Literacy Talks
Welcome to Literacy Talks, a podcast from Reading Horizons, where reading momentum begins. Each episode features our trio of literacy champions: Stacy Hurst, an assistant professor of reading at Southern Utah University and Chief Academic Advisor at Reading Horizons; Donell Pons, a dyslexia specialist, educator, presenter, and writer, who now works with adults with reading challenges; and Lindsay Kemeny, a dedicated elementary teacher who is a CERI-certified Structured Literacy Classroom Teacher and author of 7 Mighty Moves.
Each episode is a conversation among friends with practical literacy strategies, powerful tips, and a real passion for teachers and students alike. Listen, laugh, and learn with Literacy Talks, brought to educators everywhere by Reading Horizons.
Literacy Talks
Inside Literacy: What Mattered Most at IDA 2025
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In this special recap episode, Stacy Hurst and Donell Pons share key takeaways from the 2025 International Dyslexia Association Conference. While Lindsay Kemeny wasn’t able to attend, she joins the conversation to reflect on the insights and themes that emerged — including the newly revised definition of dyslexia, the critical role of literacy leadership, and the power of early, high-quality instruction. Whether you attended or not, this episode offers a practical and reflective look at what truly matters in literacy education today.
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Welcome to Literacy Talks, the podcast for literacy leaders and champions everywhere, brought to you by Reading Horizons. Literacy Talks is the place to discover new ideas, trends, insights and practical strategies for helping all learners reach reading proficiency. Our hosts are Stacy Hurst, a professor at Southern Utah University and Chief Academic Advisor for Reading Horizons. Donell Pons, a recognized expert and advocate in literacy, dyslexia and special education, and Lindsay Kemeny, an elementary classroom teacher, author and speaker. Now let's talk literacy.
Stacy Hurst:Welcome to this episode of Literacy Talks. My name is Stacy Hurst, and I'm joined by Lindsay Kemeny and Donell Pons, and we get to talk today about the International Dyslexia Association conference that was just held as of this recording last week, and Donell and I got to attend it in person, so we thought we'd do our recaps like we do anyway. Lindsay, we missed you, but we know you're teaching.
Lindsay Kemeny:I saw lots of pictures online. It looked fantastic. Sad I missed out, but it's just it was hard. With October, I already went to the reading league conference, and I can't. My students need me, so I was needed in the classroom, but I'm excited to hear about it today.
Stacy Hurst:Yeah, that is understandable. In fact, I think this year it was a week. We had a week in between the reading league conference and this conference. But next year, Ida moved their conference to November, right? Donell, so there's going to be a the reading league will be in Chicago in October, and then, oh, this is other big news. The IDA conference is going to be in Las Vegas, Nevada, in November.
Lindsay Kemeny:That's awesome for us, because that's so cool. I
Stacy Hurst:know, I know, I know, I'm excited about that so Donell, I just thought we could start maybe from the beginning of the conference, and I I got to go a day early because I met with some higher ed people, and we had a little some of our own to talk about the benefits of Ida accreditation in our university programs. And can I just tell you throughout the conference, Ida did a really good job of focusing on higher ed and all the work that's being done to ensure that our pre service teachers are prepared to teach reading. So I of course, that's my current situation. So it was really effectual for me in that way too. And I just wanted to highlight one superintendent as you know, the conference is in Atlantis, so they had a superintendent named Grant Rivera, and he is a superintendent in Marietta schools and Lindsay, as I read some of the things that he said, I just want you to be thinking like as a teacher, how great would it be to have this type of leadership? He has said that they are literacy is their number one priority. And everything he shared really proved that. So he has, he started with the question, how do we provide teachers with time to do the work? And I know, how many times do we attend professional learning and then we're expected to somehow take the time to absorb it all and implement it. So he was focusing that, and he cited the the philosophy of Home Depot, saying it should be that we're using company people on company time solving company problems. So he is not going to ask teachers to do it outside of contract time. So he's done a lot to provide them with time to do that. And then he said his their guiding question is, if we were to spare every resource to ensure every student can read, what would that look like? And he they've had great results, as an example of it, all of their scores have gone up, even in math as they're focusing on that. He shared some statistics about how district and state scores have also gone up, but their their district scores have superseded that. So it's paying off to focus on literacy. And he was just said a lot of really impressive things.
