Everyone is talking about the science of reading , and we know that it can feel overwhelming . There's a lot of talk about what the research says , which is great , but we also need to find practical ways to incorporate research-backed strategies into instruction .
That is so true , melissa . Well , I stumbled upon this book that I happened to fall in love with , by Lindsay Kemeny . It's called Seven Mighty Moves , and she breaks down the signs of reading into seven actionable strategies , specifically for K3 reading .
Yeah , seriously this book is a game changer , and Lindsay doesn't just throw research at you . She gives insights into how she has successfully implemented these strategies in her own classroom . Yep , even with videos .
In this episode , you'll hear from Lindsay all about her seven mighty moves and some practical advice backed by research . Trust me , after listening to Lindsay , you'll feel ready and inspired to transform your reading instruction . Hi teacher friends . I'm Lori and I'm Melissa . We are two educators who want the best for all kids , and we know you do too .
We are two educators who want the best for all kids , and we know you do too .
We worked together in Baltimore when the district adopted a new literacy curriculum . We realized there was so much more to learn about how to teach reading and writing .
Lori , and I can't wait to keep learning with you today . Hi everyone , we are here with one of our best teacher , friends and the author of Seven Mighty Moves , lindsay Kemeny . She's been on the podcast before , in episodes 80 and 98 . We're so glad that she's back today to talk about her very popular book .
It's part of Scholastic's Science of Reading and Practice series and just the same series that our book is going to be in the Literacy 50 . So we're super excited to have you here today , lindsay .
Thank you , it's great to be back . I love both of you and I'm excited to be on your podcast again .
So the first five moves in your book focus on phonemic awareness and word recognition , while the final two focus on fluency , vocabulary and comprehension . So I'd like to start by focusing on the first five . As a group , we know these are really really important foundational components to reading . So let's jump into these moves All right .
Move one Teach phonemic awareness with intention . Move two Teach phonics explicitly and systematically . Move three Teach decoding strategies , not queuing strategies . Move four use decodable texts instead of predictable texts with beginning readers . Move five embrace a better approach to teaching sight words . So the floor is yours .
What's important to take away from these five ?
Oh , it's hard because you know I could , I could go , you know , an hour at least on each one . If you had asked me if I was teaching phonics before , I would have been like yes , and kind of offended if you were implying that I wasn't teaching phonics .
But when I think back on what I was doing before , I was more facilitating phonics activities versus explicitly and systematically teaching them , like I didn't even have a scope and sequence of phonics skills to follow .
So that was just a huge change in my classroom is to say , okay , I don't want that Swiss cheese effect in my students' knowledge , right , I need to follow a scope and sequence and teach them the basics of the English code , whereas before I was really kind of reactive , whatever they missed in a when they were reading , then I was like I guess I'll teach that
or point it out . And sometimes there's this idea that explicit instruction is like very serious teacher lecturing , very you know , drill and kill and dry , and that couldn't be further from the truth . And so if you came to my classroom because I am a teacher , if you came , you would see it's so interactive .
I do something , they do something , I say something , they say something , I read something . They read something , I write something . They write something .
Right I'm channeling Anita Archer here but in an explicit , systematic lesson there are a lot of opportunities to respond , and that's something that I think is really important to remember and to try to increase the amount of practice students are getting , and I'm always thinking about that throughout the day how much are my students doing ?
How can I increase these opportunities of practice for them ? So that's huge . Phenemic awareness is huge . I wasn't even teaching it before . I didn't even know it was a thing , and that's an area where I had to make a few shifts . As my learning , you know , increased , as my learning , you know , increased .
Decoding strategies instead of queuing strategies was a huge one , and it's when I talk about it I often tell teachers like , don't shoot the messenger .
I know this one is hard , but I had to completely abandon what we call the three queuing strategies , had to completely abandon what we call the three queuing strategies , and I mean I just it's hard because I did these and it's this idea that readers use various cues to figure out the words as they're reading , and so you're coaching them by saying look at the
picture , does that give you a clue ? Look at the first letter , read the rest of the sentence , figure out . You know what the word is . And when you take a step back and think about it , these are guessing strategies , not decoding strategies . And I saw this with my son because before he had the skills , I mean , he would guess , guess , guess , guess , guess .
And you see this with students , even if you haven't taught them they , you know they come to a word that looks difficult for them and they'll just guess automatically . And so a huge change has been to really help my students , like I need to help them learn to trust the letters and really apply the phonics skills I'm teaching them .
