Literacy Talks

Episode 116: Plain Talk Rewind: Practical Insights for Powerful Literacy Instruction

• Reading Horizons • Episode 116

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What happens when you bring together thousands of literacy educators for one powerful conference? In this episode, we break down the biggest takeaways you can actually use in your classroom tomorrow.

In this episode, we discuss:

  • Key insights from the Plain Talk About Literacy and Learning Conference
  • Practical strategies for spelling, syntax, writing, and student engagement

Show Notes

In this conference rewind episode, Lindsay reports back from Plain Talk, sharing standout moments from keynotes and sessions—including ideas around academic risk-taking, meaningful task design, and the importance of intentional family engagement. The conversation highlights how creating safe conditions for learning can empower students to take risks and build confidence.

You’ll also hear practical, classroom-ready strategies for improving syntax and writing instruction, along with fresh thinking on spelling and language development. Plus, the team reflects on how to evaluate instructional practices (and even conference ideas) with a critical eye—always grounding decisions in what truly leads to student learning.

Whether you attended Plain Talk or not, this episode brings you actionable insights and thought-provoking takeaways to strengthen your literacy instruction.

Resources mentioned:

Plain Talk About Literacy and Learning Conference

Literacy Talks Episode with Dr. Grant Rivera


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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 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. I'm Stacy Hurst, and I'm joined by Lindsay Kemeny and Donell Pons, and we thank you for joining us for this very awesome episode. Those of you who've been listening to our podcast know that we do conference recaps. It's been a while since we've been to a conference. So as you also might know, Plain Talk just happened as we're recording this last week. And Donell and I were not able to attend, but we did send Lindsay, who is here, to return and report. And so Lindsay, we're just going to turn the time over to you to talk to us about what you experienced, and then I'm sure we'll talk about all kinds of things related to literacy as well.

Lindsay Kemeny:

Yes, thank you. Hello. Okay, Plain Talk is amazing. It's just one of my favorite conferences. So you guys, know, it's in New Orleans every year, which is such a fun city, and then the plane, the Center for literacy and learning, that's the organization that puts on this plain talk about Literacy and Learning Conference. And I just have to say they know how to put on a conference. You know? They've been doing it for years. It's, everything is well organized. I felt like it went really well. Guess how many attendees? Any idea? 3200. Close. So 4000 sold out. So they were the fourth year in a row they've, they've been sold out. So that is great, because that means a lot of people are wanting to come to this conference. And the learning was amazing.

Stacy Hurst:

So, and I bet they come back to it, just like you did Lindsay. And like, we have,

Lindsay Kemeny:

yeah, you know what? They actually it was interesting, because they said, like, I think it was 71 72% of the attendees were new first timers. That's good, great. And I thought that was interesting. I thought there would be less than it would be a lot of repeats, but, yeah, a lot of first timers. I think Louisiana was the state that had the most. I can't remember most attendees new. Hampshire had one single person from the state, and that was cool, because I met her, Oh, no way shining. And I had asked, Where are you from? And she's like, New Hampshire. I'm like, Oh my gosh, you're the single So, yeah, it was great. They had, I'm holding up, they had paper what are these called

Stacy Hurst:

programs? Yeah,

Lindsay Kemeny:

I love you guys. Know, I say that all the time. I love my paper program, and honestly, sometimes it's faster than the app. A lot of times you just flip through right and I can see right there, and I can hold it while I'm walking around, and I don't have to have my phone out. And I'm so glad that they still have the paper.

Stacy Hurst:

It's that sense of place, and it looks like a good size, like, not too big,

Lindsay Kemeny:

not too small, yeah, and look at the art. Isn't that I did notice? Yeah, that's kind of like, and on the back, I'm sorry if you're watching on YouTube, you can see it, but, yeah, that's fantastic. So I thought, I thought we could kind of talk, because you guys weren't here, and I'm like, how's this gonna go? Because so I kind of organized what we're going to like the sessions into some categories that we can kind of talk about, but the first one was from the keynote. So we had Dr Cain map was the keynote, and I wasn't familiar with her, just because she's she's more in education, like the broader, I guess, category of education versus the science of reading. She's written some books, and it's all like she speaks a lot about school and community partnerships, and so that is what her keynote was about. And she said some things that I thought were really interesting, where she was talking about family engagement and saying that it's a strategy, not a goal. Role, and it's and I thought that was interesting and something to think about, just like, hey, this is a strategy and it and we need to be really intentional about it. She said, No more random acts of family engagement where you just like, Okay, here's one activity we can do for the community, or here's another thing, here's another thing, but being really intentional and more strategic about it in order to, you know, I guess, lift everyone and help our students. And so I thought that was interesting. Yeah, you guys have any thoughts on that? Or any thoughts? Do you have any suggestions for how to build that engagement? This something,

Stacy Hurst:

you know what? It makes me think of our episode with Dr grant Rivera, where he talked, he's he talked a lot about community, and that their approach is from birth, essentially to more.

