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.

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7.4 AD FREE Word Knowledge

Subscriber Episode • October 17, 2024 • Shannon Betts and Mary Saghafi

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Shannon and Mary welcome Heidi Martin (@Droppin' Knowledge with Heidi) back to the podcast, and Heidi's husband, Adam, a LETRS trainer, also joins the conversation. They talk about all the aspects that go into the topic of Word Knowledge. What are all the things students should know and understand about a word to demonstrate complete knowledge of that term? You'll walk away from listening to this episode with a more complete understanding of all the layers of skills within Word knowledge that we need to help our readers build.

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7.4 Word Knowledge with Heidi and Adam Martin

Welcome back to the Reading Teacher's Lounge. Mary and I are here with a returning guest and she brought a special, a special guest with her as well. So hi Heidi, it's been a while since we've had you in the Reading Teacher's [00:01:00] Lounge and then thank you for bringing your husband as well.

Heidi: Of course. Thank you so much for having me back.

And I'm excited to be here again and have my special guest.

Shannon: And his name is Adam, although I called him Mr. Droppin Knowledge.

Adam: It's like a better connection. Cause everybody knows her.

Shannon: And then Heidi, we had you last on, I think season four, which we're in season seven now, and you came on That was sort of like when we started doing the big shift to the science of reading here on the podcast.

And so you gave us a great sort of introduction of what you had learned in your own journey from sort of balanced literacy to learning about the science of reading and how your instruction had changed. But that was a couple of years ago. So what have you been up to since then?

Heidi: Yeah, it has been a wild ride.

Let me tell you, but there's been a lot of learning and unlearning, of course, like that's just always going to be there. But I've kind of transitioned out of the classroom for a little bit right now. I miss it a lot, but currently I'm just focusing on You know, helping [00:02:00] teachers and helping parents make that same transition into using more of those practices, and I'm doing that through, well, our line of decodable books.

So I am super duper picky about my books for my struggling and my early readers. They really wanted to develop something where kids, that kids could actually read without having to memorize or guess a word or using the picture. And while there's really great books out there, I just wanted. I just saw a vision.

And so we have spent the last about two years learning how to self publish and get those books out there. So we're really excited about that. That's been a big thing. And then also just continuing with sharing on social media. Sharing at conferences and through the science of reading 101 membership things like that.

So it's been a lot, but but I feel like, you know, if we don't talk about it, then nothing's going to change. So that's just been the goal right now is just to [00:03:00] keep talking about it, keep pushing, helping those parents and those teachers.

Shannon: You do such an amazing job on your social media with TikTok and Reels and everything just breaking down.

I don't know. I think I make a lot of assumptions where I'm just like, I think the teachers already know that I think, you know, this doesn't need to be shown again, but you just show you even show some of the same things multiple different ways. And every single time you show them, I get a different understanding of it.

So I just appreciate the way you break it down.

Heidi: Thank you. And let me just tell you, I'm the same way. And then I'll just put out, I'll be like, okay, well, I'll just talk about the site words one more time. And then it hits a different side of social media. And all these people are like, no, just memorize the words.

And I'm like, okay, well, we still have a lot of work to do and I can still keep talking about this. You found

Shannon (2): that pocket of people that needed to hear it.

Mary: I will say that your explanation for orthographic mapping, I had done my, my OG training like in 2011. So I've had this [00:04:00] knowledge for a really long time, but I don't think that I really understood orthographic mapping until I saw you break it down, especially with sight words.

And I have used your orthographic mapping sight words. Since I bought it, since the last time you were on our podcast, I love it so much. And I also like in my practice constantly use your decodable texts. So I'm happy to plug that as well because they have gorgeous illustrations. And I just wanted to share with the listeners.

We often share. Yeah. Resources that we use and we love. And so I'm super happy to endorse that too, for y'all because it's yeah, it's so beautiful. The text is great. I can use it with variety of different learners too, because even if I have learners who are still working on CVC words we can have more deep conversations based on some of the illustrations that you have in your texts too, even if the words are more simple and the decodable pieces.

So just wanted to share that for you because I like to endorse things that are [00:05:00] reasonable and worth their time and money. And you can tell that you guys put a lot of effort into that. And I also really like to tell my students, Oh, my friend, Heidi wrote these books. See her name right here. We know her.

Heidi: I love that so much. Thank you so much for sharing that. It's great to hear, you know, cause sometimes you're just doing this work and then you never really hear about. You know, stories like that. So I really appreciate it. Anytime somebody can share that with me. So thank you so much.

Shannon: And you can always reach out for follow up, you know, like, especially since Mary's using them you know, on a daily, weekly basis, if you ever want, you know, questions about specifics of how she's using them and things like that.

So, so we brought you on this time because I wanted to talk about word knowledge. That's just been like a term that I've been kind of floating around in my mind because we did an episode about spelling with mindful teacher, Rachel. We did an episode about etymology last year, we did an episode about vocabulary a couple seasons back.

We've done [00:06:00] tons of discussions about decoding, but I'm trying to sort of like loop all those things together into this sort of understanding of word knowledge to reflect on my own practice. And then also, you know, in the present and in the past and kind of to think about, okay, am I assessing all of those skills in my students?

Am I covering them in my curriculum or some of my areas of my curriculum weaker or not? So can we just like, first off, like talk about word knowledge and through the lens of simple view of reading and the Scarborough's reading rope, and then sort of talk about, you know, how it's taught, what goes into it.

So what what would y'all say is word knowledge? Like what are the sub areas and sub skills under that heading of word knowledge? What do students need to know about words?

Adam: I just think that term word knowledge is like a big, it's like opening the fire hydrant there because there is a lot to know really is a lot to think about and it's And it really builds [00:07:00] upon each other and there's a lot of layers to it.

