Shannon chats with her favorite literacy guru, Wiley Blevins, about the decisions and methods that go into differentiation. Shannon picks his brain about some of her reading students. Also, Wiley shares insights from his coming book about adjustments that teachers can make before or during their lessons to better suit the learning levels of their students. We always get some much wisdom from Wiley, whether it be from a direct chat, a webinar he hosts, or from a book he's authored. Listen to this entire episode to get inspired about ways you can best meet your students' needs.
RECOMMENDED RESOURCES AND ONES MENTIONED DURING THE EPISODE
Shannon chats with her favorite literacy guru, Wiley Blevins, about the decisions and methods that go into differentiation. Shannon picks his brain about some of her reading students. Also, Wiley shares insights from his coming book about adjustments that teachers can make before or during their lessons to better suit the learning levels of their students. We always get some much wisdom from Wiley, whether it be from a direct chat, a webinar he hosts, or from a book he's authored. Listen to this entire episode to get inspired about ways you can best meet your students' needs.
RECOMMENDED RESOURCES AND ONES MENTIONED DURING THE EPISODE
6.9 Ideas for Differentiation with Wiley Blevins
Shannon Betts: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Reading Teachers Lounge. Come join the conversation with other curious teachers as they discover teaching strategies and resources to reach all of their learners. I'm Shannon. And I'm Mary, and together we bring an honest and experienced point of view to the topics we cover to shed light on best practices.
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Find what works for your students with us in the Reading Teacher's Lounge.
Welcome to the Reading Teacher's Lounge. We have, I guess, my favorite returning guest ever coming in here. This is [00:01:00] Shannon Betts. And then coming back to the Reading Teacher's Lounge, we have Wiley Blevins.
Wiley Blevins: Thanks for inviting me again.
Shannon Betts: Oh, thank you for being here. I just cannot wait to pick your brain about like everything.
It's been two years since we saw you. Yeah. So fill us in. What's been going on?
Wiley Blevins: Well, I've been doing a lot of work in the schools. And I mean, part of what we're talking about is, is the new book I have coming out. Called Differentiating Phonics Instruction for Maximum Impact. And so I've been doing a lot of work with schools who have basically phonics in place but need to take it to the next step.
And so the subtitle of the book is how to scaffold whole group instruction so all students can access grade level content. And that's really arisen out of the work I've been doing with schools where some schools are doing all their phonics whole group and It's sort of teaching to the middle and there are children who are below grade level expectations who are frustrated not getting what they need and there are students who are above grade level expectations who are completely bored and [00:02:00] so and their big chunks of time are being wasted of their instructional day.
So how do we make that time matter for every child? And then there are other places where the phonics was just small group, where children were placed along a continuum. And some children who were below grade level expectations were starting in skills in earlier grades and moving through them very slowly.
So that by the time they finished, say for example, first grade, they weren't exposed to a big chunk of the grade level content. So they went into second grade even further behind. So those are really big issues that I've been trying to resolve. And so. The book really, I mean, I write these books so I have something I can leave behind, but I, so they can continue the work and continue the conversations.
That's part of what I've been doing. But the other work I've been doing is here in New York City. So I live in New York City. I was on the New York City Chancellor's Literacy Advisory Council last year, and the District is the largest in the country, and we are transitioning to a new way of doing reading over the next two years.
Half of the schools this year and half next [00:03:00] year. And so this particular year I'm working in one of the, like, sub districts. So we have a big district and then we have these individual districts, there were like 30 of them. But I'm working in the district in Queens. That's not transitioning until next year, but we are studying the materials and implementing the materials in a subset of the schools to work through the kinks.
So we are digging in and analyzing those materials. What is in those that we can that we know that we've been doing and we can keep doing what are the shifts, why are the shifts and those kinds of things so we we have this lab site and schools come to visit us. And we've been working through all the big instructional routines, like blending, high frequency words, we're working on dictation now, we're going to start decodable text later this week.
And schools come in to visit and we, we talk about the research, we talk about the shifts, we do model lessons and so on. So it's very intensive and very precise kind of work, which I really, really love. But also the materials that have been chosen have some flaws. [00:04:00] They're not perfect. And so we're having to address that as well.
And so that requires a really deep dive into those instructional materials, and how we scale that up, you know, we've had conversation in the past about this whole notion of fidelity and I know we'll probably talk about that more today. But the superintendent's comment at the beginning was, we will not follow these materials with fidelity, we will follow them with integrity.
Meaning we will recognize what's great about them. We will understand what's great about them. We will understand what is not perfect about them. We will fix those things. And we will also think about our children.
Shannon Betts: And those are data informed decisions, of course.
Wiley Blevins: Oh my God. Yeah. So we have research and we have data.
So we, we give the Acadience assessment at the beginning of the school year. And so we had a ton of data at the beginning that pointed to some very specific flaws of the materials that have been chosen that we could address quite, quite readily. So that's been super helpful. [00:05:00]
Shannon Betts: And when you said that the school district is transitioning, I just want to make sure I understand you.
They're transitioning from, I mean, my understanding is like New York was sort of ground zero for reading and writing project. And so they're transitioning from units of study and balanced literacy to more structured literacy.
Wiley Blevins: That is absolutely correct. And so this is a massive shift. One of the biggest challenges is what we do during small group.
Because in the past small group is easy for the teachers. They're like, you're a B, come over Bs. You're a D, come over Ds. Now small group is skills based. Like what are the specific things students need some intensive work on? So not only do we need data to help us inform that, but teachers need progress monitoring, formative assessment.
systems in place to continue looking at what needs to be done and making those decisions, that is a really difficult transition. If you, if you've just sort of organized by a level and you're not thinking very [00:06:00] discreetly in terms of skills and strategy needs, it's a, it's a massive shift.
Shannon Betts: And they also need to really understand, you know, last time we had you on was scope and sequence.
That was the topic, but they probably need to have that understanding of sort of the developmental sequence of how the students decode the vowels and things like that. And the scope and sequence of phonemic awareness skills to then know, like how to help, like you called them the bees, but like, that's sort of the lower students.
And, you know, that old list of like, I never understood the, all the checklists that were in the. Guided reading, you know, at the back of the book where it said, this is what the skills are for level A and B and C. And I was just always overwhelmed by that long list. So I never really looked at them, but teachers now need to understand, okay, what are the actual skills that, and developmental things that the B's need, that the D's need, that the J's need, or more specifically, if the student, you know, is, you know, kind of at a first grade developmental level, what, what is it they need?
Wiley Blevins: I will say the one thing about the [00:07:00] Acadience data, I don't know, people probably have strong feelings about it in both directions, but one of the things is that it's fluency focused. Yes. So there's great attention to how we get students to efficiently use these skills quickly. And I love that that is getting attention now because we have a short window of opportunity to get those skills in place for our young readers and writers.