And so the other , like using decodable texts , which is part of move four for beginning readers , that's going to help this process .
So you know there's some overlap in the moves , but and then I guess I just want to say while I'm talking about this , we don't want to overcorrect , and it doesn't mean we only use decodables , and we'll probably talk about this when we talk about the other moves .
It doesn't mean that sometimes people think now , context , like you never refer to context and it's a bad thing , but you still use context to understand the meaning of the words and what's happening in the story . You use pictures to add to your comprehension of the story . But when we're saying not to use context or pictures , what we mean is to decode a word .
You decode the word first and then context will help . You know , is that read or read ? Is that wind or wind ?
I was going to ask that same question .
I'm glad you brought that up because we've hit that on a couple other podcast episodes where we talked about just that , where you know if they're decoding a word and it doesn't quite sound right to them , you know , because maybe it can be pronounced in a few different ways that's the time when you're like oh well , look at the picture . Does you know it ?
Does a different word make sense here ? That's close to what you just decoded , but it's the after that you're talking about , right ?
Yeah , and the same with reading the rest of the sentence . Right , like reading the rest of the sentence to see oh , was it read or read which one makes sense ?
Yeah , yeah , yeah , and that I was going to say we've talked about it before , melissa , but that's that set for variability , where readers have the ability to try different sounds that they know for the spellings that they see .
Yep , that mispronunciation correction , right , and so they . They're going to read it one way and that might not make sense , but they're like okay , many , oh many . That sounds like many , but they've decoded it first .
I always think the really important thing there , too , is for them to know that it's not right , if anything , like I always used to praise students for being like oh my God , like I remember being in second grade and being like , oh my gosh , you knew when you didn't know that that is important , because what always scared me were the kids who just kept going ,
and that is terrifying , cause they're like I'm like you have either have no idea or just don't want to because it's such a tedious task , right , so we have to build that stamina muscle to go back and it's it's hard , and so it's kind of like encouraging students to know when they don't know , like I kind of I love thinking about that and encouraging kids to
do that , and when they just keep on going like that , I mean they're just not attending to the meaning at all , right , and so , yeah , you want to kind of slow them down and make sure .
Oh , that didn't make sense , you've got to go back and read that again .
Do you want to touch on the sight words real quick before we move on ?
Yeah , so before you know , what I often well I think a lot of us do , is just think a sight word is a word that can't be sounded out and we just have to memorize them , right , like memorize them as a whole , like as a whole visual unit . And so that's really what I did .
And really , when I think back , I didn't teach them , I assigned them and I just expected them to learn them . And there's a limit to how many words we can memorize as a whole . There's a limit .
And you have some students that are very good at memorizing and they want to kind of bypass the step of phonemic awareness , like that might be a deficiency that they have . And when you're matching the sounds you hear with the letters , you see that is using phonemic awareness . And when you're just memorizing words as a whole , you're just skipping that whole step .
And so I talked to someone as an adult who struggled learning to read when he was young and he's like that's what I did , I just memorized words , I just memorized words I don't know , and he wasn't making a connection .
But we know that in order for those words to be stored in memory , they've got to connect the letters they see with the sounds they hear , with the meaning of the word , right , those three things have to happen so that they can retrieve that word effortlessly in the future , and that's what we want .
So I love the phrase every word wants to be a sight word . When it grows up , by Jan Wazowicz , I think , is the first one that said that , and it's just . You know , it's just kind of changed , like we want every word to be orthographically mapped , we want every word to be recognized instantly , but that doesn't mean we can skip steps .
I mean , students could do that and they could just memorize words as a whole , but then they're going to reach a limit and not be able to memorize anymore and so we need to attend to the sounds , the letters and the meaning of the words . So that just really changed what I do .
And now I'm like , oh , I have to teach a word , I can't just assign them words .
I love that . I also love very practically thinking about how that spills over into spelling and how , hopefully , spelling has changed since I went to school to align with phonics and what we're teaching and the words that we're teaching . So I love thinking about that too , and that's one of our favorite quotes Every word wants to be a sight word too .
And you'll see , like if you have a book , you know the book . I share my favorite kind of ways , like I'll break down the research and then I'll just share here's my favorite ways to work on this thing , or this is what I do in my classroom , just to share . And so in the , in that chapter , I'll share . Okay , this is what I do now .
This is how I teach . Quote unquote sight words , right ?