And we know are talking about word knowledge. We starts with speech. Like we really have to set that speech down from oral language development, moving into the manipulation of sounds. It's talking about that phonological phonemic awareness and then making the connection of, okay, yes. Okay. Now we have that basis down now.

We're bringing in letters and now we're learning the different skills of those, those letters that connect to those sounds. And then you gotta keep going. You're building on that. Now we're decoding words. Well, now that we can decode words, well, now we have to also spell those words. So are we really, do we ever really have a basis on that?

And can I transfer those skills over to spelling those words? And then how do those words go in the context of sentences? And then when we put those sentences together, we have books and we're going to read and we're going to decode and then understanding those different parts of those words to really, okay, well, what does this word mean in the context of this sentence?

How is this word working in the context of this sentence and really putting [00:08:00] those pieces together to build on that to comprehension? And so it's like a, it's a winding road of all of this. And as educators, it really is. I feel like daunting at times, like you sit there and you're thinking, okay, well, this is all.

Okay. The things I have to teach my students. And so when we're thinking about word knowledge, I just feel like it's all those pieces that build upon each other and saying, thinking like, this is where we start with those sounds. And then how do I build into that comprehension point? And because we think about simple view of reading, that's our ultimate goal.

We think about, and the Scarborough's reading group, our ultimate goal of reading is to be able to say, do I understand what's actually, what I'm actually reading or being read to me? But we have to pull all these different strands in and connect those together. And that's the big thing is how do we start from just those sounds and build upon that.

Heidi: And so for me like we were talking about earlier, I'd like to simplify everything. He's like the in depth, he's like, he's going to tell you everything, everything. Like if we're playing a game and he's tries to tell me the instructions, I'm like, [00:09:00] Let's just simplify this here. But it's good to have both, right?

Because some people, everybody learns different ways. And I like to just have everything as simple as possible. So it is a wide, I think it is vast. You know, we had that conversation about, okay, what's word knowledge? It covers so much, but so I created that that image that I was telling you all about earlier, the simple view of the reading brain.

And I really think we can kind of condense things. there because we have the phonemic awareness part, right? They need to know the sounds. Then we have the letters and phonics part, so they need to know the symbols. Then we have the, that connection part where they have to make that connection between the sounds and the symbols.

And then we have the meaning part, which is where you know, morphology, etymology, all of those types of things would come into play. You know, and then we can put spelling around the whole thing, all of that. But you know, that's where I would kind of simplify it. If, if we know these things and we can give our kids these things, look, we're hitting all the parts of the reading brain [00:10:00] and our kids are going to be more successful.

with that.

Adam: Yeah, and with word knowledge, I like to continue to continue on with all that. We're pulling in all this information, but it's like really trying to get our kids. Can we own these words? Can we really own them? Do I know if I tell you this word out loud, can you tell me the sounds that are in that word?

Well, are there any morphemes attached to that word? Well, what does that morpheme have to do? Well, then how do I use it? What part of speech is that? How do I use that sentence and all that? So It's really owning the word. Can we really own the word? So I think a word knowledge is building all those different layers to say, if I say this word out loud, what can you tell me about this word?

And it's something that, I don't know, you don't really think about it, but unless somebody like says it to you, it says, okay, tell me all you can about the word. Let's just say parent. What do you have a word? What can you tell me about that word? Well, I know a definition of it. And okay, well, can you use in context?

Is there any morphemes in this? What sounds are in that? How many syllables really owning that word? You don't think about all those different layers that go [00:11:00] into it's just a word that I hear it's in my sight word vocabulary. So when I see I read it automatically, but I don't think about from a teacher's perspective thinking about my students.

coming in the classroom or knowledge that what is all it's going to take for them to own that word and really be able to use it.

Mary: I think that example of parent is a really good one because you can think of parentified and, and talk about what, what is a person who has been parentified actually look like?

And how can you explain that? I really love this con this, Especially because I think as a teacher, it's high level to understand and be like, yes, I can actually understand that I need to be able to get my kids to manipulate these words. It's another thing to be put kind of right on the spot. And And then you're asking your student, okay, let's talk about all of these areas of, of parent.

You know, there's like the, our parents are, there's two parents or there's just one parent. And we can talk about, there's so many [00:12:00] different. keys. But I think that what our teachers are struggling with is when you're put on the spot to automatically be able to kind of break down a word like that, it gets a little bit tricky.

So how can we really help teachers to own word knowledge in a way that maybe they weren't Specifically taught in college or how can they become, you know, like not the keepers of the words, but, but the, the big resource that kids can go to, to English teachers.

Shannon: I kind of have started thinking myself as like a teacher of language.

I'm a teacher of the English language. That's great. Other than a reading teacher.

Mary: I think that that actually hits it a little bit spot on because that's right. You need to be able to really manipulate a lot of these pieces that we're talking about with multiple different words at any given context.

So that's kind of where I want to kind of drive the conversation a little bit too. So maybe how did you guys come into you know, really learning and owning [00:13:00] letters for the words for yourselves as teachers.

Heidi: So I'll just talk about you know, maybe that the first part, right, like the first part of owning those words is, is actually knowing what sounds are in the words, right, and what letters spell those sounds, and knowing, you know, that there's graphemes here and that, you know, there's digraphs and blends and those different things that we have to have kids learn.

To recognize, to be able to segment and blend those words together, right? Like at the kindergarten, first grade, even second grade level. This is a big part of what, of word knowledge, right? For, for our early readers, our kids who are just learning how to read. And so for me, that was actually a big deal.

That was something that I wasn't teaching. I wasn't focusing on phonemic awareness. I've told my story before. That's something that no one ever taught me about. I didn't realize how important those sounds and matching those sounds to symbols [00:14:00] was. And so I think, you know, when we're just starting out with our students, that is a key point of word knowledge.