And so we're, we're doing much more work with monitoring that, which I, I'm really pleased with.
Shannon Betts: I will say fluency is an area of reading that I don't, I still am learning about, but we're, this episode with you is coming in a series of episodes we're recording about the nature of reading comprehension.
And as I'm learning about the science of reading in terms of reading comprehension, what I am realizing how complex. reading comprehension is. I mean, just literally so many cognitive processes and language processing is happening that that automaticity is 100 percent necessary. I mean, the brain just would explode if it had to do that decoding [00:08:00] and all that difficult comprehension work at the same time.
Wiley Blevins: Yeah, we don't have the mental energies available to do all that. So we are working on fluency at the sound spelling level, the word level, the connected text level. And all of those have to be addressed early on. And, and they're pretty easy to monitor. That's the great thing. We can really check who is, who is transferring these skills and who isn't.
And we can make those course corrections for those children. So. There's a lot of work to be done. It's, it's, I mean, some people refer to it as sort of the forgotten area of reading and kind of hasn't been the attention it needs to, but it's absolutely essential, but we're also not thinking of, we're also trying to approach all of these things.
You know, obviously I'm working with them on phonics, but we're, we're, we're trying to incorporate all the other aspects of literacy. So. You probably know from the work I do at Decodable Text, we, we, we work on vocabulary. We work on writing. We work on text cohesion and syntax, deconstructing, constructing.
[00:09:00] All these things have to be embedded in everything we do. We can't silo these things. And so there are more conversations happening around that, which makes me happy also.
Shannon Betts: Speaking of decodables, since we've talked in the last two years, I mean, like the explosion of decodables in the marketplace is so exciting.
Wiley Blevins: Yeah, I worked with a company recently, Benchmark, that did dynamite decodables. I've been begging a publisher to do trade book quality decodables. That look like a trade book that teachers could put in their classroom library that kids would fight over, you know, just really fun, engaging. I want the world to see that these books can be also wonderful reads.
Because I think it's important that children love what they're reading and enjoy books while they're learning how to read. We know that there's joy in learning how to read, but I think the quality bar has been pretty low. And so I'm thrilled that it's starting to rise finally.
Shannon Betts: Now, I mean, like, I find new [00:10:00] decodables every day and I just want to buy them all, because I know.
Yeah.
Wiley Blevins: Yeah, I don't know. You need to talk.
Shannon Betts: Well, and then also I found High Noon Books that makes a lot of high low books, you know? Yes. So like that Yes. high interest for the, you know, older students who are still learning to decode. And there's graphic novels. And I mean, our students are just like attacking those books.
Wiley Blevins: It's back to fluency. This is my big fear in the science of reading movement is People are finding these phonics resources to use and they may have one book or two books for reading. It's not enough reading. And if we don't have books in hands and pencils in hands, the bulk of the phonics lesson, we're not going to get them to fluency quickly enough.
So all this great work we're doing with phonics isn't going to have the payoff we want. They aren't reading a ton, which is why we need significantly more of these decodables in the classrooms. When we had level books, they were a gobillion. Yes. But with decodables, you're hard pressed to find enough to even [00:11:00] cover a week with a skill, let alone the weeks it takes to really master them.
Mm hmm.
Shannon Betts: And, and real books are key. Like I, we're using UFLI curriculum in the kindergarten at my school, and we love it. And the first and second grade adopted it this year, but, and I love their one page, you know, little decodable texts. I mean, cause they're free online and they're fantastic. And I like that, you know, it, it's not, I mean, there's no illustration.
The students have to illustrate the story themselves. So it's not picture reliant, but there's just something about when a student holds the spine of a book and like turns those pages, that's just really
Wiley Blevins: important. Yeah. What is nice about UFLI is that they have taken a look at some of the that are out there.
They did their lessons to some existing that Google that Google sheet.
Shannon Betts: I use it all the time.
Wiley Blevins: Yeah. So if you do have some of those in your school, you can, you can make those connections. They try to make it very easy. They, you know, it's a fantastic team there.
Shannon Betts: So they are, they are. And I'm in the Facebook group and they will answer questions like Dr. Lane will [00:12:00] answer questions like. Oh, she's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. So, but I'm excited to see what other curriculums kind of come out that, you know, follow their example. Because I think we said we're seeing the decodables come on the marketplace. And then I think we're going to see the curriculums follow and it's just going to be really neat to see what the publishers can come up with when they hire people like you and other experts to apply that creativity to sort of make like You know, a high quality basal that actually is aligned to science of literacy, you know, structural literacy.
Wiley Blevins: I think what publishers need to learn from examples like UFLI is how uncomplicated it is. Yes. It's not a ton of stuff. It does what it does efficiently. It doesn't overcomplicate it. It gives you the resources ready made that you need. Like it's just, we need tools that are just really easy to implement.
Mm hmm.
Shannon Betts: So tell us a little bit more about your book, because when you were describing it, I was remembering that we had had [00:13:00] Nancy Young on our podcast, and the author of the Ladder of Reading and Writing, and she was saying the exact same thing that you were saying, even, and she was like, kind of, like, took ownership of the problem, because she says, I put out this ladder saying that we have to do structured literacy.
She's like, but they're giving too much structured literacy to some students, not everybody needs the same amount, and she was. Noticing like she felt really bad for the kids who were like in the green part of the ladder because like you said, they were maybe getting bored with just too much phonics. And so you're seeing that same issue that we need more differentiation.
Wiley Blevins: Oh yeah. So there, there are like so many issues. One of them is wasting children's instructional time. So there are places I go where they have like 20 to 30 minutes for phonics. And there are places I go now where it could be 45 to 60 where the foundational skills. Now they're incorporating, you know, the reading of the decodables and the writing and all that in that time.
But that's a huge chunk of time. Yeah. It's not meeting [00:14:00] any of your needs. So what I've been doing with teachers is going through every instructional routine, blending, high frequency words word building, decodable text words, everything. And how during a whole group lesson, do we. scaffold? Do we support?
Do we modify in some way so that everyone gets something from grade level expectations? So we know everyone is learning what they need to be learning for their grade, but also leveling up or leveling down based on where they are in terms of other needs that they have. And so my hope is that We go through, teachers will go through each routine, practice these differentiated techniques and tools, so they become second nature, so that they, when they're teaching, they, they have these resources available.
I was in Australia back in May, they invited me to come for a week because they were launching this new literacy initiative, and so on Monday we were launching the new literacy initiative, and then on Tuesday, Wednesday, [00:15:00] Thursday, Friday, they filmed me teaching. And what they call reception year one year two, which is our kindergarten first and second grade.
So they told me what they wanted me to teach the routine and the skill that was being covered, but I didn't know the children. I knew nothing about the children. So, you know, I'm having a mini panic attack here because when you teach, you know, your students and you, I had to go with my lesson and the things that I already do for differentiation, but also my sort of differentiation bag of tricks.