Donell Pons:And you know, Stacy at the conference. And Lindsay, this was interesting. They're emphasizing the relationship between reading challenges and math challenges. And in fact, I was in one presentation where they went so far as to say, if you have a student who's been screened out, receiving services for reading intervention, and they're having reading difficulties and you have not looked at their math, you have not done service to that child that. How often they co occur. Thought that was really interesting. We're finally talking about that link, yeah,
Stacy Hurst:and that did come up frequently, no matter the topic of the the session.
Lindsay Kemeny:Yeah. I just think, wow. Like so powerful to have leaders in your district or state who are prioritizing literacy, you know, and it sounds like they really are, and not just saying it because it's kind of like, well, put your money where your mouth is right. Like, do your budget decisions reflect the fact that you're prioritizing literacy? And it sounds like they are, and their decisions do reflect that? Yeah, that
Stacy Hurst:is what he said. He said that's how we show what we value. Is the way we spend our resources, money and time and people. And he gave this specific example of their district finance person, and they were having, it sounded like a letters training, something similar to that. And the finance person said, Well, why do I need to be there? Do I need to be there? And he said, you absolutely need to be there, because this is how we're going to be spending our money, and you need to understand what that's going to go into. It was really powerful. Anyway, I recommend following them. And then in that same day, it kept getting mentioned over and over again that we have 720 school days from kindergarten to third grade to teach a student how to read. And that's another thing I loved about this conference. Of course, it's dyslexia is in the name. But we everything was focused on how to meet the needs of every student. So I really liked that. Donell, what? What was one of the first sessions that really stood out to you, that you had a great takeaway from before
Donell Pons:we dive in, and there were great sessions, but I'm just going to say they don't ever provide a paper map at all or schedule. Oh, yeah. So you're in the app constantly, and the app disappeared right after the conference, so now you have to wait on Yeah, it's gone. Can't access it, and I have to wait for them to then put the resources back out. I'm just saying how much I love Yeah, because then you can go back through and you have a visual in front of you so you can remember the things it's all so jumbled up in your mind.
Stacy Hurst:Yeah. Donell, what do you think of the venue?
Donell Pons:On the plus side, that's about to say there was plenty of room I felt like and you could make it into. I did every session, and many of them were full. People wanted to be in them, but there was enough happening. It was spread across, and the rooms were sufficient. I loved that piece of it. Yeah, I
Stacy Hurst:don't remember one session that I was in that people were sitting on the floor or either, yeah, but full sessions, though, and it was in Atlanta, Georgia, always a beautiful place, but also, yeah, just a lot of people. I really liked that. There were so many attendees, but yeah, I didn't feel like we were on top of each other.
Donell Pons:Yeah, I didn't either. It was nice.
Stacy Hurst:Okay, so where do we want to start? Donell,
Donell Pons:yeah, opening up. One of my first ones was they gave out these awards at Ida, and then the individual who receives the award does a presentation. And one of them was, and I'm gonna probably slaughter the name. She's from the Netherlands. I take it with my Americanization as Elsie, but it's E, l, s, j, e, Van Bergen, I think I can get the last part Correct. Van Bergen research in the Netherlands. As I said, really good presentation, not someone I'm familiar with. That's what I like about Ida as well, because it's international, and they bring in people that you don't normally see. Stanislaus de Hain he was one from France that we got to see for the first time at Ida, at least I did for the first time. So I really appreciate that about this conference. And she was discussing some research that she has done, and that's mainly on looking at the heritability of, well, it was a lot of things, but heritability of dyslexia. And she asked a really interesting question in well, she presented some information and asked later in a breakout session, which I also attended, and she posited the question, what's the best way to tell if a student is going to struggle with reading because of dyslexia? Is it looking at the student's DNA, or is it, number two, looking to see whether mother or father or someone close in that family has had a reading difficulty? And of course, a lot of folks are DNA, right? DNA, DNA. And she said, unfortunately, because it is so difficult to trace that it's just it's just so multifactorial that isn't right. Now, the best way, and the best way would be, to look at is there a close family member with a reading difficulty, which was interesting, and that also led to some of her research in looking at the profile of the brain of individuals who are have dyslexia, and that you can't compare brain to brain because there's so many differences, that would be a really poor way to be looking at it. So anyway, very interesting research. And again, it was, it was nice to have someone I hadn't seen before. What about you, Stacy?
