In this conversation, Stephanie Stollar discusses the implementation of Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS).  MTSS is a framework for school improvement that helps to provide support for students with various needs. The MTSS framework focuses on using data to identify barriers to student performance and making plans to eliminate those barriers. Stollar explains that word recognition skills are more discreet and sequential, while language comprehension skills are more unconstrained and complex. Stephanie recommends that special education resources should be blended with general education resources from the beginning, and students should receive intensive support as soon as it is needed, without having to go through a series of interventions and assessments. She also emphasizes the importance of evidence-aligned instruction and the need for team-based decision-making in the MTSS model.

Takeaways

• MTSS is a framework for school improvement that helps teachers provide support for students with various needs
• The tiers in MTSS are prevention of reading failure, with tier one being primary prevention for all students, tier two providing extra support for students at higher risk, and tier three offering intensive and individualized support for struggling readers
• Differentiate tier one instruction and provide targeted instruction based on screening and diagnostic data
• Assessments in MTSS include screening assessments to identify students at risk, diagnostic assessments to determine specific instructional needs, and progress monitoring assessments to track student progress.
• Blend special education resources with general education resources from the beginning and provide intensive support as soon as it is needed.
• Focus on evidence-aligned instruction and team-based decision-making in the MTSS model.

Resources 

• Stephanie's Reading Science Academy 
• Stephanie's MTSS Course 
• Watch Stephanie discuss...  
  • the importance of using universal screening data to reflect the effectiveness of Tier 1 instruction  and design core instruction 
  • the elements in a coordinated, comprehensive assessment system
  • why you should teach word recognition and language comprehension at the same time

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Helping teachers learn about science of reading, knowledge building, and high quality curriculum.

In this episode, Savannah Campbell, a K-5 reading specialist, shares practical spelling tips for teachers. She emphasizes the importance of having students say the sounds or syllables as they spell, as it helps develop sound-symbol correspondence. Savannah also recommends interleaving, which involves practicing both new and old spelling skills to ensure mastery. Savannah also discusses the use of dictation, word chains and sound boxes for spelling instruction. Additionally, she advises keeping the same routine but varying the methods to keep students engaged. 

Takeaways

• Have students say the sounds or syllables as they spell to develop sound-symbol correspondence.
• Interleave new and old spelling skills to ensure mastery.
• Provide more spelling practice than you think is necessary.
• Keep the same routine but vary the methods to keep students engaged.
• Use word chains and sound boxes for spelling instruction.

Resources

• Follow Savannah on Instagram
• CampbellCreatesReaders website

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Helping teachers learn about science of reading, knowledge building, and high quality curriculum.

 Pam Kastner discusses the connection between spelling and reading. She emphasizes that teaching spelling is teaching reading, as spelling is a higher linguistic skill that requires complete and accurate recall and memory for words. Spelling helps students understand the internal structure of words and improves their reading abilities. She suggests using instructional routines that integrate phonology, orthography, morphology, semantics, syntax, and pragmatics to teach spelling effectively. 

Takeaways

• Teaching spelling is teaching reading, as spelling is a higher linguistic skill that requires complete and accurate recall and memory for words.
• Spelling helps students understand the internal structure of words and improves their reading abilities.
• Effective spelling instruction should be explicit, systematic, and teach spelling patterns from least complex to most complex.
• Instructional routines should integrate phonology, orthography, morphology, semantics, syntax, and pragmatics to teach spelling effectively. Direct and systematic spelling instruction is essential for students' language development.
• Spelling inventories are valuable tools for assessing students' understanding of language and identifying areas for targeted instruction.
• Spelling can be used as a teaching tool, allowing students to learn from their errors and improve their spelling skills.
• Spelling instruction should be aligned with the research and evidence-based practices to ensure its effectiveness.

Resources

• Pam Kastner's Padlet with resources (password PT2)

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Helping teachers learn about science of reading, knowledge building, and high quality curriculum.