Okay. I am modifying based on what I'm seeing.
Shannon Betts: So you made adjustments even in the moment, that first time you met that class.
Wiley Blevins: And that's what this book is trying to help teachers do. So like there are vignettes that describe. And so I was thinking aloud as I'm doing it. So we were doing a dictation. So I was dictating some words and I dictated the first word.
It's very clear there were some children who struggled segmenting words. So the next word. I threw up the sound boxes, and we stretched the sounds, and we marked the sounds, and we built it, and there [00:16:00] were some children who I knew right away were still going to need that support, so I had my blending, my sound box little sheets that I gave them right away.
Do you know what I mean? Like, in the fly, you're giving students what they need. There were children for whom they were writing these words like that. I knew I was going to have to add some challenge words for that. So I could, I could walk around and whisper a, you know, a harder word, or whatever. What really needs to happen in real time and what can become habits for teachers.
That's really what I want this book to, to accomplish.
Shannon Betts: So were you able to, I mean The book's not on the marketplace yet, so I haven't read it, but like, how were you able to do that? Because like you brought, you know, your decades of experience, you know, and you had your own brain like with you at that time.
And you sort of had these things that you could pull out at once. So was this book more like a PD kind of course where it's going to teach the teachers how to do that?
Wiley Blevins: Yeah. Yeah. So I go every routine. And I talk about what I typically need to think about or do or have at the ready for children who are below grade level [00:17:00] expectations, above grade level expectations, or my multilingual learners.
What can be done at point of use? You know, when we're teaching the lesson, there might be some things that have to be done before. To get them ready for it. And so I point those, those kinds of things out as well. And of course there are things you're going to do in small group to, to continue work with other skills that they, that they need support with.
Shannon Betts: So it's not the look, the look fors. Are probably the most important thing because you're, you knew what to look for when those students who either where it was breaking down or they needed the challenge. And so you saw those like, you know, triggers sort of like, Oh, this kid needs this, this kid needs this.
And then you pulled out that trick. So the teachers need to really understand those students and pay attention to the learning happening to be able to make those adjustments.
Wiley Blevins: But there are two things in the book that I hope. are helpful for teachers. One is I have vignettes that I wrote out that are based on me being in classrooms and what was happening as I was going through the lesson, what I was observing and what I [00:18:00] did.
So you, you get in my head during those vignettes for that particular routine. I also have a template that's set up for all the different parts of routine and a listing of the different possibilities for things you might need to do to scaffold support or modify that particular part of the lesson. For children.
I know it sounds really overwhelming and complex, but for teachers who have the phonics in place, this really is the next step for them to really think about meeting the widest range of needs as possible. And I encourage teachers to do it slowly. Just do one routine, get it under your belt, get it habit forming, and then like, like what we're doing in Queens here in New York City, just one routine at a time, building capacity, being comfortable with it, and then moving on right into the next.
Shannon Betts: I was showing, I work in a second grade classroom this year and I was showing it's a first year teacher that I'm helping and she's alternative certification as well, you know, so she got like a six week course in the summer and was like, here you go, you know, and she told me point blank, I don't [00:19:00] understand phonics, I don't understand phonemic awareness, so I'm trying to teach her in the moment and in the lowest reading group I work with You know, we have done CVC to CVC e words and two of the three students are like, you know, getting really fluent with it.
And then one girl is still only attached to the short vowels and she cannot get, you know, the long vowels. And so I have these little like fluency cards and it's, I mean, they're really silly. It's like, you know, road, the rod, you know, like yeah. Clean the can, you know, like stupid little things like that, but it's like in the phrase, the students can switch between those short and long vowels.
And I was trying to show this, that's, I think that's what I was showing the teacher is like the look for, like, look at, look at this student, like struggling. She's getting like three out of the four on the page, incorrect every single time. And then look at this other two kids in the same reading group.
And I pulled them over to read those phrases and they were just like flying through them.
Wiley Blevins: So great to see
Shannon Betts: and that's what the teachers need to know and like she kind of I don't think [00:20:00] she fully got it like I think she's going to need some time, you know, I said, I need you on the days when I'm not at school to like pull this little girl and read these little phrase cards with her and we need to get her looking like the other two students in the group to be able to be on pace with them.
Wiley Blevins: And so one of the things that you bring up is really important that isn't in a lot of programs is the intentionality of the practice. I'm very careful when I'm choosing a set of words for blending lines or for phrases like you're doing or for dictation. That I organize them from easier to more complex and I organize them in a way that sets up a really important instructional conversations.
I don't do anything randomly. So even with the teachers I'm working with now, you know, they'll plan like a list of words they want to practice and I say, how are these organized in a way that gives you information about what your children need? What's the conversation you're going to have? So when you were talking about going from can to cane, that's an instructional conversation at the ready.
You can talk about the A and E working together if she makes that mistake, and [00:21:00] so on. Like, you, you want to be so intentional and think about what you're going to teach and talk about with that child. So these things should not be random, and we can be very thoughtful about our choices of words to practice and stories and phrases and so on.
So that's really great to hear.
Shannon Betts: Well, and I added a scaffold for that one girl, which I've done in the past, which is just if they're really struggling with that vowel switch, you know what I mean? I want to do you know, recording this in the fall, it's come after Christmas. I want to be adding R- controlled vowels.
Well, she's not ready for three sounds for a vowel if she can't do two sounds for a vowel. So I really need her to get these. And so what I've done as a scaffold is. You know, for like cane, the can, I'm making her look at them and say a, ah, and then she's got to like, then came the can, you know, or like rod the road or road the rod.
I'm making her say either the long, oh, short, oh, or short or long, oh, whatever the phrase goes so that she gets that vowel ready in her mind. And then even when she makes that error. I [00:22:00] can say, but that's not the vowel sound you said, because she'll say it in isolation. Correct. She'll look at it. She sees it.
The magic. He shall say the long vowel. She sees it without the magic. He shall say the short vowel. But then when she reads the phrase, she reads them both with the short vowel and I'll say, but that's not the vowel sound you told me. So you're right. I can have that intentional conversation because of that scaffold.
I can have that intentional conversation with the little girl and say, I know, you know, the sound, but I need you to like apply it in that phrase. And that's why those. Fluency practice is important too, because there's something that happens when they get that three words in a row, as opposed to a word in isolation, that they struggle.
Wiley Blevins: It's so different, completely different, because they're bringing everything to the table once you get that connected text in place, and that is much more cognitively demanding. So that's why we talk about fluency at the sound spelling, the word, and the connected text level, and can be all over the place.
The other thing with phonics instruction is that Children can be okay decoding words of the skill but really struggle spelling. Oh yes. So much longer and so much more intentionality and that's [00:23:00] not happening as intensely as it needs to. And so that makes it even harder for the teacher. So, you know, some of that differentiation can be some small group.