So yeah , and there's links to videos of you too .
Yes , it was so scary doing because , okay , I mean , you guys know , just putting a book out there that's scary enough , right , Like you're . Just , you're opening yourself up to criticism and you put all this work into something and then anyone could say anything , Right , and we know that sometimes we tend to be really judgmental .
And then , you know , adding the videos is just another layer of that where I'm like , look , I'm not perfect , but I know that , no matter what , when you're watching someone teach , it's a learning opportunity , even if you see not as great things and things you would change , or if you see great things .
Either way it's learning , and so I really hope that that's helpful for teachers . That was my desire , but it adds another level of ah , eek , you know scary , totally understandable .
I've learned from your videos . I hope that's helpful . I mean I can even specifically say like seeing how you use a sound wall as a tool and how you quickly like move from phonemic awareness to connecting it to the letters so quickly with your kids and it's interactive the whole time . I've learned a ton from watching you . Oh , thank you .
That's so nice . Thank , I've learned a ton from watching you . Oh , thank you , that's so nice . Thank you , it was fun . It was fun and literally those videos were all recorded by me and my phone . I would just set it up and hit record and go around and teach the lesson and go back over and stop and then send it to Scholastic .
It's all very real life In fact . Just a funny little story is one of the okay .
One time when I was recording for the book , I got really fancy and I borrowed my husband's phone and so I had two phones going , so we had two different angles and then Scholastic was kind of piecing them together and they like I just felt like one transition was really kind of odd . And I was .
I was asking them you know , can we , can we keep it on this camera angle for a minute so they can see me get started there , and then we'll switch . And they were like , well , one of the students kept picking her nose and I'm trying to edit around there and I'm like that is just OK . So it's just very real life . This is my classroom .
Oh my gosh , I hope you have a lot of like Lysol wipes .
Yeah , oh , for sure , I think every teacher does . It's like the number one school supply .
You know , on the school supply list , All right , I think we're going to move into the last two moves and we're going to spend a little time with each one of them , okay , so moving on to move six is all about fluency , and we actually have a whole podcast with you about fluency as well . I know that was a while ago .
It was a while ago , but it's packed full of great information . But I love that this talks about . You know , like you can't just expect fluency to improve on its own . You can't just expect it to be something that kids get better at just because they're in school and reading with you . Like it has to be intentional .
So you obviously suggest giving students really meaningful practice opportunities to improve their fluency . Wondering if you want to share some of those practical ideas with our listeners now , maybe give a little background first and then share those practical ideas with our listeners now , Maybe give a little background first and then share those practical ideas .
Yes . So I love and I'm just trying to I think this is like Lane and Pullen quote , but they say large amounts of carefully orchestrated reading practice and I love those words . And when we're thinking about fluency , this is really I think about this a lot carefully orchestrating times and opportunities for students to practice their reading fluency .
Because , like you said , melissa , it's not just going to get better on its own necessarily If we just say , okay , we're going to give lots of time for silent reading and students will get better . But if there's a student that has a fluency weakness , they're not going to get better . If left to read silently , that problem just becomes inaudible .
And Dr Seidenberg talks about that . So , yes , lots and lots of opportunities to read out loud , with the opportunity for feedback , also thinking about how fluency develops in progressions . So sometimes we might think , oh well , the upper grade teachers will worry about fluency , but it starts at the letter level and the letter pattern level .
We want to develop the automaticity and Dr Hasbrook John Hasbrook says that automaticity is the heart and soul of fluency . And when you think of those components of fluency , that accuracy , rate and prosody , then you have the accuracy and rate and those combined are automaticity , the accuracy and the rate .
So we're working on that at the letter-letter pattern level and then at the word level and then at the phrase-sentence-passage level . So you know , just even just starting in kindergarten , where you're helping them get really automatic with recognizing those letter sounds , that's going to help them . At the word level .
You're going to take those phonics skills that you're teaching and put them in words to help them . So , like in my phonics lessons , I will make little word lists . So if we just learned like what did we do ? A-i and A-Y , then I'm going to have words with those for them to practice and then we're going to get into the passages and phrases as well .
So there's a lot we can do .
All right , Lindsay , I'm wondering about one specific thing that you mentioned in the chapter and you mentioned on our last podcast , which is paragraph shrinking . So I'm wondering if you want to talk a little bit more about what that means , and I'd be interested to . Is that something you do with your first graders ? What does it look like with first graders ?
