September 2024 Bonus Episode for Subscribers Artwork

Reading Teachers Lounge

This is the Reading Teachers Lounge where listeners can eavesdrop on professional conversations between elementary reading teachers. We are passionate about literacy and strive to find strategies to reach all learners. Shannon and Mary are neighbors who realized that they were “literacy soul sisters” at a dinner in their Atlanta neighborhood. Once they started chatting about reading they haven’t really stopped. Come join the conversation.

All Episodes

Reading Teachers Lounge

September 2024 Bonus Episode for Subscribers

Subscriber Episode • September 26, 2024 • Shannon Betts and Mary Saghafi • Season 7

Subscriber-only episode

Send us a text

This is our 2nd exclusive bonus episode of Reading Teachers Lounge podcast. In these episodes, Shannon and Mary will share about the students they're helping in reading, the resources they're using, and the books and other materials they're studying to further their practical knowledge about the Science of Reading.

In September 2024, Shannon and Mary provide details about their tutoring students of various ages and how they're using different curriculum resources with their readers. Mary shares how she's using Bookworms, All About Spelling, Measured Mom Plus, and the Times Tales resources with her students. Shannon talks about the free Structured Literacy training she's taking online through Cox Campus. She also chats about how she's working on handwriting skills, preparing for the structure of MAP testing questioning format, and using the UFLI reading curriculum with the 1st grader she's working with.

RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE:

Get Literacy Support through our Patreon

Season 7 September 2024 bonus

Shannon Betts: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Reading Teacher's Lounge. We're glad to have you back. This is our second of our new series, which is our exclusive monthly bonus series that we offer only to paid subscribers. And so this is our September, 2024 episode. We recorded our first one last month, which was August, 2024. And in these, Mary and I are Finally just this is like season one where we're just sort of sitting and catching up with each other on what's going on in our own teaching practices and a little bit of what's going on in our own personal lives.

And I'm glad we're doing this, Mary, because like I have to schedule like a scheduled Zoom time to talk to you. We have not had time to talk this month.

Mary Saghafi: It has been super busy. You're so right. And I, this is really good debriefing time with me too. We always talked about this first season was like, I really wish your classroom would have been right across the hall from me because you would have been that person that I would [00:01:00] go and just pop in and ask a quick question and then answer it.

back to my classroom for. So I think that this time is seven years later.

Shannon Betts: Now we're finally doing it, even though we're at different teaching positions and placements at this time. But fill me in, like what has been going on since I last talked to you, which was back in August. So,

Mary Saghafi: yeah things are my practice is going really well.

And I'm really doing

Shannon Betts: practice. My tutor practice. Okay. And

Mary Saghafi: my advocacy practice. So both of them but I have to say this fall has been very busy. Our school has changed their schedule since, like post covid. We now have an extra half an hour. And so in my wise or not so wise decision, I thought, oh, that means I can do three kids after school with three hours of tutoring.

And that has. Been very busy for me. It's really good. I know that I'm helping families. I know that they're super appreciative. But it's just it's a new way of organizing my family life after [00:02:00] school and my work life. So I have been spending a lot more hours doing advocacy during the day tutoring in the afternoons and evening, and then I've been.

That is, that's what I'm doing at the moment with my stuff. So we're just kind of like. Planning kind of like all over the place. So in the margins

Shannon Betts: of time in the. Yeah. As soon as you're done with your tutoring, you're like on mom duty, right? I mean, you're. Fixing dinner and helping with homework and bath time and all that.

Mary Saghafi: Yep. So we're just kind of like. In those throws where I feel like my husband and I are sometimes like ships passing in the night. It's just, it is what it is. You know, you see my neighbors in passing and I keep thinking like, I know we'll hang out soon. And it feels like each day just turns into the next.

So I'm a little bit in that. But I think being really like cognizant of it and, and trying really hard to schedule my day within blocks and making the most of my time. It's, it's helpful. It's coming along. I'm not you know, I don't think I have overcommitted. It's just a busy season right now. [00:03:00] So I'm, I'm taking that kind of in stride.