Spelling work and coding work with those skills like we do like these five minute dictation drills, where we just have, you know, we just do a few words we call group for five minutes and we do words that they need at the level they are, and we just kind of whip through so we get a lot of dictation in but it's kind of a quick routine.
We're doing a dictation drill, call them over and you know it's differentiated based on their, their specific skill need areas so
Shannon Betts: That's what I was doing with that girl too. And like, we, I've got these great you know, you were talking about the sound boxes. So I got them from hand to mind and they have the sound boxes, but they're also magnetic.
So you can put the magnetic tiles or the cute little color counters on them and use the blending ones. But then also they have like a little like mover thing, you know, like you can, yeah. And so, yeah, so that has been so great because like we'll map those words and that little girl, you know, I'm like, [00:24:00] okay, let's map cane.
You know, and we're counting and there's only three sounds and she goes to write it down. And she's like, wait, but I have to write four letters, you know, cause otherwise I've just written can, you know, and like, I'll do them back and forth. I'll keep dictating short vowel, long vowel words, you know, or vice versa.
And that really is starting to like cement, like, wait a second. Like I've got to add that invisible magic E that I, I'm not counting. I'm not tapping, I'm not moving the bar, but I have to write
it anyway. It's changing the sound. Yeah. So great. Yeah. So
we'll get there. Hopefully, hopefully I can add those R control vowels because they're second graders, you know, like I don't want, I want her to get most of the scope and sequence of all the vowel sounds by the time she gets to third grade.
Wiley Blevins: And that's really second grade is really hard because they really do need fluency in second grade with all these skills in one syllable, but they're reading all these books with multisyllabic words. So we have to get them into multisyllabic word work really [00:25:00] fast. And so second grade's a tough year.
Shannon Betts: Well, they're using, they're using a combo of UFLI and your Sadlier. So I recommended to use the Sadlier but you know, we were saying like that you need multiple practice of decodables. Like, I love your little decodables that you have in each chapter, but it's not enough. Like a lot more decodables.
Wiley Blevins: The other thing I'll say about those decodables for the second grade. So I'm doing a study in Ohio. It's. Funded by the Ohio Department of Ed and I'm a part of this study where they're using that particular those particular resources for tutoring. So children who are high need get an additional 30 minutes of intensive work before the school day starts so they don't miss anything of their literacy block.
But with those decodables for second and third grade, they have a lot of sophisticated vocabulary in them. They do more than you would be more than you would expect. And so we, we, we trained the tutors to do what's called drop in vocabulary. So like there was a passage that had, you know, maybe 10 words [00:26:00] that some of the children didn't know.
And like one of the words with mend, he was mending something this night. It was mending something. I asked a question, no child knew it. So I had her reread that paragraph. And drop in the meaning. So she read, you know, and then the night mended or fixed his da da da da da. And I told her, you know, when you're doing your echo reading, do this drop in vocabulary.
Like we can't forget about the other needs that children have and attending to those kinds of things. So we want to make sure that we are aware of the wide range of. It can be not only decoding, but it can be vocabulary. It can be text cohesion, you know, connecting ideas across sentences, like when pronouns appear and don't know the reference, there can be complex sentences that we need to deconstruct.
Like what's the who part of the sentence? What's the did what part? What's the where part, you know, and build that meaning and those kinds of ways. So there's so much more that these children need and so much more that we can do with children with these very basic [00:27:00] tasks.
Shannon Betts: So two things. One, I've been learning more about cohesive devices from Timothy Shanahan's blogs, because that was something I didn't really understand before, and how complicated, as a sophisticated, good, proficient reader, I am connecting all those things from the previous paragraphs, but that's not always obvious to the students, especially even when they, you know, put some word, you know, maybe an adverb in the sentence that all of a sudden everything means the opposite of what was the previous sentence.
Part of the sentence and they didn't recognize that the other thing I was going to say is okay. I mean, you know, that scope and sequence very well for Sadlier so they're in second grade. It's November. They're following, you know, the order of the lessons that group. I was just describing and that girl. I was just describing.
She's not on the level of where they are whole group. So I'm having to I'm having to You know, those decodable texts just aren't quite approachable for her. I mean, ideally, I guess I should have the first grade book, you know, working with her for that, but yeah, for the one syllables.
Wiley Blevins: Yeah.
Shannon Betts: Yeah. [00:28:00] So but you know, the teacher's got to do, I mean, let's talk about that, of like what you're doing with the schools in Queens and like, what's in your book, like how would a second grade teacher, like, first off you said those, you know, the dictation only takes about five minutes.
You know, so like, and I'm sure the blending lines and things like that are pretty quick too. So like, what does that, I don't know, hour long, hour and a half long literacy block look like? How many pieces does it have? And then how is the teacher able to handle all the differentiation for the lower students versus the higher student?
Wiley Blevins: So this is, this is sort of like the million dollar question. One, it's one of the hardest questions to answer because every school I go into has predetermined some of these things, or they have different time. Frames and they define them differently. So when I think about phonics, I think I do the introduction of the skill and the work with the skill and isolation, but also we are reading connected text and we are writing.
So for me, there's a lot that's happening. [00:29:00] Some people think of phonics as just like. your isolated skill work. It can't be. We don't see movement unless they're picking up a book and picking up a pencil. So when I think of how much time I need, it usually is about 45 minutes at least to do the reading and the writing, do everything that I need to do.
So I need a good chunk of time to do that. So while we're doing that, and it can vary based on your student's needs, like you said, differentiation, what have you. So I'm differentiating during that whole but I also need a chunk of time where I'm meeting with small groups. To do some hard work below level, you know, work with skills they haven't previously mastered.
I might do some more intensive work with my on level students a couple times a week because When they get to like long vowels and complex vowels, they can really hit a wall because that's a lot of content really fast. So you want to keep them on track.
Shannon Betts: And a lot of homophones and a lot of different spellings.
Yes.
Wiley Blevins: And so they need more intensity too. And sometimes we don't do enough with [00:30:00] them, additional work. And then my above level students, I can move them further in the scope and sequence and march them through it. A very, I do it very systematically because I want them to move through that, that sequence and, and, and that kind of way.
But so I need a chunk of time for that. And that can be 15, 20 minutes. You don't meet with every group every day, obviously, and so on. But then you need that knowledge building period of time. You know, in primary grades you are systematically building knowledge, like you're systematically building literacy skills.
So what does that look like? If you don't have a knowledge building curriculum, I know that's sort of the trend now and people are talking about it, but not everyone has something in place. I work with schools where we just look at our read alouds. How do we reorganize our read alouds so that we are reading for several weeks about animal habitats?