So the whole protocol is called partner reading , paragraph shrinking , and I learned about this from Dr Matt Burns and it's kind of a pared down version of PALS , p-a-l-s .
And what happened is I was teaching second grade at the time and I was really kind of alarmed because it's the beginning of the year and over half of my students are below the benchmark for words correct per minute . And I just thought , oh , like what do you do when it when it seems like half your class needs intervention , you know ?
And I just thought , well , I've learned a lot about the science of reading and I've done all these things , so game on , here we go . And so two weeks later I go to progress monitor my students and our class median was 50 words correct per minute and the benchmarks 52 , right , so we were below . And so I do just all my business as usual .
Two weeks later , I progress monitor everyone and our class median rose to 51 . So I'm like , well , that's not very good . What am I going to do ? Webinar that Patton was hosting with Dr Matt Burns , the topic was class-wide interventions for reading and math and I was just thinking a class-wide intervention . Yeah , that's exactly what I need .
I need something I can do for the whole class . I need an intervention for the whole class . So I started and it's evidence-based , it's designed for grades two through eight and Dr Burns says it's two weeks . It's like it's 20 minutes a day for two weeks . So I really wasn't expecting to leave that presentation with something I could do right away .
But I did and so two weeks later I progress monitor my class . Remember our class median was at 51 . Two weeks later it was 64 words correct per minute .
So two weeks huge and 20 minutes a day yeah , 20 minutes for two weeks .
That's it .
So I feel like it would be awesome if you explained to our listeners like what is paragraph shrinking ? Partner reading routine . Did I get it right ? And I usually just call it paragraph shrinking and don't say the rest .
Cause you could just do paragraph shrinking anytime , Right ? So he's doing partner . I just go , I use PRPS and so , like in my notes or in my planner , I'll put PRPS , partner reading , paragraph shrinking , yeah . And and let me just say you can do this so you can be two weeks and done or you can continue to do it .
I liked it so I continue to do it , but I just not necessarily every day , but I would do it , you know , maybe two or three times a week , and then sometimes I'd be like , okay , now the next two weeks we're going to do it , and so I just want to share that .
The middle of the year , second grade , the benchmark is 72 and my class median was 90 words correct per minute . And by the end of the year , the benchmark for second grade is 87 words correct per minute and my class the median was 118 words correct per minute .
So it was just like whoa , I mean , and what I love about it , and you'll see , is it's just an opportunity for practice . It's not like I'm saying read faster , or like timing them and putting pressure on , it's just an opportunity for practice . So what students do is you put them in intentional partnerships and then the stronger reader goes first .
That's reader one , and they read for five minutes . Then reader two reads for five minutes , and then reader one . It's back to reader one and now they read for five minutes , but they stop to shrink every paragraph as they read . So they're summarizing every paragraph .
And then reader two reads for five minutes , stopping to shrink every paragraph , and when you paragraph shrink , they read a paragraph and then they answer the questions what's the most important , who or what ? Tell the most important thing about the who or what and then say the main idea in 10 words or less .
So they're taking those things they just said and then trying to shrink it to just 10 words . So they just really kind of get the gist of the paragraph .
Lindsay , is partner two reading the same text as partner one , or do they keep reading ?
Yeah , this is so good , and whenever I do presentations on this , like I go through this and then still it's it can be a little confusing at first . So they're , they both have the same texts in front of them and they when reader one is reading .
So they're , they're reading the same thing , and Dr Burns in the research study says it needs to be on the weaker partner's reading level , which we know reading levels . That's a little arbitrary and you can be kind of flexible with that , but generally you want something that the weaker reader can be successful with .
And does that answer your question , or do you want me to go in more detail on that ?
No , just clarifying . So it just means that , like the second reader is repeating what the first reader , Okay , yeah , and the first half , yes .
So the first , so the reader one reads five minutes , reader two goes back to the beginning and starts where reader one had started and reading for five minutes . So yes , it's like they got a passage preview right . They got some modeling , which we know from research that that's helpful too . But then the second half .
So reader one will then start wherever reader two left off and they're going to be stopping to paragraph shrink . And then reader two is going to continue wherever reader one left off on that last little part and be paragraph shrinking . So that part may or might may not have been read to them .
So do you want to make sure that what they are reading is long enough for them to for for the full 20 minutes , for them to not finish it before that 20 minutes , or would they just go back and reread , like I'm just like let's get nitty gritty here . I have a lot of logistical questions .