But then one thing I think that I was missing is adding in that meaning. And, you know, Adam actually brought that to my attention. You know, he's talking about the CVC words. A word like bat. Like I used to think that's a simple word. Okay, bat. We blend that together. You got it. Like, come on guys, you know, but I had students who would struggle with that and that's because they were missing those foundational skills like phonemic awareness and letter sound skills.

And then also the meaning is right. That it

Shannon: could be used as a noun or a verb.

Heidi: Yes. What am I talking about? And like,

Shannon: or is it an animal or something that has to do with a sport? That's very different.

Heidi: Yes. And so like so Shannon, like you said, thinking about yourself as that English. Language teacher, especially in those early years, can be so helpful because I never really thought about that before.

And now I'm like, oh [00:15:00] my gosh, looking at these CVC words, I mean, just look, like cub. You know, these are words that are actually vocabulary words. And I never, as a teacher, never thought of them as vocabulary words. I'm like, that's such a basic word. But these are words our kids may not hear. Hut. You know, those kinds of things.

Shannon: The UFLI curriculum is a good, they do a good job of like kind of teaching the meanings of those little CVC words. And like we had Nancy Young on and she said that the most complicated CVC word is set. I mean, there's like 20 or 50 meanings of the word set when you really think about it. And so, yeah, we have to explore all that.

Heidi: We do. And I'm so glad to hear that. They're, they're talking about that and teaching that. Cause that's, that's something that I was missing. And like I said, he brought that to my attention. And so one thing we actually did was come up with, he, he came up with spelling riddles. And so it's like a riddle.

You know, there's five questions and the kids have to figure out. And so we started with it for just CVC words and it's talking, you know, the questions are like [00:16:00] it has a b sound in it. Or I don't know what, I don't know. We just, you know, you ask questions about the words. I can't think of

Adam: it all the time.

Yeah. Like, we're talking about bat. Like, we'll start with bat. Like, like, we're using that as an example. We want to get to be able to spell bat. I might start with, okay, hey. This begins with the b sound. And I am a nocturnal flying animal. Or, I am something you can do in baseball. And then. They start to hear these different meanings.

Shannon: And

Adam: then they're also thinking about, okay, well, I know the word now. And now let's go ahead and spell that basic word. Like, so these are skills that you're starting earlier on thinking about vocabulary. They're connected to, to our basic, okay, well. We're working, working on CVC words now to spell these words, but there's meaning attached to that.

So let's see what you know. So it helps tap into that background knowledge because we know kids are bringing a lot of different levels of background knowledge to the table, but then it's also exposing them to multiple meanings of words. Also working on that phonemic awareness, like, [00:17:00] okay, well, it starts with this sound and okay, well, now I got this clue about a flying animal.

I got this clue about baseball. Oh, I know. Oh, I know one of those back. Oh, let's sound that out. And now I could spell that word. So you're working on owning that word knowledge. You're working on those skills. So that was just something that I just, I've never seen it and never thought about, but it was an easier way to work on multiple meanings, but incorporating it into your skills already, you're going to work on the spelling or work on specific skill.

Well, let's tie vocabulary in as well and still hit all those points so that we're, Okay. Trying to hit and make it easier us on teachers to try and hit as many points as we can within our lessons. So

Shannon: I could see a decodable story about some sort of like baseball playing. Flying mammal.

Adam: Ideas. I like that.

Shannon: Yeah, put that in the next set of decodables. Okay. I want to circle back to something that Adam said earlier. Two things actually, one I love that you said that. When you said like word knowledge is like the fire hydrant, you know, and like it's so many [00:18:00] areas and you said it really starts with the oral language.

This month I started taking the Cox campus structured literacy training and the very first module it's called oral language is the foundation of all literacy. And I had never learned like the, the learning development stages of how oral language develops. And so that was fascinating. And I do see how that is the foundation where the students are, you know, hearing the language that they're loved in, you know, at home and they're building meanings, learning how to play with sounds, you know, just saying, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, and then starting to say two sounds together and then starting to string together words and phrases and how all of that eventually translates to print.

And then the other thing. As you were saying, sort of, you kept saying like layers and building and layers and building, and I kept picturing I guess maybe one of my tutoring students keeps bringing me his like custom Lego creations at every appointment, and so sometimes it's like a very simple car, you know, where it's [00:19:00] just got like the little wheels and like that little rectangular piece, right?

So like I see that as sort of the phonemic awareness and that letter sound knowledge, you know, and that could be like a little Lego vehicle that's moving but then other times he'll make like, you know, a Jeep Wrangler or Range Rover or something and it's got tons of layers. And I see that as like, what you were talking about like building the students.

Word knowledge. I'm thinking back to like my middle school self, like I got really into horses in sixth grade, you know, like a lot of girls did in the 90s, and I knew how to sound out horse I knew how to spell it, but then like my meanings of all of that vocabulary. Got like a sophisticated detailed Lego car, you know, because like in my brain, it just got richer and richer and richer of my word knowledge of, you know, thoroughbred and quarter horse and all of these things.

And so we as teachers, you know, we start building that phonemic [00:20:00] awareness. We build orthography awareness of how the word is spelled, if it's with sound symbol correspondence, or maybe some other reasons for the spelling. We build in morphological awareness. And then, like you said, we build in those vocabulary layers as well with shades of meaning, and then depth and breadth of vocabulary.

So I don't know, I just saw myself as sort of a facilitator of, like, the kids building these, like, Lego vehicles with each vocabulary word.

Heidi: I love that. I love that comparison. Great

Adam: connection. And when you talked about building, you're thinking about, like, the layer of oral language development. And then we tie on, we're thinking about, okay, as we move down the progression of grade level skills, so we start getting third, fourth, fifth grade, we start to hit a lot more multi slavic words.