Lindsay Kemeny:

Yeah, I'm trying to, I might need to go back and listen to it again, because I'm like,

Stacy Hurst:

Yeah, but I think they involve the community. From the beginning, I love that she said, it's not a goal. It just should be the way we do the way we do things. Yeah, that's

Donell Pons:

so interesting, because it makes me think about partnerships. And if we think about how siloed maybe sometimes the research has been from actual teaching, think about the silos in care for an individual from birth, say, to graduating from high school and going to college, and maybe if we had more partnerships between us in education settings, that really has me thinking how much more powerful it could be, yeah, and

Stacy Hurst:

thinking about your experience. Donell like, How much easier would it have been for you and your children if that sense of community was just part of it.

Lindsay Kemeny:

Yeah, yeah, you would definitely more feel more valued as a parent, right?

Stacy Hurst:

Yeah, and I do, I often hear educators and I understand this actually, not something I have to experience in higher ed, but oftentimes parents are hard sometimes to deal not oftentimes, sometimes parents can be hard to deal with. And I think if there, there was that sense of community, it wouldn't be so much in us and them. It would be like we're all part of this.

Lindsay Kemeny:

Yeah, so she was saying there's a difference between involvement and engagement again, like, it's, it's more than just involving them, it's truly engaging them. And I don't know, but, like, I want, I guess I want to know more, like, what that could look like, you know? Because I think that's definitely an area I could improve.

Donell Pons:

The specifics, right? Of Exactly,

Stacy Hurst:

yeah, well, and it sounds like a systemic thing too. Like, what can you do in your classroom? But then what can a school do? What can a district do? Yeah, community, interesting.

Lindsay Kemeny:

Okay, well. And then moving on to the day two, the keynotes were Doug Fisher and Nancy fry, and they talked about academic risk taking, and this is the term that's really used a lot, I think, in the research, they like to use the term courage to learn. So they talked about how learning and risk taking are inseparable, and you know, that does make me think, especially about our students who struggle with learning a little bit more it really, they really do have a lot of need to have a lot of courage in the classroom, right? I think just showing up, because a lot of times they're in this environment where they feel like they're failing, right? But we want to create those conditions where they're going to learn and feel safe and so and so, that's something that they mentioned, that we have to create those conditions, both between the students like students, between students and other students, and between the student and the teacher, we need those conditions where they're going to feel safe. And it reminded me, as they were talking to me, to us about it. It reminded me of Dr Anita Archer, success breeds motivation. You know how she says that success breeds motivation. I was thinking about that because helping them be successful and starting with something they can do, and then the and then they kind of see, oh my gosh, I did that. I did something, I was successful at that. Then they're more motivated to take a step further, to try something more, to try something more. So that's what, that's kind of what it reminded me. Of course, everything comes back to Dr Archer for me, but yeah, you

Donell Pons:

know, it got me thinking, Lindsay, it's really interesting. You should bring this up, because just last week, one of my adult students, very much an adult he just said, for the first time, you know what? There's a subject. Would have studied in college. He's never, he's never, ever said anything about I would have done this, or I would like to have done that. He's never even talked about it, never even, never brought it up. But he brought it up just the other day, and he said, You know what? I think I would have made a good and then he said, The word of a profession. And he said, and what's interesting is, I only think of myself that way now, because I have the confidence that I could probably do it, I would need supports, but I would know what they are, but I didn't even know I could do this kind of a thing before. But now that he's had the correct tutoring and received help with his reading and writing, isn't that interesting. He sees himself in a different way as a learner. To say, I think I could have been which is really interesting. He never thought of himself that way before.