Stacy Hurst:Yeah, you know, as you were talking, I'm trying to find the page. I actually took so many notes during this conference. I love that. But I. I want to say it was during, oh, the keynote Doug Fuchs. Oh, very good. Oh, he was talking about the percentages of who's likely to have dyslexia. So related to that. And it was a little bit surprising, because he said 7% and this could have been someone else. I'm still looking 7% of the population, the chance of in the general population, anybody has 7% of having a reading difficulty, having dyslexia, specifically, and then if you have a if you have a language delay, that is 17% of students are likely to have dyslexia. But if you have a language delay and a relative with dyslexia, then that's where the 50% comes in, like now you're really likely to have dyslexia. So I thought that was interesting, too, how they parsed it out like that. And then they really spent a lot of time talking about the fact that we just need to treat the symptoms like when it shows up, and not worry about brain images, necessarily. But they also said ideally, oh, maybe in a perfect world, we wouldn't need the term dyslexia, because we're just addressing the needs of every student. And I am sorry that I Oh, I think that was during the definition of dyslexia,
Donell Pons:yeah, I was gonna say that felt like, yeah, when they went over the new definition,
Stacy Hurst:which is major, do you think we should skip to that to talk about that next Donell, because that was what we were kind of looking forward to as well. Talk about that whole session.
Donell Pons:Yeah, it was a highlight for the conference, because we had been tipped off earlier, and some of us had an opportunity to make public comment. Unfortunately, I don't think that went wide enough for people to know that they could make a comment if they wanted to. And so I talked to some people after it had closed for public comment that, yeah, you could have made a comment about the new definition, and they were providing a sort of abstract of what they thought the definition would change to from the 2002 definition we've been using for so long that's often seen in many states legislation about dyslexia that they were going to change it, update it. And again, the idea is that this should happen regularly. As more information becomes available, our understanding becomes greater, we should have an update to the definition. Does not mean we don't know what dyslexia is. That's not what they're saying at all. We've known for a very long time, going back to the 1800s we can trace that history for you, if you'd like. We're not changing that at all. What we're saying is we're updating our information, and that should come with a better, more specific definition. At the conference, they were going to unveil, or reveal the culmination of a bunch of individuals and researchers sitting together all of the comments that were brought together, and give you the definition which they did present. And they had a very lengthy presentation, and I thought it was interesting before they presented it. Lindsay, you'll find this interesting too. They said, Now we don't want you to rush out with this definition immediately feel like you have to do something with it. Take your time with it, digest it, you know, put it out. Make sure other people have a chance to look at it. So they wanted you to be slow in your reaction, right? Slow you down, because it can be very divisive, and let you just kind of sit with it for a little bit. So that was a caution. I'm just putting that out there because we're going to talk about it. So that was a bit of a caution for them. But it's, it's longer, it's much longer. I bet it's double what it used to be, but it covers a lot of ground. I thought, yeah.
Stacy Hurst:And then at the end, we were encouraged to advocate for the definition. But in that whole session, they literally went sentence by sentence. They went over the whole process of how they revised the definition, including the research that we have access to compared to before, and then they went even color coded section by section and addressed it, yeah.
Donell Pons:And they also talked about ways in which you might use it. You don't have to use the whole definition. Maybe there's a part of it that speaks to certain audiences, and to feel like you can do that, you can take it apart and use the portions that are most relevant to what you're talking about. Thought that was interesting.
Lindsay Kemeny:Too. Awesome. So do we want to do that? Do you guys want to go sentence by sentence and share?
Donell Pons:Yeah, we're up for it. Okay?
Stacy Hurst:I think so. Let's do it. Okay? Donell,
Donell Pons:yeah. So to begin with, this might sound familiar. Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that's not new, characterized by difficulties in Word, reading and or spelling that is new to add the or to spelling, because here we go, that involve accuracy, speed or both, and vary depending on the orthography that's new to acknowledge different orthographies, right, and how it might appear differently.
Lindsay Kemeny:So. Right? Because English is very complex lithography, right? So it's it's going to be harder, probably right, for students to learn English because of the complexity. And
Stacy Hurst:it does go along with what Donell was saying earlier about this being a focus on international language development in reading and writing, because in most every session, they address that they talked about how even something like Ran is such a differentiator, because in some languages, accuracy is not the issue, because it is such a shallow orthography compared to English. So that was very inclusive, I think, to add that into the
Lindsay Kemeny:definition. And I imagine you know, because we know dyslexia is on the spectrum, so the fact that it's saying it's characterized by difficulties in Word, reading and or spelling, I just think if you have a more mild case of dyslexia, you might, you know, they might be reading fine. It's in the spelling where it really becomes apparent, right?