A lot more vocabulary, a lot more focus on comprehension and morphology. That's usually connected to those intermediate students later on in elementary school. But, one thing I feel like gets overlooked and as a first grade, as first grade teachers, is something I [00:21:00] was guilty of was like, oh, morphology, vocabulary.

Y'all can handle that later on in third, fourth, and fifth grade. We're trying to work on reading. We're just like, how can I play, manipulate these sounds? How can I try and read this word? That's where our focus was at. But We really, I feel like sometimes we have to give ourself grace with everything because we talk about as teachers are trying to own words, we do need to give ourselves grace because there is a lot out there to learn and know, but as long as you're starting to plug things together and build on that, you're going to get there.

It's just going to take time. You just got to know where to look. But one thing I want to encourage kindergarten, especially kindergarten, first, second grade teachers, oral language development gets overlooked. We. Get super hyped for the focus because of all the demands we have in the classroom on what we need to do is these kids need to read these words and that's what we need to focus on.

But we're, we are missing, we're thinking about simple reading, we're missing those language comprehension components, but oral language we need to use. I do recommend using them. Those high academic [00:22:00] vocabulary words use those words that you may not be comfortable using because you're afraid they're too young for this or let's not read these books because of the vocabulary of this, but it's exposure.

You're not asking them to read that word. You're not asking them to spell that word. But what you're doing is you're exposing the multi syllabic words. They're going to ask questions like, Oh, use the word perplexed today with us. What is that word? You said we were perplexed. What is that? They want to ask questions.

They're really nosy as we know as kids. So having these conversations, throwing out these. Bigger, multi syllabic words, using unique words, using a lot of academic vocabulary, and read alouds is really helping with the oral language development and vocabulary. Because then, later on, when they do get to third, fourth, and fifth grade, it will expose them to a lot more of these words.

Our third, fourth, fifth grade teacher going to be thankful because now that they've heard this word, it's kind of stuck in their head. They might have a meaning attached to that too as well. That's going to help them break that word apart because we've developed those other skills in those earlier grades.

But now they're going to be able to break apart this multisyllabic [00:23:00] word, have more success with spelling it, decoding it, and also attaching meaning to be able to understand that passage that we're reading. So I feel like the The K through two kind of morphology and vocabulary and having that discussion gets kind of pushed to the side because it's not our hyper focus, but we can set the stage.

By just using more vocabulary that we use, we could own words, but also read alouds. I feel like, I know it's, we talk about, but talk about those words, having those conversations, it's really helpful moving on.

Mary: I think that's a really good point. I, when I taught kindergarten, which feels like a million years ago now, but We did a really cool dinosaur unit.

And if you think of all of the dinosaur names and how they really build on each other and how multi syllabic, there are some kids that were in my kindergarten class that were just dinosaur experts. I was totally blown away. And I'm sure that many of the listeners are thinking, I know some dinosaur experts.

If you know a [00:24:00] dinosaur expert, that's because that child has developed a really extensive vocabulary for a dinosaur. Language. Maybe you are not an expert in dinosaur language, but the, the multi syllabic words that are coming out of that kid's mouth are impressive, but it doesn't just have to be about dinosaurs.

It can really be about any topic. And so I think that there's this huge growth that happens between four and five and six, and that oral language development grows tremendously at that point. And so we shouldn't. And also, I totally agree. I feel like once I was teaching first grade, I really kind of like melded it back down to the CVC words because that was the big focus that we were focused on.

CVC words are really just syllables that are part of many words that we have. So, I think that you know, you shouldn't shy away. So, I think that's a really excellent, excellent point for developing language. We've, we did a previous episode about colossal words and vocabulary [00:25:00] development, and it was a really playful, fun episode.

Y'all

Shannon: need to check out that book. If you haven't seen it,

Mary: the author's name is Colette Hiller, and she's just lovely and hilarious. And that book it's really wonderful, but my daughter was just like, so inspired by it and it was just. Teaching how to use these big words in really fun, playful ways.

And so if you're looking for a resource to really get started in those younger grades, I would even start with that book, because I think that that might be something that you could start to build on. So I thought I would throw that one out there too.

Shannon: Mary, I was thinking about Strive for Five. We read that book this summer.

We led our Patreon through it as a book club for the summer. And it's all about that oral language development in the lower grades. And like you were talking about with Perplexed Adam, like you can, we, they taught a strategy called recasting where like the student can say, I'm confused about this.

And you can recast and like respond to them and, you know, keep the conversation going by saying, yes, I noticed you were [00:26:00] perplexed by that question. Let's continue this, you know, and you're, then they can see that confused and perplexed are synonyms and they understand what you're talking about. And it lays that foundation for all of those future words.

Adam: That's a great point that you bring up too. And I guess I kind of left that out is not only us using higher vocabulary, but let the kids do it. The kids need to be saying it. Those conversational turns that we know is part of that development of oral, oral language development is that conversational turns, let them use those words.

And the research we saw, we know that like, we're always focused on the reading brain, the left side of our brain, that's where all the reading happens. But when we think about vocabulary, it's a little bit different. There's research out there that shows, and it's probably covered, I don't know, probably covered, but also that we map and we categorize words.

based off of other words we know. So if like you were using the word confused and perplexed, well, now we're connecting those synonyms. We're helping those students make those connections, their [00:27:00] brain, because that's how we map words. When we say a word, I might say fish or fish might be a nature word. Fish might be a hobby activity, sports word.

And we're going to, our brain's going to put those, that word, it could be in one spot, part of our brain, but it can be a multiple sides, even on the right and left hemisphere to really categorize that as well. So. Like you said, continuing on with what a student says and making those connections will help, especially when other kids are hearing it.