I have them go on to the next passage . So I have I put in their folders like maybe six to eight passages , okay , and so what I do is I use ReadWorks . Readworks is free and you can get a lot of passages on the same topic .
That's going to be so great , because we're going to talk in a minute about that wide reading right and multiple texts on the same topic is great for building their knowledge . They're going to see several vocabulary words throughout those texts , which is going to be great .
So when they finish one text , they just go to the next one and then I have , um , you know , I just staple those together and they have , like you know , six to eight passages and if they happened to get through them all , they would just start at the beginning again . Um , it , dr Burns and his research studies .
They would have just like a loose leaf um paper and they would put it behind and they wouldn't read them again .
But for me in my class I knew I couldn't be printing off all of that every day , and so I would print off for the week and then I would print off new passages for the next week and then what I would do is like um , monday or Tuesday we might start with the first passage .
Maybe on Wednesday I'll say let's start with the second or the third passage , because sometimes they don't get far enough along because they're starting you know they're stopping to shrink every paragraph . Hopefully that makes sense . But it is in this chapter too .
It's described in this chapter and I have QR codes in there with handouts to help you and I have a whole presentation on there with handouts to help you and , um , and there's a . I have a whole presentation on this and that's linked in the book too , if you wanted to watch the whole presentation for the reader , for the listeners out there .
And I forgot to mention so because someone asked me about first grade . So it is designed second through eighth grade , but now I'm in first grade and I I do it in first grade . But what I do is I wait until January to start . My last year's class I started in February . They just need a little more time .
This year's class was ready in January to start and I started everyone in decodables first , and now I'm transitioning Um , so when they're ready , I transition them into the regular ReadWorks passages .
There are ReadWorks decodable passages too , which is nice , um , so that's great because I can have some students in regular passages and some students in the decodables , but that they're on the same topic , which is kind of nice , and and nobody really knows or realizes that they're in different . You know they have different difficulty levels .
I can't talk , you know , with their passages that the students don't really notice .
Yeah , well , and then it's all in service of building that vocabulary and background knowledge , and I assume maybe it might connect to something else that you're learning about , or maybe like something special that your class has chosen to learn about . Is that right ?
Yeah , it doesn't have to , because it can be addition , in addition to what you're already teaching in science or in social studies , but you can also go right along with it . In fact , one of the studies that Dr Burns talks about it was upper grade teachers , and they were saying we just don't have time to do this . And so they ?
Well , they did it as part of their science and they used , you know , science topics , and not only did their reading improve , but their science scores improved too , so that was- .
Oh my gosh , that's amazing . Yeah , we talked with Dr Branson . Now you're making me want to talk with him again about this too .
He's a wealth of knowledge . I just really admire him and just the fact that he I just feel like he's always really trying to help us teachers and I really appreciate that , like all his advice .
Yeah , all right . Well , I feel like we're kind of getting into some background knowledge stuff now , so I'd love to transition to move seven . It's all about embracing vocabulary and background knowledge . Can you share some ideas about what teachers can do to make this move ?
Yeah , so you know and this was kind of just a mistake I was doing before I really wasn't considering how important background knowledge and vocabulary are to reading comprehension . But they play a huge role and there's a lot of things we can do here . Don't neglect your read alouds and keep doing those rich read alouds for students .
I mean they can they have the ability to listen and hear . You know texts that are above their . You know what they can read and so they can learn you know sophisticated ideas and be exposed to more vocabulary , words and rich ideas in different situations than they're used to , and I think there's so many benefits to those read alouds .
When I hear people say that read alouds are like , not aligned to the science of reading , oh my , God , I just I'm like who is saying this ?
I haven't heard that . That's really interesting .
But it's the people who like focus on the just the like . It's just phonics .
Yeah , and usually I feel like they have an agenda , so yeah , so let's put it like let's put a pin in that the science of reading includes great read-alouds and rich discussion , and it's going to build oral language . Lots of benefits 100% .
Is there anything that , as you transitioned to Move7 , that you did that made an especially big impact on your students in building their knowledge ?
in building their knowledge . Oh , that's so . I don't to choose something over the others , I don't know Definitely . Just I think , thinking about the fact that , hey , we want to build knowledge as we're reading , and so when I have students in complex text , I really we need to scaffold them into complex text .
So thinking of things that they can do , things I can do before they're reading , to help them understand the text that we're going to read together , so I can pre-teach some vocabulary words or some phrases that might be a little unusual .