Lindsay Kemeny:

It's really interesting. It's like kind of heartbreaking, because you want them to feel that so much sooner. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Stacy Hurst:

I'm thinking about my own students, and I can ask them a question, and it's crickets if I'm doing a whole class, but if I'm doing individual responses, or they're talking with a neighbor, they're a little bit more emboldened to make mistakes, I think, because peers, you know, they can relate to each other and so forth. But as the semester goes on and I'm talking about my initial first class, they become more and more comfortable. It takes taking risks to answer a question they may not get exactly right, but that helps me to really want to emphasize that I know we've heard lately the term productive struggle, but the fact that that is part of learning right, and not to just shut down because you didn't get 100% on something, or it's just, it's just part of the learning process. We're going to fail. But that's how, that's partially how we learn, and things are not always going to be easy. Is that what you think they were addressing there too? Lindsay, or more? Um, are more like just having the the courage to

Lindsay Kemeny:

Yeah, yeah, um. But one thing, like, I thought was interesting, is they showed a video, and in the video, they had, and I was, I was a little bit like, is this? Is this kind of supposed to be the example of what courage to learn look like? Because they had a young student, and maybe this was like, third or fourth grade, and she was the one leading the class in a vocabulary lesson, and it seemed like she would do this. Like, I don't know if she did it every day or the whole week, but she would lead them to and she had, like, a script she would say, and then the students would repeat back, and then she'd be like, say the word, spell the word, it means this. And then they would repeat and use the word in a sentence, this kind of thing. And I just, I don't know, I'm always going to be devil's advocate, I guess, in these things. But I was thinking, well, is that, though, is that really the goal? Like, would this lesson be a little better if the teacher were delivering it, the teacher was delivering it? I think courage to learn doesn't necessarily need to be the student is leading the class, right? And that might not be what they were saying, but just with that video, and they were talking about the process that the student had to get through to be able to be the one to lead, where she had to, like, go through a series of interviews and all this, all of the stuff to do that. And I just thought, Now, I don't, I don't know about that, and that might not be what they're saying, but I'm saying definitely we need to create these conditions where they feel safe and can take risks. What exactly are the risks? You know, it's just it doesn't have to be them leading everything, right? I don't know what they're saying, but,

Stacy Hurst:

and Lindsay, you know way more about this than I do, but I remember having similar thoughts when I very first read about srsd clear back in the day, because you're literally teaching students to stay engaged and work through hard parts. And, oh, yeah, not just Yeah, give Do you think there's a connection?

Lindsay Kemeny:

What do you see? Yeah, definitely. You've, you're, you're taking risks, right like, and learning how to like, what you can say to yourself, and how to manage your own time and your own thoughts. And, yeah, that does take a lot of risk, and just being willing to like, share with a neighbor, what you learn, share with the class, just writing something, you know, I guess there's lots of ways students take risk in our take risks in our classrooms, right? So, so anyways, I just, I thought that was. That's interesting. And then something else I was going to say something else on that, but I can't remember. Something else I liked that they were talking about was tasks to really think through the tasks we're assigning our students and why, and if it's worth the time and investment, you know, and I can't remember which speaker gave the example, but it was like a junior high, maybe science class. I think it was junior high. I can't remember. It could have been upper elementary. And they were learning about the body. And they had this whole activity they did where they would outline the body on a big, large piece of paper. And then they would do all these designs and drawings and stuff on the inside with the parts. And, you know, they asked the teacher, well, how long does this take? Three class periods, just like how much learning is happening with that, you know, with that task. And so it was a really good call, you know, like a good kind of call to action, to really rethink the tasks we're asking students to do. We want to make sure that they lead to learning, that they don't just fill time. And I thought that was a really excellent point.

Donell Pons:

Yeah, what's what's interesting about that one, too, I think is oftentimes we teach things that are very important, say even in syntax, you know, vocabulary, even spelling, I put all those together. Yet we don't really give opportunities for students to do those things that we taught them. It's like we teach the thing and then we move along whether the student learns to apply it has the confidence or comfort level to apply those things. I'm not so sure. We check back often enough to do that, to make sure that, Oh, are they picking it up and bringing it and integrating it? Or have I just

Lindsay Kemeny:

taught it right? Yeah, yeah. And they're that ties right back into the risk taking, because they have to be confident enough to try it. Or, like, another example of the risk taking is when I have students, you know, I have them verbally compose a sentence, and they're going to, you know, I'm going to model one way to make your sentence, you're going to talk to a neighbor, and then you're going to share back. And that takes courage to share your sentence with me, and then the courage to maybe try again. Where, if your sentence didn't work, that's okay, because we're all learning. And so that's like an example of those conditions that you have to create, where, when they share something with the whole class, you know, and it's wrong, we need to tell them they're wrong, but, but that's great if they feel comfortable and it's okay to be wrong and make mistakes. So a lot of it is that, you know, it's like that growth mindset kind of thing, like, it's Hey to make mistakes, like, we're all going to make mistakes. And Stacy to your point that you were saying earlier. I think a lot of sometimes our gifted students really have a hard time with being wrong or making mistake, because maybe they're always kind of perfect and and they have people in their lives that are always, you know, boasting about how how great they are and perfect. And so then they think that means they have to be perfect at everything.