And we know some kids be like, I've never heard that word before, but now that they're hearing other kids use that word, and then you're building upon that word and now they're making connections. Now you're exposing kids, other students to those words as well. So having the kids use it as well as a great thing to make sure that they're doing and expanding on that because our brain does process and groups words together based on categories.

So it's a great way to build that vocabulary.

Shannon: Yeah, it was a neat title because like it sticks in your head like strive for five like that is the mission in the book is, okay, why don't you strive for just a few extra conversational turns [00:28:00] with your students and while you're doing that, build a ton of oral language and background knowledge in those extra conversational turns.

And while you're at it, you're increasing student engagement and building the relationship with the student because they see you're interested in what they have to say. It's a really neat premise. I recommend that book highly. So let's talk about a little bit more about specifics. So, I mean, I taught second grade kind of majority of my last few years in the classroom and I'm kind of looking back on what I did in second grade and sort of how I spent my 90 minute reading block kind of Monday through Friday.

Did I cover every area of word knowledge as well as I could have? Probably not. You know, like the vocabulary, we did not have any vocabulary curriculum. It was like just random words from the basal story, and I didn't want to use that. So I was just sort of trying to embed vocabulary instruction, but I didn't do any systematic, explicit vocabulary instruction because I [00:29:00] hadn't learned the science of reading methods at that point.

My spelling was sort of my own custom thing. You know, like, I, my phonics was my own custom thing that I had kind of based on Wiley Blevins, the things that I'd learned from him. How can teachers know that they're sort of handling all of this in a way of like what the students need and also what the standards dictate?

That's a big question, I know, but you can pick a grade and just sort of go from there. Pretend it's kindergarten first, second, third, if that helps.

Heidi: I'll let, I'll let you go. But I, I just want to say, like he said earlier to first of all, give yourself grace in here because it, I mean, yeah, looking back, no, I just definitely didn't cover everything that I should have covered.

But with simple activities, like, you know, the riddles that he came up with, you are covering a lot of different things. And you can use [00:30:00] those and adapt them to whatever grade you teach. You know, maybe you're, One of your riddles has to do with, it has a morpheme, and this is the morpheme in there, or this is the history, it comes, it's Latin based, you know, like those types of things, so find, you know, finding activities like that can be really helpful, because then you know you're at least hitting the majority of the word knowledge parts.

Heidi: So but and then also, yeah, giving yourself grace is a huge thing.

Adam: I just feel there are a lot of things that you can connect and overlap in a grade. Let's say I'm a first grade teacher and I'm going through a ELA block ELA lesson. There's a lot of things that we can incorporate and layer upon each other as we're going through our lesson that will touch on a lot of different things.

Aspects of word knowledge. I do feel as we are going through into second, third grade as a teacher, I [00:32:00] feel like we always should start with a phonemic awareness warm up. Whatever the skill is that we're working on, whether it's a short vowel sound, if it's a vowel team, if we're working on even a morpheme or a, yeah, even a morpheme, let's start out our lesson around sounds.

Let's manipulate that sound. If I'm working with the morpheme or the morpheme, the past tense inflectional ending ed, let's manipulate words. Let's, I want them to focus in on those sounds, that sound, that sound, and that id sound. I want them to manipulate that. Let's, so let's, Let's work on splitting words up, or segmenting, blending words.

Let's work on syllables as well, because that even comes into play once we add that, that ID, that id sound to the end of a word. So let's incorporate that, but let's do a quick warmup so that we're manipulating those sounds, getting the brain focused on that because we're speech to print. So let's get that sound base down, ready to go, and then move into the lesson.

Let's [00:33:00] introduce the lesson. Let's make connections to what we have learned. Have we learned about morphemes yet? So let's, we're talking about the EDNing. Have we learned about morphemes yet? Talk about what a morpheme is. I like to look at it, think of it as like puzzle pieces. Like we're building, as I add morphemes on, it add, it changes the puzzle, the picture that I'm looking at.

That's what I like to look at. Yeah. Unlearning. Yeah. So. I have learned if I add the puzzle piece on what does that change? How does that change the picture? And then, how does that change the picture? So that's what I like to think about morpheme. So have that discussion introduced, let's say we're introducing the ED.

So then we're going through that process. And making connections, say, we already learned about morpheme already. We learned about the plural S. So now this is just another morpheme. It's going to change the meaning of these words when we add that on as well. And then as you're going through the lesson, you can go through and work on words in isolation.

Can we decode words in isolation with the skills that we've already learned? Making sure that's a key point is, okay, what skills have we already learned? Now we're going to attach this ed [00:34:00] ending to that, but we're going to still stick to what we know. I'm not going to throw in a vowel team, vowel team words, because we haven't learned that yet.

So my kids are not expected to decode that. So let's work on decoding words in isolation using phoneme graphing, mapping mats. However, we're going to work on that, those exercises as well. And then while we're doing that, guess what we could do? Whatever words we're building. Can we talk about vocabulary?

Yes. Let's talk about vocabularies. Okay. Go ahead and map this word out, tap it, map it, graph it. Now let's spell it. Okay, what does that word mean? And then, okay, well now, I mapped out the word, let's say, past. Like, we went past the store. Let's talk about that word. Now, let's map the word past again. But this time, this is the word, I passed the ball.

So now we're talking about morpheme, understanding the difference between morphemes to help me with spelling. Well, there's the past tense. version of easy, that ED ending of I threw the ball. So now I have to understand the context of the word or the word in [00:35:00] the context of that sentence, make that connection to saying, well, am I writing this as P A S T?