Donell Pons:These difficulties occur along a continuum of severity. We just talked a little bit about that, and persist even with instruction that is effective for the individual's peers. Now I just want to point out right here. It was really interesting because somebody asked Hugh Katz, so what if a student has a lot of these reading challenges, but, but you're, you're not calling it dyslexia. What is that? So, is all of it dyslexia? Is only some of it dyslexia? You can't. Said something really interesting. He said, Oh, if that student's really struggling with these things, and you provide that same intervention, and that student starts to make really good progress, I'm not talking dyslexia. That student had other challenges and issues that were going on. They needed additional instruction if it persists. So that's that persistent part. And he really talked about that, the severity and the persistence of it, even with instruction that is effective for the individual's peers. Katz really came in on that one. I thought it was interesting.
Stacy Hurst:Also, do you remember they had a panel, and we were able to ask questions of the people, and somebody asked the question. Nadine Gabb answered it, but she said she sometimes describes dyslexia like depression, there are different reasons people have depression. Some of it is clinical, some of it's situational, but the difference is the persistence. If you're likely to have that as a persistent problem, then it's more chronic, and something you have to address your entire life. If it's situational, then you address it and it goes away. Like those kind of when she was talking about reading difficulties, but that she said, That's sometimes the comparison she makes. What
Donell Pons:do you think?
Lindsay Kemeny:Lindsay, so I think this is a little like, this is, this is a little gray area I feel like, because it's not like, if they have dyslexia, an intervention can't work and they won't learn to read successfully, right? So I think this is just a little it's a little more complicated, a little more nuanced, because they will improve and make progress even though they have dyslexia. But I guess the key is, then you you add in another vowel team, and you add in something else, and there's, it's still going to be this, you know, it's going to take a lot of work for each new skill right to acquire, of course, depending on the severity of the
Stacy Hurst:dyslexia, yeah, the amount of practice. Yeah matters there too.
Donell Pons:Yeah. Okay, so here we get into the causes of dyslexia are complex and involve combinations of genetic, neurobiological and environmental influences that interact throughout development. That was interesting, the complexity of it, right? That we were talking about, does anybody want to stop there?
Stacy Hurst:Are we good? Well, I'll just reiterate, maybe that's what Nadine Gabb was addressing when she was comparing it to depression, something like depression, yeah, yeah.
Lindsay Kemeny:Yeah. And it's, it's not just one of those, right? So it's saying it's all three, so it couldn't just be environmental influences, right? That's when we're like, there's an instruction issue, not dyslexia, if it's only environmental issues, that how you like, that's how I interpret that. So it's a combination of all three, genetic, neurobiological and environmental influences. And to
Donell Pons:your point, Lindsay, if it's environmental strictly, then with the right instruction, we should see that student moving right, making progress. Yeah, okay, underlying difficulties with phonological and morphological processing are common, but not universal. And early oral language weaknesses often foreshadow literacy challenges.
Lindsay Kemeny:I was taken aback with morphological processing a little bit because I'm like, why that? Why not just say, you know, multi syllabic reading or words, or something, multi syllabic words. Why morphological any? Do you guys have any thoughts or insights, or did they talk about that?
Stacy Hurst:Well, I think it's because the morphology informs spelling and orthography reflects morphology. So when the code breaks down, so to speak, that we teach in phonics, then we need to be aware of morphology and how that would in. Form, the spelling of a word, and therefore retrieval and meaning and all that that's involved with that. I don't know what, what do you
Donell Pons:think? I thought it was interesting also to acknowledge here that they said are common, but again, not universal, pointing that out, right?
Lindsay Kemeny:Yeah, that's what makes it so complex, is that it does look different and different, you know, in
Stacy Hurst:each case, yeah. And again, though that's where they really emphasize, the persistent nature of dyslexia is the differentiator
Donell Pons:the early oral language weakness. That was interesting because it hasn't been there before, right?
Stacy Hurst:Okay, remember when I was quoting statistics earlier without knowing where they were? I found them, and it was during Charles hulmes speech, and he talked about, if you have developmental language delay at the age of three and a half, there's a 35% chance that you'll acquire dyslexia. I was all off on that. And if you have just family risk, then that is less, but if you have both, then you have almost 50% chance.