From 3/4/2022

We’ve been asked about spelling and the connection to reading science more times than we can count. Today, we talk with expert J. Richard Gentry,  author of Brain Words and blog contributor to Psychology Today: Raising Readers, Writers, and Spellers (An Expert Guide for Parents).

He tells us all about spelling and how it connects to our speech and language system. Moreover, he supplies teachers with practical, meaningful, science of reading-aligned strategies to teach spelling. 

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Helping teachers learn about science of reading, knowledge building, and high quality curriculum.

In this episode, Jessica Farmer shares tips for teaching heart words. She explains the importance of blending and introduces the concept of continuous blending. Jessica defines heart words as high-frequency words with irregular or temporarily irregular spellings. She emphasizes the need to follow a scope and sequence and provides a routine for introducing new heart words. Jessica also discusses the process of orthographic mapping and suggests engaging activities for teaching heart words. She concludes by recommending additional resources for teaching heart words.

Takeaways

• Blending is the process of putting sounds together to form words, and continuous blending is a method that connects phonemes without breaking between the sounds.
• Segmenting is important for spelling, while continuous blending is effective for decoding words.
• Heart words are high-frequency words with irregular or temporarily irregular spellings, often involving vowel sounds.
• Teaching heart words should be done in a systematic and routine-based manner, following a scope and sequence.
• Engaging activities for teaching heart words include coloring by sounds and unscrambling the spelling.

Resources 

• Find Jessica at Farmer Loves Phonics on social! 
• Connected Phonation Research 
• A New Model for Teaching High-Frequency Words
• Blending Pyramids
• Heart Word Cards
• 30 Early High Frequency Words for Beginning Readers 

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Helping teachers learn about science of reading, knowledge building, and high quality curriculum.

Julie VanLier and Dr. Svetlana Cvetkovic discuss their experiences and successes teaching phonics.  They both highlight the importance of a speech-to-print approach and the impact it has had on their students' reading and spelling abilities. The conversation also delves into the principles of speech to print and the scope and sequence of instruction.  They emphasize the importance of interleaving, where concepts are revisited over time. The integration of phonics into all aspects of reading and writing is key, as well as the use of authentic text. Overall, their approach focuses on engagement, flexibility, and integration to ensure student success in literacy.

Takeaways

• Teaching phonics using a speech-to-print approach can lead to significant improvements in students' reading and spelling abilities.
• The principles of speech to print include the understanding that one, two, three, or four letters can spell a sound.
• A sound can be spelled in many different ways, and the same spelling can represent different sounds.
• The scope and sequence of instruction in a speech-to-print approach involves teaching students the different sound-spelling patterns and helping them understand the logic and patterns of the English language.

Key Tenets of Speech to Print 

1. Sounds can be represented by 1, 2, 3, or 4 letters. 
2. Sounds can be spelled different ways.
3. Spellings can be pronounced in different ways.

Resources

• Julie's iReady scores infographic
• Kinder spelling phase comparisons using traditional & speech-first phonics approaches infographic
• Evidence-Based Literacy Instruction (EBLI) 
• Li & Wang (2023) self-teaching meta analysis -- self-teaching was enhanced through phonological recoding via spelling 
• A step-by-step pdf for k-2 teachers using FREE speech-first resources-- I especially encourage kinder teachers to take the free 1-hour Udemy course by John Walker (founder of Sounds-Write) as it includes a full scope & sequence for teaching the basic code and even into the beginning advanced code
• Ep. 147: Hot Topic Series: What is Speech to Print? 

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Helping teachers learn about science of reading, knowledge building, and high quality curriculum.

From August 12, 2022

Talking with Dr. Julia Lindsey is like popping into the classroom next door to chat with your best teacher friend after school. On this podcast, Julia shares what evidence says that young readers need to know to help them decode words efficiently. We discuss foundational reading skills, starting with oral language and print concepts through multisyllabic word reading. Instructional swaps take this conversation to the classroom where Julia tells us what to swap to improve instruction. Efficient and effective instruction is critical when teaching decoding. 