Stacy Hurst:

Yeah, I think that the point about tasks is well taken, too. I was thinking about this in relation to comprehension instruction. And oftentimes we ask questions of our students, which could be an important thing, but then we never really get to the meaning of the text, like, who's in it? You can tell me the setting, the characters, but what really was the message the author was trying to share. And how will you apply that in your life? Sometimes those tasks are pretty surface level.

Lindsay Kemeny:

Yeah, absolutely. And it's just like, does that lead to learning? And that's like we talk about that all the time, where we're like, what? When I say practice, I don't mean this, some one off worksheet. When I say practice, I mean practice, doing the thing, reading out loud, with feedback, writing, you know, that kind of thing.

Stacy Hurst:

I love that you said, does it lead to learning? And it ties back to what you were saying about Dr Archer. It's motivating when you can learn things. I think we like to learn. The three of us really like to learn, yeah, but once you recognize there's a hard part to learning. You know, I love reading research papers. It wasn't that easy for me when I started that sometimes can be a heavy slog, right?

Lindsay Kemeny:

I had actually written that in on my notes. The actual quote he said was, tasks exist to produce evidence, not to fill time. And I had said, like, I would tweak that a little bit and say, tasks exist to improve learning or to lead to learning outcomes, right? And then he said, tasks require students to consolidate their understanding, practice and apply.

Stacy Hurst:

Oh, yeah, I love that word consolidate. That's good. I thought

Lindsay Kemeny:

I we could kind of I could, I could organize. I went to. Several different sessions that were kind of on the same topic, so I thought we could just kind of go topic by topic. And so we're going to talk about spelling, syntax and grammar, and then a little bit of AI, and if we have time, I'll share something that I heard that I really disagree with,

Stacy Hurst:

that's a lot that's intriguing.

Lindsay Kemeny:

Our listeners listening. And then, you know, throw in little other tidbits from the conference as we go for like, for example, you guys are usually my conference buddies that I go around with, but you weren't there. So Kate win was my conference buddy, and that was so fun, if you guys don't know her, she's a really talented, amazing teacher, kindergarten teacher from Ontario, and she also just wrote a book about reading assessment with Dr Stephanie Stoller. So anyway, it was kind of fun to have someone to touch base with and and meat for breakfast and that kind of thing.

Stacy Hurst:

Do you know what? Kate was my conference buddy for a minute at triple Sr. We got to sit next to each other, and it was the same thing. I was the only one there. Thank you, Kate.

Lindsay Kemeny:

Okay, so spelling, just a couple. Oh, okay, a really memorable session was Linda Farrell, oh my gosh. You guys know she's really fun and engaging, and she was such a hoot. She was like,

Stacy Hurst:

she is cheerful. You

Lindsay Kemeny:

guys, she acted for us. So she she acted She's all I have four acts, and she's going to be demonstrating basically, kind of the history of English and the layers of our language. So, you know, she's like, so she goes over, she's all, and they didn't give us, me a changing room, so I just have to do it in the corner. And she'd go over in the corner, and she just like, originally, she just like, she messes up her hair, she puts it all like, around and go like this, and she hunches over, and then she turns around and she's like, I am the angles, the Saxons, the Jutes and the frigids and my tribes have invaded England, and this is the Anglo Saxon period, because it's not Britain anymore. It's England Anglo Saxon. And she just, like, hemmed it up, okay, it was so funny and so and she would keep, so what? So this is the first layer of layer of language, of English, Anglo, Saxon. Then it was act two, and she, like, goes back over in her corner, fixes her hair, comes back over. She kind of like, you know, puts a finger on a nose, like, kind of sticking it up a little bit, and then she's like, I'm William the Conqueror, and I will conquer England, and I have my own language. I am French. And we don't use words like old, that's so basic and simple. We use words like antique, you know. And she would give all these examples, and she kept going. Act three was Latin, and so she explained, it's the time of the Renaissance, and everyone wants to be intelligent. It's not raining outside. That's not rain, that's precipitation. And she would all these little things to bring in. And then the fourth act, which is the fourth layer, was Greek, and she was explaining that when when Latin didn't have a word for something Greek did, and the Olympics, and she pretended like she was, like, holding a torch and coming over, and so that was hilarious.

Stacy Hurst:

Oh my goodness, I thought when you got to the Greek part, she was just going to be in a toga.

Lindsay Kemeny:

I know she didn't. She didn't really have any costumes. She was just kind of just hilarious because a photographer came in to take her picture, and she's like, Oh my gosh, I just, like, messed my hair all up.