What are all the books that we have available? How do we connect it to what we're doing in science? You know what I mean? So we're very intentional about. the kinds of things we're reading. So there's overlap in vocabulary, overlap in content, but, you know, each book adds something different. And what kinds of conversations do we have that [00:31:00] gives children opportunities to use that information and use that vocabulary?
And how is that connected to writing? You know, they can hear these things. We can connect it like thinking about how that strand is in place really needs a lot of attention. Now it gets very, very little. We are. spending so much time, and rightfully so, working on the decoding piece, but leaving out a huge part of what children need to get them ready for the demands in second, third, fourth grade.
And so that needs a big chunk of time. And then, of course, the writing. I think, you know, my hope is, I know Phonics is getting so much attention now, my hope is that they'll get bored with me and move on to other areas that need attention, like vocabulary and writing. And I hope that they get more prominence as the, you know, upcoming months and years progress.
Because we haven't done either well.
Shannon Betts: Oh, vocabulary. I'm still learning about that too. And I have so many English language learners and there's just these words that I think they're gonna know and they don't, you know? And [00:32:00] so I like what you were saying.
Wiley Blevins: We have native English speakers. We have native English speakers.
Yes. True. True. And stories. Yeah.
Shannon Betts: So, so what you, I like what you said about using the Read alouds. This episode with you is gonna follow we just had. Dr. Molly Ness on and she's, she's amazing. And she just had released a great book about real alouds. I
Wiley Blevins: love her protocols in there.
Shannon Betts: She has them for literacy.
She has them for social studies, the content areas, and she just makes it so actionable and she kind of just like releases all her secrets, you know, at once, but I like what you're saying. You're basically like working on that content through the read aloud, and also it sounds like through the speaking and listening standards, because you're having the students discuss it a lot.
Wiley Blevins: It has to be more than just hearing it. They have that information, whether they are, you're, you have structured conversations in place, you have them write about it and, and what have you. There just needs to be some follow up and some intentionality around it.
Shannon Betts: You're not just reading a book about sharks, but you're having them process [00:33:00] what they learned about sharks.
To then put it in their background knowledge.
Wiley Blevins: And connect what we know across those books. So maybe we're going to focus several books on how these different animals survive, or several books on the habitats they live in, how that affects how they survive, whatever. There needs to be some kind of focus.
Shannon Betts: I did that yesterday with my second grader.
So we were reading the geodes books. And I'm doing the first grade set of geodes with them because they're at the CVC, you know, long vowel stage, but there was a whole, like four different books about how different animals communicate. It was like how elephants communicate. How ants communicate through their sense of smell, how bees communicate, and then how monkeys do different squawks to like communicate where to move when predators are coming.
And like, we talked about those connections. That was the, that was the comprehension piece that I brought into the lesson was what did we learn about how all these animals communicate?
Wiley Blevins: But just think about what you just said. Think about the language you use. [00:34:00] Communicate. Predators. Survive. You know, you are using those same words when you're talking with kids.
Of course, yeah. And you're telling them to use those words. That is really meaty work.
Shannon Betts: Well, and that's the beauty of, I mean, I really do like the Geodes. Somebody said they're not really called decodables. They called them something else. I can't
think of it. It's on
my Instagram. I'll have to find what they called it, but they were saying basically it's not like a true decodable.
Because there's so much knowledge building in there that they're not quite those like controlled text, but I like it for that purpose because it's giving them a lot of fluency building with the high frequency words, and then we can have these amazing conversations.
Wiley Blevins: Well, I'm glad you brought the high frequency.
This is another, these are the things that keep me up at night that no one else does. Worries about, but
Shannon Betts: no, we're glad you're solving the problems of the literacy world for us .
Wiley Blevins: I worry, I worry about the lack of repetition and the high frequency words because the decodables have become so decodable.
Yeah. That there, [00:35:00] there's very little repetition of these irregularly spelled words for some of our children. And we know, like I took, I have a list of the top 248 and about 60 of them are regular. Children need to know that like said and the and was, they need to know those words like the back of their hand.
And if we have decodable text that aren't including them or including them very often because of these sort of high requirements, they're not getting that. And so not only are they not getting it, so we need other resources to help them with that. So your, your phrases or maybe other books. And people are probably passing out when I say that, but there might be other books that serve that function if we don't have our decodables.
We also are having children who can't spell these words. Yes. So they're learning to read them, but they can't spell them. So they're not seeing them enough and we're not having the instructional conversations. These irregular words are so ripe for instructional conversations. Like, you know, like a word like love or Give or what have you, you know, teaching that no English word ends in V.
We [00:36:00] have to add any, like there are these tips about how to spell that we have when we're teaching these and then the repetition and seeing them and using that, that's not happening enough.
Shannon Betts: Well, and then etymology, I mean, you know, like the etymology of one and, you know, all the other family words, like once and things like that.
You can have really rich conversations too.
Wiley Blevins: So that all needs to be embedded. And so I worry. About that is why we don't test the spelling of these irregular words. I see all these assessments out there to see if kids can read them and they do okay. And then teachers are like, I don't know what this word is, you know, or they, they see W U Z everywhere for a while.
It's like, we haven't done what we need to do with those words. And we're not staying on top of them the way we need to be.
Shannon Betts: No, I agree with you. I agree with you.
Shannon Betts: Hello listeners, it's Shannon here, and I want to take a quick moment to tell you about one way I'm committing to my health this year. I've [00:37:00] started making green chef meals again, and my family and I are loving them. The food is delicious and easy to prepare. There's tons of sauces and spices and other ways to add flavor to the meals.
There are also tons of gluten free options for me each week. I use the app a lot. It makes it easy to make changes to the menu choices and pause a week if needed. The great news is they've given me free boxes to give away. So if you're interested in trying Green Chef, head to the show notes for this episode to get the link.
Or you can visit www. readingteacherslounge. com backslash quick links and click on the button for Green Chef. Happy cooking. Watch our stories on Instagram to see some of the meals I'm making.
Shannon Betts: You suggested, so we talked about background knowledge. Is there a place also, like I've seen this debate in the science of reading community of like, is it background knowledge or is it comprehension strategies?
Like we're a both and group, like is that what you believe? [00:38:00]
Wiley Blevins: Absolutely. I'm both. And so there was an interesting conversation recently with a bunch of like big name people like Nell Duke and Tim Shanahan and Dr. Katz and Dr. Buckingham and others. And they were talking about a background knowledge and just how critical it is.
But also one of the points that Tim made, which I think is so important, you don't want to give children all the background knowledge before they read because then it defeats the purpose of reading, reading,
Shannon Betts: they've got to learn from their reading.
Wiley Blevins: They need to learn from the reading and I think that's a really important point to remind ourselves of also strategies are needed to figure out where you're having some comprehension breakdowns, and so they have to be in place.