Donell Pons:I work with readers of all ages, and one thing I've learned, when instruction aligns with the science, learners start to believe in themselves. Again. That's why this free teacher license to Reading Horizons Discovery is such a big deal. It's everything you need to deliver structured literacy, and it's free for the whole school year. So simple to use, and it makes a real difference. Go to reading horizons.com/free, and get started. Seriously. This is a win for you and your students.
Stacy Hurst:So back to the language, and I know at Big Sky, and we talked about this, Dr Hill emphasized and re emphasized that language is everything this kind of hearkens to that.
Lindsay Kemeny:And Donell, your kids with dyslexia, did they have oral language weaknesses early on? No, and mine did. He was late to speak,
Donell Pons:so mine did not. And I got asked that all the time, and when I couldn't answer that with a yes, I would get a side eye when I said, but we have these other difficulties and challenges. I got the side eye for quite a while because of that interesting
Lindsay Kemeny:and then my son like so he was late to speak, but then he did have a really good vocabulary later on, so that when he was diagnosed with dyslexia, I just had family members that were really surprised, because they were like, well, he speaks so well, and he has such a robust vocabulary, right? So he definitely made up for that the oral language. But we, we had no idea about the dyslexia until he was seven, so didn't do much to help him there. I mean, did a lot, but it didn't have the knowledge to truly help them until later.
Stacy Hurst:That's interesting. Yeah, Charles Hume also said, Without language, reading doesn't exist at all. So it makes sense that we're, you know, calling out the language
Donell Pons:and just to call out again to Charles Hume, who also received an award and was one of the speakers, just phenomenal work, and his his delivery just gets better and better as we Americanize him a little bit more American every time he
Lindsay Kemeny:talks like the choral responses he likes when he did it again and then stop and we don't have to say everything. I was so funny. He
Stacy Hurst:did that again, but not quite as many repetitions, still trying to emphasize that, yeah,
Donell Pons:all right. Secondary consequences include reading comprehension problems and reduced reading and writing experience that can impede growth in language knowledge, written expression and overall academic achievement. Any thoughts there?
Lindsay Kemeny:Yeah, just that's like, no surprises, yeah, of course. You know what I mean. Like, of course, now it's gonna impact other Yeah.
Donell Pons:Love that they though expanded it, don't you? Lindsay that they expanded it to say that can impede growth in language, knowledge, written expression and overall academic achievement, really laying it out, yeah,
Lindsay Kemeny:yeah, because it's gonna affect every like every subject, right? So, yeah, it is good that they said that
Stacy Hurst:explicitly. You will be limited if you cannot access text. No matter what kind of technology we have today, you will be limited what you can learn.
Lindsay Kemeny:And isn't it so common for people to jump to it's a reading comprehension problem? Oh, this student has a reading comprehension problem when it's actually a decoding, like a reading, you know, it's self problem. And of course, then you're going to have a comprehension problem because it can't read the words. So I kind of like that this sort of it clarifies that, that now it's going to impact the reading comprehension, right?
Donell Pons:Yeah, I thought that was so good, okay, and we'll continue on, because this is additional and really important psychological well being and employment opportunities also may be affected. Hadn't been mentioned before. Four although identification and targeted instruction are important at any age, language and literacy support before and during the early years of education is particularly effective. What do we think of that ending
Stacy Hurst:and man that was emphasized in almost every session, that early identification, addressing it early, not waiting to address the issues, even if a student doesn't receive a classification till second grade. Let's meet the need before then.
Lindsay Kemeny:And circling back to our conversation at the beginning of this the leaders are, you know, district leaders need to probably be prioritizing literacy and their budget, budget decisions should be reflecting that right, because this is just showing you how important it is, not just for students with dyslexia, because it is critical for them, but it's also critical for everyone that we get it right as quickly and early as we can.
Stacy Hurst:Yeah, I this is becoming very comprehensive, just going through the definition, but I also thinking about that, did they refer to it as social, emotional or not? But they were talking about logical well being Yes. So that is becoming more and more prevalent too. We cited in previous episodes meta analyzes that have been done saying that if you cannot read, no matter the the issue actually just if you cannot read, then you're it increases things like anxiety and depression and ADHD and all kinds of things. Has a bigger effect if you can't read on those things, then if you have those things and you can't that has on reading. So again, like you were saying Lindsay from the beginning, I feel like we need to get that message out there more and more, because if you can address it early on, then we're going to have a healthier society all around
Donell Pons:and the clinical psychologist who stated in the one session that we attended, and she clearly said, which is first the reading disability or anxiety. And she said, I'm here to say it's the reading disability and then the anxiety. That's That's it. That's the way it goes, reading disability anxiety. So
Lindsay Kemeny:when we have like these mandates from the district where where they're saying, Oh, you need to do these social emotional lessons, or you need to fit these in any you know, sometime in your in your day, it cannot replace the literacy instruction. And I feel like it is. It's so frustrating, because I think teachers get all these things piled on, and it's at some point you have to be like, okay, when would you like me to do that during our reading time or during our math time? You know, what is that supposed to replace? Because, let's be honest, we can't do everything.