And I also think that This is probably limit, like helping me see what is my max capacity because right now I'm truly at max capacity. I think for this practice, but

Shannon Betts: So what is that capacity? Like how many, how many tutoring students are you seeing? And then are you seeing them just once a week or, or some of those repeat during the week?

Mary Saghafi: So, OG practice really dictates that you should see your students twice a week for 45 minutes. And so that is something I always offer as long as I have the availability. And right now, there are some families that are not able to even commit to a full time job. More than two days. So I have a couple students who are doing more than one day.

And I have a couple of students that are just on a weekly basis, but not everyone has the same severity. You know, in their diagnoses and not even the same diagnosis. So You know, regardless, my, my practice is really prescriptive. So I've had I have a fifth grader and a fourth grader who [00:04:00] are brothers who I see and I have seen them for a while and both of them, as you can expect, would have very like different needs.

And the fifth grader is a student who has. And he has some working memory and processing issues and those issues kind of just cause him to need a lot more wait time in his studies and it takes a really long time to move into the longterm memory for him. And so he needs a lot of additional practice turns.

But he's highly motivated to. By like high topics or interests of you know, that he's really interested in. So his, his topics of motivation are baseball and famous figures in history. And so, so

Shannon Betts: this is the one that you've talked about, like, cause you use the bookworms curriculum.

Mary Saghafi: Yes. Yes.

And he loved the book a strong right arm. That was really great. And we, We took our time getting through that novel. It's a historical novel and I highly recommend it for [00:05:00] anyone who really loves baseball. There's lots of like play by play action in it. And so he was following every single play by play.

But there's also a lot of colloquialisms in it too. And so that was really good for him to kind of understand and experience the language. And we would talk a little bit about what does it mean when they, They say, I can't even think of an example right now. But

Shannon Betts: even just hit out of the park or something.

Right?

Mary Saghafi: Yeah. Yeah. I think that would be a good example. Anyway, it's a baseball

Shannon Betts: one, but it also, it could be like hitting a goal out of the park. Yeah. So do you use the novel, like as the vehicle didn't teach? The skills that the student

Mary Saghafi: would need. Lots of skills. So we work on vocabulary skills. We work on fluency.

We're working on even phonemic awareness. So we'll break down the vocabulary word and we'll work on morphology things. Or maybe I will use our blending board and, and we'll blend different words and create a word chain with one of the words that we're working on. Or if I notice that he's consistently missing a particular site word [00:06:00] or something like that, I'm, I was definitely using the, the book as the vehicle.

And so my OG practice sort of shifted for his needs basically. And so I wasn't doing the same consistent drill routines and the same encoding and writing. As he was a

Shannon Betts: fluid encoder and decoder at that point, he was.

Mary Saghafi: Yes, but as I had stated before, he also has some long term memory, right things.

So when I tested him in May, we did another words their way decoding and what's noticing that he was really missing some blending sounds even. And we have. Worked on blending sounds like two years ago. But it just wasn't sticking. It wasn't something that he was really solid in. He was missing a few vowel teams still in his spelling.

And so when I, I thought really long and hard about it and I talked, I talked with him about it. I said, you know, I love doing these novel studies with you, but I'm also noticing that [00:07:00] you're spelling is. Still not quite up to speed. What do you think? And we talked about it. And I gave him a pre test and I actually invested in a new curriculum new to me.

But the all about spelling curriculum. And so they have two sections of it. They have all about reading and all about spelling and it's for homeschoolers and tutors. It's a very strong Orton Gillingham formatted lesson. A little on the pricey side, but for me, this was a really good investment.

And so I started back on level two, so I would have assumed that he would have been at least at level four, just based on previous lessons that I've worked on with him. And what I've really noticed is that he just needs that solid, consistent practice and spiral review. And so he My mom, his mom and I have had a lot of conversations about what his true level is right now and how can the school maybe make some modifications for homework so that he can still spiral back and do some review practice.

That would [00:08:00] be really true independent practice for him. So this is kind of like span both sides of the advocacy world as well as tutoring. But I finished the second lesson with him yesterday and he was so proud of himself. It was It was such a like big illuminating piece for me because as As long as I've been practicing this, as long as I've been you know, kind of creating resources for my students, having this very specific and directed curriculum is actually lighting, lightening the load for me.