So I've always focused on real world kinds of strategies with the students like Even if I had a program where they would say, you know, here, you need to stop and do X, my mind was always like, well, not all kids need to stop here and do X. Like, so I would ask children, you know, where, where were some parts that were a little more difficult?
You don't understand. Let's [00:39:00] look at that. What could we try to help us figure that out? Like that's more, we need more of those kinds of conversations. So you teach them and then you use them very flexibly when children need them at different points. So we need more focus in that area of the practical application.
Shannon Betts: That's what I've learned, too, from my reading about reading comprehension, is how important a purpose for reading is. I did not realize, I mean, I, yeah, I mean, I have given students just like, go read this book, and like, I didn't realize that I was doing them such a disservice, but proficient readers have this flexibility of like, I'm going to use this strategy for this purpose, and I'm going to use this for this time, and they have their bag of tricks that they are like, maybe even just Like, not even consciously using to attack and understand the book, and if we don't give them that purpose, they don't know which tricks to use.
Wiley Blevins: Completely. I mean, think about us. If, if we're reading an article that we know we have to share with colleagues, we read it very [00:40:00] differently. Mm-Hmm. from a novel we're reading at the end of the day for fun. Yeah. You we're to it differently. We're thinking about it differently and we're incorporating information differently.
So you purpose for reading and writing is super critical.
Shannon Betts: Well, and I told Mary like, you know, if like. Your kitchen's burning down and you got to like read the directions for the fire extinguisher. You're going to read them very carefully.
Wiley Blevins: Yes. Yes. And quickly. Yes.
Shannon Betts: I was also thinking about background knowledge, so that, that second grade group when we were reading the book about the ants at the very beginning, the, you know, my little girl that I was talking about, she didn't know antenna.
First off, I had to help them. Decode that word that I guess is a word that was not decodable in the text. But then also she didn't know what antenna were. So I had to tell her that when we acted, you know, on our forehead and things like that, because the rest of the story was based on all the different ways that the ants used their antenna to communicate and all these different things.
And if she had not understood that one word, she missed the whole, the whole plot of the, you know, the nonfiction text. So.
Wiley Blevins: But how did you know she didn't [00:41:00] know? Did she tell you? Did you ask?
Shannon Betts: I said, I said, well, like I had to help her with the word. So then I said, what is antenna? And she's like, I don't know.
Can you, I said, can you point to the antenna on the ant? And she's like, no. So I knew I needed to provide that background knowledge so that then she could then learn the new ideas of the text. And I guess that was my reading experience of just knowing which part of that knew, like what you were saying, Tim Shanahan is saying, like, we don't tell them everything, but we need to tell them the critical things to be able to unlock what they need from the text.
Wiley Blevins: Exactly. And that's very nuanced. It is. And so that requires us to preview these texts and think deeply about possible issues, and publishers can help point out some of those things for sure, but yeah.
Shannon Betts: Oh, Molly Ness said that too, and I have, I've done read alouds where I have not previewed the text, and she was like, Don't do that anymore, because, you know, you can really, yeah, you might still, like, I was like, but I'm having an authentic time where, like, if my comprehension breaks down, I'm on a, you know, a model, how I'm [00:42:00] understanding for the students, because, yeah, that'll help a little bit, but you really need to preview that text so that you can know which she said, background knowledge to teach also funds of knowledge, which was something I'd never heard of Okay.
The, the, you know, the cultural kind of background knowledge and then also to know like what vocabulary you had talked about that, like which vocabulary to kind of teach in the moment versus which vocabulary to pre teach.
Wiley Blevins: Exactly, exactly. That's why I love this concept of drop in. So drop in vocabulary words you teach in the moment, just to help students.
You don't hold them necessarily accountable for it. They're not the big words that are going to trip them up, but they might trip them up some.
Shannon Betts: Yeah, she gave an example of like Duchess, like, Oh, I don't, it's not, it's not telling the whole story of Brave Irene. So, you know, when she's reading Brave Irene, she just said, Oh, a Duchess is kind of like a princess and you move on.
Wiley Blevins: Yeah, exactly. It's super fast. You don't belabor it. You just go on.
Shannon Betts: But then some other words the students really needed to understand like package to be able to understand [00:43:00] the plot of bravery. So, yeah, we need to, we need to, you mentioned this earlier was just it's, it's, it's intentionality. It's being intentional of knowing,
Wiley Blevins: yeah, knowing your students well,
Shannon Betts: yeah, to know what they, what, where are the breakdowns going to be for them, right?
So I want to ask you to, like, we learned two quick questions. One, can you make awareness with or without letters? With.
Wiley Blevins: Okay. And it cannot be siloed. This is what this is. What do you mean? This is keeping me up at night as well. I go into so many schools who know that they need more phonemic awareness support.
Oh, they have resources and they have a protective time of phonemic awareness, like 10 minutes a day. And they're doing like a gabillion activities.
Shannon Betts: That's the Hegarty curriculum or something like that. Okay. I don't know. You never, you never named drop, but I'm going to go for
Wiley Blevins: you. I don't, I don't ever want to criticize anyone because there are great things.
And they really are.
Shannon Betts: I mean, because they filled in void that, you know, my [00:44:00] teachers that didn't have any phonemic awareness activities, but then differentiation, people are doing too much of it. Maybe exactly,
Wiley Blevins: exactly. It's like, it's like overcorrecting. Yes. When I'm in a spot, we look at those activities and we say, which of these are connected to our reading and writing goals and our phonics.
That's the whole point of phonemic awareness to unlock the ability to use these skills when we read and write. So let's take something like oral blending, you know. Can you put that together? What's the word? Like, if children can do that, I don't need to do it orally. Because when they sound out a word, they're looking at the letter, they're saying the sound, they're stringing the other sound.
They are doing it. I get more mileage out of them reading words. Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah. So one of the things we're doing is trying to carve out time, like use our time as efficiently and wisely as possible. So if I'm doing all these things that aren't connected to my read, like if we're clapping syllables and doing rhyme.
It has no impact if we're reading and writing words at the sound phoning level. Do you [00:45:00] see what I'm saying? And so why are we wasting 10 minutes doing that when I should be focusing on the phoning level? So there's a disconnect. And so I do them orally and connected directly to print. So if we're doing, if we're segmenting, you know, sat, then we're going to build it with letter cards right afterwards.
So I'm making connections very directly. We're doing manipulation tasks. Children's struggle doing those orally. So we have the letter cards. We're replacing the letter for the SAT. You know, I show them how to do that very concretely. And I feel like I get more impact out of that learning that way. So limiting the activities.
Thinking about the connection to the reading writing, so it's not a silo thing, and being very concrete about that work.
Shannon Betts: Like, like my second grader, when she sounded out ka ane, but then blended it as can, that's a phonemic awareness looking at print that can be like, you just said these sounds, but you didn't put it together correctly.
I ka ane, cane.