Stacy Hurst:So I went to a fantastic session that speaks to this, Stephanie allotaiba et al, I'll just say they actually have a whole curriculum. It's focused on dialogic read alouds and language. So it is literacy, but their themes and the topics are, oh, I think I wrote some of them down. They're beautiful. I thought, like the last one that I remember was, you know, I can basically, I can do hard things. I can set goals and achieve them. I can be kind to other people. I can, and it was still meeting that aspect of development, but through literacy. So like you're saying, Lindsay, the more informed our leaders are, the less likely they are to say, Okay, you have to do this on top of everything else you're doing. Like this is how you can integrate it and give resources to do that, yeah,
Lindsay Kemeny:yeah. And that'd be the best way, if you can't, if it is connected to a, you know, beautiful literature that you're reading to them, and you can pull that in, yeah, connected
Stacy Hurst:and integrated, right? We keep saying
Donell Pons:that. And the clinical psychologist pointed out in the moment, working with the student and and having strategies to hand that you can use to say to the student to continue and support motivation for the student, where this is really, really hard, that's more helpful than say, talking about strategies outside of the setting, right? Makes sense that by finding a few of those strategies in the moment, that's a lot more helpful to parent to teacher than talking about them outside of, right?
Stacy Hurst:Yeah, yeah, the immediate context, I think back to Lindsay, what you're doing in your classroom with srsd. It's not unrelated. I mean, you know, sticking with something when it's hard, and in the context, that immediate context for the student,
Lindsay Kemeny:yeah, and then they it does carry into other parts of the day, right? And hopefully, and you could talk about, oh, after school, did you have basketball practice? Did you have to keep, you know, persevering and trying as you're you know? And you can extend it to other things for sure? Yeah. So we've
Donell Pons:spent a good deal of time on the definition, so I'm just going to quickly get because that was really important. And like Stacy said, it was the highlight of the conference. I think a lot of us were there to hear about the new definition. Position that's going to be really impactful. It's in legislation across the country, so it might be impacting legislation as we speak. Hopefully it causes conversations in those settings that goes beyond just looking at well, are we screening appropriately? Are we making sure we're getting the right reading interventions? Are we really tracking that data? Are we making sure that we're supporting those students? How big are we going in order to support in reading. So that'll be interesting. Dr Eric treatise was part of a conversation discussion. He's always really good talking about executive function, and that's been another big topic, is executive function and the importance of it, and the challenges that can occur when you have students with different learning differences, and the support that they might need with that, he talked about child self direction, helping children be self directed and goal oriented, and making sure those are attainable goals. And he also talked about not structuring too much and scaffolding too much of the student to where we're managing them so much they don't have an opportunity to manage themselves. So talking about what are the things that we can allow the student to manage that won't impact the learning so we continue that's a priority. Make sure that's still happening. But are ways in which the student can take over some autonomy and start gaining some which is interesting, and instead of offering too many scaffolds, maybe some prompts with strategies, like we have strategies and prompts. So I thought that was an interesting thought too. He talked about the difference between a four to five year old in executive function to a six to nine year old. There isn't a whole lot saying so he says, Would you leave them on their own? Yeah, no
Lindsay Kemeny:surprises the first grade
Donell Pons:teacher. He says, Come to that the 11 year old you leave on your own. Did you trust that one?
Lindsay Kemeny:Yeah, my teenagers were so mad when I was like, Come on, get up, you know, and we can do it. And then today, guess what? They slept in because I was because I thought, well, I then I don't have to wake up early for them. And so I didn't, and they did it.
Stacy Hurst:Yeah, scaffolds are good until they become a permanent fixture.
Donell Pons:He talked about the impulsivity too, right? And sustained inhibition being able that's required for so many parts of learning. And we don't really talk about what we do to support students who might have challenges in those areas, and that's very impactful in the learning. So that's interesting.