And it's also exactly what he needs at the level that he needs it. And so yeah, it's been kind of a new experience. So and his mom is really pleased right now. We've also been doing a lot of work with math tales, which is a way to help students memorize their multiplication facts with a visual strategy.

So it's for after they have really learned They're, they're the way to actually process and understand [00:09:00] number placement and how to, how to multiply and what groups of groups groups, how am I saying this groups of whatever you're multiplying by they really understand that because these are little stories that are visual strategies that help you automatically recall the fact so it would be like, Okay.

Six is represented by a classroom of students, the sixth grade class. And seven is represented by Mrs. Week. And so throughout all of these little math tales stories, they would use six to represent the sixth grade class. And so you'll visualize the sixth grade class. And maybe if you're talking about number four, it's a chair.

So the first story is the sixth grade class plays musical chairs. For 24 hours. And then they ask silly questions like, whoa, 24 hours is a long time. How do you think they would feel if they had to play multi or had to play musical chairs for 24 hours? And so, you know, it kind of gives this silly visual, but [00:10:00] it's reinforcing six times, fours 24.

And so that's, it's reinforcing it so.

Shannon Betts: I could see how that would be helpful if he's got memory.

Mary Saghafi: If you have all of those, like understanding and he can, he can skip count numbers, but yeah. So anyway, this automatic recall has been really great. And his mom's like, what is this crazy story that they're telling me?

I don't understand it, but he gets his facts. So that's working well. So anyway, those are my, those are some high level curriculum things, choices that I've been using lately that I really like. So math tales. No Times Tales, timestamps. Okay. Is the name of the program. And then all about spelling, all about reading.

And then bookworms. I love the bookworms.

Shannon Betts: Yeah. I'm running all these down to make sure we link 'em in the show notes that's specific to this episode. Are you seeing any clients? That are more like mine that are learning to decode and spell and yes. So I have,

Mary Saghafi: Four kiddos that are first graders and are [00:11:00] working at the CVC decoding level right now.

And I'm using, actually, I'm using a lot of materials by Anna Geiger, the measured mom. I have a subscription.

Shannon Betts: Yeah.

Mary Saghafi: And she has some really great. The measured mom class,

Shannon Betts: right.

Mary Saghafi: Yep, the measurement plus is the subscription, but she has some really great decodables, and there are even lessons that go along with it.

A lot of word chain practice, fluency practice. I found those to be really useful and helpful.

Shannon Betts: I'm using the UFLY curriculum with my student just to Because they're using it at his school as well. And so it's but I had to go backwards and kind of reteach some of the stuff that had been covered in kindergarten cause it hadn't been mastered.

And so where he is in the first grade lessons is a little bit further along than where we are. But at some point, hopefully we will meet in the middle, but then also I went to my storage unit this week and got All of my games, you know, because I put them up in storage over the summer when I moved out of my [00:12:00] school office.

And so I was able to get all, like, all those colorful games that I have from that Phonemic awareness worm book, you know, that I love so much because those are so good about connecting sound symbol and like sort of making that phonemic awareness and phonics connection. And so I pulled those out and he loved them.

And so I'm going to kind of weave those in, like in addition to the UFLY activities. But UFLY has had some.

I'm not following the full lesson of it, but I do like the Google slides is really, really nice. For one reason that there's one with each lesson and as they teach the sounds, they have like a jiff. Is it GIF or GIF? I never remember. But anyway. I never

Mary Saghafi: know. I

Shannon Betts: always interchange them. But it models the letter formation.

Like, so just over and over on the screen, it's modeling the correct letter formation. And so I will have that laying on my Chromebook while we're practicing that handwriting. And we're doing a [00:13:00] ton of handwriting work. The student like really likes to start letters at the bottom. It has a, you know, or.

We'll do the stick and the circle separately for different letters. And so we're working on letter formation a number of times during the activities, like there's a. dictation of spelling part of just, just words, single words in UFLY. So we'll work on the letter formation in that part. And then also part of the decodable text portion of the lesson, they have actually decodable sentences in the Google Slides presentation.