Like I walked past or I go past the store or am I doing this? Like I passed the ball. So in the concept of you mapping out words or even writing a sentence, you can talk about morphology, vocabulary, all within that same lesson that you're focusing on that ed lesson. That's what your, that was your main skill that you may be focusing on at the time, but you can incorporate those vocabulary instances.

You can work on orthography and understanding the difference between P A S T and then P A S S E D. So you're having those conversations. So there's ways to layer all that in through your lesson. And continue that on to, okay, well, we talked about words in isolation. Now let's put these words into sentences with ed endings.

And then you're also talking about sound. So we're thinking about, Oh, how do I know what to use for my ed ending? Well, that's, and again, we've already learned, set that base with that phonemic awareness. Well, let's look at that base word. Is it a. [00:36:00] Voice sound, is it an unvoiced sound at the end? Well, that tells me what kind of, what I need to do, or what sound that ed sound is going to make at the end.

Well, what if it ends in a t or a d? Well, then it's going to have that extra syllable. So that's something you can say and say, well, when I have a word like I can't think of a word, right? Pat. And then I add that ed and pat it, it adds that id. That's an extra syllable. Now I have two syllables in that word.

Well, that helps me know. Okay. That's a different type of ed. So you could talk about base words and then talk about how that ED ending changes based on the base word, if it is voiced or unvoiced, or if it ends in a T or a D. And so now you're working on so many different skills and layering that all in.

So. There's a lot of points you could hit throughout a lesson that you don't think of. And then you can, what I said, you put those in sentences. Well, when you put those words in sentences, now students are working. Okay, we mapped out these words. We read words in isolation. We read these together. Now I have to work on writing and spelling this out.

So let's spell some words with that ed [00:37:00] ending. Now let's take those words that we spelled in the ed ending, putting in the context of the sentence. So now we're, again, we're learning more about vocabulary. How does that word work?

And then I always want to bring it back to reading and decodable texts come into play a lot. So especially in the younger grades is now we're going to read and decode. The text that I select, and that's why we kind of, that's why we did made decodables, because as the teacher it's helpful for us to build on those skills.

So now I'm going to use a decodable text that has a lot of those ed endings within it, and all the previous skills that we've learned. There's not going to be multi syllabic words with different morphemes that we haven't learned, Latin morphemes we haven't learned yet, or vowel teams because we're not there yet.

So students are getting that practice. But then also through the concept of reading, now we can work on comprehension as well. So as through that lesson, it's 90 minutes. We only have so much, but we can work on a lot of word knowledge skills, even starting at the [00:38:00] beginning with phonemic awareness. We can throw word, bigger words out there for them to hear.

That morpheme ed at the end and then talk about that as well. We could talk about vocabulary throughout the whole lesson or a language development. So you're hitting a lot of these different points. You just have to find ways to layer it in. Even phonemic awareness, reading words in isolation, mapping out words.

You can bring in vocabulary sentences. And it all builds upon each other and you're still Focused around one specific skill. So you're not jumping from this skill, jumping over here to this skill, you're incorporating all around that ed ending for say, but you're still looking at these different points of word knowledge.

And you can fit that all in your 90 minute lesson and hit a lot of points around your 90 minute lesson.

Mary: Yeah, Adam, you have so much extensive knowledge about. You know, you know, speaking about what what the expectation of students are expected to do. And I think that first getting a really solid footing on understanding, you know, how you can [00:39:00] be How you can change a word that has an ED ending and what that actually means and getting comfortable with that.

And one of the ways I think can be beneficial as a teacher and as the student, especially in an intervention group, is reiterating those same phrases that you're saying and giving the students an Opportunity to share back that information. I changed the word pass to P. A. S. S. E. D. Because I know that if I pass something, then I did it before that and let you know that you're giving them the opportunity to reiterate how you're doing it.

So I would say that. You know, your first tier one instruction is going to be really explicit with your students just the way that you described it when you're doing the intervention, I would be I would be modeling a lot for them and then giving them lots of opportunities to then feed it back to me.

Tell me the reason why. And and then with your tier three students, they may need even an extra dose of that. You may [00:40:00] need to model that even a little bit more, but I think that your explanation of a lesson is really great because all of those points are just so critical. And you just need to know that some of your students may need more doses of that same exact instruction, just with more practice turns or more ability to kind of.

Reiterate focus their brain as to explaining why if they can explain it, then they know it. It's something that they own. So I think that that's really important.

Shannon: I'm going to go back to the Lego car for a second, because you were talking about the layers. And so I see that like during the timeline of the lesson and the discussions with the students, whether it's whole group.

Or small group or one on one, you're looking at, do they have that sort of layer base layer of the car with the wheels and that big rectangular piece that kind of everything builds on each other, which is the sound simple correspondence and like the orthography choices that are used, you know, to show that.

you know, to either make the meaning based spelling or [00:41:00] the sound based spelling or combo of the two. And then from there, you're layering on the meaning of the word, like, okay, yeah, they have that foundation of bat, but then what meaning of bat? And then now they're applying in a context. So that's another layer, because then you're bringing in part of speech and syntax and things like that.

And then, like you said, then you even layer in the overall comprehension Whether it's because all of that we're talking about is word level comprehension. Right. And then you get to sentence level comprehension paragraph level comprehension passage level comprehension. So I do see those, you know, like each time you're adding things on that car is getting more detailed for that student that word knowledge.

And that picture, overall picture and background knowledge of that word is getting more detailed for that student. I

Heidi: love that. I think too, you, you, I don't think, just thinking of me as a teacher, like you have to be okay with also not knowing things sometimes. And [00:42:00] it's okay, like, you know, so many people are like, well, what about the word one?

You know, well, Let's look it up, you know, and, and etymonline. com is a great

Shannon: website

Heidi: bookmar it! And, you know, if you don't know something, say, you know what, guys, let's look this up, let's check on this together and don't be afraid. I know there's so many, you know expectations now with districts for teachers, but some of my best.