Stacy Hurst:

It sounds like she did not need costume. I know she didn't. I could see that she could commute really well. That's awesome. Yeah. And then do you think that it helps people understand those layers?

Lindsay Kemeny:

Well, totally remember those because of what she was doing. Like, yeah, even I wasn't planning on kind of reacting for you all, but I kind of did, because I had my notes. I did have my notes, but you know, I could, I could picture her doing all those well.

Stacy Hurst:

And for those of you are watching on YouTube, you did see Lindsay mess up her hair. That was great.

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Lindsay Kemeny:

I went to another so I'll just a couple takeaways on on spelling, oh, dictation, phrases like when you do I don't do this. So I do word dictation, and I do sentence dictation, and I haven't thought to do phrases for dictation, and that's something like you could do. I was thinking that might be something to do right before sentence dictation, because sometimes when I do a sentence, maybe it's a little longer or a little harder or has, you know, a review word or something, and sometimes I will review that word beforehand, like for word dictation, but I thought that's kind of a good idea to do a phrase you know

Stacy Hurst:

before Well, and you could connect that to syntax too. So if you had a phrase that was just like, over the hill, yeah, then you could even say to your students, what part of the sentence Are we missing? This is just a phrase. What are we missing? Oh, yeah,

Lindsay Kemeny:

nice, nice connection to the next topic, Stacy. But just wait. We're not just syntax. Okay, sorry,

Stacy Hurst:

integrate. Integrate. That's my thought.

Lindsay Kemeny:

And then Elsa Carden Pons Cain, I went to her session, which is about writing. So we had several different things, but something interesting about spelling that she shared a lot of times. Our students who English is not their home language, and they have a different home language, they might over generalize some things they know from Spanish as they're writing. And so for like, they might spell house H, a U S, because a U spells out in Spanish. So I thought that was really interesting, and I had no idea, you know. So just another reason why I wish I knew Spanish, because that would help me a little bit more. But I kind of wanted to review, because she has, like, a chapter in her book where she shares, like the different spellings, and might be helpful for us to

Stacy Hurst:

that's really useful. I think, what you remember when we had her on as a guest, and she talked about the taco test for phonemic awareness, saying you don't need to know, you can do phonemic awareness with any word. It doesn't have to be from English. It can be from their first language. But then also, as you were giving that example, Lindsay, I was thinking, unless we knew that right? So you need to know enough about their first language you could miss diagnosis. Student like that student would be solidly in the full alphabetic phase, unless you don't know the AU spells

Lindsay Kemeny:

out how great that you could confirm for them. Well, yes, in Spanish, those letters spell out. Let me show you what it is in English. And I was thinking, you know, you probably get this more in upper grades, where I teach first grade, and they probably don't read or write in their home language either. You know, if they're coming in, like, if they're really young, versus when they're older than they when they may, you know, so,

Stacy Hurst:

so, but it probably starts with pronunciation, right? We use the example that in Spanish, there's not and so they would pronounce it, yeah, which could show up in their spell.

Lindsay Kemeny:

Yeah. Really good point. So, yeah. So, definitely another reason to be kind of familiar with the with the phonemes that overlap and the ones that don't. So that was spelling. Then let's move on to syntax and grammar. I went to a couple different Oh, I my favorite session of the whole conference was Michelle Elia, and she is another really engaging presenter, and it was about syntax. And I love really practical sessions, since I'm a teacher, and hers was really practical. And so, you know, she just shared a little bit of research at the beginning. And then she shared, I'm going to just share strategies the rest of the time, things you can apply. Is that cool with you, you know? And of course, the whole audience is like, Yes, please. Like strategies. And she talked about how syntax helps us gain meaning from the text. And one of the activities that she had was called Follow the verb. And it was like, you pull out kind of a challenging, maybe paragraph, and you look, kind of follow the verb throughout the paragraph, and you're going to ask the student questions about it. So she was using example, like it said, Someone consider. Something, right? So that was, like the first verb you kind of noticed. So she asked the student, who considers, you know, whatever it was, what do they consider? Who plays that? Who is that? Like the word that? What did it play? Where does it play? And you just kind of follow that throughout to kind of break down what's happening in each sentence

Stacy Hurst:

that is very actionable.

Lindsay Kemeny:

Yeah, it was really great. And let's see, what else did she share sentence deconstruction, which is basically like finding the kernel, like the who and do have a sentence like, take it down to the sentence level, what's the who and do?

Donell Pons:

And I'm just thinking Lindsay, a great way for a teacher to be able to pull that sentence apart, if they didn't have the time, would be to use cascade graders, Julie Van Dyke on right, go in, pop their passage in and see where it's broken out with syntax.