And then there are like, two to three sentences to dictate. Oh, great. And, and they involve some, you know, the targeted sound. And so we'll practice the sentence formation in those dictated sentences, which is also really good because then we can practice the conventions of writing as well. Because he was struggling with, you know, capital letters at the beginning, appropriate spacing, remembering the [00:14:00] period, and then also Sometimes putting capitals, you know, in the middle, the word or whatever just kind of mixed case words and things like that.

And so I put all of we do one of those every single time, and I put them in a folder after we had done about six weeks of them, and I showed him. like how his handwriting had progressed. And I actually just said, look, this was the first time we had done one of these sentences. And then we just sort of went through in time order and looked at them.

And actually he, even before I said it was like able to articulate, like, he finally was like, this is the date I got better. And it was sort of like four weeks in, you could see like a huge transformation where instead of a ton of erasers marks, you know, and a ton of errors, it was just like one or two little things, you know, and that was sort of the mark of transformation of like when things started to stick.

And I thought that was really cool that he had noticed it.

Mary Saghafi: And also let's like reiterate that like he's [00:15:00] in first grade, he's just beginning first grade and he's recognizing his progress and holding. Self now accountable, but that's also super motivating for him. So, so let

Shannon Betts: me, let me tell you a better thing.

Okay. And this was like, it's total added benefits. So I told y'all went to my storage unit and got all my games, but then also the parent Based on my direction had asked the academic coach for the detailed map scores. You know, I always like to get that like the student profile printed, not just the graph, but the actual like growth statements and things like that.

So yeah. I asked the parent to get that, and the parent did. And I went through it and noticed, you know, kind of the writ bands for like the discrete skills, like what is the writ band for foundational skills, what's the writ band for vocabulary, and so forth. So remember when I was teaching second grade, I had, I had ordered on Teachers Pay Teachers, like those MAP practice test cards.

Like,

Mary Saghafi: remember I

Shannon Betts: had [00:16:00] like, like a lot of my kids were in the one fifties for something. So I had gotten like one fifties vocabulary practice cards and I had gotten like one sixties language practice cards and I had gotten foundational skills, like one forties to like one sixties. Okay. And I, I mean, I, I probably purchased like four or five of those products.

Okay. Just based on where my second graders were, well, this first grader happens to be where a lot of my. English language learner second graders were. So like the resources that I had in my storage unit matched exactly his needs. And I wanted to make sure that as I see he's mastering things that we've worked on which I am checking that because UFLA has progress monitoring every two lessons in the back of the book.

So I've been doing those, but also is that going to translate to map scores, right? Like, because map ask it a different way. And so I told the parent after they had given me the report that I wanted to make sure that we really saw [00:17:00] progress at the mid year map, map testing. And so I said, I'm going to start incorporating these questions as exit tickets or as like activities some of the time, just to sort of make sure that in this different format that the student is recognizing all the skills that we've worked on.

So. At first we did some reading ones and then I pulled out some language ones. And I thought these were going to be super boring for the student because it is the ones where it says, read these four sentences and choose the one that's correct. Okay. Okay. And I thought we would only be able to do one or two of those questions.

We ended up doing eight straight for almost 15 minutes. Wow. And the student got so into it. Okay. At first. He did not know how to do it. So I said, okay, the first one, we've got to do it together. I was like, because these are tricky. By the way, I brought my, I also got him a storage unit a staples button that says that was easy.

And I pulled it out so that we could, [00:18:00] and like the student is like, yeah, we can't choose the button for this question. That one wasn't easy. He's very honest about which ones get the buttons. But anyway, so the first one did not get the button, but later when he did them really easily, he got to press the button, but.

I showed him, okay, let's look at, I said, first off, I taught him since you're at, you know, this level, I don't know if you remember this, but MAP will let you, will read the question to you. I was like, but you have to press the speaker icon. So I said, I want you to pretend that that speaker icon is next to each little A, B, C, D, and I want you to press next to that so that you're telling me, as the computer tester, you want me to read that sentence to you.