For example , we were reading a book on Thomas Edison and it had a phrase that was as a result , as a result and my first graders probably don't use that language , as a result , and so they're going to see that in the text we're going to read , and so that might be , here's a little phrase and I'm going to pull that out and maybe the sentence before it
and with that to kind of explain look , this is what as a result means and this is what it's saying , and we'll see this in our text . And I think another way to kind of scaffold is giving them a purpose . Okay , we're going to read . You're going to read something really interesting that Tom Edison did when he was younger to solve a problem that he had .
Let's see what that is , or you know , whatever , and just kind of giving them a purpose , pre-teaching vocabulary and those phrases and then writing about what we're reading , and that's just another way to deepen our knowledge .
So , oh , lori , I'm sorry , you asked me one thing and then I kind of like a few things , and then I'm thinking of more and I'm like I don't know , it's hard to pick one .
What did you notice in your students writing as you transitioned to having them write about what they were reading ?
You know , anytime I mean their writing isn't going to improve , but also their the knowledge of the topic .
Because when you write about something and you guys know , because you just wrote a book when you write about something you've really got to think through it and three , think through all different sides of it , right , and you understand it so much better in the process of writing about it . And so our students will experience that too .
So we can read something and then we're going to write about something , but I mean it just it forces them to think about what they've learned in , you know , deeper ways .
We need to be able to say it if we're going to write it , and one of the ideas I share in this chapter in the book is keyword outlines , where you read the text and then you pull out , like you look at the first sentence , you pull out three words , the three most important words of that sentence , and the students write it on their outline .
And then they go to the next sentence and then they pull out three key words and put it on the outline , right , then we're going to put that source text away and then they're just going to have their outline that they wrote with the keywords on them , and we're going to practice turning each one of those into a sentence .
Now it's going to be different from the text because we put the text away , but this is also a great sentence building activity for each one .
But then also you're putting it all together in a paragraph and so I'll have my students and partners practice speaking and saying that before they write it , and I learned about that from the Institute for Excellence in Writing and it's a great activity .
That's awesome . I love anytime students can talk before they write and that is a great teacher's tip and strategy right there , the building sentences . So thank you for that .
Lindsay , I'm wondering if we can talk really quickly about types of texts , because I heard you mention decodable texts , complex texts , read aloud texts , and when we're thinking about improving comprehension and vocabulary , I feel like the text really matters .
So can you talk a little bit about , especially in that K2 world , what kinds of texts we're talking about using ?
I am glad you asked this question because it's something I'm really concerned about that sometimes we tend to overcorrect a little bit and so we talk a lot about using decodable texts for beginning readers . I love decodable texts , but then sometimes people overcorrect and think we only use decodables and that's just not the case . We need a variety of texts .
But the question is kind of when and how much , and so when students are reading so I'm teaching first grade so students at the beginning of the year they all start in decodable texts and that's what they're reading like in small group .
But I'm still reading aloud to them and we're also reading more quote unquote complex texts because it's complex for them in our whole group . Now at the beginning of the year in first grade the whole group is still decodable and then throughout the year it gets harder . So right now , like in the spring , we're recording this .
In the spring this probably hasn't been released , but in the spring . Now I have , you know , our whole group . Complex text is regular text . Like I was just talking about that Thomas Edison book . It's just a regular text . It's not decodable . In small group I have some students that are in decodables and have others that are in regular texts .
I like to transition students from highly decodable texts to lower decodability texts . So you guys know I love geodes . Those are less decodable , in fact now correct me if I'm wrong I think they call them readables .
Now I love using like I'll start the year everyone in highly decodable and then I'm going to transition students into deodes and they're doing great with those and I know , hey , they're going to be ready for regular texts . So it's it's kind of a continuum , but then all along . So even right now we have this complex text we're reading as a group .
Students are reading different things in small group and I'm still doing read aloud to them with , you know , texts that are harder than what they could read by themselves . So that's going to be so . I guess I just it doesn't mean so people are .
Sometimes people are saying things about leveled books , like they're getting rid of all their leveled books , and to me any book can be leveled , so like they're getting rid of all their leveled books , and to me any book can be leveled , so that's a huge problem .
I replace the predictable repetitive texts , those very beginning levels , so like it's usually those guided reading levels A through D . That's when I would use that's . You know I'm using decodables there instead . I'm not going to get rid of all my other texts because I have to transition students into them .