Lindsay Kemeny:

Be nice, easy. Okay. Do you want to describe what that is a little bit more, just in case our listeners, yeah, with Julie

Donell Pons:

Van Dyke and listen if you want. To get the whole background, which would be, I would highly recommend, but it is a website, free, a free website, the folks can go to cascade reader or reading, and it's the reader that you're going to put it in. So you'll take the passage, you can pop it in, and it will go ahead and syntactically break, put breaks and indent, so you can see how the sentence or the paragraph is taken apart. So paragraph, sentence, passage, whatever you want to use, yeah. So be easy, yeah.

Lindsay Kemeny:

That would be really helpful, because it's just, this is really nice. Scaffold is going to show them, you know, like the the where phrase is going to all be on one line, right? The preposition, the you know who it is, what they're doing, is what they're doing is on the next line, the next line, the next line. So, yeah, great scaffold. And we had a great I'm trying to think if we had two up. No, I guess we just had one episode of Julie Van Dyke. Great. Another thing Michelle shared, which I I have started using in my classroom, when I'm teaching about writing, is about this cohesion circle, which, that's Jane's and Hennings kind of use that term cohesion circle, and where it's like, you could explain to your students that the like, if you're reading, or you could do this for reading or writing, if they're reading, the authors will use different words to describe that key noun that they're talking about, right? Or in our writing, we can say, we can use other words to describe the topic so that we don't keep seeing the same word over and over. It makes the the makes it more fun to read. And so you can come up with a list you can have like, okay, we're talking about giraffes. And then you can come up with a list of other like words you could use for that, including pronouns. So you could say animals, you could say mammals, you could say these large creatures. You could say, you know they or it, if you're talking about one. And then it like, in the text, you're going to show them how those like, what? When you when they're reading, and you come to a word that, let's circle that and say, Okay, what? Who is that? Who is it talking or, what is it talking about? What's that? And link it back to the to what it's referring to, right? These are all things like you might take for granted, but when you get some of those paragraphs, it is confusing. Like, okay, what's it? Who are we talking about here or now? It just used the word creatures. Who is it talking about? Oh, it's talking about the oysters, or whatever the paragraph is about. So I thought that was another good activity that I've started using, especially when it comes to writing. But of course, when we're teaching these things for writing, they're going to help with reading too. So you're kind of working

Stacy Hurst:

on both. Yeah, I'm smiling a little bit because this just happened. Well, it's been a few weeks now when I was writing my instructions for my students midterm, and I found myself doing that a lot it do it, and then I'm like, No, I need to be more clear. So instead of using it, I need to say what I mean.

Lindsay Kemeny:

Jennings and Hanes their cohesion circle, they have like the at the very top of the circle, they have like the key noun, and then they have a synonym on the side, and then the bottom, they'll have a pronoun, and then on the the next, the other side of the circle, it will have synonym. So it's kind of encouraging you to go in that order. So let's say, when you're writing, you use the main noun the next time you're going to use a synonym or for that noun, then you use a pronoun, then you use the another synonym, and going like that for a variety and she did a really great job of breaking down some of those grammar words that we have clauses, the difference between a dependent and independent clause, the difference between compound and complex sentences. You know, all of that. Stuff that sometimes it can be easy to feel overwhelmed with. As a teacher, if you don't aren't familiar with all that, and she did a really good job of breaking it down. Michelle did, so I love to her session. Ai, well, the session I went to was really interesting, because what they did is they talked about the instructional hierarchy and how, like, what different, I don't know, like programs, I guess apps, different, AI resources, like where they could fit in according to the instructional hierarchy. So you have the acquisition phase. You know, if you're like, what's this instructional hierarchy? You have acquisition and then you have fluency stage. And then they grouped together generalization and adaptation, but some people will separate those and do generalization and adaptation. And so they shared, you know, different AI tools, and they shared cautions with with each of them, I would say like I would be even more cautious. I just sometimes I feel like with technology, we jump on the new thing a little too soon before it's been thoroughly studied or understood, and we need to be careful. But But I thought it was interesting and very interesting way to kind of classify the different types of AI,

Donell Pons:

yeah, and, you know, it's just on that same thought. Lindsay, I think when we're thinking about any of these tools, they can be an enhancement, and they can be even helpful for engagement, but it's never a replacement for making sure students have the skills, foundational skills, to be able to do these things and to and to then use the enhancement right to take to the next level. So that's something I'm always running through my head, is, Have I done enough to ensure the student has the foundational skills and is getting enough ability and practice to be able to do those things, and then deciding, how does this enhance that kind of work for the student?