So we're practicing that just because I'm trying to mimic what he would see on the screen. Then I also told him, I said, I don't know if anybody has ever showed you this, but MAP also has a thing where you can like pretend, eliminate the wrong answer. It doesn't go to the next question. You just sort of like temporary black it out so that you can have fewer choices.

So I said, we're going to practice that, that as well, you know, X off the [00:19:00] ones with the dry erase that we don't think are right. I said, but only press the speaker icon once for these types, because it's the same sentence each time. You know, like, my mom picks up the mail on Tuesday. Okay, like, whatever.

That's what the sentence is. So you only have to read it one time. But I said, then you have to go real carefully, like, real carefully through each word. And, like, I kind of blacked them out with my hands. Like, let's just look at the first word. My four times. Do all those look the same, or some of them look different?

And he immediately was like, Two of them don't have a capital letter at the beginning! And he like, ux'd them out. And so then we went to the next word. And then we went to the next word. And then we went to the next word. And finally, like, we had to go to that day of the week, like, where one of them was, you know, Tuesday was capitalized, and one of them Tuesday wasn't capitalized.

And then he was able to choose the correct one. So as soon as we went through that first one correctly, Like kind of step by step. He got so excited about these. He started going through, like I said, seven more and he was so good at finding the mistakes. [00:20:00] I mean, my jaw dropped like. Us doing those UFLY sentences and me constantly, like, looking over the Fine Tooth Clone, you know, are those capi are those first letters capitalized?

Is there a bending mark? You know, are the middle things have the right capital letters or all lowercase or whatever it needs to do? He was so good at applying that to these map type questions. And he got just boom, seven in a row, just back to back to back to back to back. He started to kind of peter out with like the last like one or two, like he got fatigued, but I was amazed at his age, the concentration that he, cause he would, he would literally like be staring at the paper and he was doing exactly like I did where he would kind of put his hands at a column and just look at word by word, by word, by word, by word.

And that takes a lot of executive functioning to do.

Mary Saghafi: Yeah. But you know, I think what's one of the things that I've been kind of reflecting on lately is when I'm, when I'm working on my lessons, how do I know that I'm [00:21:00] evaluating them? And the first thing, you know, that I think of is like, okay, is it multi sensory?

Is it approachable? Are the kids engaged? Right? So I think like in this example, you're like, Ooh, I'm a little worried that it's. He's not going to be super engaged in it, but let's see what I can do. So you have your like, easy button, right? So that's kind of motivating. But then the secondary piece to it is accountability and you're showing him exactly how to do it.

So it should be semi motivating to know that the student doesn't have to start or attempt this task on their own. So that's something that I'm always the first one. I broke it

Shannon Betts: down for him. So then

Mary Saghafi: what you're doing is the, I do. We do. You do. And once they get to the I do and they can do it, that is intrinsically motivating for students.

That is so exciting. And then you can be really specific with your encouragement, right? Like, wow, you really did it. And I would, I've been really reflecting on this piece a lot. I was Just doing a post for us, [00:22:00] actually, because I was, you know, you and I had talked about this, like, okay, well, how do you get our Patrion

Shannon Betts: collections?

Yeah. Where we modeled strategies and techniques.

Mary Saghafi: One of the questions that you had asked me was, you know, okay, what are, what are you thinking? You don't, when, how do, how can I get into your mind? And so that's how I broke it down. But I think that that's exactly what you do as well. You know, first and foremost, we're informed by the data.

know what we know what the student needs. We're helping the student like recognize that this is an area of need in a supportive way. So then how do you make it engaging and motivating? Okay. Well add in a fun button maybe, or, you know, multi sensory as much as possible, but then it doesn't have to be that like overload extreme piece of it.

What the most important part then is the I do, we do, you do piece of the lesson. So they feel initially supported and that gradual release of responsibility. So I think that's like the perfect example for that.

Shannon Betts: It also will change over time because like our first [00:23:00] few appointments I had, I was trying to pinpoint the correct UFLY lesson to start with.

Cause there really is no sort of like an assessment alignment. Like if they're here, start at number blank or whatever. So it was a little bit of trial and error. And I had chosen a lesson. We've got through all the pieces less than fine, but then when we got the decodable story, it was way too many words, it was too much cognitive load, and he, I mean, he just hated this story, but, so I just sort of had to, like, constantly help him sound out each word, sound each word until, like, we were done.