So and what's tricky about it is it's not the same for every student . I think a lot of students are ready to transition the middle of first grade , but not everyone Can I ?
I'm going to ask another nuanced question about your whole group text . So can you walk through what that looks like ? Can you walk through how much of it you're reading aloud , how much students are reading aloud , and maybe just an example , like you said , the Thomas Edison text like is it first grade-ish ? Yeah , I think it's first grade , okay , okay .
First grade-ish . I like that , yeah . So before we read , we're going to , I'm going to pre-teach any vocabulary words that they're going to need for that text , and maybe it's not a vocabulary word but just it's . It's going to be tricky for them to read and I'm going to pull out some of those to talk about phrases Like I talked about .
That as a result , you know , and you're going to , and I will need to prep them with any if I feel like there's any background knowledge that they need in order to access that text . And then initially , what I do is I will read the text to them . A lot of times we do .
I mean , I call it echo reading , but echo reading you might consider a little shorter . So I am going to read a page and the page is maybe a paragraph or two . I'm going to read the page and the students read the page Corally together , and then we go to the next page .
I read it and then they read it , and we're going to stop and talk whenever you know we fail , and then go to the next one . I read a page , they read the same page . So they're getting a model , I'm modeling it for them and then they're reading it .
Sometimes they can do it by themselves , and sometimes I have my voice with them so that they can stay with me .
And then the same text that I will have them partner read it , and when they're in their partners , I have them do it the same way where they're in these intentional partnerships , and the stronger reader will read the page and then the weaker partner is going to read the same page and then they go to the next one and the stronger reader does it and the weaker
reader does it , and the whole time they're doing that I'm walking around to help and if I need , I can create a triad , a threesome . If I have one student where it's really difficult for them , I'm going to pair them with someone else and they're going to be reading it at the same time and then they have the stronger model with them .
Does that make sense ? So we do a lot of that and then we'll write about what we read afterwards .
That's awesome . Okay , thank you . I appreciate that specificity .
Yeah , so it's just thinking about that complex text . Think of modeling the reading , echo reading , choral reading and partner reading . Those are all kind of the different ways that you can help them access the text and write . The model reading is going to give them the most . You're doing most of the work .
Versus partner reading , now you've kind of it's a little more of an I do right , going from I do , I mean , you do , I do , we do , you do .
All right . So , lindsay , now we can kind of think about reflect on our conversation today . Is there anything that you didn't share , that you would like to share about your book ? Is there anything that you didn't ?
share that you would like to share about your book . I will think about something tonight , probably when I'm laying in bed and I'll be like dang it .
I wish I would have said that , but I guess I just want to say I've just been really honored because I told you I was so scared putting it out in the world , and I think I think when Scholastic first was like hey , it's a yes , we're going to do this , I was like they were like you should be really excited , because my reaction was kind of like , oh my
gosh , I'm so scared . And so I have just been overjoyed and just so appreciate just the kindness and people reaching out and sharing with me how it's helped them and how it's changed what they've they're doing or how they appreciate you know one thing or the other , and it's just meant so much to me and so I'm just , I'm just really grateful and grateful .
I had the opportunity and I don't think I'm perfect , and so I just appreciate that people have been so kind .
Well , we thank you for being so vulnerable and putting it out there , because I've seen so so many people who have just been excited about the work you put out and , like you said , really helped them in their own classroom . So thank you for that . I'll just share real quick . I mean , obviously you can order this on Amazon Scholastic . They can find it there .
Is there anything else you want to share ? Lindsay , about where they can connect with you ?
So , yeah , you can follow me , connect with me on social media Twitter and Instagram . It's just Lindsay Kemeny . My Facebook is I have a Facebook page , so it's it's teaching with Lindsay Kemeny . My Facebook is I have a Facebook page , so it's it's teaching with Lindsay Kemeny . And I have a website , lindsaykemenycom , so you can go .
If you want to reach out and have questions , you can reach me there . I'm the co-host of Literacy Talks podcast , so we talk all things literacy and so you can find me there too .
Well , thank you so much .
Yeah , we'll link all of that in the show notes so that everybody can find you very easily , and we're so grateful that you came on for this conversation .
Thank , you Thanks for having me , it's fun .
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the Melissa and Lori Love Literacy podcast are not necessarily the opinions of Great Minds or its employees . We appreciate you so much and we're so glad you're here to learn with us . Thank you .