Lindsay Kemeny:Do they have some helpful tips, strategies?
Donell Pons:It was explicit conversation around you, the behavior you're seeing happening in that moment. Say, for instance, every time you want the student to read, maybe from top to bottom, and they're racing because they want to get to the bottom, you have a discussion about what I really want you to do is and refocus the student I'm not racing to the bottom of the page. Give them a goal or a focus that isn't about the speed, so that having those explicit conversations is not assuming that they understand that that's what we'll be doing. And reiterate it.
Lindsay Kemeny:Yeah, I have a student right now that's really struggles with any kind of managing himself and just all that's all about self regulation, executive functioning, and I cannot. I cannot give him several directions. I have to do and even if I'm like, put the game in your backpack. I can't I have to be like, get out your backpack. Put it on your chair, unzip it, push it open. Wow. Insane. But she really has a hard time, you know? And it's like, I you have to be on him following through. It's it's one thing
Donell Pons:he did bring up, which I think is interesting. And he's not the only one to do it was modeling, and modeling in those situations. So finding a student who is is patient but capable, and having that student watch I have John put his away. You want to watch John do that? That kind of a thing? Yeah. I thought that was interesting too, because I often, yeah,
Lindsay Kemeny:what happens other kids will just want to do it for him, you know, to just to be like, hurry, we're going and they'll just do it. But I like that. We're just like, have someone kind of, he needs to learn how to do it, and just have someone kind of gently following up with them. Yeah, you
Donell Pons:know what's funny? Lindsay, I had an experience at the airport just after we'd had this conference, and I watched TSA explaining to some people around me that they wanted everything they had in one bucket, which at different airports. That's not the case, so it's unusual, and then they wanted them placed in there in a certain way. I had watched the video because I was bored stiff. Had nothing better to do. They clearly had not watched the video. And the TSA kept getting the voice got higher, and they were more insistent. And the individual, who's an adult, got more confused. And the backpack he was twisting around, and I noticed I did. I just took it and stuck it in the bin like it needed to be. He leans over to us, thank you. So even as adults, can happen to us, right?
Stacy Hurst:We get overwhelmed. Yeah, good example. Did he mention the power of non examples in that too, like watching another student do successfully, then also what it doesn't look like? Did he mention that?
Donell Pons:Yeah, the non example, yeah, I was thinking of first.
Stacy Hurst:Grader who is an adult now, and now that I'm thinking about, I'm like, I wonder how he's doing in life, but I really had to say to him, your number one goal every time I give a direction is to get started. Just get started, because he had like. But then I had to follow up by saying in that, with this assignment, Getting Started looks like what it doesn't look like, you know? Yeah, lots of need for that. I did attend a session where Mary Ann wolf spoke. I always love to hear her talk. She was talking about just how we need to Red Flag some of the ways the AI might be utilized in our profession, and she said that she shared the impact of offloading some of these thinking processes to AI. She also said we shouldn't refer to them as tools, because they are not they're offloading thinking, is what she's saying. And she said we need to be very aware of that. But this is what I thought was a powerful statement out of it. She said the impact of cognitive offloading and over reliance on AI. So she says cognitive offload, or offloading, and its over reliance reduce critical thinking, long term memory, storage and reflection. And then she said, Children expend less time and effort on tasks that build the circuits necessary for deep reading processes that underline the ability the underlie the ability to evaluate truth of information and build empathy. And then she related it kind of to society today, and maybe at the heart of every issue is the inability to recognize truth or to have empathy for
Donell Pons:someone else. Wow, something to think about these days. So it's
Stacy Hurst:not nothing right, like we need to proceed with caution. Yeah. So I thought that was interesting, too. Wow.
Donell Pons:So I'm not gonna I obviously we can't get to every speaker. It's they were all phenomenal, but I'm just gonna talk about one more, and then I'm probably done, because it's been a lot and a lot of really good stuff, but a lot. There was an individual who could not make it. She got covid at the last minute, but had taped a recording. Had a recording or video. Her name was EV Fedorenko, and she was in the syntax. She was part of the syntax group that Julie Van Dyke put together. And again, if you haven't done the two perspectives editions, part one and two on syntax, I highly recommend getting on the website. If you're a member, you have access to the perspectives publication. They were both really good. If you were a big sky you received both of them, and Julie put together a fantastic range of individuals who spoke on syntax. Couldn't get to it all, but here's a couple of quotes from from EV in her video that I thought were really good. Language systems, either by ear or eye, is the same that supports language understanding. So whether you're getting it by ear or eye, they're both fantastic. It goes into the language system and it's the same. It goes into that same system or network that supports language understanding. And once a word is decoded, it goes into the higher level language region. Reading, speaking, writing depends on the strength of the higher level language regions. These areas keep increasing until age 16, the system engages for all languages, and even made up languages, which I thought was interesting. So anything that is in a language system, how do we how do we increase linguistic competence, exposure matters, reading to kids, having kids read act on the vocabulary. Kids are good at inferring word meaning, have them do it. We increase competence based on exposure and use of the language. Yeah, it's really good.