Best lessons came from a kid asking a question. I don't know. We're gonna dive into this and we're gonna look at it together. And that was another thing I thought of when Adam was talking. So I used to do these phonics. I call them phonics talks or phonics name game. With my students where we would, you know, do each student's name and we would dissect it and talk about the phonics parts of it, but you could even do this with your vocabulary words or, you know, just so those bigger words, like if you're doing a read aloud and perplexed is in there, write it on an anchor chart, dissect it, [00:43:00] have fun with it, look it up together with your students, you know, those things are okay.

I just want teachers and parents to know, like, it's okay to not know everything too, because there's. So much learning and unlearning to do. And kids, kids, I feel like respect that too. Like, Oh, she didn't know. Oh my gosh. You know? And then they kind of feel like they're learning alongside of you and it even builds that connection.

Shannon: Well, then those teaching little moments can happen, especially with students curiosity during the lessons. I will say too, like, I love the book, like know better, do better. And I've just sort of adopted that as a life motto in terms of my teaching, I guess, a professional motto. And. I'm kind of trying to do better than my past second grade self.

And so actually have some more advanced readers that I'm working with the tutoring. And so that's why we're delving up on some of these topics this season, because I'm having to work on spelling instruction. I'm having to work with comprehension instruction. I'm having to work on morphology instruction.

And so I've been finding some more, Resources curriculum resources to use to [00:44:00] do that in a structured literacy is explicit and systematic that I want resources are going to help me do that. So I want to show y'all. I just got my son was like, you got a box in the mail mom. And so my morph morphine magic and morphemes for little ones came in today.

I'm so excited. And Mary is using. All about spelling curriculum. Is that right, Mary? Which is like a homeschool curriculum. And so I wanted to ask you guys before we finish our conversation, if there's any resources that y'all have found through your work in the field that y'all would recommend for sort of all of these little areas of word knowledge, like vocabulary, morphology, spelling.

Heidi: Yeah, so same because we homeschool and our son is now in third grade. And so it's getting harder, especially for me because my expertise is with the youngers. But I just got Morpheme Magic 2 and I absolutely am loving it. And then one resource that I haven't used Extensively, but that I would [00:45:00] recommend looking into is in for cabulary, and it was just recently I guess picked up by really great reading, but I think you can just get a license for that it's in for like inference in for cabulary.

And a while back they had given me a free trial so I looked at it a little bit but it it seems like it's a really good resource for teaching vocabulary worth looking into at least. And then a resource for spelling that I do want to share, it's a free website. I happened to meet the developer at a conference I was at and he is a retired man who was tutoring and he is absolutely amazing.

It's called Three Click Spelling and he developed this website that I use with my son. all the time because he still is I don't know why he's still, I don't know how to spell that type thing. And you know, like I try to break that habit in kindergarten. Like we're not doing that. But he still does that.

And so we use this site because I'm not going to give him the word. I'm not going to, you know, help him. And it requires you to find the syllables in a [00:46:00] word, the sounds in a word, and then it'll bring up options for what your word might be. And so it really relies on those, those basic car Lego level skills.

Right. But it can also help with spelling as well. Three clicks spelling.

Shannon: I've written all of those down for our show notes. Thank you.

Adam: On the morphology path I do recommend a resource, I guess, is he has multiple reasons, but looking up Dr. Peter Bowers.

Shannon: Oh, Mary and I just signed up for training with him.

Structured word inquiry. I'm so fascinated by this.

Adam: It really,

Shannon: it's

Adam: a lot. It's a lot to like start to learn, but it makes, it helps make morphology and words make a lot more sense. So especially how can I transfer that over into. at the kindergarten and first grade level, which I thought was amazing. So really looking at Dr.

Peter Bowers and Instructor Word Inquiry is definitely a path for K 5 teachers to really look at.

Shannon: Spoiler alert, he might be coming to the Reader's Teacher's Lounge later this season. [00:47:00] Yes, I took

Heidi: his training and I have his book. And so I use that along with the morphine magic with a side. I forgot about that.

Adam: So he's,

Heidi: cause

Shannon: that, that does, I don't know a lot about it. Like I am really like a very newbie with it, even though I've been in the Facebook group for a while, but my understanding of structure word inquiry is that it's sort of, you are analyzing words through the lens of etymology, through the lens of the syllables, through the lens of the morphology in it.

Is that, is that. Am I getting it right? Okay.

Adam: And it gives a lot of examples and makes a lot of sense to things like, Oh, well, what is, do I use at the end of artist? Well, most words that are related to people in a job is IST and EST connects to like a degree of intensity or whatever. So it makes you start to think about words like, Oh, it's way more simple than I try and make it.

And that's as educators, we really need, especially in the world of morphology and etymology, It can be daunting. So

Shannon (2): yeah, it

Adam: is. He breaks things down like that and it makes it really interesting and makes [00:48:00] me analyze words more.

Heidi: Like his example of why is there a G in the word sign? Those are questions that kids are going to ask us, you know, and then he started talking about, well, let's look at signal, signature.

Shannon: I know, right? It's like a word family, not a word family in terms of CVC rhyming, but like a meaning word family.

Heidi: And you know, I don't want to get too much into it because he'll probably talk about that exact example on your webs are on your podcast, but it's so, you know, it's eyeopening. So I found it very interesting and, you know, so we like it.

We're fans.

Shannon: Thank you. Thank you. We want to recognize, you know, that your time is so valuable. So we appreciate you sharing all of your expertise about word knowledge here with us today. I feel like I mean, we didn't give teachers all the answers because we don't know their students and we don't know the, you know, requirements and non negotiables of their school building and their school district and things like that and the curriculum resources that are around them.