Wiley Blevins: Exactly. So, so. You just did [00:46:00] something that I want to talk a little bit about. You, you tap the, the, yeah, they're just
Shannon Betts: listening to this episode. So they didn't see that. So,
Wiley Blevins: yeah. So, so we do that when we segment, you know, sats at, you know, we, we segmented. So one of the things that is in the materials we're using here in New York city is they do that when they're blending.
So they'll tell children put it together. Watson sat. Okay. And so. I've never done that. I always do like sat and then we slowly
Shannon Betts: continuous blending.
Wiley Blevins: So some research came out by Linnea Ahri because I'll stray. And I think it was 2021 or 22 is fairly recently that talked about continuous blending is far better.
then the segmented blending, children's struggle holding onto the sounds and so on. So we have that piece of research that was finally done about stringing together the sound. Then we flash forward to the beginning of the school year. We looked at our Acadience data and there's a section where they have to sound out these nonsense words.[00:47:00]
The children bombed. Okay. It was like, why are they bombing? So we looked at what was happening and what they were doing was. Let's say they saw the letters V O P, they were going V O P, VOP. They were doing that segmented and putting it together, this is a fluency assessment. Where they should have been going VOP, RAPS, whatever, you know, going through them very quickly.
So we found out that one of the techniques in this particular program was actually impeding fluency. Oh. We stopped it. So now they do the continuous blending from the very beginning. They're going, you know, sad, Bob, you know, whatever it is, the words, real and nonsense to get over that hurdle. And so this is what the new information is really helping us looking at the research and the data and fixing some techniques that might be holding some children behind.
Shannon Betts: I think I, first off, I think I've just done it because I've always done it. And then also I see students doing it. So then I just did it. But then also like, I guess I'm predicting [00:48:00] that they're going to struggle with like, which ones are stop sounds and which one are continuous sounds, you know, like, are they going to like cane?
Wiley Blevins: Yeah, you do it very quickly. So you can, when you model it, you model it with the, the continuous sounds, you know, sap, and you do a fashion sap, but if it's a sap, you know, and they get in the habit of how to stream the other sounds. When you get to the stop sounds, you just do it quickly, bat, you know, you just go right into that vowel and they get in the habit of doing that.
So we still, we still segment in the same way, but for blending, we're doing the continuous. We now have data. From the research and we now have data from Acadian showing that there's, we need to improve the way it's being done. All right.
Shannon Betts: I'm going to work on that. And I'm going to look for that latest study.
Wiley Blevins: I wonder with, I wonder with, with this particular child, if that might be something that's standing in your way, try doing continuous blending with her and see if it makes any difference.
Shannon Betts: I will, I will try it tomorrow. Yes. Thank you. One more thing I want to pick your brain about and then I want to bring up another thing that you talked about, but we talked, we did a really good episode last [00:49:00] season where like, we learned about the reading brain.
I had not understood the reading brain ever. Yeah. How do you explain it? I mean, like, let's talk about those teachers in Queens that were doing balanced literacy. Like, did you teach them about the reading brain before to give them a why about structured literacy?
Wiley Blevins: We, we did a little bit when we talked about high frequency words in the.
way we were modifying the routine where we're doing the full analysis of those words that are irregular. We talked about the different parts of the brain that need to be activated, how we have to attend to the sounds, the letters of the meaning. And we show them in the routine, the new revised routine, how we were doing that.
And I think that that made sense. So I showed them the The Stanford study by Bruce McCandliss that that looked at the participants who were sounding out words versus learning words as a whole chunk, and how that affected what was happening in the brain that we talked about the parts that need for orthographic mapping, looking at Linnea Airey's work.
So I don't go into a ton of like we don't map out the brain and do the [00:50:00] fancy names and things like that for it. I just I just give the teachers the information that I feel they need to understand why that routine is going to help accelerate learning. That's kind of as far as we went with it.
Shannon Betts: It helped me to watch the the Stanislas Dehane.
Oh my gosh, so great. Yeah, his YouTube videos of how he explained basically, you know, how like our brain sort of, once we became illiterate. Humanity, how we sort of co opted part of our brain that was recognizing faces and things like that to then be able to, you know, make the letterbox, which I just think is really amazing.
Wiley Blevins: I want him to fix my brain so I can remember people's names.
Shannon Betts: I'm really good at faces and their names either. I just, I just tell people that I'm not going to remember your name, but please don't take it personally.
Wiley Blevins: I, I never forget a face, but a name, I, I tell people I make my mom wear a name tag. That is how bad I am at remembering it.
And it's [00:51:00] embarrassing. I don't know what part of my brain has been injured or is not working.
Shannon Betts: I don't think that's it. Let me tell you what I think it is, Wiley, is that we have been in schools for decades and we have just had to learn like so many kids names over the years and teachers names over the years that there's just, we are at our capacity for now.
Wiley Blevins: We're just old.
Shannon Betts: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But okay. One of the things you said earlier, I just love this so much. You said we don't see movement unless they pick up a book or pencil. Yes. So that means authentic reading and writing.
Wiley Blevins: Yes. The authentic application. It does not matter how good the phonics materials are, if the bulk of the lesson, they aren't using them.
And here again, this is another issue with the materials we're using here in Queens. They were doing like an hour of this, this work 45 minutes to an hour with never picking up a book or a pencil. Oh. And I was like, and then the children, we were looking at it and they weren't making it. I was like, no, it's so removed from [00:52:00] reality.
Let's do a little teaching and then use it, use it, use it, use it. So
Shannon Betts: those are the changes you made to the curriculum? Is that what you're talking about?
Wiley Blevins: Okay. So we found places in the, so I have to work within the structure we're given. So, and that's the reality that we're living in. We, we, they're not doing the Wiley way, you know, it's, they're not my materials.
And, and, and, and to be quite frank, my job isn't to go in and tell them my preferences. You know what I mean? We all have preferences. I try really hard to stick to what works, what the research says. I might have my preferred ways of, of using that and other people have other ways and that's okay, but I want to be very clear about what the research says versus what my preferred way of applying it.
And so this is someone else's preferred way of applying that, but there are some deficiencies. And so we're looking at every part of the lesson where we can do more picking up books and picking up pencils. And so that's part of the, the hard work that we're doing, but it's, we're starting to get that in, in a more systematic way, which I think will have payoff.
Shannon Betts: [00:53:00] I think that's really creative, what you're doing. And that if somehow you could sort of make that a systematic thing, like how to take any curriculum and look at it and evaluate what are the pieces to keep and what are the ways to modify it, you know, to help the students that you have.
Wiley Blevins: Yeah, it's important work because I mean, here in New York, we have so many children.
I mean, enormous numbers of children who are reading and writing where they need. And there's just, we know how to do it. And so let's just, let's just get it. Let's just get them further than they have been ever before. And it takes time. It's, it's, it's really hard work. It takes time and effort, but we know we have the tools.