Stacy Hurst:Yeah, that is really good. I also I'm glad she got to video that then that was good. That was a good solution. One thing that I wanted to mention was Doug Fuchs talk. He spent a lot of his presentation talking about the research behind basically inclusion versus pull out instruction in schools. And it was surprising to me that it the research is kind of all over the place for different reasons, but the really important takeaway was the quality of instruction, the how, was more important than the where, almost in every case. And I love that. He said this, so I wrote it down. I'm probably going to print it and have it in my office, but he said we should be excruciatingly interested in the quality of instruction and like starting in teacher prep. And then he said, Who else can we prepare to become instructional specialists, which is what we need when we're talking about something as important as reading.
Donell Pons:Hmm, yeah, he was really good. Doug Fuchs, yeah.
Stacy Hurst:And you know what I will say a little something about his delivery. I know we've talked about this before, but his his slides, which I did take pictures of many of them, so thankfully, with my phone, so I have to rely on the app. But literally, it was word for word, what he was saying. It's a lot of text on the slides, and he went through them, but his message was really powerful, and I can see why he did that, because there's some really critical information densely packed into that, that whole presentation every it seemed like every other minute, I was like, oh, oh, oh, that's interesting. Oh, he kind of took us on a journey. Yeah, he did. He really did. It was really great.
Donell Pons:It's been a great month between this and reading League, right?
Stacy Hurst:Yeah, really, October is the month, right? And then we, I love how we keep referring back to other conferences we've attended to, because it really does highlight and emphasize the fact that what we call the science of reading is a converging body of knowledge. No matter the setting, we're getting the same information because the research is showing similar strands and where we don't know, well, we find out more about which I love I love that.
Donell Pons:Yeah, and a hero this month. I want to do a shout out Matt burns, because I was able to hear him at two conferences. He was at the plane talk for dyslexia, as well as at the reading league conference. And I have to say, yeah, he was a standout this month. And that's saying something, because there were a lot of standouts this
Stacy Hurst:month. Yeah, agreed. And I love that. As you the listeners know who have been with us for all however many episodes we've had now, Matt was our second guest ever, right after Anita Archer, I think we need to have him on again. But there are so many things that I we say this, don't follow people follow, you know, concepts and ideas. But I think the reason why he deserves, he's deserving of that shout out, is because of his concepts, ideas and research, and he has such an ease with it, but also it's just fun to watch what he focuses on. And I think because he has such a strong practitioner side. Whatever he shares, however he interprets things, is always very actionable and relevant. It's not pie in the sky. Okay, let's like work through this, but it's an immediate gateway to practice. So maybe we need to have Matt on again. Matt, if you're listening, yeah, somebody want to share this with them. We'll reach out. You've been officially invited. Okay, yeah, it was a great conference. It really was awesome. I'm glad I was able to make it this year. We did miss you. Lindsay, I know last year I well
Lindsay Kemeny:be awesome. Yeah, November sounds good,
Stacy Hurst:right down the street. Oh, and we were, did you write down the dates? Donell, I want to say it was the 14th through the 17th.
Lindsay Kemeny:I think 12th to 14th, right? Yes, that was it 12th to 14th. November. 12 to 14th. Yeah,
Stacy Hurst:doable, yeah. For those of us in the West, it'll be great. Okay, well, thank you for the conversation, and we'll look forward to all three of us being there next year. And we'll, we'll do a take two or another edition of the IDA recap, and thanks, as always, for those of you who are following along, we wish we could cover absolutely everything. These recaps are fun for us, but they're just the tip of the iceberg. Wouldn't you guys say that every time we do a recap, there's so much. So if you ever get the opportunity to attend one of these conferences, we in a perfect world, teachers could go for free. I think that'd be so great. But please do attend, and as always, thanks for listening, and we hope that you'll join us for our next episode of literacy
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