But [00:49:00] I, I think what I've done in myself and Mary and I think what hopefully we've done to listeners is just pique teacher's curiosity about word knowledge and getting them to think about their own instruction and reflect on it and think about, okay, well, I Where are my students in terms of their own word knowledge and then how am I teaching and word knowledge and making sure that students get this complete detailed understanding of words beyond just the sound symbol correspondences.

Mary: I totally agree. I think that the other piece of. I don't know. I don't know. Just giving like a little bit of like give yourself some grace and peace in this is that once you're teaching students, these words come to you and you start to own those words too. So the longer you keep practicing this, your craft grows and grows.

And so it's just a matter of. Starting with getting started on it and making it part of your new habit as you're teaching and getting curious about words. And so once you get that

Shannon: Mary, like we wanted to peak [00:50:00] kids curiosity about words and get them to become. Be word collectors

Mary: to become word collectors.

Right. And that's like, once they own a word, it becomes part of theirs, but that's true of all humans. Like, I know I'm so thrilled when I learn a new word, that's like a just right word that I was hoping to use. It's really exciting. And so you know, it can be playful, it could be joyful, it can be meaningful.

And so all of those things are ways that we can motivate kids. And you know, so.

Shannon: I like that you said that, Mary, because I'm picturing, like, just the drudgery of looking at the words that are in, like, the science lesson and then, like, looking them up in the dictionary or looking up in the glossary and writing down the definitions.

Like, that is the definition of drudgery to me. I still dread it from when I was in middle school and high school.

Mary: Yeah.

Shannon: Vocabulary and word knowledge instruction doesn't have to be like that. It shouldn't be like that.

Mary: Well, and I think that like that comes back to the art of teaching too. And once you model that curiosity and [00:51:00] you model that, I mean, I can think of teachers that I had, who had vastly different interests than I was really you know, like geology, I had a geology teacher who was the coolest teacher because they were so curious and they made me curious about it.

I had no, I. No intentions of becoming a geologist, but I did enjoy going to their class because they were super motivating because they were all in every day. And so I think that, you know, that's a great lesson to just like, kind of take with you. It can be fun and joyful and you bring that

Shannon: final thoughts while we've got y'all here in the Reading Teachers Lounge?

Heidi: I'll just piggyback off what you guys were just saying because I think that's so important. It should be fun. It's not even say it can be. It should be like, you know, come up and that's, that's really what a lot of what we do is coming up with games. First of all, that encompass multiple skills because I'm a super fan of that.

If I can cover this, this and this in [00:52:00] this one game, yes, please. So, you know, finding those activities that do that, that your kids love and that they enjoy, and that will get them curious. And then again, just to reiterate, like giving yourself grace and being okay with learning along with your kids. I don't know guys, let's look this up and let's see if we can figure it out together.

You know, those kinds of things I think can be so important and really cultivate that love for learning that we need to have.

Adam: And one thing I would just want to encourage, like, as a teacher, and to all the teachers out there, is that we always see, like, okay, well, now I gotta do vocabulary, and now I gotta do morphology, and now I gotta, it's like, adding to my plate.

But just know that in your instruction, you are doing this stuff, and there's windows there for you to just pull these things in. You just gotta, it's about the learning process of, like, oh, I can talk about morphology and vocabulary in my phonemic awareness warmup? Yes, you can. There's no rules against it.

And guess what? You're hitting 10. You're hitting these strands that you don't have to do a whole next [00:53:00] extra 30 minute block on just vocabulary or morphology you there's windows for you to tie it in there. Just, I just gotta, sometimes you gotta sit and think like, Oh, how can I incorporate that then? And then you're not doing extra work.

It's part of your 90 minute block. And you're weaving all these things in and out, in and out. And you're making it fun for you and for the kids. Cause you're hitting all these topics of word knowledge. So they're there. It's just, sometimes it's taking a step back and saying like, Well, can I, where can I fit this in?

And it can start from the very beginning. Even when manipulating sounds, you're still building that. background knowledge or vocabulary, morphology, etymology. It's there for you. So don't get discouraged about another thing I have to do. How can I incorporate that in there and it's not an extra step and it's just part of my job that I'm already doing every single day.

Shannon: That is such a good point because readers aren't going to like read a chapter book and be like, I'm only thinking about vocabulary and during this chapter and I'm only going to think about fluency during this chapter. So why would our, you know, We don't have to have an instructional block, so regimen, and we might [00:54:00] have like a vocabulary, you know, focus mini lesson to like a strategy for becoming, you know, better, you know, solvers of understanding words in context or something, but we're not going to have this vocabulary block necessarily.

Adam: Exactly. Yep. And it can be tied to the specific skill that you're working on. There's, so you're not adding extra work. It's there. We just got to see like, how can I weave this in?

Mary: I think I'm a part of this conversation. That's really helpful. And it's actually really one of the reasons that Shannon and I started the reading teachers lounge is starting a conversation with another teacher about this.

Like, Hey, have you found any great strategies for weaving in the morphology in the beginning of your lesson? Or, you know, I've, I've Doing a pretty good job with my phonemic awareness. How would you explain this word? And I think like modeling it with another adult first, who's also doing it similarly can be really helpful, especially we're all just like so stressed for time, but I think this could be really like a two minute [00:55:00] conversation and it could really change your.

You know, your work. So I do, maybe a challenge is in the teacher's lounge, start a conversation and just see how it's going in someone else's class. As teachers, we love to talk about what we're teaching. So, you know yeah. Thank you so much for your time, you two. This has been so enjoyable and I'm so proud of the work that you guys are doing.

I love using your products, so we're glad to have you on.

Adam: Thank you. Thank you for having us again. Yes.

Mary: Yeah. Thank you so

Heidi: much.