Stacy Hurst:

Yes, yeah. And as a teacher, like if you know the limitations of each of those, I do think it's a very interesting way to an interesting framework to talk about AI with the instructional hierarchy, and by the way, that's also referred to as the learning hierarchy, so you have what a student is doing and then what a teacher does either ahead of or in response of that, and that's where I think those limitations can come out.

Lindsay Kemeny:

Yeah. I like that. Thought that's good, yeah. So they listed, like, there was lots of different AI programs, algorithms, websites that I, you know, haven't used, although we, except for maybe heard about except for some of them, like they did recommend project, read AI. We had interviewed the developer for that on our podcast, right? And that is one of dabbled in, and that I really love. It's creating decodables for you, and just like these resources for teachers that we can then use. And it's, I don't feel like it's trying to replace the teacher at all, but it's definitely can be a useful tool.

Stacy Hurst:

I think it's, it's fun to explore those things too. And I know project, read AI has all kinds of things to offer. Lit lab is another one that will use AI to create decodable text. Okay, I don't

Lindsay Kemeny:

think I've looked into that one yet, and a couple highlights. Oh, and I gave a presentation, so that was great. I did a presentation on writing instruction, and it was really fun, because Nicole Ormandy, she's from the aim Institute, she also did a session on writing, and it like, aligned really well with mine. I'm like, Oh, this is, like, everything I'll be talking about next, you know, which was awesome. And so in my session, you'll be happy to know. So if you remember, two years ago, I spoke at plain talk, and my laptop died in the middle of my presentation, and it was like my worst you always have no electricity, Big Sky, Blackout. I survived that. Yeah. And then two years ago, well, and I had plugged my laptop into the power strip, but the power strip wasn't connected to anything. Okay, but so it's good, because now every time I do a presentation, I make sure happy to know I had no tech issues during my presentation. Very happy, and I just felt like it went really well, and so it was really fun. I really honored to get to speak at plain talk, because it's one of my favorite conferences. So to be invited amazing,

Stacy Hurst:

yeah, and I bet the attendees loved it. I was gonna say, you've already mentioned, like, how? How applicable a lot of the sessions are plain tuck and how it's very teacher directed. So I'm sure they got loads out of your session.

Lindsay Kemeny:

Well, I hope so. And then just a couple other highlights, and then I'm going to share what I disagree with. Okay, everybody. So couple other highlights, the food I had the best bread pudding. And I know the three of us think that we know the restaurant with the best bread pudding, but we were wrong, because now I we went to Luke's this time, and I had the bread pudding at Luke's. And I'm just saying My mouth is watering thinking about it.

Stacy Hurst:

You know what? You do not need to convince me because of the picture, yeah,

Lindsay Kemeny:

on top with this caramel sauce, and then I was telling everyone about it afterwards, I'm like. My book signing was a highlight that was really fun. So thank you to any listeners that who came and I had a rock and roll party. That scholastic threw me in their hospitality suite for rock your literacy block that book that just came out last year. So we had a rock party. I wore leather pants and leather and like I had these star earrings and necklaces, and I had bracelets that I forgot to wear, that I borrowed from my son. Oh, anyway, I was so embarrassed walking through the hotel like I'm like, once I get in the room, I'm okay, but until then, I feel like everyone's like, what in the heck is she wearing?

Stacy Hurst:

What is she doing. And you know what? I would be remiss if I didn't mention that episode of Friends or Ross gets stuck in his leather pants. So hopefully you do not have

Lindsay Kemeny:

any getting them off. Thank you very much.

Stacy Hurst:

That's awesome, though. Way to go scholastic. That's a really great fun.

Lindsay Kemeny:

And then they had, you know, the rock you literacy block, like cookies. And they even had my book image on little chocolates, like the little Hershey chocolates. And they had people could take, and that was really fun.

Stacy Hurst:

And they had all, they just had a great adventure,

Lindsay Kemeny:

like, with we had props and, you know, stuff, it was fun. That's awesome. Okay, are you ready? Or anything else you guys want to mention? Are we ready to hear what I did? Okay, here is the I'm not going to say who said it, because I won't call anybody out, okay, but this person said, and I will say there was no research citations on their slides, and I looked into this, and I don't think there's any research to show what they said. They said that having students write on whiteboards develops the wrong parts of the brain for writing. What develops the wrong parts of the brain for writing like, Okay, I have to see the study. I have to see the study to believe that, but that is something I disagree with. I use whiteboards in my phonics lessons every single day, and I feel like it's there are so many benefits to using whiteboards.