I didn't want to just, like, abandon it, but we just had to get through this and be done. I think that was, like, story 30 something, 40 something. I had to go all the way back to, like, 20 something. story. I think like lesson like 11 or something to like go back. So for a while he hated the decodable stories.

Like that was just, you know, a negative experience. But once he got the ones that were just right for him, like after like two or three lessons, the decodable stories [00:24:00] Like, he's always like, is it time for our folder? Is it time for the story folder? He adores them. And, like, asked his asked his mom, like, Can we get an extra copy to practice at home?

And then they sit at the, you know, they sit at the kitchen table and practice his little folder of the Cuddable stories to reread them. And so, it's it's very interesting that it transformed that quickly, like, only in like a month or two. And, Where he really hated that experience and now he likes it. So it's good to also I'm learning to like, try out different things because to see what he likes and then kind of, to, you know, take them out of the rotation, put them back in the rotation and things like that to keep them, to keep them motivated.

Mary Saghafi: I completely agree. I was, you know, how my mind is always working, but if you want to borrow, I have one of those little like magnifying glasses. So like when you're looking and searching for something, you might bring out the magnifying glass and be like, okay, I need your super eyes to find what's, what's, you know, missing.

Because I think that that's a really [00:25:00] good example of like how I would go across the hall and talk with a teacher and be like, I have something that might be motivating for your student. You're doing all the right things here. Let me add onto it. And I think that that's what you and I hope that these conversations kind of Become right.

We want, we want the enthusiasm to hopefully transfer to our listeners too, because we want to hear your stories that are similar to this. You know, if you want to share or write down something, we would be happy to share your story and maybe even ask some questions about, you know, how is your progress coming along?

How do you assess your progress? You can look for our social medias. I have this new. Post coming out about, you know, what is motivating, what is the accountability factor? And then how are you supporting and encouraging the student that way? I think that that's really useful. What a nice story, Shannon.

I love that.

Shannon Betts: Yeah. I'm enjoying it. Really, really, I'm enjoying it. And I'm [00:26:00] actually, I'm actually personally enjoying teaching handwriting because I've always wanted to do hand lettering myself. And it is, and I've struggled in the past because it's, it's, I'm just not a kinesthetic person. And so like the downstrokes and upstrokes are just not automatic to me.

You know, like, it's hard. I really have to, like, break it down, but because I'm having to break down the handwriting for the student, like, now I'm just sort of like, oh, yeah, obviously that's a downstroke, you know, because I'm constantly having to correct him and be like, no, you need to go down, not up. And so I think I'm eager to, like, when I was going through, some of my like handwriting books because I always get them for Christmas and I get like brush pens, but then like I never quite get around to like practicing it, but I'm like, I feel ready to tackle this now. Like I'm ready because I feel more like aware of what goes into handwriting. So I'm excited about that.

Mary Saghafi: That's really cool. It's a good hobby too. I've done it every now and then too. Well, I'm getting into bullet

Shannon Betts: journaling too. And so I'm [00:27:00] excited to combine that. Yeah.

Mary Saghafi: Oh, your journals are going to be so pretty. Hopefully.

Shannon Betts: The YouTubers are like, amazing. So it's a little bit like, you know, comparison is a thief of joy.

So I gotta like, look at them as like inspiration, but then like not compare my stuff to them. That's right. Also for learning, I finally started, I'd said for a couple months I was going to do it, and then the summer got crazy, but I finally did start the Cox Campus Structured Literacy course, and oh my gosh, it is amazing.

Like, the first module of it is I just love the title, I keep writing the title over and over, but it's Oral Language is the Foundation for Literacy. Yes it is. I know, I mean, and so like, everything is based on that it's taught by an instructor that works at the Rollins School. here in Atlanta. And this module, this whole training, it's four hours in total.

Honestly, it's going to take me a lot longer than four hours because I keep pausing, writing down all the important terms that maybe I'd never heard of [00:28:00] before, and then like writing down a ton of notes. And I'm doing this, Number one, because like things are harder for me to study and put him a long term memory since my brain injury.