Shannon Betts: We're so grateful. You're doing this work. You're not going to retire anytime soon.
Wiley Blevins: I'm close to retirement age, but I don't know. I like what I do.
Shannon Betts: So, no, no, I mean, because the fact that you are, you always continue to work with teachers and students, which I think is great. You're not just on a podium talking.
Wiley Blevins: Oh no, no. [00:54:00] And I don't like doing that. I'm very, I'm very much an introvert. People don't realize that. So that kind of work is not my favorite kind of stuff. I'd rather be with kids. I like kids better than adults by far. Same. So, but, but the thing about education for me, that's been so interesting is you never stop learning.
Yes.
Shannon Betts: Cause all the techniques will like not work on one student and then you've got to figure out something new.
Wiley Blevins: Hopefully. And that for me is where it just keeps compelling me forward. Like I have to solve this issue and there's nothing, there's no perfect curriculum. There's no, you know what I mean? So there are always unanswered questions, even though we know so much.
There's still things we need to do better. And so there's always areas to keep going.
Shannon Betts: So where do you think we're going? You said you think we're going to kind of, hopefully everybody's going to sort of, in the next few years, get the whole phonics thing. And then we can move to fluency and vocabulary.
Wiley Blevins: I hope so.
You know, the thing we in education. have a [00:55:00] habit of taking a good thing and overdoing it and making it bad. So I know there's some overcorrecting that's happening that could be problematic. You know, like I worry about not enough reading, so they're not getting fluency, and so people think it didn't work, but that's the reason, you know, I worry about these kinds of things, the practical kinds of sides of it.
But I'm hoping that we move the field forward enough that teachers have a, a larger body of information about how to do this early work. Well, that's what is exciting to me. I feel like that's starting to happen with all the training and, and what have you, but there are big areas that, like we said earlier, vocabulary, it's just never been, my work at Harvard was all on vocabulary.
Like, I was an Isabel Beck fan back in the 80s, and doing my own sort of work with her work. And I just could never understand why vocabulary didn't get the attention that it was, that it was. And finally, after, you know, like 30 some years, it's [00:56:00] finally getting some attention. But that's a big area. That's an unknown, and there's still more, and it's harder to assess.
It is like there's all so many issues that need to be worked out and writing. Writing is really hard to teach. Most teachers aren't writers. They're not comfortable teaching something they don't do all the time or do well. So how do we help teachers be better teachers of writing? I think that's an area that's right for.
More exploration at work.
Shannon Betts: My school just adopted last year a writing curriculum, and this is the year we're like really implementing it, and it's been so exciting to see. Empowering Writers. I don't know if you've heard of that curriculum, but it's really I've heard of it, yeah, yeah. Yeah, well like back in the day, like I think my second year teaching, I bought Your books.
Like about, you know, Phonics A to Z and then the intermediate grade one. And then I bought Barbara Maracondo's book about like the most wonderful writing lessons ever. And I mean, she's the one who ended up creating Empowering Writers Curriculum. So I've taught writing like that my whole career. So it's really exciting to see it implemented school wide.
Wiley Blevins: Yeah. I think about, you know, I'm a writer, you know, I write for [00:57:00] teachers, I write books for kids. So I think about writing in a very different way. And I think. Me, as a, you know, you could say a professional writer, I'm learning from other writers. That's who I go to to learn, but we don't have children go to other writers to learn.
Right?
Shannon Betts: Well, that's how this curriculum works. It's kind of like you, you annotate a ton of text and then you sort of find techniques of like, this is the way to write a good introduction. You can use A, B, or C, and then they apply that to a whole writing piece after they learn how to write just an introduction.
Wiley Blevins: And that's how writers learn to write. That's really exciting to hear.
Shannon Betts: Yeah, no, you would think it would be like, like when I first did it, I'm like, Oh, but they're teaching it in isolation. Like you're only learning how to do character details. You're only learning how to do setting details, but then all those things are like strung together in, you know, and you apply as you learn even you apply each of them to your new writing piece.
Wiley Blevins: But writers and children's books, you know, we go to these conferences and we focus on areas in which we know we have weaknesses. [00:58:00] Okay. Character. It could be story arc. It could be emotional arc. It could be whatever page turns, you know, we focus on the minute thing that we layer into the things we already do well.
So I'm glad there's a curriculum out there doing that same kind of thing and the structures and the moves that professional writers make, why they do certain things. When you have those insights, when you, we unlock that mystery, it also makes it easier for children to do those same moves.
Shannon Betts: I think it also improves comprehension because like then they totally understand where a writer comes from and then they're understanding that reading is trying to interpret the author's message.
Wiley Blevins: It's like nonfiction, and I know we're, we're getting late on time, but it's like nonfiction. You know, for years I would see teachers teach structures and features. Mm-Hmm. it was very sort of removed and I, I kept saying, if we want children to really understand structures and features, they have to use them in their own writing.
Like, choose the structure. Tell me why. [00:59:00] What are the connector words you're going to use to connect the ideas for your reading? What about this feature? Where are you putting it? Why are you putting it? Does it add to it? Does it explain something? You know, like when they have to make these decisions like a real writer, they understand why writers are doing these same things.
And then they get more meaning out of the text they're reading. We don't go far enough. We're very
Shannon Betts: One of the simplest things they do in empowering writers. I mean, it's like, you'll just, it takes like 10 minutes. It's a really good sponge activity for students. Like you'll just say, okay, it's about to be winter.
Okay. Everybody give me a detail about winter that, you know, give me a fact about winter and you write them all on the board. And then you, I mean, you might have 30 facts or 30 things, you know, it's cold, you wear scarves, whatever there's Christmas, blah, blah. You have the students group those into main ideas.
that are not overlapping.
Wiley Blevins: Wow. I love that.
Shannon Betts: And then you come up with the thesis sentence to like lead up that, you know, and it, then all of a sudden you've got like a nonfiction piece, you know, like it's amazing.
Wiley Blevins: Called We Hate [01:00:00] Winter. I'm in
Shannon Betts: Georgia, it's a little more mild here.
Wiley Blevins: Oh my gosh, it's starting to get cold here.
Winter's so hard for me, because I'm originally from the south, and I'm cold like, you know, in July, so you can imagine in December.
Shannon Betts: You're staying in New York for the children, huh?
Wiley Blevins: Right. I love New York, but it's really cold. I used to live in Chicago, and that was It's like painfully cold. Oh, yeah. I love Chicago.
It's an amazing city, but it was cold.
Shannon Betts: That cold wind. Woo.
Wiley Blevins: Yeah.
Shannon Betts: Okay. Well, I could pick your brain forever, but I'm gonna, we're gonna let you go. And thank you so much for joining us, Larene Teacher's Lounge.
Wiley Blevins: Oh, my pleasure.