Resources
Reading Above the Fray by Dr. Julia B. Lindsey

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 Yvette Manns discusses the schwa and its importance. She shares insights from her book, The Not So Lazy Schwa, and explains how it helps children understand the schwa sound. Yvette also tells all about National Schwa Day, a holiday she created to celebrate language and literacy in schools. She provides suggestions for celebrating the day and highlights the resources available in the National Schwa Day toolkit. 

Takeaways

• The schwa is a neutral unstressed sound that is the most common sound in the English language.
• Teaching the schwa is important for helping students decode and encode multisyllabic words.
• National Schwa Day is a holiday created to celebrate language and literacy in schools.
• The National Schwa Day toolkit provides resources and activities for teachers to implement the holiday.

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Helping teachers learn about science of reading, knowledge building, and high quality curriculum.

Danielle Colenbrander and Katie Pace-Miles discuss orthographic mapping, irregular word instruction, and the different terms used to describe high frequency and irregular words. They translate research about the effectiveness of different approaches to teaching irregular words. They also discuss the role of morphology - how understanding morphemes can help students decode and understand words. 

Takeaways

• Irregular words exist on a spectrum, ranging from completely regular to highly irregular.
• Different teaching approaches, such as mispronunciation correction, can be effective for teaching irregular words.
• Meaning and context play a crucial role in word recognition and understanding.
• Teachers should provide students with a toolbox of strategies to decode and understand irregular words.
• Temporary irregularity is a helpful concept for students, emphasizing that irregular words are only temporarily challenging until they learn the necessary grapheme-phoneme correspondences.

Resources

• Hear more from Danielle Colenbrander on Teaching Literacy podcast (Ep. 38) and Thinking Deeply About Primary Education podcast (Ep. 76)
• Assessing the Effectiveness of Structured Word Inquiry for Students in Grades 3 and 5 With Reading and Spelling Difficulties: A Randomized Controlled Trial by Colenbrander et. al. 
• Katie's PRINTABLE Word Analysis Manual, a resource to support learning and word analysis activities to use with high frequency words (and any word, really!)
• Treasure trove of additional research articles (Katie Pace-Miles, Devin Kearns, Linnea Ehri, and more!)
• http://reading-ready.com/ 

Our guests mentioned the work of Lyndall Murray but meant Bruce Murray. The correct article is linked above. 

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Helping teachers learn about science of reading, knowledge building, and high quality curriculum.

Denise Eide, author of Uncovering the Logic of English, helps us understand the logic of English! It actually makes a lot of sense... and can help your students learn to read and spell. 

Takeaways

• English spelling and decoding can be logical and systematic when taught with complete phonics rules.
• All words in English are decodable when the rules are understood.
• Incomplete knowledge of rules can lead to misconceptions and difficulties in reading and spelling.
• Teaching phonics rules explicitly and fostering curiosity can empower students and improve their reading skills.
• Be open about not having all the answers and learn alongside your students.

Resources

• Phinder.org 
• Uncovering the Logic of English book 
• LogicofEnglish.com Free Resources! 
• Sold a Story podcast 

We wrote a book! The Literacy 50-A Q&A Handbook for Teachers: Real-World Answers to Questions About Reading That Keep You Up at Night

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Helping teachers learn about science of reading, knowledge building, and high quality curriculum.

In this episode, teacher Christina Winter, better known as Mrs. Winters Bliss on Instagram, talks about the practical application of sound walls in the classroom. She provides her top 3 tips and shares how sound walls can be used in instruction. She also provides ideas for how students can interact with sound walls, such as through dictation, chants, and games. 

Takeaways

• Sound walls can be used during direct instruction to introduce new phonemes and provide a reference for students. 
• Students can interact with sound walls through activities like dictation, chants, and games. 
• It is important to prioritize the most common sound-spelling patterns.
• Resources and tools, such as phoneme-grapheme dictionaries and frequency lists, can support teachers in implementing sound walls effectively.

Resources

• Mrs. Winters Bliss Website 
• FREE DOWNLOADABLE Science of Reading RESOURCES! 

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Helping teachers learn about science of reading, knowledge building, and high quality curriculum.