And I need it to go on my long term memory. Because secondly, the purpose of this course is to take a class, to get certified in structured literacy. So I'm not going to get a degree, but I do want to get the certification. And so I'm going to have to. know all of the details of this learning like months from now.

So I'm taking really detailed notes and it's probably going to take me, this four hour module is going to take me maybe six to eight hours. And then there's tons of modules, like this four hour thing is just one piece of it. Then you have to take a ton of other things. To get ready. So I don't think I'm gonna be done with this.

Training. Until mid November. That's what that's my timeline. It's gonna take. But anyway, this oral language one. It's a lot like going over what was in the strive for five book that we did this summer.

Mary Saghafi: I was imagining that. Oh, it's so cool. [00:29:00] Yep,

Shannon Betts: because it's There's even like a, remember that book had like a lot of tables and stuff.

We shared a bunch of them on our Patreon of just like really good teacher talk things to do and like, you know, rules for dialogue and things like that. I'm going to share some pictures on social media because like the Cox campus course has a bunch of these for free. Some really neat charts and things for like teacher scaffolds to do.

Like if a student only gives a one word answer, this is what you should do. If a student gives a phrase answer, this is what to do. If a student gives a simple sentence, this is what to do. Which I thought was just so specific. They're just, they're amazing resources. Like I am, I'm just a little bit into this course and I am learning so much and there are tons of like footage of actual classrooms and interviews with teachers and it's, it's fantastic.

I cannot believe all of this is free.

Mary Saghafi: It's, it's. It is a very generous donation for the Cox campus to offer these for free and I'm happy to share the [00:30:00] information to to teachers far and wide because it's very valuable information and it really came onto my radar in 2019 when the Georgia bill the dyslexia bill was passed.

And so that that's when they first started Sharing that this initiative was coming to be. So now it's all rolling out.

Shannon Betts: Well, next, next module after I'm done with oral languages foundation for literacy, the second piece of it, which I'm going to do next week, hopefully is the Georgia dyslexia video series.

So remember we had, we had talked about that last season and watched one together. I think maybe we'd gone to like a release launch party of one of them. Cause university of Georgia had helped put them out there. So I'm excited to like kind of be forced to watch all of them for this coursework, so I can talk about that in our, in our October bonus episode.

Mary Saghafi: Yeah, no, I can't wait to hear about more of your coursework. Yeah. rearrange my schedule a little bit and not be so loaded [00:31:00] down. I'll have more time for that as well.

Shannon Betts: Well, and I think you might know more of the specific details than I do from this stuff. I mean, remember, I've only learned all of this through experience with students.

I've never taken any focused literacy training. Yeah. I've just learned on the job. And so this is, this has been important for me to like learn the actual terminology for a bunch of things. Like, okay, for example, I have. use the phrase incorrectly. I've called them ESOL students, but they're not. They're English language, English ELs, English learners are students who qualify for ESOL.

That's true. Otherwise they're multilingual. learners, which means they might not have qualified. They might end up in tested. They're just a student in a classroom that has more than one language, but I'm going to use that correct terminology now where their English learners are the students who have qualified.

Mary Saghafi: Yeah. Yep. [00:32:00] And you can also think of that similarly to students who are in the gifted programs too. They are students who have qualified. Yeah. Under that terminology, there are students who have qualified for special education. There are students who have qualified for a 504 plan. So all of those have to meet criterion that criteria there's, there's multiple levels that they have to be assessed for.

So,

Shannon Betts: yeah. Yeah. So I'm just not going to use that blanket term. Like my ESL students did this because that's really not.

Mary Saghafi: Yeah,

Shannon Betts: that's not like the correct terminology. So I was excited to learn about that too. And then I've done a ton of professional reading as well. We just recorded a spelling episode.

That was one that I had not read a lot of structured literacy, you know, science of reading. Books about, and I learned so much and learned so much from our guest. Not going to share yet who our guest is.

Mary Saghafi: It's a great episode. We're really excited about it. Yeah.

