term we typically use is morphological awareness, and you're really helping to build that awareness. In my class, just last week, we talked about morphemes, and we used a word like myocarditis. Also a benefit of knowing morphemes is reading your medical bills. Brought. Medical reports, but we talked about Myo means muscle. Card means cardio or heart, and itis is inflammation. So if you have myocarditis, you have inflammation of the heart muscle, and it's really appealing to them. They get so excited to learn those things as college students. So Donnell, you work with students who are regularly exposed to text beyond a fourth grade level. How do you address morphology in your instruction? And do you have some examples of how the impact that it's had on reading and writing for your students?

Donell Pons:

Yeah, I just so it's interesting. Lindsay, you're talking about the younger students, because even those little kiddos, and I love seeing little kiddos light up when they're start doing some of this stuff, is understanding that the base word even for something that would be really exciting for a kid, like a gift that can you imagine, if somebody left off the s on gift, what would you get? One when you went a whole lot more so yeah, kids really get that? Oh, well, that's important, right? Don't want to miss that. S and I think Likewise, with older students, it's kind of interesting, because their struggle, oftentimes, has meant that they haven't had the opportunity to be able to take some time with the words, to sit with them for a minute and to say, Okay, how does this impact? If I change the beginning of this word, and that's the prefix, because it comes before, and I had this word that meant this, and then I added the prefix, and now it means this. Haven't really had a whole lot of time, because the whole time they were just trying to take the words apart to be able to decode them, to read right? And never mind, was I going to be able to be able to spell that. So now, when you've restored order through that chaos, because you're giving them some syllables, we've gotten to our did our sounds, we made sure alphabetic principle was solid and on board. And we're all integrating these things, that's an opportunity. I find it within sentences the most for my older students, it's when we start looking at whole sentences, because now we're getting really some really good spelling skills down, we're doing some sentences, and we start taking those sentences apart and understanding what the words are, what the meaning of the words in the sentences and their relationship to each other. So again, it's integrated, right? I'm not doing this separately. It's all integrated within that whole language piece that I'm doing with my students. And wow, the lights start coming on with, oh my goodness, I didn't realize. And these, you know, just the impact of changing that a little bit, and now suddenly, okay, the meanings of that word that's really interesting. The opportunity, I call it opportunity to sit with words like that and to be go back over them, wow. It's powerful, really powerful. Haven't met a student yet that didn't just love

Stacy Hurst:

it, and it is. It's an aspect of teaching that I think students get really excited about, because morphemes are everywhere, really helps us unlock meaning, right? So the next item on the what info map is, orthographic conventions, this is huge when you consider we have 44 phonemes and over 250 ways to spell those four phonemes in English. So let's start again. Just start with a simple definition. So orthographic conventions are referring to orthography, which is the study of the rules that govern written language, including acceptable spelling combinations. And there are some examples. On page 36 they list the convention of or the the rule. I should call it the generalization in English that we don't spell at the end of a word that follows a short vowel sound with the J, we use D, GE. If it's a long vowel sound, we're going to use GE. And then we don't spell words with V at the end of a word. So we add that E as a placeholder. Those are some examples. In addition to doubling rules that we just talked about, if you're adding a morpheme, like a suffix, then you need to double, in some cases, the final consonant before you add the suffix. Do either of you have I know this is a weird question, but I have mine, and I don't know if I'm just weird or unique, but Do either of you have a favorite, or some favorite, orthographic conventions that you love to teach,

Lindsay Kemeny:

like, I'm all a favorite one. I guess it's fun when you know, my students go like, I'll say English words don't end with V. And so now they like to chant that whenever they're writing, they have a V, you know? They'll be like, English words don't end with V, and then they'll add the E, you know. But I don't know if it's like, I don't really have a favorite spacey,

Unknown:

okay, okay,

Stacy Hurst:

different types of nerdiness, I guess I am a word nerd. Clearly. I don't know.

Donell Pons:

You know what's interesting about this is, I don't know if I have a favorite, but I always have to remember in working with older students, because they'll, they'll tell me right away, right? Oh, that's really nice to have that little spelling convention. But there's a whole lot of stuff out there doesn't make a lot of sense to me, and they're quick to point that out. So let's, I'm always very because I work with older students, that's what I usually get the feedback about. It's, it's, they are, they've already been out there in the wild, and they're saying there's a whole lot more, and they're right. So conventions get us so far. However, I'm going to say it again. It's a nice base. It restores a lot of order when there had been a lot of chaos. So that's really nice, and it gives folks a sense of stability when they're getting their feet under them. And again, I'm working with older students who did not have their feet under them for so long, and they were just expected to try to figure it out without having the skills. And so I love that it does provide a nice, solid base. I'm going to acknowledge you're right. It's not going to answer every question, but again, order where there was chaos, yeah, and

Stacy Hurst:

just because I asked the question, I'm going to answer it. And to be fair, the context is is multifaceted, right? Because I've been training teachers in these orthographic conventions for decades now, and pre service teachers who happen to be adults. But I've also taught this extensively with younger students too, and I will say that with older students well and younger students, when you teach the C and K spelling rule, they get so excited. And most of my younger students, my first graders, were going home and sharing that with their parents, who didn't know it. And so they got an extra amount of excitement about that, noticing that spelling skill and using it in their writing and recognizing and reading. I have to say, you mentioned this already. Lindsay, the ED suffix is one of my favorites to teach, because I feel like that adds some insight to why we pronounce it three different ways, right? And I think Donnell, you make an excellent point that if we are just teaching these skills in an isolated form, see sequence matters, and if we're doing it in a sequence, then you're adding that cumulative aspect of good teaching comes into play here. Cumulatively, things make more and more sense, and our students aren't overwhelmed and don't shut down with this kind of instruction. So thanks for indulging that question in this part of the article two, Barbara Wilson mentions high frequency words. She calls out that they need to be recognized and spelled with automaticity. I know a whole lot of assessments where we check if students can recognize them in reading, but we're not always assessing the spelling of them for irregularly spelled high frequency words. So when the spelling is unexpected, given the pronunciation of a word, she describes the heart word APPROACH. She doesn't call it that, and she points out that typically, only one grapheme deviates from its most frequent pronunciation, like she gives the example, the word the letter A, and the word what, instead of spelling at, in that case, spells. And I'll just take this opportunity to do a shameless plug that we did an episode on this. It actually, you guys, I don't know if you remember, this is our first episode ever. Yeah, I know I I had an opportunity to go back in the the catalog and recognize that, so I

Donell Pons:

thought you were going to say, no, no

Stacy Hurst:

words matter. Donnell catalog that that differs by one syllable, right? So let's listen to the end of the word please. Okay, episode one, season one, check it out high frequency words and how to address them in instruction. We have talked about a lot so far, Donnell and Lindsay about the word recognition and handwriting and spelling part of the info map, and we are going to pause here and cover the rest the comprehension and composition side of the what part of the info map in our next episode. So in the meantime, grab your edition and feel free to read up on what we're going to discuss. Thank you so much for the conversation we've had so far, and we look forward to the next one. So feel free to join us on the next episode of literacy talks.

Narrator:

Thanks for joining us today. Literacy talks comes to you from Reading Horizons, where literacy momenta. Begins visit Reading horizons.com/literacy, talks to access episodes and resources to support your journey in the science of reading. You.