Stacy Hurst:

I am laughing right now because I know Donell is googling. Donell, yeah,

Lindsay Kemeny:

Donell, when I was looking it up, I'm like, whiteboards versus paper there. There's actually a lot of it seemed like there was more support for the whiteboards. But we know both are really important. Both are really important. So that's the key thing. I wouldn't only do one. And when I use a whiteboard, it's only during my phonics lessons, and then the rest of the day we're writing on pencil and paper, because you do want the, you know, the friction and the feel of that. One of the things I looked up, because I go to look into this afterwards, is that one of the well, there was a lot of benefits to using a whiteboard, but one thing is that some students might struggle a little with the physical act of writing, and since there's less friction on the whiteboard, it kind of it's like a scaffold. Now they can just focus on the formation of the letter and the spelling of the word instead of thinking about, you know, having a harder time with the physical act of writing. And so I'm like, Yeah, that's and that during phonics, that is my goal. My goal is to work on letter formation and our spelling. And so I'm like, okay, yeah, that's my goal. And then we can move to our writing tasks where we're using paper and pencil,

Stacy Hurst:

yeah, and you see that it transfers and so that. I think that's

Donell Pons:

important too. So Lindsay, for context, why say this? I don't understand why.

Lindsay Kemeny:

I don't understand why either, and it wasn't even part of this person. It's like it wasn't anything. It wasn't about handwriting, just

Stacy Hurst:

an offhand remark. Yeah, it was kind of the

Lindsay Kemeny:

offhand remark and, and I thought that's like a strong statement. I could see you could totally say, like you didn't like them for whatever reason, but to say it develops the wrong parts of the brain for writing. I think if you're going to say that, you have to back that up with research. And I will also say what's really nice about the whiteboards. Remember, we were talking earlier about risk taking, and you know what? It's so easy to fix a mistake on a whiteboard. It's so easy versus they spelled sit instead of set, and they've got to erase, you know, the vowel, and replace it, and they're erasing, and it's harder, whereas, on the whiteboard, it's just a little wipe of their finger and they and it's like, no big deal. We make mistakes all the time, and I can easily see I'm monitoring the class. I'm walking around, but I can easily see a couple rows away if they've spelled it right or wrong, which I wouldn't be able to see on a paper and pencil, right?

Stacy Hurst:

Which makes me wonder about that, even the contrast could be beneficial, right, not just for the children. Yeah, yeah, the black on the white, yeah. I know a lot of school paper is more in the category of gray. Yeah, lined paper, but yeah,

Lindsay Kemeny:

so I just thought that was kind of funny. And yeah. Well, if any listeners know of any research, send it our way.

Stacy Hurst:

Yes, please. Do Donell will also continue thinking about it. Now she's gonna go. Yes, I saw her right away.

Lindsay Kemeny:

Strong, really strong statement, but it was excellent. I you know, I hope to go next year. I hope you guys can go next year and listeners, I hope you get an opportunity to go one time. I think at least one time, it's an amazing conference, and registration is already open for next year. And I don't remember the dates, but we got the email like the day after plain talk. And yeah, it's, I think, Oh, I just wish more districts would send teachers. But whatever your role, I hope you have the opportunity to go, because there's nothing like being, you know, surrounded by these other like minded individuals learning together. It's amazing.

Donell Pons:

And you know, Lindsay, they do that plain talk about dyslexia that I was able to go to for the first time. And you're right, they put on just a really great conference. So the skills that they have for plain talk. They brought them to plain talk about dyslexia too. So they just

Lindsay Kemeny:

always taught me. And we had the cutest bags. They were so cute. And they have all sockets with the light blue and the COO and all these pockets on the outside. I took it to school today like this is great. I'm gonna use this one.

Stacy Hurst:

I'm not gonna lie, when I saw people posting pictures of those, and I think plain talk themselves posted a little real about it, I was like, oh, man, even Donell would like that. Yeah, it looks really great. Well, thank you so much, Lindsay. We did miss you, but we're, we're grateful for the updates and your takeaways, and for any of our listeners. If you have any, if you were able to attend, feel free to share those with us as well. And yeah, maybe next year we'll all three be there and we well, you know that bread pudding is kind of it's enticing. All the things that we always take away from plain talk as well. So thank you, Lindsay for this great conversation, and for those of you who've been listening, thank you for listening, and please join us for another episode of literacy talks.

Narrator:

Thanks for joining us today. Literacy Talks comes to you from Reading Horizons, where literacy momentum begins. Visit readinghorizons.com/literacytalks to access episodes and resources to support your journey in the science of reading.