Shannon Betts: And I learned a lot about spelling. And then this month in Patreon, we're sharing about kind of the new way to do reading [00:33:00] groups, you know, like not, you know, give the assessment and level them, you know, A, B, C, D, you know, and then kind of see them so many days a week versus other days a week.

There's a new way of doing it and, you know, the structured literacy way. And so I'm having to do some research just to make sure that, you know, we're sharing all the correct information. So

Mary Saghafi: good stuff.

Shannon Betts: Yeah. I feel like I finally, now that I'm not you know, going to a school each week, I have time. I'm enjoying my time at home, but then I'm also, you know, have freedom in my schedule and a little bit more, um, brain power To be able to handle some of this fresh learning.

Mary Saghafi: So great. Yeah. Well, this is really enjoyable. I love this format. I can't wait to post some of these good resources for our listeners and share some more. I have one little bonus thing that I just ordered for my students for teaching. It's a little disc shooter. It's so silly. It's like these little foam discs.

So cute. But it doesn't really look like a nerf gun or anything like that, [00:34:00] but it's so on the side of my office, I have one of those big, like Ikea modular bookcases. And so I lined up all of the word cards that we were practicing and restudying and I let them shoot them down. Oh, fun. And they were reading and decoding after they had already worked on.

That's a lot more

Shannon Betts: fun

Mary Saghafi: than just using a pointer. It was, they did such a good job with it. And so, you know, those, like those little pieces, they just kind of like help stick with it. I will also share that I had another student who did not meet his goal, but I had shared that this was going to be the option at the end of the lesson that he would have the opportunity, but he couldn't, he couldn't meet his goal for that.

So we're saving it for the next week, again, highly motivating and holding him accountable. So. That's, that's going to be my mantra for right now.

Shannon Betts: I think I might want a photo video of the student. Oh, I will. This little thing. And

Mary Saghafi: I will, once he earns it.

Shannon Betts: Yeah, [00:35:00] that's really cute.

Mary Saghafi: Okay, well,

Shannon Betts: I think, I think we're pretty caught up.

Anything else you want to share about what you've been doing with your

Mary Saghafi: teaching practice in the last month? One happy thing. I've been actually dying to tell you about this.

Shannon Betts: Okay.

Mary Saghafi: So my, my daughter who's in first grade has she's doing great. She's, she's not as motivated as my older daughter to show me what she knows, but she's doing fantastic.

So I like to kind of schedule some one on one time with her. And I said, Oh, I have a game for you. And I pulled out our favorite FCRR where they have to sort from the long sound and the short sound. Oh, whale versus. Okay. Yes. The wheel and the bat. I have a picture of it because she, I taught her to sort it like maybe two or three times.

And she was so motivated to do it. It was so great. So we like timed it. And then 20 seconds, she got through half of the deck. And so I said, okay, the next day we'll do it. And she was begging me to play this game with her. And it's not even

Shannon Betts: a

Mary Saghafi: game. It's

Shannon Betts: just a word sort. [00:36:00] No, but it's so good. Cause it's. Sorting by medial vowel, either long or short and it's just, I have done that game every year for probably 18 years straight with any student, like before I introduced the, the final E.

Like that is a mandatory activity.

Mary Saghafi: Yep. I was so impressed. We, she was like, can we send a picture to my teacher? So

Shannon Betts: she should bring the whole cards and like a little pocket chart and the class could do it.

Mary Saghafi: Actually, that's a really good idea. That's totally

Shannon Betts: appropriate for the first grade.

Mary Saghafi: It definitely is.

And it could be like a really fun, like indoor activity for some kids.

Shannon Betts: When she could lead them and then like, that's what I mean, correct. You know, and be like, try that one again. Let's segment the sounds.

Mary Saghafi: Oh, fun. So I knew you would appreciate that. Cause I know how much that one sort, it's so good. The medial sound sort.

And it's so good. The rigor of it is good because there's so many different ones and all the different sounds. So I'll just, [00:37:00] I'll share a picture out with that.

Shannon Betts: Please do please do. Awesome. I think that's a good note to end on because XVR always makes me smile. So all right. Well we will chat more in October and I'm sure a whole lot will happen even in just a month, just like it did the last month.

It always does. Yep. Okay. Bye.

Bye.